My Experience with Smudging
Hi friends, happy August! Welcome to the first official blog post of my new site. I’m excited to share this post with you because it is something that makes me feel good, and it is something that I’ve gotten a lot of questions about on my Instagram page. Before starting, I want to say that I am no expert in this, and I understand that this is a practice that is sacred to others. Smudging is traditionally a ceremony for purifying or cleansing the soul of negative thoughts of a person or place. It is a common spiritual ceremony that was started by Indigenous people and has been around and practiced for thousands of years. This practice has grown in popularity in places like the US and Canada.
So, here’s my story. It’s a long one, so prepare yourself. I want to give you the full story so you understand why I decided to take the steps I did to turn my year around. Like many others, 2020 has NOT been my year. 2019 was such a good year for me, I traveled like crazy, made so many new friends, and was doing very well at work! I was a top performer on my team and hoped to carry that into 2020 with hopes of a promotion, move to a new place in a new neighborhood, and upgrade my current life.
Then, 2020 hit. January felt like the longest month of my life, work was starting to get shitty, and the talks of Coronavirus were getting more serious.
February, our 2019 year-end performance reviews results were due to come out, after months of being told I had nothing to worry about in regards to getting promoted, I sat down with my manager before our performance meeting and asked him "how things were looking” in regards to my promotion. He flat out told me “eh.” I was crushed. I honestly couldn’t believe he would have said something like that to me. Our sit down meeting came and he told me that “unfortunately” he could not promote me. Everything that I was working hard towards literally felt like it crumbled in my face. Weeks passed by and work was hell, I would’ve been okay if I wasn’t lied too, I honestly didn’t trust a single person on my team. Later that month, I had found out that not only was I not getting promoted, I was getting demoted. My role was going from “salary” to hourly. We had to clock in and out everyday including breaks and lunches, and I lost perks such as unlimited PTO and sick time. I started looking for jobs in February thinking “things will get better.” Later that month I reached out to my property manager and had him help me look for a new place to transfer to. If work wasn’t going to get any better, at least I had control over my own space. I finally started looking at some places and started feeling better about my life outside of work. I rearranged my work schedule to be able to see my therapist twice a week to get back to trusting my job and getting through a rough start of the year. Naturally, work became better too. I kept to myself and realized that if I was going to spend 8+ hours at a place, I couldn’t sit there and be miserable, so I tried to make the best of things. At the end of February I signed on a new lease for a one bedroom that was going to be $300 more than what I was paying for my studio. It was risky, but I knew I’d be able to afford it. I thought that would push me to work towards finding a new role, or work towards getting hired at a new company that would pay me more and see my worth. I had also moved forward in the interviewing process for a Project Manager role with the same company I was at, but on a different team. Then, one day, we were told that we were going to work from home. I packed up my desk, thinking that this would only be temporary.
March came around and there was still no word of going back into the office, Coronavirus was at its worst. They placed a hiring freeze company wide which cancelled the Project Manager interview for me. They told me they’d “resume” once we got back into the office. I cancelled my trip to Scranton and Seattle. I moved back to my moms for the first two months of quarantine. Living back with your parents after living on your own for 4+ years is… interesting. You forget what it’s like living with other people, doing things you’re used to doing on your own in another person’s house. March was a rough month for me, for a person with anxiety, it’s really hard to live in a space of “unknown.” No one knew what was going on, there would be days all I did was work, and watch movies. There were days I didn’t even go outside. I was terrified. I was so sad, I missed shopping, missed the city, missed going out to eat, and missed my friends, but felt like being in the suburbs would ultimately be safer since cases in Chicago were rising.
April came around and things at home started to suck. A lot of family drama happened that I won’t go into detail about, but naturally I overstayed my welcome. Lol it be like that sometimes. Mental health is super important to me, and sometimes it takes distance from people you love to get your groove back. The last weekend of April I moved back to my apartment in Chicago. I spent a lot of time working and packing in my downtime, since it was almost time for me to move to my new place. At the end of April, our CEO mentioned that, like many other companies, we were going to start layoffs in the next “couple of weeks.” I started getting a really bad feeling about things, and was not excited about moving, my goals, or my future at all. Everything just felt, bleh.
May 1st rolled around and I finally moved, I loved my new place, I felt like after everything was unpacked it was the ONE thing I had control over in my life (wrong). I was excited to decorate, budgeted out what I was going to spend on a couch, new decor, etc. Work went back to being horrible. Every week there was something new with the layoffs. First week of May, I found the news that they were cutting over 80% of my old department. I was heartbroken. All my friends on the team I first started working with, were gone. The feeling of “what if I’m next” took over me. Everyone assured me that our team would be good because it was “essential” and a new line of business. Even my manager. The regular stress of your day-to-day job plus the unknown of if your job is safe or not affected me really bad mentally. Later we found out that our line of business WAS going to be affected, and no team was safe. I got to the point where I could not even function anymore. I would cry in Zoom meetings (obviously with camera and sound off), feel sick to my stomach every time I would log on for work. I just couldn’t handle it anymore. Not only that, but in the first two weeks of my new apartment, everything from the dishwasher, stove, fridge, toilet pipes (x2), and shower broke in my new place. Needless to say I became very good pals with my building's engineer. I saw him almost 3x / week in the first month of me living there. That’s the price you pay when you move into an old Chicago building, and settle for more space. But everything, really?! WTF did the previous tenant do in there? Not use ANYTHING?! I also discovered I had a mad woman live either above or below me. I still never figured that out. Every night, at 12:30 AM EXACTLY I’d either wake up to- or couldn’t fall asleep because- this girl would SING on top of her FUCKING lungs as if it was her own personal recording studio. Repeating the same lyrics over and over, completely disregarding that people needed to wake up still for WORK, pandemic or not. I couldn’t handle my constant bad luck. Then, May 18th. This day I woke up with the worst anxiety, after not sleeping all night, after my morning check in I had to tell my boss that I was going to wrap things up early and take the rest of the day. I wasn’t sure if I was just overly tired, or something bad was going to happen, but I did not feel right. I was on Facetime with a co-worker when I received a email from our organization’s director. I’ll literally never forget how I felt. My heart sank so low I thought I was literally going to puke it out. I looked at my co-worker on Facetime and said “I have to go, I just got laid off.” They did it…through…email. A company I was loyal to and with for 2+ years laid me off, in a f%$@ing BCC email. And. I. Had. No. Idea. It. Was. Coming. We don’t have to go into details but, May was, ROUGH. Luckily, I had my @tarjaymaxx page to get me through. I put a lot of focus on working on my page and linking things on my LTK page. I used the down time to create my presets, and other exciting projects that I didn’t have the time to do before. I also found out that some douchebag I had been pining over had a girlfriend the ENTIRE time we were talking. Men suck, men in their 20’s suck even more, but thats another topic for a whole other time lmao. I just couldn’t believe how BADLY things were going. I literally couldn’t catch a break. End of May as we all know, something brutal happened to George Floyd, and caused chaos in our cities. I was horrified to be living in Chicago during this time, especially alone. ESPECIALLY still in a very-real pandemic. A city that’s pretty well known for its violence and crime was exceedingly worse during this time. I spent nights away from my place, moving around from neighborhood to neighborhood because threats of “burning down the North Side” (where I live) were streaming around the internet. Shit was just rough, for everyone. EVERYONE was hurting at this point, understandably so.
June came around and all I hoped for was a break. The city was starting to go back to normal, night after night there were less and less emergency alerts and our curfew was lifted. June was officially the month I was no longer an employee of the company I was at. I lost my health insurance (bye therapy), went to pick up all my belongings at an office that felt like my second home, and became apart of the 90% of the unemployed population. June was full of emotions. I felt like I was going through the worst break up of my life. Things were starting to look up Coronavirus wise. States were opening back up, Chicago was heading into phase 3, and other states were fully opened and returning to work. I decided to TRY and look at the brighter side of things, and book a trip to Dallas, Texas at the end of the month and stay for a few weeks. I wanted to make the best out of my experience and use this time to do things I’d never be able to do again if I had a job, like travel and visit my best friends in other states for 3 weeks out of the summer. I was SO excited to finally catch my breath. Get away and escape the rejection “we went with another candidate that would be a better fit” emails, coaching calls, and unemployed quarantine life. I needed to feel normal, I had to. The last weekend of June came around and I got a text from my best friend in Texas telling me that ahis entire friend group tested positive for Coronavirus, and he was getting tested shortly after. A day before my trip, I had to cancel it. I was like “that’s it,” I’m literally done tying.” I went back to Chicago during the hottest weekend of the year, decided to relax and watch some Jersey Shore on Hulu. I turned on my AC in my boiling hot apartment and all of a sudden it turned off. It was 82 in there I had the AC set to 73, no way in hell it got to that temp that fast. ANOTHER. F%$@ING. THING. BROKE. IN. THIS. APARTMENT. I think you can imagine what happens next… when I tell you I lost my shit……I LOST MY SHIT!!!!!!!!! Just lost it.
I was DESPERATE to try anything to help me feel better. I made a post on Facebook asking if anyone had ANY tips for how to cure this bad luck streak I was having. A Facebook friend of mine recommended giving sage a try. I started asking others for tips and advice, and doing my own research on how to smudge. I was becoming so fascinated on how it was practiced and the success stories that came from it.
Obviously, as you probably could assume, I bought sage and decided to give smudging a try. I needed the negativity first and foremost out of my new apartment. I couldn’t keep going day after day with something new breaking, and needed to get the negativity of everything that happened in that apartment out. It was driving me nuts, day in and day out looking at the place I found out I got laid off, sitting in a room where I was constantly worried if I was going to get sleep or not because of SOMEONE ELSE. With everything else going on, I needed home to be a safe space, not a place I constantly wanted to leave in a pandemic. LOL. The first week of owning sage, I smudged my apartment everyday. Starting at the front door, making my way to every CREVICE of my apartment, and ending back at the front door. I literally went as far as cleansing the new appliances I received, cleansing the newly fixed appliances, I basically covered all my bases all while repeating positive affirmations, and manifesting a better month, next month, rest of the year, and future.
After my first week, I started smudging when I felt I needed it. To date, if I am feeling down, or upset about something, I will light it up and say positive things. If I feel down on myself or not creative, I’ll light up sage and smudge around my desk, repeating things like “I AM creative, I AM going to be successful, I WILL find a job, I WILL be positive in this space.” This past week, I finally had my first call with a recruiter, regardless of where it leads me, it felt good to get back in the game, and feel a gleam of hope again. I also will smudge new items I bought from the store, especially if they are thrifted before putting them into my place. I like to smudge every night before I go to sleep, especially in my room. As you guys may remember from May’s recap, I had a crazy neighbor, since smudging, I have not heard a peep, and if I do, it’s very short lived and I can look past it. I also have not had a single nightmare. Since moving in, more nights than not I was having bad dreams and either falling sleep or waking up with horrible anxiety. Every night I light sage and repeat positive thoughts, I say things like “clean and clear the negative energy from this space, I will get a good nights rest,” and recap the day and why it was good. I smudge the whole room then go to sleep and let the sage burn out. The smell calms me and is super soothing to fall asleep to. If I have time, I will also manifest in writing, and jot down everything I want for my future in a journal only using “I will” statements. Since smudging, (fingers crossed), everything has been working in my apartment, and nothing has broken on me and I haven’t seen my engineer pals in over a month.
Final thoughts: I know this was a long one. And if you stuck through it, you’re the best. I’m glad I can share my story with you in hopes that if you are feeling the same way, you learn that there is always a way out of a mentality you are stuck in. I missed feeling positive, I missed seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and smudging has helped me re-focus and re-shift my thoughts and get back on the right track again. Is everything perfect and happy now that I’ve started practicing smudging? Nope. Probably the opposite, lol. This is not a quick fix. It’s a good practice that can help you ground yourself and get back into thinking positively. Nothing worth keeping EVER comes easy. I’ve certainly learned that this year. I was too comfortable, and nothing good comes from staying in your comfort zone. Mindset is LITERALLY everything. You CANNOT go through life thinking negatively or you will create negative outcomes for yourself. That was literally all I was doing. I was stuck in a loop of negativity and couldn’t get out. Smudging helped me get out, but only I can fix what’s broken.
I want to leave you with this, regardless of your beliefs, I genuinely believe that if something makes you feel good and is impacting your life in a positive way, you should stick to it. I am a person who loves to learn, and always willing to try something new. Smudging came into my life when I needed it the most. I am a person who believes that we make our own destiny in this world, I genuinely believe in the power of manifestation, and what you put into the universe is what you will receive. I want to make it known that I didn’t try this because it’s “trendy” or “popular.” I did a lot of research and found that this was something I was willing to try and take seriously. I looked to this in a time of desperation and it is something that has made a positive impact on me, and that to me is worth continuing to implement in my daily life. I realize this is a touchy topic and I don’t want to come off as if I believe that one person’s belief is more or less important than another’s. Like I said, I’m someone who is willing to learn and try new things. Just because I had a positive experience doesn’t mean that the next person might, but if you can relate to anything I’ve said in this blog post, it may be worth a try :)
Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll catch ya time! Xo
Related articles and videos:
How to Smudge: Burning Sage (Good video for beginners)
SMUDGING 101: Cleansing Your Home with Sage & Palo Santo (Good video for beginners)
