Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

I decided to commit to a 100-day blogging challenge: I’m posting every day for 100 days. I was inspired by my sister and elder Quanita Roberson’s journey (www.Nzuzu.com), where, like everything she does, deep wisdom, soul, and authenticity came through her.

The past two years have been a total upheaval of my life. It’s been a coming home to myself, in ways I never thought possible. They have been two years of tremendous loss and gifts as well. A returning home to my own soul. While the past two years have been unique, the journey goes back 20 years.

I took my Reiki I certificate in 2002. It was wild curiosity. A friend had done Reiki on me for 10 min, and for the first time in years, I felt a little bit of relief in the constant headaches I was accustomed to “tuning-out.” I was only 27, but I already knew chronic pain.

By 2004, my Reiki practice was consistent and the headaches gone. I decided to become a Reiki Master Teacher because I was so excited about how delicate, yet effective, Reiki had been for me.

For some teachers and students Level III training is a short-term thing: a weekend, or a few hours online. For my teacher, it was a process of me coming into self-mastery. The length of the process would depend on the speed I set forth, how I embraced the journey in achieving her goals for me, teaching Reiki, and my goals for myself. It took me three years to complete Reiki Level III.

In the first exercise, my teacher, Yvonne DeVastey, gave me a simple instruction at first: “It all boils down: What you want?” she said, “Many people go through their whole lives without knowing that. Here’s an exercise. Make a list of what you want.”

Simple enough, I thought. Not really.

“Make this list,” she continued, ”For days, weeks, months, until you get to a place that you can go no further. The first things on your list will be the things you think you want. Then, will come the things others told you to want. But when you get to that place that you can go no further….there will be something you really, really want, and it may surprise you.

I started the list.

• I want a steady income.
• I want freedom to write and create.
• I want to feel I’m making a difference in the world.
• I want to do work in integrity with my values.
• Things I had said a million times that I wanted.

Things I was used to hearing myself say. Then I gave myself permission to try some new things.

• I want a red convertible.
• I want three apartments across the world: one in Italy, one in the USA, one in Africa (likely Kenya).
• I want a partner who loves me for all that I am: activist, artist, small-town values, big-city life, introvert-reserved, extrovert-raucous-irreverent, adamant innovator, fierce trouble-maker, curled-up sloth, free spirit.
• I want to travel and always be home.
• I want to be loved and accepted.

I had yearned for my totem to be a panther. At the time, I yearned to see myself as fierce and invincible. A warrior for justice to be reckoned with. I discovered I was more of a sparrow: I am curious, I love to discover and fly, hop here and there. What I want more than anything else is love and home.

Rita