About Sacred Openings
“There are openings in life, Sacred Openings, which - if we allow them - change us and grow us, bringing us into deeper communion with our hearts, with others, with the land, with God.”
Life is full of initiatory moments which, when fully explored and honoured and allowed the space they command, have the power to change us and to act as a portal into a deeper knowing of ourselves and our soul path; ultimately a deeper knowing of Love.
In much of modern culture many of these events go unexplored and un-honoured. They are often rushed.
We are often rushed. Told to get on, move on, often before we’re ready.
We go into moments of birth, of death, of initiation into womanhood and motherhood, without fully comprehending or allowing for their important and potent initiatory power
We can be left feeling confused, feeling underwhelmed, overwhelmed - traumatised, even; or simply with a knowing that an important ‘moment’ was missed, and a niggle that we won’t feel whole, or fully able to engage in our lives until time and space is created to process, and be with, all the ways the event challenged and changed us.
I lead women as they journey such openings…
…partnering with them to process, and meet - with an open heart - the big events in their lives, the happy, hopeful ones, and the ones around which they feel or felt, shame, disappointment, rage, or sadness.
“The Sacred Openings of death, of birth, of illness, of motherhood, of womanhood, challenge and invite us into deeper relationship with ourselves and with Life.”
What is a Sacred Opening?
They can be tear-drenched releasings, keenings;
joyous, uplifting celebrations;
heart-opening, soul-shaking portals into union with Divine.
They call for all of us to be present; for all of us to be open to feel what there is to feel.
They call on us to surrender; to open to Love; to open to the life that wants to pour forth in that moment; to open to the indivisibility of us and Life, us and others, us and the Land, us and God.
In those moments we are stunned and humbled, silent and filled, whole and at peace.
Unhonoured these ‘openings’ can feel disappointing, jarring, unfinished, confusing, shameful, traumatic, empty of love.
Often these moments are full of confusion and conflicting emotions and tumult. My work as Rites of Passage Doula* is to hold you through all that. To see you and love you and guide you and support you.
*A phrase coined and attributed to me by soul-sister, Sara J Sanderson after I assisted her with supporting her mum’s journey onwards.
My Mission is to hold, and guide you as you honour these moments in your life
About me, Kate, the creator of Sacred Openings…
Meaning-Maker, Spiritual Guide, Rites of Passage Doula, Ceremony Creator & Holder, I lovingly guide women through the Sacred Openings in their lives so that they may more fully understand themselves and walk their path joy-filled, resourced and connected, and fully expressed as the deep-feeling, shining lighthouses they came here to be.
In other women’s words…
“Kate is like a modern day parish priest: offering sanctuary, confidential counsel, creative ceremonial ideas, spiritual guidance, and love.” Lian Brook-Tyler.
Many of us grow up fascinated by the big questions: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ ‘What is the meaning of Life?’
When these questions go unanswered by the cultural narratives we grow up in, many of us will, (with some sense of ill-ease), set those questions down, and ‘get on with life’.
Often, though, in the afternoon of our life, or after some big event, like an illness, the death of someone close to us, or a spontaneous occurrence after which everything changes and life just doesn’t look the same, those questions will come back to tug insistently on our sleeve.
I had those questions come back in the form of a magical encounter with a woman of light (literally!: her surname was ‘de la Luz’); burnout and chronic fatigue; the coming and going of our baby daughter; a spontaneous spiritual experience; a soul-descent, and other initiations into motherhood, nature’s cycles and the blood mysteries.
I began to have a deep respect for the Sacred Openings of life: the way in which - if we allow them - they grow us and change us and allow us to deepen into ourselves and into life.
The Sacred Openings of life became precious portals to me: opportunities to experience life bigger and deeper and more soul-fully.
I realised that there is no neat answer to the meaning of life; we create our own meaning, moment to moment.
There is no other way to ‘know’ the *meaning* of life, except through our embodied experience of it.
Honouring and exploring the sacredness of life has become a vital part of that meaning-creation.
My desire is to support women to explore the meaning they want to create with their lives so they can shine as the ‘souls on deck’ and lighthouses they came here to be.
This kind of journeying is not for the faint-hearted and it requires and demands the creation of sacred spaces and very often the support of allies and guides - physical, non-physical, elemental, spiritual.
15 years ago, I had a vision: to build spaces - temple spaces - where people walking in out of ‘the desert’ could fall down on their knees and find cool stillness, water, inspiration, and fresh perspective; a place where they could take a moment to come back to centre; to be with themselves and their idea of spirit/god, or simply with the quiet, clear, knowing place inside.
Today, I help people build this temple inside of themselves, and I also build ‘real’ temple spaces where women come together to walk the path of opening to the sacred and deepening their communion with themselves, with others, with the Earth, and with Spirit.