By Jillian Vriend

The seagulls ride air currents, swirling and curling like waves above the sparkling water. Their piercing cries invite me to pay attention, to watch them, to take in their messages offering bridging between water and land. Waves roll in and out, landing mostly softly on the shore, tumbling granite into small speckled stones. The beach stretches out in both directions, empty and still on this rare sunny morning in May. My dog Koda is leaning against me, his heart chakra pressed against my left hand- both giving and receiving love. I sit on secret beach in Gibsons, BC, feeling that I am here. I am where I am meant to be.  I am home.

I am praying in a light way, my thoughts and dialogue with Mother drifting in and out without a clear direction. I express my gratitude to Her for the guidance I received from Her almost a year ago, “Go be near water. To offer this work, you need to be held by water.” I first heard this message while I was sitting on a beach on Gabriola Island, an island a 20 minute ferry ride from Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. My husband Wayne and I spent half of our time on Gabriola Island last year, living in a cottage near the water. SoulFullHeart was born during these visits and we drew the first people to this way of life once we could breathe and be near the water and away from the busy grids of the city.

We stopped renting the cottage in September as we felt Gabriola was too remote and small for us and I received further guidance to explore the Sunshine Coast and specifically the town of Gibsons. The Sunshine Coast is not an island, yet it feels like one because even though it is the same land mass as Vancouver, it is not accessible by car, only by ferry. A 40 minute ferry ride from West Vancouver, Gibsons is a small town with an artistic and environmentally conscious community. The moment we came here it felt like our geographic ‘home.’ We began to bake on our desires to move here back then, feeling that we wanted to stay in North Vancouver until our daughter graduated from high school. Our fellow SoulFullHeart Way of Life members and friends, Christian and Kathleen, actually moved to Gibsons first in March together, allowing us to visit here frequently and fall even more in love with the setting and the breathing space it offered. In a matter of hours after putting our desires out there, Wayne and I drew a new home that has organic garden beds, guest rooms, a large room to host SoulFullHeart groups, is walkable to beaches, and has a view of the ocean.

Our focus over this last year while still living in North Vancouver had been to develop and deepen SoulFullHeart as a way of life and soon a non-profit society. We offered SoulFullHeart through free introduction meetings in North Vancouver and in Squamish. We also appeared on the Conscious Living Radio show twice at the beginning of the year to talk about SoulFullHeart and introduce it to the conscious community there. We are open to drawing those in the Vancouver area, yet, we feel that we would invite them to come to a monthly group here in Gibsons, as we feel the air, sunshine, and water are deeply healing and support their process.

The last month has been full with actualizing our desires and dreams to live on the Sunshine Coast into reality. Many times I could feel parts of me reacting to a change or transition or difficult decision to be made, especially around establishing my daughter on her own in North Vancouver. I could feel a young matriarch part of me having a difficult time letting go of our space, especially her domain in the kitchen, and tensions and anxieties coming from difficult experiences living with others in the past. I experienced a significant cold for the first time in three years and spent a week being with myself, resting, and letting in the changes to come.

Yet, I repeatedly received during this time this message from the Mother, “Want what you want. And let go of how it will come to be.” I feel this is an important message about how to hold our deepest soul and heart desires. She invited me to feel them deeply, no matter how difficult or impossible they seemed, and, at the same time, let go of how they would specifically manifest. Letting go in this way opened me up more to others’ alchemy, Wayne’s leadership, and resource exchanges with others, inviting us into a new economy not based just on money but exchange of value. We are currently staying at a beautiful property in Gibsons for a couple of weeks until our new home is available in exchange for doing painting and other jobs around the property. People here seem more open to exchange and trades in this way wanting to ‘leave the government out of it.’ We are all excited to feel and see how SoulFullHeart may plant and grow in this kind of alternative and conscious soil.

My experience of this process of moving to a new geography over the last year validates my experience that change is a natural process that invites us into our own growth and deepening connection with ourselves, others, and the Divine. If we can hold and feel our relationship to change and be with parts of ourselves which are anxious, concerned, and afraid of it, we can draw to and manifest our deepest desires and dreams. But only if we are open to giving up our attachment to the things, people, careers, medications, etc. which don’t support our most authentic self, numb our feelings, and block the realization of these dreams. We’ve had to say ‘no’ many times over the last year to things which wouldn’t fulfill our desires, but what we were always saying ‘yes’ to was the realization of our dreams and a deeper experience of love.

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