To Dare, Together ~ Truth Seeking in the Depths for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation
Hello friend! I’m so grateful you’re here. I created this space for you and I to spend some time together. To Dare, Together. To seek the truth in the depths. To Dare to tune into the wisdom and pleasure of our bodies. To honor the places that hold pain and renewal. To Dare to descend and arise, transformed in the never ending cycle of death and regeneration. To reenchant the world around us from a more embodied and integrated place. To Dare to join in honest connection where liberation, love, equity, beauty, joy, gratitude, sensuality, dignity, and reverence for all life on earth is at the heart of our sacred space.
I am your host, Erin O'Brien, licensed psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor, and dare I say, witch, and if you are willing, your friend. Together we will descend into the mystery, into the exquisite darkness because true liberation starts with healing from the inside out. And it happens when we dare to go there, together.
Where are we going, you may ask? Well, we are delving into all the realms of our experience. We will move through our body, heart, mind, soul, spirit, original and chosen family, relationships, communities, cultures, dominant systems in society, intergenerational patterning, ancestral wounds and wisdom, and the great expanse of our collective. Because when we are together, we will seek to know what’s true. We will alchemize and transform, knowing that our fates are inevitably intertwined with one another. So let’s will it together.
My offering here will be a combination of deep dives with other like-hearted therapists, healers, intuitives, activists, magickal practitioners, artists, abolitionists, visionaries, witches, and more. I want to support our journey of transformation by sharing practices that we can facilitate because ultimately we are our own wisest guide, healer, and teacher. Our body holds so much intelligence if we just slow down enough to listen. When we know how to keep silent and just be, just breathe, just listen, we know how to summon our greatest powers of transformation.
We will explore practices that focus on increasing our somatic awareness, trauma integration, and nervous system regulation. We will work with our shadow to illuminate what needs to be alchemized or released. We will dismantle our internalized systems of dominance and extraction so we resonate with the reciprocity and abundance of life. We will deepen our understanding of intersectionality and how our social location in the world shifts our experiences of power and disembodiment. We will strive to relate with others in ways that are embodied and promote connection, celebrate differentiation, and respectfully move through rupture or conflict so that all beings preserve their dignity. We will conjure the wisdom of our ancestors to strengthen our communal spaces. We will create rituals to attune with the cycles of nature, lunar rhythms, and the wheel of the year. We will do pathworkings and divination to deepen our relationship to our Higher Self, Spirit Team, Intuition, Magick, Soul’s purpose, and so much more.
We are all here on Earth right now. It’s time To Dare to take a stand for healing, transformation, and collective liberation. And the first step starts from within. Let’s take it together.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” – unknown
To Dare, Together ~ Truth Seeking in the Depths for Healing, Transformation, & Collective Liberation
Dark Moon Journey for Our Regeneration
Welcome to the first episode where we will be exploring the powerful energies of the dark moon, a liminal time that encompasses both life and death, opening up possibilities for our regeneration journey. Let's dare together to breathe into the darkness, slow down, and go deep into our experience across the dimensions of intergenerational patterning and social positioning to listen to the wisdom and power of our bodies, hearts, and souls with the support of our spirit team, ancestors, and life itself in service to our highest path and purpose. We move closer to healing, transformation, and collective liberation with each breath we take together for alchemy, abundance, and love. Thank you for joining me and if these offerings are meaningful to you, I hope you subscribe to continue To Dare, Together!
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to the first episode of To Dare Together, truth-seeking in the depths for healing, transformation and collective liberation. I'm so delighted that you're here. I want to offer something that is in alignment with the lunar rhythms and nature, and today is what is known as the dark moon. What is known as the dark moon? It's uh, I'm not an astronomer, so I'm forgive me for my attempt at explaining this, but essentially, this is the time where the moon is, um, technically, technically, a new moon, in its initial moment of blossoming into the first lunar cycle. In particular, the dark moon is that point where the moon is invisible to us. It's this point where the sun and moon are exactly aligned, the same point, and so we can't see the moon. So it's an opportunity for us to be one with that moment and use the energy of stillness. It's a liminal time between life and death, including both life and death. It's a time for us to slow down and go inward and be with our experience, be with going deep inside and seeing what's there for us to release or let go of or die to make space for what we're trying to bring in.
Erin O'Brien:I was really wanting to take us a bit on a journey to honor this moment of the dark moon, to work with that energy of slowing down, of being still and reflection. One of the things that is so healing and transformative is being able to return to our origins. There's always more to find there. There's always more to um, alchemize more stones to turn over and pull those lessons or that wisdom into a different relationship with us, a different place of consciousness, and my belief is that we're all doing this work Forever and always. So I want you to bring your awareness right now to your breath, and you're going to just notice your natural state of breath and the movement that it takes as you bring that beautiful breath into your body and release it, and you're just noticing the experience of that. Your breath is always with you. It's a dear friend that walks alongside you, always there, and so we're going to notice our breathing and allow it to be a doorway. Notice our breathing and allow it to be a doorway.
Erin O'Brien:And for this moment, if you are operating a vehicle, as you're listening as I know I do when I listen and tune into others' offerings and voices I'm sometimes driving. If you are, I want you to listen. Of course, I mean, you are sovereign. You will make your own decisions, but my intent here is to move you through something that would be best done if you're in a kind, uh kind of a grounded safe space where you're not, uh, operating a vehicle or anything like that. Um, so that's my disclaimer that maybe I should have said sooner.
Erin O'Brien:I'm new to all this, so maybe I'll edit this out, who knows, um, anyway, um, so we're going to notice our breathing and, as you do, we're going to travel back together and you're going to use the wisdom of your body and your breath to take you a bit deeper, into a space of feeling open to information and messages from the wisdom of your body, the wisdom of your spirit, the wisdom of the water that moves through your body, your blood. Those vital fluids of our life hold memory, hold infinite possibility. So let's move with the rhythms of that. Gently, allow yourself to notice what information or messages your body has for you. In response to a question and the question is this, if you are willing, of course, in honor of the dark moon, of course, in honor of the dark moon what needs to be released? What needs to be discovered?
Erin O'Brien:or shape-shifted or brought into a different view. What do you need to return to for understanding about the new seed that you want to plant, or the new life, or the new doorway that you're wanting to walk through? What do you need to let go of? What needs to be transmuted from out of that deeper space? It's like we're digging in the soil of our experience and we're locating parts that maybe need to be removed, so whatever seed you want to plant can take root. Maybe what you're finding is something that can be used, um, as fertilizer compost to make the soil more fertile, stronger, uh, more abundant, and just be with that question. What needs to be released? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to find deep, deep down in the soil of my being, of my memory of myself, and there's so many dimensions of our experience where you could find something to be released.
Erin O'Brien:Maybe it's something in your intergenerational patterning, maybe it's a way that you learned about love and closeness. Maybe it's not safe to be too close, to be too seen, to be too vulnerable, to be too known, to be too big, to be too loud, to be too strong, to be too, to be too, to be too, to be too much. Maybe that's not safe. Maybe that hurt you, maybe that brought shame, maybe that brought pain. You learned what did you learn? You learned to stay small. You learned to submit to stay small. You learned to submit to stay safe.
Erin O'Brien:The patterning also is informed by our position in the social world. So let's move through that dimension. Notice your body and how the world responds to the body that you were born into. What are those experiences there? What did they teach you about your right to breathe, your right to be, your right to want, your right to desire, your right to live? What did those experiences teach you? What did they teach your family? What did they teach the generations that came before you? There is so much privilege in knowing where one came from, what one's family experienced. Maybe that's not something that is yours because of what happened to yours, your family, your ancestors, your people. All of that is in our bodies, all of that follows us, comes with us.
Erin O'Brien:And also think about the magic, the beauty, the strength, the resilience. Resilience is a complex word and can be used as a weapon to delegitimize one's experience. Right, let's not do that. We're celebrating the magic, the courage, the power, the beauty that exists in the bodies, in the hearts, in the families, in the cultures, in the experiences of people who know, who know? What do they know? What do they know? They know, they know what it means To fear. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I do the wrong thing? What if I breathe? That could really, really put me and mine in jeopardy. What does that mean?
Erin O'Brien:Some bodies, some humans, move through the world feeling more free to take up space, to literally breathe, to move, to speak. They are born into bodies with different pathways to access abundance, to accumulate, accumulate, what, many, many things. Many, many, many, many things. Some bodies do not. So where am I going? What am I saying? Well, take what you will, take what feels true to you, because we are on a journey Moving into the darkness, moving into our body, our psyche, our intergenerational experiences, reflecting on what happened to our bodies, their bodies, our people, your people.
Erin O'Brien:What happened? What did they learn about love, about life, about safety? Did they even know safety, a moment of stillness, a moment of truth? What did you learn from the people closest to you when you were small? You know our bodies, our systems. Our very neurobiology is shaped. Neurobiology is shaped, is informed and formed and moved and influenced by the people around us that we depend on.
Erin O'Brien:There are many names for this. Right, we know Our attachment systems. Yeah, we're mammals, we have those. What does that mean? Well, there's lots of research on attachment and there's lots of places where you can find that information and take what you will and leave the rest where you can find that information and take what you will and leave the rest. What it means for our experience is that it's a way that we turn toward the people around us who are entrusted with our very lives. We are utterly dependent, utterly vulnerable. Maybe it's our family, maybe it's other grown-ups, other people who are taking care of us when we are at our most independent, most dependent. And what were those experiences like for you? And we don't have a narrative memory when we are very, very, very young, very small.
Erin O'Brien:But if you are willing you can check in with yourself with a breath. You can ask for information and trust your experience, trust what comes through. What was it like for me when I was so little? Give me some information, maybe a body sensation, maybe an image, maybe use your imagination. Maybe you're able to really channel things using other parts of your experience. Maybe just be with that question. What was it like when I was little? What was it like?
Erin O'Brien:And we hold compassion for the grown-ups and the people who were taking care of us, who were raising us, and we can feel into their context, their reality. What was their experience? What was their context? What was their context? Was life and abundance and access and resources available to them? Were they steady on the ground beneath them? What was going on in their bodies, in their patterning that they didn't know? They didn't know. And so this is a process of holding much complexity, much complexity. Think about your original question what do I need to release right now? What do I need to know? What needs to die so I can compost that energy, that pattern, that chapter, that trauma, that experience, that part, that internalized system of dominance or empire, what, what Be with it now, be with the question. What needs to go? Mm, mm.
Erin O'Brien:Mm, what needs to go? Go? Maybe it comes up as an image, as a sensation, a memory, a knowing. Be with it. What do you need to say to it? To say goodbye, to say thank you, to say let's shapeshift, let's transform, let's alchemize that into this, into now, into the seed, into the door that opens now for you. What? What? If you're willing, let it come to you, Watch it transform, watch it transform, watch it transform, watch it alchemize, watch it move down into your soil, regenerating from the roots, up and up and up. Allowing whatever needs to go is now no longer. It has changed. You did that With the power of your deep awareness, your attention, your breathing, your courage to dare to go down and down, and down a little deeper, beneath the surface, to pull up the current of unconsciousness, semi-consciousness, maybe the shadow realm, maybe the trauma that was a patterning in your being that just allowed you to pull the thread a bit.
Erin O'Brien:Pull it, change it, detangle it, so that you could create something from it for you, for you, for you, for us. For now, we need it, we need you, we need us to go deep, to look, to pay attention, to find the places to do it. Let's do it together. Yeah, turn your attention to your breathing. Let your breathing fill your body. Let's talk about breathing, shall we? Breathing is the magic to soothe, to regulate, to calm, even, to generate, to activate, even to generate, to activate. If you are either up, up, up regulated too much or down, down, down regulated, your breath can bring you back into that beautiful window, beautiful, beautiful doorway of being, of thinking, of feeling, of sensing. Staying in that window where your body can be present, where your body can hold complexity and where your brain, your beautiful brain, can be fully integrated. And that means all the parts of the brain, the limbic right, and that means all the parts of the brain, the limbic right, the part that does our most primitive survival, the prefrontal lobe cortex, the part that can narrate, can imagine, can hold lots of different ideas and thoughts. We need all parts of the brain and we can use the power of our breathing to be present, to be present so we can be aware, so we can discover, so we can go deeper. Now bring your attention to what was transformed, the new moon, what is growing, what is going to be created from what was regenerated and renewed. How brilliant are you, are we? Yes, we are? Yes, we are. So let's focus our heart, our energy, on that which you are wanting, desiring to create.
Erin O'Brien:B, you alchemized or released a pattern of hiding, not being vulnerable, staying small, don't speak, don't speak, don't take up space, right, all that that comes from so many places, based on what body you were born into, and the patterning and conditioning and all the things that the system does to us, and we respond from a place of survival. Right, how brilliant, you survived. You survived, but today you decided to release that, to shape, shift it and change it, because you summoned your powers by being still and silent and reflective and going in and being daring to ask the question what needs to die so that something in me can live? How do I use that beautiful cycle of regeneration? And you to stay quiet?
Erin O'Brien:What is growing you? You are expanding, you are regenerating, you are filling up with life, with life, with desire, with want, with power, with confidence, with so much support from life itself that wants you to breathe, to be, to take up space, to fly, to climb, to dive, wants you to create, to have pleasure, to have your voice, to have your vision, to have abundance. Life wants you to live, trust in that your ancestors. They stand behind you, behind you, beside you your legacy, those that travel down your path. They're there. Time is interesting and liminal, so breathe in the support you have, a spirit team. You have guides and guardians and protectors. Maybe you call them angels, maybe you call them ascended friends. Whatever words, you know what they are. They're there for you, to support you, to help you create life, the door you opened, what you transformed.
Erin O'Brien:So let's take a moment and be still and let what needs to come in. Maybe it's a message, maybe it's some gratitude, maybe it's an experience in your body, maybe it's your body saying thank you for slowing down, for paying attention to me. I'm here, I carry your soul, I carry you. I try to give you messages. Please listen, don't delegitimize me. I'm your home, no-transcript, and I am grateful for you coming and spending this dark moon with me and doing this work with me. It's work for all of us. I will continue to offer similar experiences. Some will be different, some will be very different. I'm still figuring it all out, but I'm excited and I want to make healing and transformation more accessible for all of us.
Erin O'Brien:To dare to dare. To dare to dare to breathe, to live, to have pleasure, to be together, to take a stand. Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. Thank you. So I am your host, Erin O'Brien, Licensed Psychotherapist in practice for over 20 years, intuitive healer, relationship counselor and, dare I say, witch. As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul. Thank you so much. I can't wait to be with you again. Bye for now.