From Protector to Ally – Powerful Healing Awakening
There was a moment in my life when something profound shifted: my protector — that part of me, the inner force that had spent decades keeping me safe, small, unseen — transformed into my ally. In that moment, I began to see myself, and others, through a different kind of mirror. A divine one. One that reflects back not the old conditioning, but the truth of who we are.
My protector became a phoenix — rising above the noise, the doubts, the harsh self-talk I once believed was simply “me.” It showed me that those voices were never my essence; they were domestication, learned from circumstance, culture, and survival. The voices that had me override my own wants, needs and desires. They still visit, from time to time, but now I greet them as guests in the guesthouse of my mind. I acknowledge them with compassion, listen gently, and choose actions rooted not in fear but in love.
Looking back, I can see how powerful the illusion of “not enough” once was — not smart enough, not good enough, not whatever enough. I see that same illusion in so many of my sisters. So much suffering grows from what we’ve been taught to believe about ourselves. Part of our sacred work is learning to discern the conditioned mind from the truth of our being. That discernment is our birthright.
When the foundation of our actions becomes profound self-love, everything changes. We hear the old voices for what they are: echoes of who we once thought we had to be. The protector was built to defend those old patterns, to keep the world from seeing our vulnerability, our essence, our brilliance. But when its job is done, a beautiful invitation emerges: How can this protector become my ally? How can the energy once used to shield become energy that lifts?
Ask yours. Listen. Invite images, words, and feelings to arrive. Trust what comes. When my own protector revealed itself as a phoenix, I laughed — it felt like a trope. Yet that archetype endures because it’s true. It is resilience. It is the rising. It is the remembering of our power.
We are all capable of rising above our conditioning and tasting the gift of being alive — in all its light, darkness, beauty, and mystery.
Winter, with its quiet descent, offers us the perfect season to turn inward. To look gently at the shadows we’ve mistaken for truth. To forgive ourselves for believing what others taught us to believe. To ask our protector, again: How can you serve me now? How can you lift me rather than hold me down?
This is courageous work. And for women, it is uniquely challenging. Our conditioning trains us to doubt our wholeness, to question our goodness, to shrink our divinity. All the more reason to break the illusions that keep us from ourselves. To live into the brightest, truest expression of the feminine.
The feminine needs space. Quiet. Stillness. The gentle conditions required for the softer voice of intuition to rise above the louder, more demeaning voice of the mind. After spending eleven days on retreat by myself, I finally honored that need. I slowed down enough to hear my true rhythm again. It wasn’t easy — which is exactly why it mattered.
In that spaciousness, I relearned how to listen to my body and my needs: hunger, fatigue, movement, fresh air, rest. I saw clearly how our culture of busyness keeps us disassociated from the sacredness of our own bodies — these bones, cells, skin, and organs that carry our being through the world. Many will never experience the preciousness of this vehicle. But slowing down allowed me to feel that reverence.
I also recognized how much of my life I had spent focusing outward — improving systems, structures, people, the world — believing that was my path. And it is, in part. But I also see now how that outward focus was my protector at work, keeping me from the deeper truth: that my greatest responsibility is to my own experience of life. To my own love. To my own being. Not to external validation or approval.
My phoenix took flight the moment I realized this: I can love life for the sake of loving it. I can love myself for the sake of being here. I can marvel at the color of the trees, the breath of animals in the winter air, the music of the world, simply because it is a privilege to be alive.
In accepting all of myself — the light, the dark, the shadows, the beauty — I can finally accept the world as it is too. And from that place, I can find what there is to love in everything. I hope you join me in this path.
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