I was sound asleep in my posh little hotel room, the last night of a women’s conference, when a fire alarm screeched through the speaker system. I bolted out of bed.
Calm down, it’s probably a false alarm, my brain told my body.
I SMELL SMOKE, my body told my brain.
I threw on some clothes, grabbed my backpack, and took the stairs down, down, down, alongside some other sleepy, concerned people. We could hear fire trucks outside blaring toward our hotel.
It was midnight, and my flight back home was leaving in about nine hours. At first, I milled around the sidewalk with other strangers, asking firemen questions. (“It’s coming from the laundry room. We’ve got it under control. No, you can’t go back in yet.”).
Eventually, I found a small group of women from the conference I’d just attended. I’d really bonded with a few women, but they weren’t in this group I found. There were over 100 of us, and I barely knew these ten women.
We went to the hotel next door and hung out in their lobby. They were nice and gave us water bottles. Our little group chatted about fires and the conference. We talked, we laughed, we yawned. But honestly? Most of the time, I was thinking “Now I have to get up in five hours… now I have to get up in four hours.”
At some point, maybe around 2 am, slightly delirious with exhaustion, we started a group text. We were allowed to go back to our rooms around 3 am, and I tried to sleep while breathing the leftover electrical smoke that reminded me (a New Yorker) of the long, horrible days just after September 11th, 2001.
Overall, it was not a great night.
And then… we all kept connecting. The texts flew back and forth.
“It’s so hard to go back to my regular life, and I feel so alone.”
“You’re never alone, we’re here, and your angels surround you.”
“Be kind to yourself, rest, you’ve got this.”
“How did it go when you set boundaries with your husband like you wanted to?”
“It was SO hard, but I used the steps we learned, and I’m so glad I did it.” (ten hearts and exclamation points)
And now this group of women from across the country, complete strangers a few days before, who I was almost literally thrown together with in the middle of the night at some random hotel because some dryer lint caught fire, are my secret cheering squad. They are my confidantes and my wisdom whisperers, literally at my fingertips. I had no idea I needed this so damn much.
But the Universe knew. Ask and you shall receive, or sometimes: muddle around as best you can, having no idea what you need, denying that you need anything, it’s fine, you’re fine… and you shall still receive.
It may take a small fire and five fire trucks, but you shall receive.
If you would love to be part of a little online community like this (but with content and 1:1 intuitive healing sessions with me), I’ve got one for you. It’s called Emerge, and three more spaces just opened up.
Does life just keep on lifing you? Do you need a little guidance, a little support? Don’t let it take a fire in the middle of the night to get you to what you need. It can be easy. It might be right in front of you, right now.
If you’re curious and you’d like to chat about this for half an hour, let’s do it!