my name was verita.

on truth, the depths, and finally drinking from your own spring

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment.

this is what drinking from your own spring looks like.

i just got home from taking my son to his physical and dropping him at school.

feeling spent.

slightly depressed.

bone tired in the way that lives below exhaustion.

so i lay down on my couch in my wrecked house and just… stayed there.

until the tears began to stream.

it’s been four days of non stop.

and two decades of the same, if i’m really being honest here.

which, if you know me, i always am.

my two oldest daughters just back from high school trips.

my oldest one graduating this week.

and then her boyfriend drama. and my quiet terror of realizing the spanish visas may not come through in time. if we can even get the appointments for them…

even though i already signed a lease and enrolled the kids in school in seville.

and then my recent decision to go back and do a retreat in costa rica.

which is very loaded for me at the moment.

because that’s where the dissociated memories of my childhood first began to surface, the ones my body had kept locked away for decades, until it decided i was finally ready to remember.

even though they didn’t fully arrive until i was home again. safe at home and resting in that liminal space my bed is when they arrived. just like so many other memories, sensations and aha moments for me throughout my life.

with the support of the safe container on this healing retreat in costa rica, something had cracked open that couldn’t be closed, couldn’t be shoved back down from where it emerged out of the depths, even if i had wanted it to.

like pandora’s box.

and once it opened my whole world shattered.

more than it already was with the death of my beloved finn, nine months before that.

and in all transparency, closing that box would not have been at all in my nature.

unlike so many in my life, who would rather bury it all under and pretend nothing happened, i don’t operate that way and never have.

my name was verita, meaning truth in latin.

before it became venus, it was verita for most of my life.

and i believe that was for a reason.

so when these long buried memories did finally resurface, they brought everything with them.

the realization that i wasn’t alone in having survived them.

that my children needed to be saved.

the legal processes that followed.

the boundaries that had to be drawn in places i never imagined drawing them.

the relationships that fragmented.

the family that chose sides.

the before and after of a life split in two by something that happened long ago but landed in the present like a meteor. like a forest fire. like a flood.

i almost didn’t go on the healing retreat then.

i almost didn’t go now either.

both times the trip planning started as something social, the momentum of planning a trip with friends that slowly shape-shifted into something else entirely.

both times, once the trips with friends were planned, something underneath the noise began to speak, and i knew i need to shift course.

i don’t know what to call it.

finn on the other side.

my guide team.

my higher self.

my own deep knowing.

but it came, both times, the same way, a whisper underneath the noise:

venus. you found the childcare. now go into the wilderness of your own precious being. into the holding of mother gaia in her radiant jungly green splendor. go to this place that is a held container and safe for your unraveling. and finally give yourself what you so easily pour forth for others. go. it’s time to drink from your own spring.

i have only taken two solo trips in two decades of parenting.

two.

and both times i had to be coaxed by something larger than my own permission.

but luckily for me, i am getting really good at listening to the inner nudges. i almost died by not listening. now i’m getting better at it.

at this healing retreat center, they take a before and after photo of every person who comes through.

they know what happens there. they know you will not leave the same.

so i’ve decided it is time to make the pilgrimage back to myself and i am going back less than two months before we hopefully make it to spain. before the biggest leap of my life.

truly, loaded doesn’t even begin to cover it.

so lying there on my couch this morning, i could feel the pull to reach for my phone. to fill the anxious fluttering in my chest and to float back up to the surface where things are manageable and scrollable and distracting.

but i didn’t.

because what i have come to realize, after four years of loss and rebuilding, is this:

most of us have been coping our whole lives and don’t even know the extent of it. how disconnected we have become from what is truly living underneath in our depths.

we’re all just treading water and calling it living.

and then something catastrophic happens and it’s like we’re thrown off our life raft, and down, down, down we sink to the bottomless depths below.

and meanwhile it’s like an enormous flashlight the size of the moon gets shone down on just how much we have avoided feeling just to get by.

the contrast gets so huge between what we were avoiding and what’s underneath.

that’s why the tip of the iceberg is such a great metaphor.

because the feelings are so huge you can’t do it the way you learned to cope and survive any longer.

it all becomes shattered in the storm, and you’re lucky to cling to any driftwood pieces you can find and hope to not drown in those towering waves.

in essence, it all breaks down.

and then, because we are such creatures of habit, us little humans, as soon as you start to feel a bit better, you go right back to it. right back to floating on the surface.

because the depths are fucking hard to sit in.

but the depths are also where all the gold is.

the buried treasure, right?

so instead of reaching for my phone i dropped in.

i let the feelings swell. i cried for all the hardship of being a human in a broken world. and then i felt a little better.

a little lighter, a little safer in this dangerous world of tidal waves and surrounded by those who hurt because they were hurt.

and then i did decide to get out my phone, but this time to record the process.

i am learning to make meaning from the madness.

so i came here and wrote to you.

and that’s it. that’s the whole practice.

try it. maybe you already do. or you have your own way of diving in and retrieving gold. of letting go of your raft to really ride the waves and dive under the surface.

we must learn to dance like dolphins in the ocean of our becoming.

and it doesn’t have to be every day.

maybe just once a week even.

but when you finally get a pause from the chaos and the busyness that’s running us all ragged, lie down. give yourself a second. and say in your heart:

i’m ready to feel what needs to rise.

because even as you will inevitably be cracked wide open, the tears and the grief will feel better than the frantic avoidance and the fluttery attempts to keep the flood at bay.

you might just find your heart has a lot to say and that spring that wells forth is like drinking from an oasis after wandering alone through the dry hot deserts of your mind.

and you are safe enough, strong enough, and eternal enough to drink deeply and feel all there is to feel in your one precious soul that makes you so beautifully and uniquely exactly who you are.

this life, these experiences, these tender moments, in all their broken open painfulness, are exactly why we came.

i love you. thanks for being here.

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i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞