Welcome!

I’m so glad you found your way here.  I have the feeling that the last 10 years I have been working towards this site and this work.  You are so so welcome…

Writer/Teacher/Soulsearcher

I have always been called to be a writer, I have played with words since I was old enough to hold a pencil and create actual letters with it. I can remember so vividly those moments in first grade where I was taught to write.  The handwriting of the teacher, the smell of the paper in front of me, the wonder and the awe in my 6 year old soul.

I have always been a teacher, since I was old enough to understand the question “what do you want to be”, I consequently responded “a teacher”.  You can ask my mom (although she always wanted me to teach French and will ever regret the day that I left that path to teach about sex instead, lol)

And I have always been a soulsearcher, diving deep into everything life dished me up, searching for the lessons and the messages. Living life to it’s utter consequences, seeking it’s heights and depths, taking on every challenge.  To find wisdom and truth and a deep feeling of being alive.

Here on Soul&Spice I combine my experience in all those areas into the oeuvre d’art of my life: a business that I own, that I organize as I please, that addresses both my writing and teaching talents and that contains everything I have ever learned in this life.

Wanna hear out the long version of it?

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Sweeeeet!  Make yourself comfortable, there’s spicy ginger tea and delicious Belgian chocolate…

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The Greatgrandmother’s version

For an assignment in a women’s moon circle, I once had to tell my story as if it were to my greatgrandchildren, a story entitled “my greatest vulnerability and how I turned it into my greatest power to serve those who come after me”.

I had no doubt in nailing down what that was: my openness to life.  How I surrendered wholeheartedly to her and every chance she gave me.  Without looking back.  Without any doubt.  Unceremoniously and confident.  I jumped, e-ver-y time.

And I got injured.  A lot.  Rocky cliffs and abysses were everywhere.  The learning was hard but strong.  I also landed in fairy gardens, healing lakes and mysterious deserts where few people were to be found because few people took the risk to jump, afraid as they were to fall into rocks instead of soft grass.

People often asked me how I got to all those exceptional places in my soul.  The answer is so simple: I just leaped whenever I was invited to.

And that’s what I want to pass on to the generations that I may raise:

“Trust that what life serves you is good and meant to be.  So leap without doubt and without fear.”

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Thus ends the greatgrandmother’s version of my life :-)  It was very revealing to write it and utterly moving to read it out loud to one of my circle sisters.

The crash version

Besides the one going after every challenge in the air, I also carry with me a personage that constantly thinks about how to improve all systems I bump into.  It’s another quality that made me push boundaries.  I actually negotiated with my mom on my very own education.  Really.  I constantly asked her to explain why -WHYYY- she would have this or that rule or reaction and then explained how I felt and suggested how we could improve communication.  Writing this out makes me roll over the floor laughing :-) Incredible how early characters and tendencies make themselves clear.  I have never stopped wanting to improve systems.  I have this innate ability to immediately analyse existing structures and see what they need to improve.  It made me change jobs quite often because frankly, most of the superiors are allergic to that kind of persons ;-)

And it is actually true that there is a limit to improving too, it’s one of life’s big lessons I had to learn.

“Imperfect is OK too.
Improving can be exhausting,
take a break and let it all go,
the world will keep spinning.

If you give situations and people time,
they will improve from within
at their own pace
and when they are ready… “

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What a revelation and what a relief…

I think I’m not lying when I say lots of us have trouble letting go of control, right?  For in these times, surrendering equals failing, taking a break equals exclusion and imperfection equals resignation.  It’s a lion’s fight and we should perform at top level at every time.

I’ve been there, done that.  During my last year of university, I combined two masters with two internships and a teaching job.  And it was good.

Did I say it was good?
It was excellent,
because I forced myself into crashing
and crashes always come with great wisdom.

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So my body crashed and refused service for a whole week and there has been nothing as terrifying as that in my whole life ever since.  My brain ordered my body to move but it just didn’t obey any longer.  It – didn’t – move.  I just lay there on the couch, exhausted and crying all week.  I had no choice but to surrender.  So when I had poured it all out and finally found some silence, I agreed to listen to the wisdom behind.  In a flash I saw the crazyness and blindness around me and in that same moment of lucidity I deeply knew:

I’m stepping out if this mad treadmill, right now… and I will never be able to turn back.

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And so it was.  Leaving the mainstream and stepping into the natural stream of life has been the fundamental pivotal moment of my life.  Through books and amazing teachers* I discovered a mindblowing new way of life.

I discovered it was an actual option to take care of my body.

I discovered it was an actual option to listen to my intuition.

I discovered there was something like natural rhythms and I had access to them, par excellence through my female body.

And as I kept learning and growing and rewiring my brain, I discovered an endless wisdom that was living just right inside me.

I finally remembered.

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And I found my own doorways to get acces to it.  I developed a way of consciously living with the seasons and the moon cycles.  That’s what carries me in the first place, what gives me a basis for all the rest.
Simultaneously meditation came along.  It felt really natural to me (it is natural to anyone, it is just a question of remembering) but it took me quite a while to find the kind of meditation that would work for me.  Sitting still did not always feel right, meditating mostly made me move automatically.  And then I discovered there was something like movement meditation. I immediately made the connection with my passion for dancing and started to take a dance meditation class.  I finally winded up developing dancing meditations for myself.  I now call it sacred dance because it has become so much more than just moving around and it makes me connect almost instantly with the wisdom inside. I always come out of dancing with an insight or an answer to my needs or my questions.

The discovery of my body and it’s ways and moves eventually led me to that final fleshly cape: sexuality.

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I feel like that last one was the missing pillar I had been looking for all my life.  Acknowledging my sexuality has given me such a boost on all levels that I do not have the space to describe it here.  I can give you a quote though:

“If you cannot look straight into your sexuality,
you will never discover your true spirituality.”

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It says it all.  It’s a quote from The Manual of the White Tigress and the moment I read it, I knew it was true.  I realized that this was the one last leap I -and we all- had to take to complete our spiritual growth.

The one leap that has been neglected over and over again.

The effect on me was and still is so enormous that I decided I could not do anything but pass the wisdom on.

So here I am.

And I’m so glad you came.

Love,

Nele

* if you want to know who my guides and teachers have been til now, just follow my Gratitude Posts, I put a spotlight on one of them every month!

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