The wind whipped last night. It’s a warm wind. The birds are so active today. There are birds chasing each other in the juniper trees and running into the windows. There’s mud all over. Don’t they know it’s not spring yet?

I think I came to Montana, unknowingly, to just integrate. I mean, I met a guy—and you all know how those stories go. But it was off the back of about two years of a lot of stuff. Everything from MDMA therapy, Ketamine therapy, Iboga, ISTA, Burning Man, and Shamanic DeArmoring, a black hole mentor, conscious kink, and so many little things, people, and changes that I truly could only give it all in a book.

It was so much all at once. It was me trying to catch up with the spiritual jones, but also just a deep longing to try to heal—to heal this trauma of childhood, this shame of an abortion, this ego of a protector, this body, who’s been through things we never wanted.

It felt like my soul was trying to push through me.

And honestly, I think it worked. In a lot of ways.

I don’t know if you’re ever fully “healed,” but you do get pretty good, because I feel, almost every day, really good. Everything does get easier. You get stronger. The world gets brighter. Your internal dialogue gets cohesive and good for you. You eat a little less and work out more. You pray, and you follow what you love, and that is beautiful.

I don’t know if that is what it looks like for everyone, but that’s how I’m doing.

And stuff makes more sense. You make more sense.

I don’t feel like I’m fighting with my body anymore—or with my desires, my identity, my actions in a way that when things are unconscious, they fight you, either for light or for control.

And after so much intensity in life, I knew I needed some calm.

And intensity was my middle name. Have you met me?

Intensity is my pattern, so calm must be my evolution.

And so I’m still here, in Montana, now with a man who loves me deeply, who is very powerful in his own right but who doesn’t look like one of these spiritual fuck boys of Boulder, CO. He is embodied without knowing what that even means.

He swims in intuitive realms that are much deeper than I can even see, and he has the capacity to be deeply spiritually attuned and connected, if he wants to, more than anyone I’ve so freely met.

And this man? He is such a gift to my heart. To a heart that has longed for a truly good love, healthy love, for as long as I can remember.

And that has to be healing. I don’t know what else is. The right man loving you is medicine.

And I’m still challenged with stuff every day.

And the man still brings things up in me that I’m scared of. To show me where I still hold fear and trauma.

Lately, I’m sitting with the fear that he’ll change, fast.

That overnight, one night, he’ll just decide he’s not the person I fell in love with anymore. That he wants to be, or is, someone else.

Sound familiar?

And in that moment, I lose him. And my heart shatters, and anything we’ve built together just shatters. This fear makes every big step feel like there’s a plan with an escape route. Because I have to be prepared to throw the buoy if the waters change.

And so there’s a rocky foundation that remains, a root chakra issue.

It’s like I want to build something with this man, but I need to keep a lifeline.

And maybe that’s just me. In this lifetime. A need for autonomy and freedom that is both part trauma-based and part design.

A core fear of the unknown + a core fear of abandonment.

The psychological pieces tell me I can do something about it, and the spiritual pieces remind me I might just need to work with what I’ve been given.

But if you’ve ever done some parts work, this is the time for parts work.

Parts work is a psychological approach that treats the mind as a system composed of distinct “parts,” rather than a single personality.

Each part has a role.

There are protective parts — the achiever, the controller, the critic.

There are reactive parts — the anxious one, the angry one, the avoidant one.

There are younger parts — versions of you shaped by experiences like a parent transitioning.

Instead of trying to eliminate behaviors (“I need to stop being scared of the unknown”), parts work asks:

The goal is not to suppress parts, but to understand and integrate them. When a person relates to their parts with curiosity instead of shame, those parts often relax because they no longer have to over-function.

At the center of this model is the idea of a stable core Self — calm, grounded, and capable of leading — that can listen to all parts without being overwhelmed by them.

In practical terms, parts work helps people:

Another way to think of it: the boardroom of your life.

Usually, when the boardroom isn’t well managed, the most intense one, or the angriest one, or in my case, the most scared one, runs the company.

Parts work says: slow down. Call a board meeting. If you remember Inside Out, that’s the most beautiful depiction of parts work I can give you.

Instead of saying, “Why am I like this?”

You ask, “Which part of me is speaking?”

Because we don’t want the part of me that’s ready for an escape plan to be running the company. But we do know that part needs attention and care.

And so parts work helps us say: hey, you, scared one, I’m here. And you’re okay, and I see you, and I hear you. Thank you for sharing your fear. But right now, we have other, better drivers, and I’m going to take into consideration what you’re saying. I got us. So just hang out.

Most of the spiritual path is just life with your eyes open. And trying to keep those eyes open. It’s letting everything be a teaching moment. It’s not running into the fire, but it’s seeing the truth in the smoke.

It’s finding the pieces of a larger puzzle, of your puzzle, of the collective puzzle.

It’s a lot of work, to be quite honest.

And the land here is holding me in that work. I feel wanted here by the land.

I feel safe and protected and cared for. Like, take a break for a while, dear woman, please.

And who would not be called to stay by such warm weather? It is never 50 degrees in SW Montana in February.

And I’m still pulling all the strings that have presented themselves here. The one of the theosophical society down the road, a hat shop that's given me a job (and a little more identity), an Orthodox church with healthy, masculine men, babies, and good structure. \

By the Yellowstone and the juniper and the open roads and big skys, and people who have just been only kind, open-armed, trusting, and welcoming, and like family so quickly.

I have to believe God is working all the time, because that doesn’t just happen.

And I feel the connectedness of the people I meet and the things I’ve explored, for their value to me on my path, and my value to them in ways I don’t always understand, or understand just yet.

I don’t think you just end up in a place with a deeply spiritual energy, like the one I’m in, just by happenstance.

Southwest Montana is deeply spiritual. You can hear God a little more here.

And the magnificence and the beauty of this place keep you in a resonance that I can’t quite describe.

Love,
Val

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