The Chrysalis of Sacred Transformation
A Story of Our Forging and Flowing to Build a Little Sanctum
This is an introduction story of our current endeavor, along with an excerpt of some communication I’ve had with the beautiful butterflies who love this biodiverse, protected land and will become a sanctum (in other words, a haven for not just ourselves but others, too, including animals).
We are here, and our souls let out a deep sigh of relief. It has been a LONG haul to get to this point.
We finally got our home built, and were able to move onto this land that we found years ago outside a little Eastern Tennessee town. Had this HUGE call in 2020, and then it got louder in 2021. Then we began hunting in 2022 and were able to formalize our relationship with this land on March 17, 2023. We have come to call this hidden piece of forest One Song Grove, but now that we’re here to see it 24/7, we realize we could have called it Hidden Butterfly Grove. WOW, the butterflies are everywhere!
We had noticed them in our visits over the years, but now we can really see how many butterflies are fluttering around, and wow! The trees and plants are pretty diverse, and the soil is rich; this is a great sign.
Some of these butterflies even have the same colors as our FORGE AND FLOW logo, so if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what it is! 🦋 😍
The to-do list feels immense because we are starting from scratch. Raw land that now holds a home, a newly dug well, septic, a driveway we had to build that has become a money sucker… and now we have A LOT to clean up. It’s very different than buying an existing home, that’s for sure! We knew that in our heads, but we are sort of unsure whether we truly knew that in our hearts. 🤪
The driveway has been a beast to figure out, but that’s a story for another day. We’ve had so many learnings and want to share with others what we’ve learned to help others do this, and go the easier way. If we knew what we know now, we would have approached things differently in that regard, that’s for sure. Now we know what to look for, and that only comes by taking the more complex paths that leave some bruises.
We seek to take care of the land and all its gorgeous beings so that we become allies with the land, and the land becomes our ally back. Reciprocity is the way forward, and is a magnificent vibration that gives my soul chills to remember. We were always meant to live in symbiosis like this with the Earth and all the amazing beings of the organic, living natural world.
Our modest home took 1 1/2 years to be completed because the general contractor was pretty bad, unfortunately. However, that may be the status quo of a very shitty industry, in general, so it is not just that general contractor. But the issues were created by the greed of this contractor. They take on too many projects because they want loads of money (gotta be a millionaire, right?!), and it’s that kind of behavior that makes doing things like this all the harder.
While our souls feel that we can take a deep and expansive breath, our human aspects are in a state of slight overwhelm. Our vision is to create a small healing sanctum for our Vibrational Medicine offerings, which will be open to humans and their pets. We have been and are keeping this vision through our Inner Eyes.
The butterflies are reminders for us, though, as I heard this while sitting in stillness:
One step at a time; one does not fly until you go through the full sacred transformation inside the chrysalis…
Aha! When Mark and I really feel into that, the human can meet the Spirit (or Soul) and take a deep sigh of relief, too.
I said, “Thank you, Beautiful Butterflies, for this reminder…” 🦋
We must meet our vision with this concept of “sacred transformation through the chrysalis.” We are in that chrysalis and have to pause in there to take each step and each day at a time. That’s of course the essence of FLOW; it allows the angst to go away a little bit. And being far more intentional and moving with love so that we forge but are not forceful.
If you’re reading this, perhaps you’re taking on larger missions like this as well. And, if so, as you well know, everything that is done today costs about double or triple what it did even a few years ago from a building standpoint. To balance all of this, it takes a lot of self-management. We cannot take TOO much action, for that is a state of being that adds significant stress. We cannot be TOO much in flow, for that can easily (and quickly) turn into apathy and a state of “not doing anything” for it is a form of being fearful to take needed action steps.
So, there is a delicate balance in dancing in these pioneering stages of doing things like this. We don’t have a map to build out a little healing sanctum, only that which is in the inner eye and via Deep Remembrance of a “time before” or perhaps even a time “in the future.” We don’t want to get investors and make this something we don’t want it to be. We also don’t have unlimited funds. As of this moment, we don’t know many people in the region quite yet, so we take each moment and do as much as we can, the best that we can right now.
This is the thing for pioneers and wayshowers in these times, though. Those of us who are being called into these sorts of builds to offer sanctums or sanctuaries for animals, bees, and/or humans, etc. (or a blend of all those things), are being asked to find balance. Not too much forging and not too much flowing. We are being called to remember the steps of a dance where we dance on a thin line, ensuring that we don’t fall off the edges into extremes. Extremes like panic and overwhelm. Or extremes like sadness or anxiety.
We are barely 2 weeks into being here and taking it inch by inch, because as we do all of this, there are realities we’re having to face, which is knowing we can’t do EVERYTHING we would like right now. We must choose the bits and pieces and look at this like a strategic work in progress. Our biggest vision, which is still a small sanctum within our hidden grove, will require help, as the other structures that we want to build on the land will take time and money to build out. We’re holding the space that perhaps grants will be a path we may need to go down, or we meet some others locally who are wanting to create something like this and willing to invest some energy to become a part of it; no matter what, we’ll figure it all out in due time.
For now, we are in the Forge and Flow chrysalis and are cleaning up, putting things together, getting organized, prioritizing, and gearing up for growth. We will seek to stay within this framework by remembering this process of Sacred Transformation, as reminded by the butterflies.
If you’re building a sanctum or sanctuary of some kind, pop a comment below and let us know how it’s going! We’d love to connect with others “doing this thing” too!