My Story: How You Can Create Your Reality
In case you feel ready to up-level your life too, read on to get inspired!
HOW I CREATE MY REALITY
Dear one,
Thank you for being here. Nine months ago today I moved my entire life to Tulum, Mexico without ever having been here before and nothing has been the same since.
I have a juicy personal story to share about how I got here. The time is right.
And I have a hunch you are experiencing a moment of being at the crossroads too and are ready to up-level your life. Just in case I’m right, I want to offer you an example about unlimited possibility of what happens next for you. If I can, so can you.
It just so happens that I’m a bit of an expert at starting new lives - not one or two but many many new realities of such wonder and joy that each time I say “pinch me!”. Are you ready for a true story?
Unlikely Origins
My name is Emily Dawn Bauman and I was born a little bundle of barely six pounds in a small Mennonite town called Elmira in Ontario. That’s in Canada. Think English speaking, rural farm town my family had inhabited for generations. It was a place grounded in humble honesty like the corn and barley that grew in the waving summer fields surrounding our community. I learned the Canadian values of politeness, never being a litter bug, and I experienced the joy of roaming freely at dusk playing kick the can with the other kids and not a worry in our parent’s minds about what would happen to us out there. It was safe.
Then as a family we left. We emigrated south, and my parents demonstrated in 3D reality how you have the power to choose your existence freely. I was in grade two. Our lives and future generations of Baumans were about to be transformed forever.
My parents had spent the first six years of their marriage in Kenya and Sudan. So for them it was easy to put our house on Queen Street up for rent and bid extended family goodbye. They sold my dad’s successful autobody business, even as a chorus of voices ranging from their accountant to four grandparents yelled “you guys are crazy!” . My dad had accepted a job in Port-au-Prince Haiti, so off they went with three kids in the back seat of in a jam-packed station wagon. We were not impressed with that journey. With melted crayons embedded in the seat, we arrived hot and sweaty in Florida from where we’d board the tiny plane to our new home. Ayiti Cherie.
Within an hour of boarding, strapped onto bags of missionary mail -we landed in Port-au-Prince. No regular flights were allowed to enter Haiti in those days you see. It was February of 1993, and the hot wind whipped my long blond hair on the tarmac unpleasantly. We were entering an embargoed land of political strife, sublime cultural richness and more than ready to demonstrate the depths of human misery. (why so many rhymes? I don’t know, just go with it!).
Welcome to Haiti
So just like that instead of growing up in a Canadian small town, I was raised from age 7 to 17 in the creative hotbed of Haiti. Mosquitoes and a big new school of Americans, Haitians and the diplomatic community greeted me. No small town for me! Think Creole, island sunsets, land of unknown mystery, coup-d'etas, vodou, folklore dance and intense beauty. I learned to write in cursive, diss in creole, and overcome my fear of open oceans.
That’s where I was raised and learned to be the most creatively unleashed, joyful being even in the face of grueling poverty, blended with extreme heights of wonder and human beauty. My parents drove us to nearly every province, and explored places like waterfalls at any opportunity.
Haiti.
That’s where I met my Self, Amanacer.
It means the soul that loves to be born in Spanish. At the age of 10 I thought I was translating my middle name, Dawn, into Amanacer to sign a painting. But I was wrong! A serendipitous typo and switch of e for a resulted in this new name, the true reflection of my artist soul! so just in case you were wondering, Amanacer means the soul that loves to be reborn.
A painting from my first solo art show in Ottawa, 2012. It was a sold out experience and the first time I publically exhibited as Amanacer!
Spending summers in the green grass of Ontario and the school year back in Port-au-Prince became the rhythm of my formative years. Unkind girls ruled much of my day to day in the school yard. If you’re friends with Emily, you will be cut off from the clubs - one mean girl said. So instead I read my way through elementary and escaped into deeper books in middle school - and only started making real “bosom friends” in high school. It all took place in one very Christian - even Quaker style place - Quisqueya Christian School. They had literally banned dancing, and taught that the earth was made in 10 days and was 10,000 years old, to give you an idea.
Have you read the book “The Yaya Sisterhood”?. That roving band of happy vagabonds, sweet freedom of multiple families and artist friends (all secretly LGBTI) formed what we called The Boongies. From ages 11-16 I got to tag along as part of a creative tribe and witness bohemian hearts unleashed. In those days, on Saturday morning even when the gas embargo made car fuel extra short - we would pile three families and half a dozen friends deep into old pickup trucks. Us kids were put in the back with a boom box, snacks and off we’d head to the beach.
I didn’t know then but I was in school, learning from the best renegades the planet could produce. I witnessed sublimely free creative hearts living avante-garde ways. I saw the moments that inspired their paintings. I learned about the beauty of nude photography in nature. I learned happiness that comes from doing whatever they pleased.
And beach camping taught me a thing or two about sand fleas. The best times was when we’d hire fishermen like Tony to take us to deserted islands off the coast for day trips. We’d go to Ibo Beach where the Clintons once honeymooned. It was since burned down and abandoned except for us and our coolers filled with sandwiches and class coke bottles. I also discovered my endless love of riding on the prow of those humble boats where the prow formed a V - I could sit pretending to be a mermaid gliding over my kingdom. And my toes dangled through parting waters that seemed to sparkle just for me.
Then high school graduation came, as it does and at age 17. Just after this photo was taken, I left for a spell, beginning to weave my own story in Canadian university. Thanks to those classes I left behind the intense religious programming and accepted my heart’s invitation to explore forbidden topics like gasp evolution, atheism, feminism and erotic texts too.
During those university years in Canada, I felt restless so I went to work in western Ethiopia. It was an opportunity that my advisor plunked down one day in front of me. I applied, got in, and one mandatory yellow fever vaccination shot later there I was in a totally new reality. Sleeping at a guest house with one fellow volunteer and Bob in the big house, I worked daily with victims of sex trafficking and helped girls with beautiful brown doe eyes and sacred face tattoos escape life in the brothels. I volunteered in livelihood development. It was an honor to help these young women create a new reality by making hair dressing school and food processing training available to them. They broke my heart too, the seeming unfairness of their choices, the trauma they spoke of openly, what they lived through. At the same time, I felt so lucky to watch the sun rise over the source of the Nile River and interact with people who felt like they lived on a different planet. I said pinch me when yet another ancient timeline sprung to life before my eyes. On a weekend visit to Gumuz Land on the border between Ethiopia and Sudan we visited a place where two year old hunted with bow and arrows, and a mother wrapped totems around her baby twin boys necks to protect them from evils seen and unseen. That included my blue eyes, it seems.
“What do you want me to bring you from Canada?” I asked one day in Bahir Dar as the girls and I sat under a tree outside the stone church, knowing my next departure was drawing close.
“Bras” they said collectively pointing to nipples exposed in thin, worn T-shirts, “We have none, we want our boobs to be more supported, we want more dignity. when we go to church”
Ouch - the simplicity of the answer stung me like a jellyfish. So, dear reader, I can tell you honestly, that there with DevXchange in Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana Ethiopia is where I truly cried. I didn’t cry for myself, a broken heart or long distance relationship crumbling like all the times before. I didn’t cry from being misunderstood or the small boobed blond girl in a world of mulatto beauty queens.
I cried for the collective women, and the hope these girls somehow held for brighter skies. It was their hope that broke me, and taught me that the soft feminine spirit is the strongest force on earth.
I took their portraits with my camera, and they gifted me a heart cracked so wide open it never shut again. From that moment in Ethiopia, I silently accepted a life of service to women like them, women like you, women just like me or anyone who wants to work with the power of femininity. I was no more than 23. but from that point on becoming a human rights lawyer, a french teacher or someone ensconced in an academic tower no longer felt like a possibility to the girl they called Emily.
Again with the rhymes, it just happens…
(And please know that I’m silently thanking you for reading this now. To be honest, I’m not sure I even knew all this with my conscious mind until I started thinking of what I’d like to say to you. It’s true that seeing and knowing the reality of the Bahir Dar Girls was the turning point towards where you and I are together, sharing this here and now. So thank you dear one for being present here with me.)
As so many of us do, I obtained the check box degrees to satisfy a part of myself and expectations of my family. I graduated with an Honours BA in Philosophy, English. A spell living in Toulouse France polished off my ability to speak French. That itself felt like a miracle! I got my first job as a barista at Timothy’s Coffee Shop in the local mall, and through sheer determination I saved up the $10,000 dollars on minimum wage - enough for the time abroad, the rent buying a red wool coat and the new french wardrobe. I was practicing re-inventing my reality.
In France, and back in Canada the Philosophy and logic, reasoning classes removed the last stains any unwanted religious thought forms from my consciousness. I began to weave new stories that felt more true. New ways of seeing the earth, believing more than ever in our inherent creative ability that flows in humans as naturally as waves flowing on the sea.
And perhaps most miraculously after France, and before starting my Masters Degree I fulfilled a promise to my German friend Gerborg and she and I reunited in Brazil and Argentina where we traveled freely. I had little money but was wealthier than ever before. I met my first Mayan guides who took us high into the mountains of an emerald lake. Without speaking, we dropped the only offering we had in the middle of the ancient stones: water. Argentina and Brazil opened up portals and adventures I still enjoy like the memory of the most beautiful lover. I was enveloped for the first time in a slow tempo-ed world of street tango, feminine company and Carnival by the sea.
It’s no wonder that I painted a series about gold cow skulls and treasure maps next. The 6 years of MA in International Affairs and working in the Canadian Government. I was striving to become a diplomat. I saw myself dying my hair brown and straightening it in an attempt to be taken more seriously by men in wrinkled suits (those blond curls of mine were not evoking respect a voice told me! And some professors echoed it openly).
In those times, of Canadian winters, working as an expert in refugee affairs and Syrian resettlement I almost lost Amanacer completely.
Yes, I painted almost every night, washing some color into my world with wine-soaked midnights and Haitian veve symbols that whispered of magic that never fades. But she was drowning in regularity. She shriveled up in grey skies, tepid routine and frigid eyes of monotony I felt reflected in too many hearts around me. Rescuing her from oblivion by leaving my life in Ottawa, returning to Haiti in 2015 was courageous.
A seven year relationship, engagement, also couldn't be carried into the future. As lovingly as we split paths, it still haunted me. I will admit, it wasn’t until Tulum and a healing session that I had just months ago that the specter of that timeline and possible marriage truly freed from me.
So you see - in 2015 I left Canada for the heat of the southern world just as my parents had done before in 1993. But this time it was about becoming the adult me, being OK in a world of chaos, unknowns, burning tires, blazing sunsets on the aqua sea. No matter how many times I got to advise the Minister of Immigration or travel solo for a peace conference in Turkey - I knew my life was destined for far more than a cubicle on floor 17. You know that feeling?
So for 5 years I built a life in Haiti - heading into my early 30’s where adult me healing childhood scars deep within. Outside I was working for leading charities in a totally new career of grant management and fundraising millions of dollars for leading global charities. My forever side-passion of photography rose up and demanded attention. I’d come a long way from portraits of Ethiopian girls by Lake Tana you see. So I got a new job as head of communications for a United Nations Agency. New commute, new world. new reality.
We all deserve to find our ‘soul family’. We all deserve to wake up to a day to day reality that makes us leap out of bed with excited expectancy.
In Haiti, I was connecting with a creative community of such potency and beauty - I am honored to call their eyes and arms my soul home. I was satisfied that communing with artists, musicians of such caliber was even a possibility. My gratitude is boundless.
But now, today, I am choose something different. I choose to work not for the government, not for a charity or the united nations, but for me - and by extension truly serve YOU for the first time. I choose to live in the magical vortex of Tulum on the sacred Mayan lands of Mexico's Caribbean coast, offering an invention from my soul called The Art Spa.
Yes, moving to Tulum felt impossible at times. But I had hired a coach the year before and she taught me how to simply choose.
The courage to leave a solid paycheck once and for all, to leave the prestige of my work at the United Nations, and move all my belongings to a place I had never been - Tulum - came on the heals of a month I spent healing in Bali. I had quit the UN before leaving for Bali, you see.
My health was on the brink of nervous disaster in reaction to the rising trauma at the neath-death experiences which proliferated around me. This isn’t an exaggeration.
Being held at gunpoint I had lived through three times already in Haiti at ages 10, 13 and 16. But at that time in early 2019 every time I left the gate of my house I was unsure of whether a car jacking, kidnapping, having an angry riot overtake my car or simply being stuck at work for several days would reach out to greet me. All were likely. It was nerve-wracking to drive the hour to the UN Base, to say the least. Often on the drive home I felt like a rat in a maze, not knowing which routes would be blocked off and which road could bring me safety over to my neighbourhood of Pacot in the hills above downtown. One thing I know for sure, is that I couldn’t have escaped that loop of danger, and feeling tied to my UN job (or any fixed reality) on my own.
Hiring a personal coach, Sammie Flemming, then signing up for The O2 Awakening Breathwork Retreat in Bali and committing fully to the healing at that retreat were the series of game changers for me.
The second morning I woke up at the Bali breathwork retreat - ensconced in the Mermaid Suite no less - I felt a burst of sunshine cracking open inside me to mirror the sunrise rising over the rice paddies. The day before was a rough initiation - an hour of breathing took me on an inner journey to the most painful bullying events of my childhood. Hello time travel! We were at Eden Estates, and on the other side of the shadow work, inner child work, trauma processing work, I was coming into contact with the blissful experience of Eden within. (Maybe it sounds woo-woo but its tangible and an accessible feeling to everyone!). I learned that safety was always a given fact, no matter what was happening around me.
So returning to Haiti from a month of freedom Bali in November 2019, I can say I had chased away the last shadows of fear blocking me from pursuing full time Art Spa Activation and radiant way of being. Breathwork was key, and so was being SEEN without judgement and being held with eyes of LOVE from 25 strangers and my dear sister Victoria.
I was ready to be radiant and activate others creativity full time. Not just on weekends. Not after hours. My analytical, masculine left brain would serve my right feminine brain in all her flowering potential. I had done the work. I had cried, faced my worst fears and brought them into the freeing light of my conscious awareness. The work continues of course. But I can tell you now that a full year after ‘downloading’ the Art Spa vision in a breath work session, I was finally ready to give a radiant life and service of sharing creativity all the time I had left on earth. I began immediately and practiced my first 15 Art Spa Activations. “ I feel reborn”, “My light is fully turned on!” the first two women said. “It really works!” I replied.
This is Patricia captured by me right after her first Creative Radiance Activation. She came back for a second Art Spa Experience, and then a month later she courageously decided to move with me from Haiti to Tulum! How wonderful!
Then it was time to test my faith and the ability to create an up-leveled new reality. I knew deep inside that I was meant to move to a space with less political trouble, a broader client base of open-hearts, and more opportunity for the Art Spa to flourish from baby dream to full grown physical entity. It was time to leave the little pond of my island home, my childhood town, and start swimming in a bigger lake with larger fish while staying connected to both spaces.
The date was set for March 1st. I was off to Tulum. Bali and Tulum are like twin sister crystals floating in tangent on the earth’s laylines. And the signs in Bali that I should build my first physical Art Spa in Tulum - a mix of a Nordic Spa, secret garden and Narnia rolled into one - the signs had been so clear. At times they made me laugh aloud.
It took weeks of packing in Haiti to prepare (thanks mom!). It took shedding expectations, boxing up art, sculptures into cardboard boxes that had housed refrigerators before. People I was closest to said they felt I was abandoning them during hard times. A part of me felt I was abandoning them indeed. Because guilt is the flip side of gratitude, right? And it was tough out there. Even then Haiti was in national lockdown. The source was political tension, not viral pandemic. We were paralyzed by mobs and burning barricades they called ‘pays lock’. Leaving the house was an impossibility for weeks at a time in late 2018 and 2019. But I not only grew used it, I learned to thrive! I twirled, turned up the music full blast and transformed cabin fever into works of art so glorious that even I was shocked at the vibrant, colorful angelic outcome.
That’s how I come to be writing to you here at my kitchen table in Tulum. Just eight weeks before the days of COVID, I slid on a jet stream over the Caribbean Sea and out of Haiti. I met my friend Patricia in Miami - fellow sister at a crossroads living from her heart - and onward to we headed together into the unknown of Mexico. I had a suitcase (or 6) full of tea cups, cacao and a heart that was fully trusting, fully guided yet filled with wild uncertainty.
Can you imagine moving your whole live to somewhere you’ve never ever been?
I was sure it was right, and my trust was rewarded. They say the magical energy of Tulum comes from the sacred rivers that run beneath this ancient little city. This place is a true vortex. It was settled long before the Mayans walked the earth, but all the civilizations have cherished something here: the minerals and infused waters pop up from time to time in the form of ceynotes. These are the blue water holes that number in the thousands, sacred waters where you can bathe and hold beautiful ceremony. The air is different here, and pyramids which feel like those of ancient Egypt, line the beach where the eastern sun holds such potent energy.
This is Amanacer home zone now. Tulum. This is where I'll be connecting with you over ZOOM calls for remote Art Spa Activations, in-person retreats of a galactic quality. I know you’ll be able to feel it too. And I am so excited for the chance to talk about you. The thought of supporting you in creating your dream reality makes me twirl right down my garden path!
This is where we will talk about your dreams, your most pressing fears and I’ll offer you the tools to create the delicious awareness you wish to unfold for your inner and outer worlds. We’ll solve problems, shed light on what’s holding you back and unlock your gifts if you desire it to be so. Because the creative courage you want to unfurl is available to you! That’s the truth! It all happens during the Art Spa Activations.
I’m not just saying that because I’m a painter. Painting is my soul’s first love and I didn’t mention it but during all those years of changing careers, cities and loves I also exhibited my work extensively. I worked full throttle in my left brain work and also kept alive my right brain’s desire for creative growth. The cities of New York, Haiti, Santo Domingo, South Korea, and collectors on five continents have honored me with art exhibits showcasing my paintings yes.
But the real magic of my methods is simple: I see the potential magic in you and know how to gently slide away the shadows, the anxiety and doubt so that your true radiance and potential shine through. The tools we play with will vary, but one thing is always true. You leave transformed. After our session you’ll go forward (not back) home, carrying gifts and tools that will then carry you on through the continued growth we spark together. Each session is unique - sometimes people return for two or three.
This is not the whole story, of me or of you. But I love the way you wish to love your body, and soul with unlimited adoration. I see your intelligence in all its forms. I adore the crossroads moment you are having just like my journey over physical landscapes of North America, the Caribbean, Africa and now Mayan lands in Mexico. An inner journey can be just - if not more - profound as these.
So, radiant soul where are you going next? Would you like some clarity, a boost of support, courage and creative energy? Do you want a pump up? Are you ready to say “hell yes?” I deserve the support and a friend to help guide me along the next phase of my amazing unfolding and coming into being?
MAYA’S ART SPA EXPERIENCE
Thank you for showing up for yourself the way you do! I look forward to meeting you in the virtual or real world soon. I know your magic will shine through just the same either way.
With love and a healthy dose of real life sunshine.
