The Ten Days That Started It All

The tender origin story of The Soulful Journey

In April of 2022, I boarded a plane to Paris.

At the time, I thought I was simply taking a trip I had been dreaming about for years. I had my travel journal tucked into my bag, a small watercolor kit, and a quiet promise to myself that I would slow down and really pay attention while I was there.

What I didn’t realize was that those ten days would quietly change the direction of my life.

Paris has a way of doing that.

My first day in Paris - jet lagged and giddy.

From the moment I arrived, something in me felt different. I wandered the city slowly, often with no real destination. I paid attention to small things — the rhythm of footsteps on cobblestones, the scent of butter drifting out of a patisserie early one morning, the particular shade of the green chairs in the Luxembourg Garden.

I wrote in my journal every day. I created layered pages of vintage papers, torn map bits, and sugar cube wrappers in my art journal each evening.

Not because I was trying to document the trip perfectly, but because I wanted to hold on to how it felt to be there.

Alive.

Curious.

Present.

I noticed something else, too.

I was more creative in Paris than I had been in a long time. Ideas arrived easily. Words came quickly. I sketched and wrote and noticed things I might have walked right past at home.

And somewhere along the way, a question began following me through the city.

I asked it as I crossed bridges.

I asked it while sitting in cafés.

I asked it quietly to myself while wandering through gardens.

How do I keep this feeling when I go home?

At the time, I didn’t have language for what was happening inside me.

I only knew that something had shifted.

Something had awakened.

When I returned home, I carried that question with me. I didn’t want those ten days to become simply a beautiful memory tucked away in a journal. I wanted to understand what had opened in me while I was there.

So I began to follow the thread.

I kept writing.

I kept creating.

I kept paying attention to the small moments that made life feel alive again.

Slowly, quietly, my work began to evolve. What began as travel journaling and creative reflection deepened into something more spacious — a way of witnessing how our lives unfold through seasons of change, creativity, and becoming.

Years later, something extraordinary happened.

During a retreat, a realization arrived that felt less like something I invented and more like something I suddenly recognized.

Our lives move through a natural rhythm of becoming.

There are seasons of listening and quiet.

Moments when small sparks of possibility appear.

Thresholds where we stand between who we’ve been and who we are becoming.

Times when our truth begins to speak.

And eventually, moments when our light becomes visible — not because we forced it, but because we lived our way there.

That realization became what I now call The Soulful Journey — the path from Shadow to Light.

But when I look back now, I can see something that moves me deeply.

I didn’t discover the journey that day at the retreat.

I had already walked through it.

Paris had been my Glimmer moment.

A spark of awakening in the middle of a life that was ready to shift.

At the time, I didn’t know where that spark would lead.

I only knew I wanted to follow it.

And that decision — to follow a quiet thread of curiosity and creativity — eventually led me here.

To the work I do now.

To the women I walk beside.

To the unfolding story that continues to reveal itself, one season at a time.

Looking back, I sometimes think about those ten days in Paris with deep gratitude.

Not because they gave me answers.

But because they gave me a question.

And sometimes a single question is enough to begin an entirely new chapter.