A Soul Retrieval

I know it's been a minute since I’ve last checked in and I am excited to let you, my community, into some powerful and profound changes that have occurred around here.

A large part of my inspiration behind Driftwood Horse Rescue and Unbound Horsemanship is to help other people experience the power of the horses, their ability to look deep into a human soul and reflect back messages that may have been impossible to see in any other way. As I have talked about on here before, to me, the horses sort of serve as a messenger from God, a translator when I can’t seem to hear or see what is meant for me.

I share with you, my community, the messages I receive, however difficult they are to swallow, so that perhaps you can too become more available to the messages trying to come through to you in your lives.

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For many years I have been quietly struggling…. I seemed happy and content and while I

was (and am) truly grateful for my life, subconsciously, there was quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) pain. I had an idea that I was abandoning some authentic parts of myself, trading them in for stability and a perception of who I thought I should be to the world.I was getting quiet signs from God that changes in my life were needing to be made and I did even begin to dip my toes in the exploration of a new reality for myself, but I never could let myself fully lean into it. All the fears that any of us have were louder than my ability to listen to my soul– what will people think, how will it affect my children, how will I logistically integrate my life with the changes I want to make?

But then one night, Wildfire, my spirit horse who left the physical world a couple of years ago, appeared to me in a dream. A dear friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in 12 years was there in the dream with me and we were riding Wildfire double. We were loping through the night, in complete darkness with rolling hills all around us. It was just so vivid and so real and I was overcome by memories and feelings of another lifetime– I felt parts of me present that had been locked away and turned off for many years.

I woke up the next morning so present with the dream– it was almost as if the parts of myself that hadn’t been with me in years were suddenly right there in the room with me.

Suddenly things started emerging and I felt very different.

It is almost like I opened an old closet inside of myself and dusted off the precious stones inside. I started writing in ways I hadn’t written in so long – real inspired and creative writing, bits of prose and poetry started to pour out of me… I was more aware of what the sunrise looked like that morning, or what the horse’s mane felt like as it ran through my fingers. My old friend that came through on the back of Wildfire and I reconnected, and all of a sudden I started recalling and reclaiming abandoned pieces of myself from before I was a mom, a wife, a trainer…

I started breathing life back into dehydrated and lifeless parts of me.

One morning I was out riding Miss Lucky when my friend sent me an Oscar Wilde poem. I almost fell off of her. I was so taken aback to see that poetry again, it actually brought tears to my eyes. Poetry had been my reason for living for so long! Sometimes life circumstances…infractions.. traumas, end up pushing passions (especially the passions that touch the most tender parts of your soul) to the back burner. That is what had happened to me without even noticing! I had striven to be a writer since before I can remember, but I chose another career path years ago when I couldn’t seem to access my gift anymore.

There's this beautiful concept that some indigenous people call a “soul retrieval.” In Christianity it’s called “soul work.” The concept says that when emotional and physical traumas happen in our lives, part of our soul flees the body in order to survive– it leaves the system to protect itself. The ceremonial practices of a soul retrieval is said to help heal the fragmented parts of ourselves into wholeness again.

Wildfire was my best friend and the most connection I have ever experienced with a horse, my spirit friend that fully knew my essence even when it was covered up. Although Wildfire left this physical world, I can feel his spirit as a guardian angel, watching over me all the time. Sometimes he comes along and speaks to me on my sunrise rides. He’s told me that he had traveled through the great darkness to return pieces of myself home. Most importantly, he told me not to block the memories and pains from my past, because they are inherently connected to my gift, and when I block one away the other also disappears. The vivid dream I had riding Wildfire awoke something in me and with Wildfire as a steward of my soul's needs, we began to call my many fragmented pieces home.

Over the past couple of months, the more I have settled into my wholeness and my power, the more I have realized how shut down and repressed I had been for so long. I had been living as a shadow of myself. My light had been so covered it had almost gone out. But my tiny light has been given momentum and… like a wildfire… the flame is growing bigger and brighter than ever.

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This process certainly hasn’t been linear and certainly not easy to share or talk about. As I reclaimed more of myself, things in my life have inevitably had to change and fall away. Those same fears still have a tendency to creep in: what will people say? Who will I be if I change my mind and make different choices? How will my choices affect my children? Should I stay small and repressed because this is the Camille the world has gotten used to?

I believe there is a myth permeating our society that children need stability over all else. This lie keeps parents repressed and not living as their true selves because they spend so much time worrying about preserving stability for their children. It turns out, it’s not really the stability our children need. It’s stable role models. It’s healthy relationships. It’s representatives of self love, of parents that choose full aliveness and full expression. It’s us stretching out our light and love and being who God truly created us to be. That’s what children need to see. Not parents shut down and repressed by fear, rules, and judgment. Our children are like sponges- constantly internalizing everything they see. Storing it away deep in their programming so they can function in life once they’re out on their own as adults. The problem is what if the messages they are internalizing and receiving about life, relationships, work etc are themselves dysfunctional? The children will only repeat the same dysfunction in their own lives as adults. This is why giving them the right role models for life should be the greatest priority and it is my greatest priority.

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I am deep in a process of striping away my masks and the false identities that have kept me small and out of my light. I am reemerging and reclaiming who I am and who I was always meant to be.

I am excited to begin offering experiences here at the ranch from this renewed place. With the horses as our guides, I hope you will all join me as we step more fully into who we were all meant to be. Stay tuned for exciting announcements coming soon.