Trust: What does it actually mean to surrender?

I've just returned from a phenomenal trip to Australia...the land down unda! I met a beautiful human in January who happened to be traveling there. After knowing each other for less than a month, he invited me to join him on an epic, privately chartered catamaran yacht for a week, sailing through the Whitsunday Islands. Everything in my system said YES, so I jumped…like the Fool (the 0 card in Tarot).

Sunset at the famous White Haven Beach in the Whitsunday islands

This archetype is a paradox. The Fool dares to begin...unguarded, unconditioned, and trusting life before the mind can interfere. Innocent yet wise. Naive yet divinely guided. When we live like the Fool, life takes us in all sorts of directions. It becomes invigorating, electric...because we don’t know what’s coming next. This is the essence of trust. This is surrender to this wild, twisty-turny thing called life.

Surrender is a practice. Trust is a practice.

At times in my life, I’ve been deeply aligned, following the direction of my heart and full-body YESes. Other times, my mind takes over, and I talk myself out of things through fear and attachment to outcome. Like I said, trust is a practice. This way of living asks us to be intimate with uncertainty…to soften into the unknown (which, if we’re honest, this is what life is asking of us). Control is an illusion, so we might as well enjoy the ride.

But let me share a story.

In January, I was supposed to drive to Joshua Tree to facilitate a mushroom retreat. I had planned a little road trip out west for after the retreat. Well, life happened, not according to my plans, and the retreat was canceled. No problem. This is life. And surprisingly, I felt a strong pull to go on the road trip anyway. Everything in me said GO! So I headed out west to Oregon to visit friends.

Road trips are one of my favorite ways to travel. I feel so free, unrestricted, on the open road with my 4Runner beast, “Luna,” and my greatest beast companion, “Austin.” On my way to Eugene, I called my friends to let them know my timing. The response was absolutely hilarious: “SHIT! We thought you were coming next month. We got the dates wrong, we’re in Ohio.”

Nineteen hours of driving…to friends who aren’t there. You really can’t make this shit up. At a certain point, all you can do is laugh at the absurdity.

So, because of this unexpected curveball, I decided to stay in Bend, Oregon, for another night. And with a string of curious synchronicities, I met an interesting human. There was an instant magnetism between us, one of those undeniable, charged connections. That moment sparked a whole new trajectory…one that ultimately led me to the other side of the earth on a trip of a lifetime.

Life…you are wild. And strange. And brilliant. And beautiful.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “That level of trust is a privilege. Most people don’t have the time or resources to go to Australia on a drop of a dime.” Yes…and also, not entirely. It comes down to choices and conditioning. Many of us in the Western world have been taught to equate comfort with survival...to believe we need more than we actually do.

I’ve intentionally designed my life to have more freedom with my time and finances. And I trust that money is currency...it moves. It flows. It comes and goes. The moment I said yes to this trip, money showed up in unexpected ways. Of course it did. The more I trust, the more life meets me there.

The Fool is a powerful archetype to embody, but every archetype has its shadows. Trust without awareness, ignoring red flags, over-idealizing people or situations, or blindly believing “it will all work out” while bypassing reality, can absolutely lead to painful outcomes.

And…even then, there is medicine in it.

Every choice we make opens a new path of experience. We fall in love, and sometimes that love leads to heartbreak. We choose freedom, and sometimes that freedom reveals new constraints. This is the nature of being human. Life isn’t meant to be controlled...it’s meant to be lived, in the full spectrum.

Without movement, without choice, we stagnate. We contract. We become fearful, isolated, stuck.

So the real questions become:How do we live without gripping for control? How do we meet life as it is, instead of how we think it should be? How do we plan, lightly, while staying open to the current that is always shifting beneath us?

Can we sit in uncertainty…and trust anyway?

One of my favorite mantras when things aren’t going according to my very thoughtful (and often unnecessary) plans:“How can I trust this too?”

So as I continue practicing trust and surrender, I’ve put all my belongings in storage, freeing myself to move when those full-body FUCK YESes come through. Life, right now, is one big question mark. Sometimes that feels exhilarating. Other times, it brings up the deep “oh shit” of uncertainty.

And still…I move.

Because since the moment 19-year-old me moved to Colorado, I’ve known this: when I follow the energy, doors open. Life meets me. Supports me. Often in ways I never could have orchestrated.

Over the past 25 years, the universe, God, Source, whatever language resonates-has shown me, again and again, that I am held. That I am supported. Yes, there have been hard moments. There always are. But those depths make the light that much sweeter.

To feel joy return after darkness is like stepping out of a long, cold winter into the first warm day of spring...the sun hitting your skin after you forgot what warmth felt like. It’s visceral. It’s alive. It’s everything. Like dancing again after being stuck in the mud…fan-fucking-tastic.

Through all of it...the peaks and the valleys, I’m becoming more resilient. More fluid. A little more graceful in how I ride the waves. I see my “shit” more clearly now (my triggers, my wounds), or at least I am attempting to. It still comes up, of course, but now I can meet it with awareness and compassion instead of getting lost in it.

The more I trust and follow those energetic nudges, the more life I get to live. The more I experience, the more I understand myself and the mysterious intelligence of this universe we’re moving through.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

I celebrate my HUMANNESS. I celebrate your humanness.

So I’ll leave you with this: “How can you trust this too?”

Our beautiful catamaran yacht called "Girasol"