Anna Taylor Phinny: Episode 1150

Transcript

[0:00:26] HA: When the psychic pain of an old soul is ready to be released, that pain might cry out to us through trauma or disease, begging to be healed, loved and liberated. But at the age of 36, diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, my next guest knew that she was embarking on two journeys at once, a physical journey through modern medicine's chemotherapy and a spiritual journey through training as a priestess of Avalon. Welcome back to the Author Hour Podcast. I'm your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and I'm joined by Annah Phinny, who is here to talk about her new book called, Lady of The Lake, Rise. Let's flip through it. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I'm here with my special friend, Annah, who just wrote a remarkable book called, Lady of the Lake, Rise: A Heroine's Journey through Cancer to Wholeness, and like, I got to tell you all, sometimes you read books and you know, they pull you in in a way and for me, I'm very spiritual. So this book specifically and Annah's journey really helped me, I don't know, tap into a few things in the last 24 hours that I've maybe have just put away for a while. So I just want to say, Annah, I'm super excited to have you on the show, so thanks for coming on today.

[0:01:45] ATP: Oh, I'm honored, thank you Hussein.

[0:01:48] HA: Yeah, this is going to be great. So Annah, before we get into the book and all the good stuff inside. I really want to share with our audience, you know, a little bit about you, your background, perhaps, where you grew up and maybe a person or an event that kind of inspired you to be the path that you're on today.

[0:02:06] ATP: Okay, lovely entry point. All right, well, I grew up in Michigan and when I was 12 years old, my family moved to the mountains of Telluride, Colorado. So I sort of feel that both of them hold the place of home in my heart in different ways. I loved the lakes, swimming in the lakes in Michigan and we had horses at our house and I've been very connected to horses my whole life. So that was a very big part of my childhood and the woman I am today, I'm a priestess of Avalon and have been studying and working with the land and moving through different kinds of initiations in Glastonbury, England and I'm actually tuning in with you today from England and my work is based on my education in spiritual psychology. I went to school in Santa Monica beginning in 2007, so a while ago now, to a master's program in spiritual psychology with an emphasis in consciousness, health and healing. So my framework and orientation to life for most of my adult life has been through a spiritual lens and I was beginning my priestess training, where a year into my priestess training in my second tradition that I studies in when everything happened, that is the central theme of the book, my journey through breast cancer. So an event that shaped my life, I would say what's really coming forward to share about is my relationship with horses. Horses were really my first gateway into the magical realm and into understanding that there was a world beyond that which was seen in the 3D as a child because I could feel the telepathic connection to my horse and I had many magical experiences with my horse as a young girl and that carried over into my horse, who I spent nine beautiful years with as an adult, who is also significant to my story and the book. But I definitely see horses as a magical gateway into the realms of the unseen because they're so sensitive and attuned to the other worlds.

[0:04:35] HA: That's so powerful. I love that this idea of this connection through other beings, you know, that roam around us and I feel like being of Middle Eastern descent, you know, I know my father was a big painter and he just loved – that was his favorite thing to paint was horses and you know, I've never got like a full answer but I assume there was like a spiritual connection, right? Because the horse and the warrior and what the warrior means today, right? All of these things are, for me, so beautiful and our connection to this being that has served humanity for so long I feel like, right? Obviously with the advent of vehicles and all these things today is just different. We don't see that. We don't see these animals that have taken care of us really and we've relied on them for so long. But I just love that you brought that up and how your connection with these beings really brought forth a different dimension of understanding. So let's dive in, can you tell us a little bit maybe a specific moment during your journey where you felt like you know, going through breast cancer, where you felt like just giving up and you know, that feeling of just wanting to I guess in a way relinquish yourself from this feeling. You know, this giving up of who you are, your identity and what that meant to you. Did you ever get to that place where you really felt like that?

[0:06:01] ATP: So many beautiful deep questions and I loved your reflections about horses, so thank you for that. That was beautiful. Well, in my journey and as I share about in the book, I made a parallel between my personal experience of being stripped. You know, I really felt that I was just completely being stripped raw of all the things that I identified with in my life, all the things that I felt were associated with beauty or femininity or my feminine essence. You know, breast cancer is such a feminine disease and through my experience, as I work with many different archetypes of goddess and different myths and stories of goddess, there is a particular story of the goddess, Inanna, who is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess, who was the queen of heaven and her dark sister named Ereshkigal, who was the queen of the underworld and in the story, Inanna travels from heaven down to earth. And then on her journey to the underworld to visit her sister, is met with seven bolted gates where she's told by one of the gatekeepers to the underworld that she must release one of her royal garments in order to pass through each gate by and so she moves through this being stripped from her crown all the way down to her robe so she's left naked and touring the underworld and symbolically, it's a journey through the seven chakras. The main energy centers of the body and all of the trappings of the outer world, all the things that she identified with that felt represented her status as queen and in order to face her dark sister who represents her shadow or the disowned or fragmented pieces of herself, she has to be stripped raw and naked and bare and having let go and release all those ideas of who she thought she was in order to meet this place of her with what is truly her power but her disowned power. Through that, she can reclaim those parts of herself and make the journey of ascend out through the seven gates, reclaiming the items but they no longer make her who she is and so I really resonated with that story as I was moving through my journey because I felt that I was being met at the seven gates of the underworld and being stripped of you know, my hair. Any woman understands, I mean, everyone has a connection to their hair. You know, any woman can imagine you know, being faced with losing one's hair is a deeply emotional process and feeling of immense loss. I also had hair down to my hips and just never cut my hair and I didn't even realize how unconsciously identified I was with my hair and having long hair. So there were several many multidimensional experiences I had of being stripped in different ways and ultimately, of the loss of my physical breasts through surgery. But the way that I related to those experiences of perceived loss where you know, I mean, it's all there. There's so much to say about it but the way that I related, I'll say this differently, I didn't relate to it as a tragedy or something that was happening to me in a way that made me feel victimized. Of course within situations like that, there are tendencies to feel those things and there were parts of me that I needed to honor and acknowledge within myself at moments that did feel that way. But the overriding sense of my authentic self continued to choose to see how this was in service to me as a divine being having a human experience and how I could utilize these experiences to support me in growing and expanding and expanding my heart and growing and evolving as a soul and so although I was met with a very intense situations and physically painful situations and emotionally, you know, gutting situations, I still held myself in that sacred container and held this very strong sense of faith that I knew this was happening for me and continuing to trust life, to trust spirit, to trust that there was a divine orchestration that was in service to me.

[0:10:59] HA: Yeah. Wow, it's so powerful and I was trying to warn the audience like we were going into an amazing episode. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, what a remarkable journey that you have not only experienced of course but you know, you associated it with this, sort of this really greater-than-life story, right? It's a, you know, whether you call it myth, if it's a myth or if it's a legend or if it is our story in reality, in metaphor. You know, however we experience that in connecting to this higher story, right? Which is I feel like in a way a representation for human beings, right? We all have to go through some sort of gate or a set of gates to sort of in a way, it's a cleansing. I know from my understanding of my faith and Islam, there is that sort of the afterlife, there is a moment in time where there's a cleansing period, right? Sort of disconnecting from the human realm and then sort of reentering the spiritual realm or whatever, right? You know, there is something beautiful about every ancient culture, right? That has this connection to divinity and this realm and I think it is beautiful and I think however we contextualize the stories, you could kind of relate as you go through life and you'd be like, "No, that's actually me, that's what's happening to me right now." I'm just retranslating it in this way, in this modern way that we're living.

[0:12:29] ATP: Absolutely.

[0:12:30] HA: I think that's really profound. Yeah, I think that's really profound and you were able to sort of lean into that story and say, "Okay, you know, this is happening to me, this is happening for me."

[0:12:41] ATP: Yes and that's the power of –

[0:12:43] HA: I've always recognized that in my dad. I got to tell you, I always – because there is amazing people around us, right? That experience really hard things and you're like, "How are they just like they look like they're skiing through this?" you know what I'm saying?

[0:12:54] ATP: Yes.

[0:12:55] HA: But there is this deep connection to what's happening is for me and there's a knowing, like a deeper knowing. I'm really interested in that, when did you think you developed this in a way, a sense of knowing that what is happening around you right now is ultimately like the fuel for who you are to become, you know what I mean?

[0:13:16] ATP: Yes, yes and because that's a huge paradigm shift. You know, our culture does not teach us to view things that way. It is very much reinforced through the media and through the stories that we hear for the most part that to respond in fear and that you know, we don't want things that as if something like that were to happen, it's bad and you need to go to this person to fix it and you know, there's sort of that method is sort of implanted in our consciousness as kids. You know, I think that it was really through my education in spiritual psychology that I learned to reframe that. I mean, I definitely longed for a deeper meaning and deeper sense of connection from a young age and by the time I was in my early 20s was really actively seeking that because it was like I just wasn't satisfied with the status quo or with the ways that I saw people interpreting the world around them. In spiritual psychology, the premise is earth is a school and we've come here to learn and all of our experiences are part of our earth school curriculum that we designed as a soul in collaboration with our soul family, other souls that are here to interact with us and to support us and growing and evolving and completing these contracts that we've made that all of it is part of our soul curriculum that we've come here to explore and learn from. So that profoundly resonated and so I feel I've been navigating life with that framework for the last 15 years.

[0:15:12] HA: Yeah, such a powerful perspective. I'm just enjoying this idea of how we can not only reconcile but also become the next iteration of ourselves as we – you know, I love the gates, right? The metaphoric gates, it's like it's not going to just happen once. You know, you talk about the difference between the hero's journey and the heroine's journey and I really, really enjoyed that. Can you share with our audience a little bit about the differences? Because I feel like you know, I didn't see it that way to be honest with you and I feel like many people probably out there don't see it that way as well. Can you maybe just share a little, you know, yeah anecdote about the difference between the two?

[0:15:52] ATP: Of course. So the hero's journey, which is the sort of the story that we often hear in mythology is of usually a man going out on a quest and he leaves behind what's familiar, his home or whatever represents the world that he's come from, goes out on a quest to learn a lesson or conquer a fear and then he, you know, retrieves that knowledge or wisdom and then comes back to share the wisdom he's gleaned from that journey, from that outward journey. So it's a very linear journey going out to retrieve something, conquering something and coming back and I was really sitting with this as I was ruminating on writing the book and as the sort of ideas for the books were starting to flow through because I was very clear that I wanted to exemplify through the writing the feminine healing journey, which I refer to as the heroine's journey, which is cyclical and spirals and it's fluid. It ebbs and it flows and it moves in different directions and it can start in present time at you know, the age that we are right now and with the set of circumstances in our lives that we have but then when we open up that door to heal from the root cause, that could take us back to a very specific memory from childhood. It could take us back to maybe a trauma we experienced in our body and then even further, it could take us back to the previous life time. Our soul having traveled through time and space is just here for the evolution and so if things haven't been completed in previous lifetimes in my understanding, they all carry over and will just bring the opportunity into the present to heal, to continuously bringing these opportunities into the present to heal them until that's complete and then we can move on to the next thing. So my experience was that I could be a 36-year-old woman who has an IV in her arm and was at the doctor, you know, in physical world reality receiving chemotherapy while also being aware of a very scared 15 year old inside myself and remembering things that were crystalizing in my consciousness from that age while also being aware of retrieving a magical priestess from a completely different lifetime and all of those things were happening simultaneously. So there's a multidimensional energy to the way that the feminine energy moves and flows and spirals and simultaneously is accessing material from the shadow and bringing it into the light for forgiveness and healing and acceptance.

[0:19:00] HA: Yeah, that's so powerful how you're able to just navigate not only just articulating it but it just in a way also displaying it from experience. You know, it's so powerful because I love the expression of both the heroine and the hero's journey and I think you're right and that you know, I think even for me there's times where I feel like the things that I actually want to do aren't just my own but a previous either version of me or connected to someone in my heritage that for example perhaps they were a farmer that always wanted to be a poet or write a book. Now that I get to have this life and opportunity that sort of seeped into my bloodline, right? To you know, conjure up or manifest it now, you know and I always think about that and –

[0:19:44] ATP: Yes, that's so powerful.

[0:19:47] HA: Yeah, I always think about that and again, I think that's what's kept me close to wanting to not only identify with but also get to know my heritage on a deeper level because then it kind of can share like I'll tell you a story real quick. I visited Iraq for the first time in 2014 I believe and I got to visit my home country and where I was from, where I was born because when we left we were so young. But you know what was really powerful? We were walking around As-Samawah, which is you know, I mean, we're an hour away from the ancient city of Ur, which is like Mesopotamia, you know, at the heart of it all and I'm sitting there and I am walking through this little town that I am from and my dad is just waving at everybody and you know, this person and that person and I just have never felt more, in a way, at home, you know what I mean? I just felt so connected to the people and I felt like I knew another layer, a part of me but there was fear going back. So you know that gate of re-cleansing and reclaiming, I just resonate with that because of those stories that I've had in my life. So you know in your book, you talk about this idea of reclaiming the seven gifts of a sacred birthright and you know, with the story that I just shared about sort of where I come from. Just visiting it and knowing that I am connected to this deeper lineage that I was disconnected from because of unfortunate events in war and I got to go explore another side of who I am, right? The multitude like America, right? A whole different language, a different culture, a different style of everything but to contrast that with where I'm from, I really felt whole. So I love this idea when you talk about reclaiming. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

[0:21:33] ATP: Yes and that's such a perfect story that you've shared about reclaiming your heritage, reclaiming your divine heritage and really allowing all of that cellular memory that is in your very DNA from your ancestry to really come online and activate through the physical energetic exchange of being on that land of your birth, I really feel that places carry so much energy for us too. The land holds so much memory and has so much to remind us and to activate and awaken within us. So there is such a powerful exchange that happens when we travel to the places of our ancestors and yes, so reclaiming absolutely has been a big theme in my journey and in my work and I'll say that it is founded on the concept of soul retrieval, which is the term used in shamanic healing that speaks to sort of fragmented aspects of our soul or of our essence that we have sort of left behind in traumatic events. So this can even be within this life, when there's some sort of trauma, it's very common in the shock of that experience for an aspect of ourselves to sort of disengage and in a way, leave or retreat from our conscious energy fields or our presence and in order for us to sort of bring back these fragmented pieces and when we lose that energy, I'll just say that that can from a spiritual perspective be the cause of illness, disease, addiction. Just anything that's kind of leaking or dispersing our soul energy because then we don't have our full life force available to us in the present. And so this method of journeying, through going on a vision quest, an inner vision journey, I often go on inner vision journeys with music or working with the support of a practitioner to journey from memory or into a memory and reclaim or retrieve the part of us that was left behind. In very much the way that you've been speaking about the cleansing, cleansing and bathing in love and forgiveness, that aspect or that memory or that younger part of ourselves and bringing them back into our hearts, bringing them back into our conscious awareness.

[0:24:18] HA: That is so beautiful. Annah, I could honestly probably just listen to you the rest of the day. I'm just going to say that, okay?

[0:24:26] ATP: Oh, I'm grateful.

[0:24:26] HA: I love that. Again, whoever is out there that's listening, the power of this book is just really beautiful. I could just feel the vibes coming off of you know, a digital space even so it is just so powerful. Let's take it to more of a tangible thing that people can really pick up from this because I know there's some tangible things that you lay out in your book too. What advice would you give someone who is currently facing some difficulties through a journey of healing, whether it be physical or spiritual?

[0:24:52] ATP: Yes, my message to you is that you have all the inner resources within you to navigate the situation and that I encourage you to really trust your inner compass and to really send out a prayer from your heart in whatever way feels authentic to you, however your relationship is with prayer. Whether it be asking for help to spirit, to the divine, to your higher self or going out in nature and saying aloud under the sun or the moon or to a tree something that you feel holds a great energy to just say you're in need of guidance. You are asking for help and support and to please lead you to the people and places and modalities or information that are most in service and aligned with your deepest level of healing and for your highest good and trust the information that comes to you, the people that come to you and know that you will be held every step of the way in your journey.

[0:26:07] HA: Yeah, I love that. I really appreciate you saying that because it's so – for me, it resonates deep. I used to ask my dad, you know, because we pray five times a day and all that good stuff and nor am I perfect now or anything like that but I just used to ask, "Dad, why so many times?" you know what I mean? It's just like why and he's like, "Well, does a tree ask like why the sun is beaming on it all day or why it's going to rain or why?" It's just like it needs that and it's like for me, as often as I can come to this prayer rug is like I need that sunlight. I need that moment in time where I can just absorb this energy to just keep me going and –

[0:26:50] ATP: Yes, well your dad —

[0:26:51] HA: What you just said – yeah, what you said just reminds me of him so much because those are the kinds of things he would sort of advise on, you know? I just resonate with that and I feel like there is nothing more powerful sometimes when you read a book and it connects you to someone else that you love and you resonate so much deeper because you're just like, "Oh my god, you know, these two wise spirits must know each other." So I think that's so powerful. I don't mean to keep bringing it back to my dad, I just appreciate where it takes me.

[0:27:23] ATP: No, I think it is beautiful that you are bringing it back to your dad. That's so meaningful. It really means a lot to me to hear, to hear your reflections and the connections you're making. It's lovely.

[0:27:35] HA: Yeah, I think you know again, with the power of words in our books, in our knowledge and wisdom and what comes through to the reader, right? Which is why I love this space and what comes through to the reader is not just logic, right? Through the words and how our mind takes all of these things and it turns him into something else, it is really the feeling that we also absorb and I got to tell you that was really powerful for me reading throughout your book today. So Annah, I can't express how thankful I am for you sharing your stories and your experiences but I do have one more question. What was your favorite part of writing this book?

[0:28:12] ATP: Oh my goodness, my favorite part of writing –

[0:28:16] HA: Come on, give me a good one.

[0:28:16] ATP: So yeah, there's so many things that I just loved about the process of wiring. I guess I'll say that before I wrote this book, I didn't really think of myself as a writer and I started writing my experiences because I just felt an overwhelming need to record them and I started sharing them with friends and they would say, "Gosh, that's beautiful" or "That is so well-written" or "It's amazing that you are able to articulate something so abstract." The journey, expressing my story kind of brought me in touch with this gift of sharing about the realms of the unseen and giving voice to things that are often difficult to give voice to and this provided me with the opportunity to do that. So it was like I got in touch with this whole new dimension inside myself, otherwise I don't know how I would have discovered it. So it was such a gift to find that within me and then I created so many beautiful rituals around writing. I think I'll share that with anyone who is writing. It was so magical for me to have a real preparation. I would light incense, light a candle, I had the same shawl that I wore every time I wrote, the same crystal that I had in my lap and I played the same music every time I would sit down to write. So I really had some specific things that dropped me into the space and I did that every single time. So that writing was this magical journey that I was entering consciously and it just felt like it was very powerful to delineate between being on my computer and writing emails and writing my book.

[0:30:07] HA: Yeah, that's so powerful. I love that you created, you know, almost like a tradition, right? To come and just practice on a daily basis to just kind of commune and I think that's the power of writing. It kind of realigns us with those moments in time where we've created really powerful traditions. You know, I think that's the beauty of also becoming a human and really realizing not just becoming a human. Really realizing our potential to be human and what that is actually like and it really does start with those rituals, the things that we practice and start to practice and indulge in so what a beautiful response of course. Annah, I'm just blown away by your stories and your experiences. The book is phenomenal. People, go get it. The book is called, Lady of the Lake, Rise: A Heroine's Journey through Cancer to Wholeness. Besides checking out the book on Amazon, where can people find you and connect with you?

[0:31:03] ATP: People can find me on Instagram @avalon.calling and my website is also avaloncalling.co.

[0:31:18] HA: Beautiful. Well, thank you again Annah so much, it is an absolute privilege and honor to have met you today and talk about you and your amazing book. So thank you again for your time.

[0:31:28] ATP: Oh, thank you so much. This was such a special experience talking to you.

[0:31:32] HA: Yeah, I felt that too. Thank you. Thank you all so much for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, Lady of the Lake, Rise: A Heroine's Journey through Cancer to Wholeness, right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we'll see you next time. Same place, different author.