Our kid – riding lightening bolts of laughter – down down down to meet us.⚡️

We pull off onto a narrow side road, then bumpity-bump our way onto a grassy patch. It’s July in Southern Colorado and every highway is lined with wild sunflowers.

We started our day in Santa Fe, giving ourselves 48 hours to meander to Boulder. Normally it’s a 6.5 hour drive. But why rush, when the stretches of sky and mountain, gushing rivers and pine, are some of the most beautiful in the whole wide world?

I climb out of the truck, Seann and Rajah watching from within, as I twist and bend the stems of a small handful of magic. Bright yellows and whites, shocking magentas and kelly greens. Then a long tall strand of grass harvested to tie it all together.

Seann looks at me with a glint of generous delight. I hoist myself back into the passenger seat, place our bouquet on the dash, and mischievously ask, “Where to now?”

All day, we’d been practicing the art of surrender to Mystery.

I mean this quite literally.

Instead of mapping a route and following it, we took the necklace off of Seann’s neck – the one with the silver labyrinth pendant – and used it as a pendulum to make all our decisions.

“Should we go out of our way to stop in Paonia?” (The teeny hippie town with the quirky artist in residency program.)

Dangle the necklace out before us. Hold it real still. Forward and backwards. That’s a yes.

“Should we find a gorgeous lake and camp under the stars?” (My personal fantasy.)

Dangle. Still. Side to side. That’s a no.

“Should we take the long winding road into the center of those two massive mountains, and spend the night in Telluride?”

Forward and backwards! Forward and backwards! Forward and backwards! the pendulum swings vigorously. A strong, emphatic yes!

“Camping?” Side to side. No.

“Bed and breakfast?” Forward and backward. Yes.

Allllllrighty then. I find a cute spot, reasonably priced, a few blocks walking distance from all the little shops and cafes, book it, and we go on our merry way, weaving through flower-lined thoroughfares.

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Now, let me back up and offer a wee bit of context.

In April, Seann and I had gone to Joshua Tree for a self-guided 3-day Conception Portal Ritual. We were ready to have our first kid, and wanted to fully commit. So we packed our bags full of oracle cards and journals… candles, books and sacred altar items… and set out to the desert.

For 72 hours, we entered the Dream Time. We did Spirit Baby meditations. Dance Temples. Deep oracular listening in nature. Had long talks about hard topics in the heat of the hot tub at twilight. And by the end of our retreat, we both felt ready.

Except for one small factor.

I completely shut down sexually.

(So maybe I wasn’t quite ready?!?😂)

A few pieces of our life still didn’t feel quite right, and my body was the first one to say it.

But April turned to May, and May to June. As the summer deepened, we began to bring what was out of alignment into alignment. And with each move of centering, the center of me began to open.

This is the power of ritual. Of ceremony. Of magic. When you cast strong enough spells of intention, your world rearranges to meet them… not right away, necessarily. But in right timing, surely.

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Okay. So that brings us back to our pendulum adventure through Souther Colorado on that mystical day four months later.

The sky is full of drizzle when we finally arrive in Telluride, bodies sore from 12 hours meandering by car. We use the keypad code to let ourselves in, dragging our bodies up the stairs. Room 7.

I open the door, kick off my shoes, throw down my fanny pack, and look around.

Bunnies. The room is decorated with an excessive amount of bunnies. I’m talking a surprisingly fancy oil painting of fluffy munchkins in sunlit meadows, two 16-inch tall porcelain statues on either end of the dresser, a cute but itchy embroidered throw pillow in the center of the bed, and a shower curtain with two human-sized rabbit ears sticking straight up.

Huh, I think. Fuck like bunnies?

We’re exhausted, but the bath is huge, so Seann starts the water, and we both strip down. I throw my flowy red skirt over the horrid LED light fixture, and we sink into the water together, nearly fell asleep right there. Eventually, we peel ourselves out of the tub, crawl our way into bed and snuggle up to the sound of rain on the rooftop.

I assume, exhausted from our day-long adventure, that we'll pass out as soon as our heads hit the pillow. But instead, our bodies feel like magnets. I’m pulled to him. He’s pulled to me. We are undeniably, almost cosmically, complete and utter yeses.

Our lips press into each other’s skin, the taste of sun salty on our tongues. Maybe it’s delirium, or maybe it’s the sheer joy of knowing what we were doing, but both us cannot stop laughing. We roll and tug, moan and thrust, with huge cackling grins bubbling over.

“Let’s make a baby,” Seann whispers in panting delight over and over and over again. I don’t say a thing. My smiling eyes do the talking.

Lightening strikes and thunder cracks when we climax together, I kid you not.

We roll onto our backs in a heap of howling joy.

We know.

Our kid is riding lightening bolts of laughter – down down down to meet us.

Two weeks later, our knowing is confirmed. I cry at the thought of chocolate ice cream for breakfast, and simultaneously want to vomit.

Our baby. He’s in my belly. Holy shit, it’s happening.

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In my pre-conception era – my process of preparing to become a mother – I read book after book about fertility. (I now know way too much about signing to your ovaries, eliminating plastic, drinking nettle infusions and walking 4 miles a day.)

But something about reading those books always felt more stressful than relieving. Like I was supposed to force myself to follow certain rules and then, boom!, achieve my baby.

While certain things I recommend religiously to any of my friends tryina get pregnant (a great Chinese acupuncturist, and Chinese herbs, for one)…

At the end of the day, not just with my conception story, but with every significant move of my life, ritual has been one of my most powerful energetic elixirs. (The other being somatic trauma resolution.)

I met my last three partners all within a week of a ritual. My last three homes the same way. Closing the ReBloom Coach Training? A ritual on winter solstice led to that decision by spring equinox. Starting my work in trauma resolution? 9 years ago, beaten down on the forest floor, I raised my hand to God praying to be given an assignment. 4 days later, I met my mentor.

Sometimes rituals take time to materialize. Our lives need massaging in order to align to our intentions. But when we sow our dream seeds ceremonially, with God, nature or a coven of other witchy ones as witness, the world moves in coherence with our commitment.

I hope if there’s something big in your heart that you’re longing to bring to life (or lay to rest), and the “reasonable path” is alluding you, you know that you, too, can take the route of ritual. Big or small. A letter to God, or a winding road trip through the mountains. A match and flame, or a four day vision fast.

Sometimes, after all that mental trying, unreasonably following a pendulum through the great state of Colorado is the most sensible thing you can do.

With mythic love,
Rachael

PS – If you’re at a big crossroads in your life, ready to call in a new direction (a baby, a beloved, a new home, or chapter of your career), and you’ve tried the approaches of logic, strategy and reason… If your heart yearns to experience divine order, embodied… my new offering MAGIC 4X might be for you. We’re gathering an intimate coven to do 3 months of alchemical ceremony. 4 1:1s with me, 4 group calls, and a 4 day retreat at a 25 acre off-grid eco-lodge on the Big Island of Hawaii. $4444. 8 beloveds, max. More details & an application coming soon! Reply MAGIC 4X if you want me to send you the invite page as soon as it’s ready. <3