From Shame to Sovereignty: Reclaiming My Chaotic 20's

The Story I NEVER thought I'd Share....

As a somatic embodiment coach, I often share about transformation, releasing shame, and the power of owning all parts of ourselves. As a spiritual mentor, I share how narrative re-wiring changes our reality. These teachings aren’t something I’ve learned in a book. They came alive through the mystery school of life — through my own lived initiations. 

For years, I held this story and shared it half baked with folks around me. I sometimes talked about my earlier 20’s in moments of joking, as I tried to deflect the real feelings that lived underneath it and appear to be free from it. Yet it kept coming up. 

Last week I realized we don’t just do inner child healing. We then do inner teenager. And now inner 20’s. I’ve finally caught up to myself. 

So here is one of those stories. Today I share it not for shock, but for truth. Because sometimes the very stories we hide are the ones that hold our medicine — the invitations to reclaim our wholeness. In bringing it forward, I meet my younger self with compassion, and in doing so, I offer permission for you to meet yours. 

Last week, I curated a playlist for Mindful Erotic Practice…a somatic journey to bring me into a deeper feeling of all parts of my body. 

A practice I teach. A practice that has been my anchor during incredibly deep trauma in my life. 

I knew I needed to go DEEP. I was on day 3 of my bleed. 

I prepared the space. Laying a yoni wand, yoni egg, an anal plug out with a bottle of coconut oil. I wasn’t sure what I’d use. Medicine in the form of objects, available to deepen my surrender, alchemizing my embodiment. 

Part of me knew some of the songs on the playlist. What I didn’t expect was to put on a second playlist.

Because 1 hour wasn’t enough. An hour in and I’d just scratched the surface. I put on music that has no end time. I could just simply flow. 

I couldn’t “curate” the transformation. The sound helped. The music flowed. 

My movement started slow. It started out feeling into the small spaces of my body. 

Child’s pose, gentle touch, cat cows, light stretching. 

My womb began to pulse. I could feel the sensation of expansion, heat, fire in my womb. 

As if she was screaming HEY. THE SHAME IS HERE. 

I placed my hands and felt OLD shame. From LONG ago.

But more surprisingly, I felt guilt under my ribs. 

I let it pour out, covering every cell. I stayed with it. I was moved by it.

I lightly pounded the floor. I shook my body slowly. I let it go. 

It wasn’t large, crazy movements. It was in the subtly. The lightness. The gentleness. 

There wasn’t a story or a WHY to these emotions, I was just feeling it. Moving it. 

My hands dripped oil on my body. My breath increased. Pleasure heightened.

Eros had arrived. 

I wove pleasure into my body. Pieces of memories came into my mind of things I’d done and felt shame over. 

I began to re-write it with my body.

I lost myself in the trance of bliss. I allowed my obsidian yoni egg to remove this darkness. With my yoni wand and anal plug, I brought attention. Presence. Awareness. To even the darkest spaces of my body. 

My body trembled with the opening. It was slow. It was sensual. It took devotion to presence. Constant checking in…are you willing to go deeper? Breathe in, the body relaxes, breathe we go 1% deeper. 

Pleasure and light brought to the cells holding shame and fear. 

I surrendered to this pleasure. It overtook me. I was lost in the trance. My whole being awakened to a spiritual state of consciousness. 

And then I opened my eyes. My hands had blood on them.

My body had blood on it. 

I’d somehow rubbed my period blood. All. Over. me. 

FLASH. Visceral Memory Came In. I felt pulled back in time. 

In my heightened state of Eros, I was taken back to a memory of my early 20’s 

I remembered being 20 years old and waking up covered in blood after a 3 day trip with my ex. We did a LOT of cocaine. Like. A lot. It was a weekend of camping, hiking in waterfalls, taking mushies, and doing ALL of the things. The weekend itself I hold in fondness in my memory. Even though the repercussions were deep shadow. 

I got home Sunday, had classes and work on Monday, so I smoked weed and passed out. 

Hours later I woke up, wondering why I was so hot?

Why was I wet and sticky?

I was covered in blood from blowing out both of my nasal passages.

I’d smeared it all over my wall behind my pillow. My white sheets and pillow case had blood all over them.

I was so embarrassed I never told anyone. I bleached my sheets. Scrubbed the walls. Pretended it didn’t happen. To me, it wasn’t a big deal. Just a nose bleed and I’d be more careful next time.

It’s only in this embodiment practice that I realized I’d had a near death experience. I could’ve died. 

I felt all of this as if I was there. My body felt hot, my breath deepened, taking me deeper into the past. I stayed in the movement. Letting it flow through me. The music mirroring the depth, pulling me deeper and deeper in. 

I allowed the emotions of the past to be met with the radical self acceptance of who I am now. Of who I was then. I wove in my pleasure.

I realized there was DEEP part of me buried in side that was afraid of my own blood because of this memory. 

In my practice, I was shocked to find this fear. I felt myself freeze for a moment. I lost my breath. 

I’m the girl who posted pics of her period blood on instagram. How could I be afraid of my own blood?

But I was. And that was the truth I had no idea was living in me. 

So I surrendered to the fear. Felt it in me. Felt in my root, in the tightness in my womb. The pain in my low back. 

I went a little deeper.

It wove in with the guilt I felt.

And the guilt I had for the decisions I made in that phase of life, providing cocaine to people I knew were addicts. 

But when I felt it. I realized. It was all their choice, just as much as mine. My chest expanded, the energy lifted. My solar plexus expanded, I could feel the light behind my ribs. The opening in the body. 

I laugh/cried at this, realizing I’d be carrying something that was never mine to hold. 

And I realized that I found an edge at that time in my 20’s. I never went too far with drugs again. I made healthy choices even mixed in with my experimentation. For months after that, I didn’t do cocaine. Eventually, it came back in my life. I experimented after this, but I did so with more intention.

It was their edge to find. Just as it had been mine. Their sovereignty to experience. Their life path. By trying to protect them, I was taking their sovereignty from their experience. I see now how shadowed my ‘helping’ was — how often we disguise control as care.

And I forgave myself. For going too far. For playing with darkness. For trading “dark energy” (drugs) for money. 

My root felt the shift around money with this. My pelvic floor opened. My breath deepened into the root. The obsidian alchemized it.

Yes, I was irresponsible with money at one time. It was another experiment. My first try at entrepreneurship. AND I’ve taken responsibility with money. 

I released it all. I surrendered to the truth of who I was. 

I alchemized through my pleasure. I poured the bliss through my body through radical self acceptance, through self forgiveness, and the realization that I can let it all go. 

I ran my blood over my body in pure ecstatic org@sm. I felt my tingling sensations throughout my whole being. Even my hair felt electric. 

It wasn’t an org@sm that is a sneeze in the genit@ls. But rather a full body awakening with energy pouring in wave after wave through every cell of my being. 

I re-wired that my blood is life giving.

The bliss is in the surrender.

To who I was.

To who I am.

To who I am becoming. 

Lastly, as a 3/5 Manifesting Generator, I share this experiences to say…

YOU DON’T HAVE TO. 

I did the experiments for you. No need to go crazy with experimentation. I already did it. 

You DO GET TO release shame from your body.

You DO GET TO achelmize guilt into forgiveness, and into responsibility.

You do GET TO integrate your fears. Are they serving you? Or is something from 10 years ago that has a hold on you that you didn’t even realize was there? 

We are the powerful. We get to re-write any narrative we desire. 

So I write this in gratitude to my younger, brave 20 something self. Who found the edge and took action to not go too far again. Who experimented with entrepreneurship with the means she had, through what was currently inspiring to her. 

And I take the responsibility of seeing how the energetics at that time were not in integrity. AND I WILL be responsible with money, relationships, my own body now. AND I have held this responsibility and integrity for years now. But now I’m holding it from a place of desire to deepen that responsibility. 

I have transmuted shame, guilt, and fear. Now I get to see where this power takes me. As a woman integrated in the past, present, and future. A woman who is unafraid of her blood, her own past, and her becoming.