My Philosophy

Third year leaps

Jun 27, 2025

“Meet me in my office after class.”

It was my freshman year of college and my philosophy professor had just passed back our first exams. I panicked. Teachers only say that when you’re in trouble, right? I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived, but I’ll tell you what wasn’t on my list:

“Your essays are very strong and I want to ask if you’ll consider changing your major.”

I was flattered, said I’d think about it — and I have been ever since.

Like the time I spoke with a shaman. It was over the phone, we’d never met. A woman I used to work for and barely kept up with arranged the session, so really, this guy had zero context. Throughout our conversation, he brought up each area of my life — which he could see into specifically without any prompting. Then he laid out predictions on the next 2-3 months. I’d never had an experience like that before. His insights felt affirming, validating, kind of wild, pretty stunning. And after all was said and done, one thing stuck out the most:

There was nothing he told me that I didn’t already know myself.

The woman who set it up offered to pay for weekly calls with him. As generous as that was, I wasn’t interested. Grateful for what he gave me, yes, but it felt more like a gift for my next leg of the journey.

That feeling was confirmed when an acquaintance heard about my talk with the shaman and sent me a message, “I’m lost and I think this is what I need.”

Something in me didn’t like that. I passed along his info anyway. As much as they kick my ass, Byron Katie’s words are engrained in me, “To think I know what’s best for another person, even in the name of love, is pure arrogance.”

But if I’m being totally honest, what I heard deep in my bones was this:

What if instead, you learned how to see + trust your own vision.

Not because you don’t need external help — this isn’t about isolation or independence. It’s about not outsourcing your intuition. You will need every living being more than you can imagine. You will need the birds and the flowers and the trees and the weather. You’ll need friends and neighbors and circle gatherings and chance encounters. But for their help to matter — to be able to discern it — you must be in touch with your inner authority. You will need yourself, you will need your dreams.

That same week, while visiting kindred spirit Kana Brown, I pulled this card from an oracle deck:

In that moment, I realized it was time for me to start sharing my philosophy on spiritual guidance.

Facilitating relationship with the divine in everything.

Telling stories about my experience + experiments.

Teaching practices, systems, and myths for self-knowledge.

Midwifing people through personal transformation.

I didn’t just want to tell someone what I could see, I wanted them to see it for themselves. As

adrienne maree brown

says, “Standing or sitting with someone as they remember their own wholeness — that is the work of the healer.” I wanted to provide accessible pathways for anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status — direction that was rooted in a different kind of success. The point? Connection. Simply being + becoming who you really are, in devotion to community, this Earth, and yourself. Honoring the pain and grief it takes. Centering joy, pleasure, beauty, and awe in the process.

These desires birthed The Workshop, and they’ve continued to return me to it.

I thought about that meeting in my philosophy professor’s office again last Fall. Wandering around Belmont’s campus with a sweet girlfriend who was about to graduate, I told her about it. How I wouldn’t change the route I took — but given the choice now, I think I’d pick something else.

Months went by, and life found ways to keep communicating, “I want you to consider changing your major.”

Owning the heart of your work.

Until one day this Spring, when I went for a walk with my friend Caroline. She was in the final stage of buying a house, so she was on and off the phone while we chatted. We rounded a corner near my apartment, and there he was. My old philosophy professor, gardening with his wife, sixteen years later. I waved and nodded as we passed by, he did the same. Like some kind of blessing over my next career move. We stopped for a minute until Caroline said, “We can go now, I just signed the contract.”

And I answered, “Me too.”

Originally posted on the gram — June 16th, 2022:

My philosophy on baking and spirituality is the same.

Make it delicious.

Summer reading: