I reached out to Dorothy McPhie about February or March of 2019, but it wasn't until the beginning of April that we finally met. She had been highly recommended to me for bodywork and because I was already stretched so far outside of my comfort zone, I knew I needed to take care of myself on a level I never had before.
Here's the timeline:
Leave job November 2018 and double my income within two weeks as a freelancer.
Sign up for year-long Medicine Wheel December 2018
I decide to explore my sexuality in 2019 and sign up for year-long refinement course that is connected to the BDSM community, and I vow to tell no one, not even my two best friends.
Begin reading "The Artists Way" for about the third time.
I cry in bed, a lot, worried I'm destroying my life.
Freelancing quickly falls apart by the end of January 2019
I reach out to Dorothy McPhie for an appointment.
I meet my mentor for the refinement course - she's awesome.
Concept for Waking Aphrodite is born. I now know I can't keep any part of my story a secret.
First of two best friends hires me to help her launch her business within 28 days.
I lose best friend within 28 days.
I go to my first BDSM party.
I set up an appointment with Dorothy McPhie
I lose my apartment the end of March.
Second best friend says I can move in with her while I get back on my feet. While taking my teen to live with his brother in Texas, said friend was supposed to give my belongs to people I had sold them to. On the way back from Texas, said friend informed me she sold my belongs for $250 and in her benevolence, said she gave some other things to people she thought would like them.
No more best friends.
I'm homeless by the end of March 2019
I tell no one other than my Shaman, the Headmistress and one friend.
I sleep in my car and cry.
It's time for my appointment with Dorothy McPhie and I have no income. I go to the appointment anyway because after driving across the country and back within 4 days and losing everything, my body and spirit could use a good massage.
I meet Dorothy and quickly learn this is not going to be your typical massage.
Excited to be meeting with her I sit at a coffee shop chatting with a friend when I get a call from Dorothy, asking me if I still plan on making the appt. To my horror, I had remembered the wrong time and drove like a lunatic since she agreed to wait for me.
Once I apologize, she smiles and tells me to sit down, explaining I needn’t worry.
As she sits across from me on the massage table, she asks me, "What's going on?"
She wasn’t asking about my body; she was asking about my life and I immediately knew I was about to have a very unique experience.
I kind of laughed and ask her if she really wanted to know. She assures me she did, so I laid it all at her feet, preparing for judgement or pity.
Rather than shake her head in disappointment or disapproval, she honors my heart, mind and soul. She then leaves after instructing me to undress to my level of comfort and to lie under the sheet and blanket.
Now, I have always been skeptic of "energy" workers but this session with Dorothy, and all of the sessions that followed, made me a believer. I felt her shift things within my body and my mind. I even asked her if she was messing with my brain, and she just chuckled.
She asked questions which led to removing the blocks stored within and I began to "shift."
She called me Goddess in reverence, and I felt as though I was in the presence of magic, power and sacredness. I've no other way to explain her and what she did.
Afterward, we sat down to discuss the session and my takeaways. She knew I needed more work but that I could not afford to keep seeing her. So, she, wanting to honor both of us, offered a trade of services - facials for bodywork.
It was from that point on that I started seeing her almost weekly.
In each session she used doTerra Oils and I would walk out of there feeling and smelling like heaven. But it was more than that. She ended each session placing frankincense on my heart and my brow. I breathed it in like it was my life’s blood and he honored me with blessings for a Goddess.
Throughout the time I worked with her she kept me grounded and focused on my goal to breathe life into this Goddess I called Aphrodite. She taught me how to honor my journey and to challenge my perceptions and what I was doing. She cleared my energy as she healed my very being and there was even a time where I felt as if my body was hovering weightless above her table.
This woman was a wellspring of knowledge and wisdom. She educated me about priestesses, goddesses, witches, and the history of women. How they went from being celebrated and respected members of their communities to being vilified and oppressed. Eventually shamed and imprisoned for being healers, leaders and free thinkers, which led to their demise.
She told me about books like, “Women Who Run with the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers” by Debbie Ford.
For Christmas that year I got her a book of poems from Rupi Kaur, “The Sun and Her Flowers.” I came across it in Target and though I’m not a consumer of poems, I stood there in the store, weeping as I read nearly the entire book. I was torn between keeping it for myself (it was the last one on the shelf) and giving it to her. Because it was my original intention, I gifted it to her and told her the reason I didn’t write an inscription was because there were none that spoke better of my love, respect and gratitude for her than those already in the book. She opened it blindly and asked me to read the opened page 144, “female infanticide/female feticide.”
It's a timeline of how the author’s culture got rid of their female babies because they were considered burdens. They did not hold the same value as their male counterparts.
Throughout 2019 Dorothy held me as I cried and guided me on my path. And in 2020, she cheered me on as I soared on January 11th as I launched Waking Aphrodite.
I’ll never forget sitting across the dressing room from her afterward and smiling into each other’s eyes, victorious and proud. It was then that I introduced her, for the very first time, as “the Midwife of Waking Aphrodite.”
The following week, she continued to support me and came to my graduation for the refinement course. Again, so beautiful and regal, powerful in her own expression of self.
She gifted me with a card and a trinket which I treasure more now than ever. I don’t know what its officially called but it’s a handblown glass device, so fragile, where you place a votive candle at the bottom bowl and it heats up the oil that you place in the smaller bowl suspended above it. She told me it was brought back from Egypt by a friend, and she gave me one of the two along with a candle.
She participated in my workshops and donated essential oils as gifts to the participants, allowing them to think it was from me and when people who were threatened by my obvious success tried to stop me, she continued to stand by my side and uplift me.
It was difficult to say goodbye to this amazing woman who had her own journey to take. She was off to help her shaman save and protect the wolves in Colorado.
We tried to call each other and texted when we could. She lived remotely and only had cell service when she was in town so the time between our conversations grew. The last time we texted each other was in November of 2021 – where her last words to me were that she was glad we are friends.
I sent her a text on New Year's Eve, wishing her well…not knowing she was on death’s doorstep. I continued to send texts every couple of months, and it wasn’t until September 13th of this year that I found out by searching her social media to connect.
I burst into tears and could not stop them. Even now, they flow freely down my face.
One huge regret is that I don’t have a single picture of us together. Not from the launch of Waking Aphrodite nor my graduation. So, this stunning and powerful woman will remain in my heart as the wild one who runs with the wolves, the Midwife of Waking Aphrodite and my Priestess – Dorothy McPhie.
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