Numbing Out

I’m having a hard time feeling inspired by life. I did it again—I fell in love, got my heart broken, picked up the pieces, and had to find my inner strength once more so that I could move forward. I wish I could tell you that at some point heartbreak will never happen again—that it eventually makes sense, that life won’t hurt you, and that loving another soul won’t leave you weeping for days, weeks, months, or even, at times, years.

In the same breath, I hate admitting the fact that I would do it all over again. Yup, you heard right: I would go through the pain of heartbreak again. If you asked any of my closest friends, they’d probably tell you they wish I wouldn’t. By gods, for their ears, I wish I could restrain my beating romantic heart.

To love so deeply, to feel so deeply, to be devoted to another so faithfully—it’s an interesting thing. In the end, the part I both hate and simultaneously love the most about falling in love is how much it allows you to learn, grow, and build deeper intimacy with yourself and others as a whole.

It takes immense strength to love yourself after allowing another to love you. They shine a light on parts of you that you didn’t even realize could be loved. They end up loving things about you that you may have forgotten. They cherish features you once thought unworthy of love. They make you realize how much you care about things you once let get “out of hand.” They call you out on old wounds you didn’t even notice had become habitual worries.

The list goes on and on. The lessons I’ve learned from both loving and losing far outweigh the hurt I’ve endured. Still, it freaking hurts. Luckily, in my hurt, some of my favorite poetry has been birthed from the moments my heart was torn to shreds.

There is one thing, however, that took me four years to unlearn—one thing that will stop you from allowing yourself to be loved, and to love another:

Numbing out.

Whatever you do, do. not. numb. out. your. heart.

This is the one thing that will truly stop your soul’s growth.

If you numb out, you stop living a life that you can truly feel. Numbing out is right up there with running away from love—which, trust me, I’ve done too.

The hardest, yet only, way to truly live a spiritually focused life full of love is to, well…keep loving—and to continuously fall in and out of love.

Natural law states that throughout the universe, there is life, death, and rebirth. Nothing lasts forever.

To ignore death is to deny life. And that includes the uncomfortable rebirth process. Love has its own cyclical flow. In every relationship, there is a life, death, and rebirth cycle.

I think the biggest lesson to learn from loving another—and from allowing yourself to be loved—is the ability to heal old wounds that once stopped you from both receiving and giving love.

Through conditioning or learned behaviors from childhood, family, and societal influence, we slowly begin to build walls. When you came into this world as a baby, you arrived as a pure being of love. Literally, it was “love” that brought you into existence. But somewhere along the way, you realized it wasn’t safe to receive or give love fully. So, you began putting up walls to protect yourself from pain. And because pain isn’t pleasurable, especially as a child, those walls stayed.

The universe—and spirit—has a beautiful way of wanting to crack you open to live a more loving life. With that, you always have a choice: stay numbed out from love, or open yourself up to it again.

Option 1: Open your heart and soul to the love that is all around you. This way leaves you open, expansive, willing to see the good and magic this world is full of. To start opening yourself up to this option, simply make the conscious decision that you want to open up to love again. The universe will have no choice but to begin shifting your world to reflect this reality.

Option 2: Stay numbed out. I’ll let you know this option is the easier one—but it will be cold and deprived of joy, passion, and lighthearted childlike wonder. You won’t get hurt, but you also won’t really feel much, since you’ve chosen not to feel.

If you ask me—and from experience—Option 1 will always lead you to a more full, wondrous, painful, yet deeply rewarding life. To stay soft, compassionate, and loving with yourself. Emotions are meant to be felt. There is no “bad” emotion—only emotions waiting to be felt and explored.

I’d like to end with understanding—truly from my own experience—that sometimes you do have to stay numb just to get by. Sometimes you aren’t in the right state of mind, environment, or don’t have the support you need to process the pain that thawing your heart out takes. So please, with an extremely compassionate heart, take all the time you need. And when you feel ready, trust in love again.

With that, lots of love n’ light,

—Emma H

The Wild Rose

The Wild Rose - Part 1

It’s funny how, when you start something deeply rooted in the seat of your soul, there’s a moment where it all begins to flow again. An ocean of words had been waiting to spill from my very being, yet I had been holding them back with a simple plug. In hindsight, my Godly plug, I had convinced myself that writing again would be far worse than it actually was. And now, as I sit here writing, I feel nothing but pure joy pouring through me.

To paint a picture for you, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in my Vancouver neighborhood. Honestly, I had been rushing to finish my three daily journal pages just to get here. I picked up this three-page journaling prompt from The Artist’s Way, a book that had been profoundly impactful when I was traveling through Ireland. (We’ll get back to that.) I hurried to get ready, skipped breakfast, grabbed my laptop, and ran out of the house. The early morning air carried that crisp West Coast chill, a gentle reminder of winter’s presence. While the rest of the country deals with heavy snow, here, we get a slight frosting. I found a small spot nestled in the warmly lit coffee shop corner, and as I settled in, I felt an old, familiar joy. The simple pleasure of writing, the same joy I felt when I first started my blog, had found me once again.

The ever-unfolding nature of one’s journey always makes me laugh. So often, the past circles back in unexpected ways. Living close to the ocean has taught me well, the ebb and flow of life is inevitable.

I haven’t always lived on the West Coast. I was actually born in Wild Rose Country, more commonly known as Alberta. I find it wildly comical that, despite my lifelong love for roses and my devotion to walking the way of the rose, I was born in a province where the wild rose is the official flower.

And so, this is where today’s story begins.

If you were hoping for me to start my story in Ireland, I’m afraid there are events that must be told first, events that made my time in Ireland and my discovery of God there so profoundly life-changing. This is the beginning of a much larger story. Don’t worry, it’s worth the read. I’ll do my best to summarize without leaving out too much.

I’ve always been a wild rose myself. Born a middle child, I didn’t carry the responsibilities my older sister did. At the same time, being the eldest of two younger brothers meant I was far from being babied. I embraced my wild child nature, and, quite frankly, I flourished in it. Free-spirited, joyful, and untamed, I had more energy than my parents probably knew how to handle at times. Deeply emotional and, on some days, carrying more confidence in my left tooth than the average person has in their entire body. Even now, I still have more energy than most. If you’re wondering my secret, well, in the words of the great Lady Gaga, ‘I was born this way’.

Thankfully, my wild and free nature was never too restricted by rules. My mother was a florist, my father an electrician, both a blessing in different ways. We had enough rules to keep us from becoming unruly children (there were four of us, after all), but more than enough freedom to express ourselves artistically and creatively. Another unique part of my upbringing? We were raised without structured religion. My parents believed in something, but no specific faith was ever placed upon us. Looking back, I see this as both a blessing and a curse on my path to God, the Universe, Spirit—whatever name resonates most.

Without any structured spiritual practice growing up, the closest thing to a guiding philosophy we had was simple: Be kind to others, and Love. When I think about it now, that core belief still shapes my spiritual path today.

Alberta, in the ’90s and early 2000s, was…how do I put this kindly? —very white. And I don’t just mean the year-round snow. I didn’t understand much about religion back then. All I knew was that church was a place some people went on Sundays, which meant some of my school friends couldn’t hang out with me. Or that certain schools required baptism, and since we weren’t baptized, we couldn’t go. I attended public school, where I was fortunate to be surrounded by a mix of different backgrounds, cultures, and religious beliefs—though, to be fair, still a lot of white snow coverage. If you catch my drift.

My cousins, who were the same age as my sister and me, went to Catholic school, church, and all that jazz. If you ask anyone in my family, especially my mom, they’ll tell you I hated going to church as a kid. I would throw an absolute fit every time we had to go. My poor parents couldn’t understand why I harbored such an intense aversion to something I had barely interacted with. And honestly? That deep discomfort never really left me. Even into my twenties, whenever I traveled with my mom to Europe and she wanted to visit churches for their architecture, I’d be desperate to leave as soon as we stepped inside. (Sorry, Mom, for being such a pain in the ass. I know you lovingly remind me of this often!)

I think my aversion to structured religion solidified when I hit puberty. As I grew, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I began to notice something: I didn’t fit in.

I was loud. I was bright. I had a beautiful personality. And I was undeniably, unapologetically, highly sexual—even as a teenager. Fun fact: At the ripe age of 12 or 13, I wrote a fanfiction with sex scenes in it, despite having no experience, just an awakening desire fueled by books and online fanfics.

So this all left me wondering:

Where did I fit in the eyes of God?

Where were the wild, desire-filled women in God’s vision? Because from what I had been shown, femininity in religion was solely embodied by the Virgin Mary. And yet, I knew in my bones that babies didn’t just come from nowhere.

Where was the acknowledgment of sex? Of erotic energy? Of the sweat, the fluids, the heat, and passion? To me, that was the closest thing to something truly spiritual. And yet, it was nowhere to be found in the religious teachings around me.

I was far from the Virgin Mary—I knew that. So did that mean I didn’t belong? Was I cast out simply for being a woman?

Churches spoke of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But what about the mothers, the daughters, the grandmothers?

The absence of the divine feminine in spirituality as I knew it left me feeling erased.

So again where did I, as a female in all my glory that I deeply felt in my body, fit in?

In turn this deep, internal confusion likely played a subconscious role in shaping the life I led between the ages of 19 and 21. I had broken up with my first love/high school sweet heart, and had just began serving, after a trip from England. I graduated and being seeing as adult woman out in the world I felt so free.

I was a young woman who was a far cry from unattractive, and trust me men were well aware of this too.

I was young, and I was about to learn a lot about the unhealthy masculine very quickly.

Welcome to my downfall.

The Budding

PREFACE to my ever-unfolding journey walking the way of The Rose.

It’s time to tell you my story of finding God.

I’ve been wresting with myself for over a year to share this part of my story. Fighting and fighting it. Hushing the whisper inside of me to the point that it’s screaming at me now to be set free. The thing about this spiritual journey is that if you walk the path long enough, it becomes very familiar to the individual. Similarities in one’s waves of death, life, and rebirth play out.

At one point, when the ego can’t go forward anymore, when it is too tired carrying on the way it has been, it must take a knee and surrender. I write this to you as I unshackle the chains from what I’m having to let unfold so that I can find my salvation in my own journey.

Welcome to my surrendering.

If you’re reading this, there is nothing in me that questions that you haven’t stumbled on this blog post by accident. You’re here because, in you, there is a need for this story to be told. In the depth of all the fighting you’re learning—or in the midst of already surrendering. To not feel alone. To know there are others who have felt this complex emotional torment within a very new world.

In that, I will express the deepest love and compassion to you, as surrendering to the inner knowing is possibly the hardest and most courageous thing one can do. I see you.

What brought on my need to express possibly one of my most intimate stories about myself came about yesterday. Last night, my bestie and I went to a mini night retreat called The Heart’s Calling. Your typical Vancouver retreat—though not to take away, in the same breath, a very gorgeous, intimate women’s circle. Tea, deep conversations, sound bath, yoga, creative expression, journaling, all wrapped in four luscious hours.

Richelle, my bestie, who we both met working as flight attendants, was very much called to go to this retreat. Oddly enough, what came up wasn’t anything during the retreat but instead, at 4 a.m. the morning after.

If you know me on a more personal level, you will know this story in great detail. Though if you don’t, you most likely don’t know the tale.

One that I will, over the course of not one post but many, share. My story, my teachings, my insights, hurdles, tears, suffering, joy, heartfelt love, and desires on:

How I found God—or I guess better yet, how He found me.

A quick note on 'God being seen as masculine for me: I know this can be very triggering, as it was for me my whole life, up until recently.

Please, if the word “God” in the masculine is uncomfortable in your body or emotions, feel free to replace it with Universe, Spirit, Source, Creator, or whichever connection to Spirit feels most aligned. For I did this for all of my spiritual journey leading up to this writing and found a lot of peace in doing so.

You may also replace it with Goddess to allow the feminine energy to feel more welcomed. (Though as this story delves into finding where the feminine energy is welcomed in spirituality, especially in a more biblical sense, I found it hard to do so.)

Everyone’s connection to Spirit, God, or Universe is extremely personal, and one story is only a droplet in the sea of conscious understanding.

My hope is that you find what you need in my very personal story on spirituality to help support and guide you along your journey. And in the same breath, if it doesn’t resonate, that is completely okay. I don’t expect everything I write to land with everyone, and it’s not supposed to. If it did, then we all would be the same human, living the same human experience. Which honestly, that sounds boring as hell to me. In this crazy, expansive, creative, unique world we live in, I’ve found that it is in our differences that we find our similarities.

I have also felt great suffering in myself resisting what I will be writing. As it goes against a lot of my teachings as a healer that I once was. Hence the inner turmoil that I have felt for years about spirituality and writing on it. In truth, I had stopped writing because I was angry that this had become part of my story—finding “God.”

A story that, when I shared with others, had been told was “amazing” and that they wished they could have a story about finding “God” as well. In their bewilderment and awestruck faces, I felt nothing but alone and singled out—the farthest thing from lucky. I didn’t want to become one of those preachy people where “their God was the only God.”

I hated preachy spiritualists, more geared towards Catholics and Christians. Truly, I had (and honestly, at times still very much in the present, still have) the worst time receiving any teachings that they tried/try sharing with me.

Even writing this, I realize the anger that I am still working through. It’s a journey. With this knowledge, I hope you give me as much compassion as I am trying to have on myself to not sound like one of those preachy, Godly know-it-all people. As nature is ever-changing, so am I—and so is my spiritual/healing practice.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, it’s 4 a.m., and I’m awake because I can hear my five-gallon little fish tank’s filter water loudly pouring into the tank in the quiet of my garden suite. Yes, I really should have filled and cleaned it the day before. Though being “on top of it” lately hasn’t been my forte.

Wide-eyed and awake in my bed, and after precariously placing a leaf to catch the water in the tank to silence the loud dribbling, I came to the aha I’ve been needing to sit and write as of late, and avoiding for almost a year and a half.

How I found God after my career with Air Transat as a flight attendant ended in 2023. How my last gift from working as a flight attendant was my round trip to Ireland and back.

I’ve always had a huge love for Ireland, though now, with finding possibly the deepest spiritual connection to Source, my love for Ireland is on a level that feels like I will always be indebted to the Emerald Isle.

I still remember the ground agent, Peter (or was it Patrick?), on my last operating flight to Dublin telling me that “Ireland was waiting for me to come back.” How little did I know how that simple invitation would break me open into a million pieces—from the numb shell I had become, to be found again in God’s love, and to finally begin to piece myself into a whole new masterpiece.

Not quite the old me, not quite the new version I was expecting, but an ever-evolving, budding, blooming, and expanding rose.

This is the story I will be sharing with you…

X Emma