Sharna Langlais

from where I am so grateful and honored to share Reiki and ritual every month. The Salt Cave is such an incredible resource - thank you for all your love and support, and everything you do for our community! ❤️❤️❤️

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This is the incredible woman that does the salt cave’s Reiki & Full Moon Ritual ❤️ We couldn’t recommend her powerful and transformative events enough🙌 She will bless the cave with her Reiki Event on 10/27, 11/18, & 12/19 and Full Moon Ritual on 11/7 and 12/8. Purchase your ticket for this special kind of magic today at www.santafesaltcave.com❤️ You can also check out her other amazing offerings at seeksparkshine.com✨ ❤️

Best. Birthday. Present. Ever. 🎉

I still kinda can’t believe it! I built a house you guys!!! Like, BUILT a house, during a pandemic, amidst bone-crushing heartbreak, in Santa Fe, doing all the GC work myself once we broke ground, and mostly in Spanish. Oh, and in under 9 1/2 months! I mean, not to toot my own horn here but…🎺🎺😂.

But truly, I’ve been so humbled by, and in so much gratitude for, the entire experience. I had such an incredible team of earth angels who helped me beyond anything I could have imagined. Every time I had no idea what I was going to do, someone showed up and guided me along the way. Every. Single. Time.

This year has been one of the hardest of my life for so many reasons and it’s also given me more faith in the universe than perhaps I’ve ever had. It’s shown me, yet again, that the universe really does know what’s best for us, even (and perhaps especially) when we don’t.

We can do hard things, y’all. And when it is so devastatingly hard, I believe that’s almost always the moment just before it’s about to get better than ever.

Thank you all for your love, support and enthusiasm. So many of you have commented how you feel like it’s your house and property too, by being a part of my journey. I couldn’t be happier than to have my entire community feel so connected to this land and project. There’s so much more to come! But right now…Ima take a nap. 😂

I’m actually feeling pretty quiet today, but I started saying this to myself, so I thought I’d just drop this here for anyone else who needs to hear it. I also want to say I am so grateful for all of you for being part of my journey. 🙏🏼❤️

I feel like forgiveness used to be one of my super powers. No matter what happened, I usually could understand the other person’s perspective. And if ever it felt challenging to forgive, I would just work that much harder to find compassion for the other person. Voila - forgiveness achieved!

Except, sometimes, at my own expense.

This type of forgiveness involved abandoning myself in service to “keeping the peace,” “being a loving and evolved person,” and “not holding onto a grudge or negativity.” This is often reinforced by trends like toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing which value staying “high vibe” at the expense of authenticity and deeper healing. Therefore, for many of us who are actively working on ourselves, it can be challenging to suss out if forgiveness is coming from self abandonment or self compassion. Often, it’s probably both, being that forgiveness is a process, rather than a destination.

Less healthy types of forgiveness value the other person’s emotional well-being over one’s own health and boundaries. I had always thought that more forgiveness equaled more healing. Recently I’ve been questioning, more healing for whom?

Does it mean that all the times I forgave from self abandonment meant nothing? Not at all. There was a core of truth to the forgiveness or it never would have been offered. I forgave from the best place I could at that time.

Yet in this newest rebirth, I’m finding a more complex relationship with forgiveness that honors my needs, pace and boundaries over the other person’s. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, and I struggle with feeling like a “bad” person (thank you, societal conditioning). But, to quote my therapist, “you’ve got to be #1 on your own compassion train.” For most of my life, I’ve been in the caboose.

When we forgive in healthy ways, it is empowering, and owns the fullness of the experience. It honors where there still may be charge, but it doesn’t come from forcing an outcome or the hope/expectation of forgiveness from others. As a result, it takes time, boundaries, reflection and strength.

Fittingly, this week has been rife with client sessions focused on forgiveness. Questions like, when do I know that I’m ready to forgive? Why can’t I just let this go? Did I do the right thing in forgiving? Was I honoring myself or just giving in?

Tune in thus week for my first official podcast! I’ll be exploring the topic of forgiveness - until then, please drop any comments or questions here!

My heart is so full! Both sisters and their littles came and visited me here in Santa Fe this past week and we had such an amazing time! This past year has been one of the most transformative of my life, and it was such a gift to share this newest version of the life I’ve been blessed to create with my favorite people on the planet.

So many of you have been so kind to check in with me over the last several months. It has been the most intense rebirth, and I feel happier and more myself than ever. 🙌🏼❤️

I’ve spent so many years of my life feeling like I had to go it on my own. So when my ex showed up for me so significantly, and 9 months later broke it off entirely out of the blue, it felt as though the universe was just reinforcing that same old pattern: I had finally trusted someone after years of being fiercely independent, and yup, I got burned.  

Yet in the midst of feeling so defeated by this old story, each one of you showed up. Each one of you reached out. You all showed me that support could (and should) look like more than just one person. It could rightfully look like an entire community. 

And so now I'm building this house! And because my ex had agreed to be the General Contractor, there was no money in the budget to replace his expertise, let alone his sweat equity that we’d factored in. Not only did I not have a GC, but I was in the negative in terms of funds needed. Yet in the midst of the worst heartbreak and betrayal, so many men stepped up and said, if this is your dream, you can do it and we will help you. 

So somehow — somehow you guys — I am being my own GC, in the Santa Fe market, which is known to be ruthless, expensive and unforgiving. I’m managing a team of the most supportive subs, along with figuring out draw requests and budgets, and overseeing the majority of it in Spanish - which is probably my favorite part. It has shown me that if the universe wants something to happen, nothing can stop it. And if it doesn’t, no matter how hard you try to make it work, it just won’t. 

I am truly happier than I’ve ever been. We can do hard things, y’all! And it is so worth it - especially when a person like me, has a community like you. 

Surrender can be so victorious when you realize you can take ownership of the lighter, match and the flame. You can light it all up and walk away, with a hip swish and a hair toss, watching how the future glows in the embers of burning and releasing the past.

Loneliness is a funny thing. I haven’t felt it for so many years. I’ve been alone probably more than I’ve been in relationship, and I’d learned to love my own company. Yet finding someone I wanted to spend so much time with, who also wanted to spend it with me, reminded me of how amazing intimacy can be.

I’ve just moved into a furnished house after 2 months of bouncing around and living out of a suitcase. The first two days of grounding were amazing and yet, as I adjust, I feel that unfamiliar feeling of loneliness. My ex had five kids who I became extremely bonded to. There was rarely a time we had them when someone wasn’t right up next to me. Sometimes we had 3 kids with us in our queen sized bed, all snuggled up watching Netflix on my laptop at 6am so we could get a few more zzzs.

I’ve never been loved the way he loved me. I’ve never offered so much of myself to someone else. The shock of the break up still sends ripples through my being, and I wonder how it is that suddenly now I am alone.

I don’t write this for expressions of advice. I write this because I think within the human condition we all struggle with feeling lonely. It’s as if we can’t allow emptiness and vacancy to live within us. We load ourselves up with so many distractions that we don’t allow the void to just be sometimes. Feeling lonely is so difficult, and yet it is where we find the space to dream of something new. It’s where we hollow out all that was, so we can step into what might be.

Without the liminal, in between space of not knowing, which includes feeling loneliness sometimes, we can never imagine what might come next.

PC:

A lot of what we see about romantic love in our culture is based on dependency. It’s predicated on the idea that we only really love someone if we think we can never live without them. I had someone say to me recently, “if I’m not afraid of losing someone, does it mean I don’t love them?” It’s an interesting question.

Each relationship is unique, but I do know that when we focus on not wanting to lose someone as a primary, driving factor for loving them and keeping them, we only end up over-compromising and over-giving, relinquishing our boundaries, wants and needs to appease the other person. A fear-driven kind of love means we sacrifice when it may not be healthy. We also forfeit what we want in our lives, because the relationship or the other person becomes the end all be all.

This type of “I can’t live without you love” also deifies the other person; it puts them on a pedestal that doesn’t allow for errors or mistakes. Accepting and loving the shadow of one’s partner is one of the elements of true and lasting intimacy.

The kind of love that chooses someone each day, whether it’s a bad day or a good day, even when you might not particularly like that person in that moment - that’s a love that is driven out of empowerment, because choice is empowering. When we feel we can’t live without the other, our choice-making becomes extremely jeopardized.

Love that is based on choice allows more than enough space for each person to choose themselves, at the same time that they choose each other. It welcomes boundaries and space, communication and reflection, shadow and light.