Thrivival

Freedom Lives Here

Thrivival is a metaphysical place, manifested through visionary activism.

We welcome you to gather with us, to reconnect and explore the intangible elements of multi-dimensional reality, including spirituality, creativity, infinity, eternity, and unity—all in the now. We will guide, encourage, and elevate one another as we experience ascension in the physical body for the first time in forever.

This is a Revival of FUN and the Arrival of true FREEDOM—Welcome to the Festival of Life.

We cordially invite you to join us here now.

How It Began…Introductions

January 1, 2015, around 3am, I awoke mid-dream to the realization of an idea forming. In the safe, dark confines of night, I hatched a righteous plan. I would step out of the writer’s closet in which I had been cowering, publicly declare myself a novelist, and commit to publishing segments of my novel, which I entitled Life By Fire, online daily as I wrote it. For the first time in my life, I took action without hesitation. I arose that morning and created the website. I wrote and posted my first entries. I perfected it all, sent out a launch announcement via Facebook and awaited the applause, while basking in a sense of accomplishment.

Then what happened? It got harder. And I got scared. I questioned the concept and the process. I failed to post a segment daily. Then, I failed to post a segment weekly. I felt resistance. I encountered roadblocks. I questioned the integrity of the story and my right to write it. I lost momentum and withdrew back into my closet to persevere alone.

The novel Life By Fire begins:

“Death by fire. I dream of dying in a burst of flames. Searing heat traveling from my feet, up my legs, swirling around me. I throw my head back to see a black sky scattered with stars, extinguished by a cloud of white smoke…. Hot, dry, release. My soul purified by fire—a quick, dramatic death, nothing left but ash. The antithesis of my life. By day, I barely tread water, barely keep afloat. Perpetually behind, perpetually overwhelmed, stuck in a whirlpool going round, round, and around. Life by drowning.”

Today, I no longer live a “life by drowning”—continuing to write equipped me with a very vital lifeboat. Since my rather dismal start with the novel, Life By Fire, I have completed a middle-grade novel called Genevieve’s Worlds and written and published a short story called Anni Annihilation. In 2017, I was awarded 1st prize in the Adult Division in the 2016 Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Awards Contest for excerpts from the Life By Fire novel. Slowly but surely I've made progress—my spirit animal is a turtle.

Throughout the process, I continued to feel a keen desire to communicate, not only about the process of writing, but about the process of self-discovery and living on purpose. The Life By Fire Book website evolved into the LifeByFire.com blog. In 2017, I also felt inspired to create and teach two courses, Ignite Your Creativity and the Seven Universal Laws; content creation for these courses flowed effortlessly though I found marketing them to the right audience much more difficult.

The course content inspired me to begin a non-fiction book called The Thrive Guide for the Hungry Spirit. I began the guide with:

I’m a lucky person. I live in the top 10% of the global population. I live in a safe, prosperous country and community. I’ve been blessed with excellent physical health, intellect, and opportunity. I have two university degrees. I own a car and share a home with my kind, caring husband and two beautiful, vibrantly healthy, intelligent children. I have never sustained a serious accident, injury, or illness. By all accounts, I have and continue to live a blessed, easy life. And yet…

I have struggled most of my life. I have felt fearful, limited, and downright stuck for most of my fifty years. From my perspective, every one of my small successes has followed an internal battle. And my big successes? I can’t name any.

But, I embarked on a mission to figure out why I felt that way and how to change it. And now, I am determined to truly learn, internalize, and practice my insights through sharing them with you and everyone else who desires them. I want us to feel happy. I want us to experience life as fun. I want us to enjoy success and prosperity as free-flowing, easy, and natural.

Together, I want us to awaken to our own power, envision our dreams, and realize them confidently. And I want you to do it now while you’re young and vital, and have all the time in the world—not after you turn 50, like me, and feel time slipping away faster each day.

So, here is our guide. Not just a survival guide—a Thrive Guide for living our happiest life—on purpose and to the fullest. I invite you to join me on this great adventure of discovery.

What authority have I to write such a guide? A PhD from a prestigious university? A channel to enlightened spiritual beings from beyond? A personal relationship with Oprah? No. I have the authority to write this guide because I wrote it.

And yet...and yet, as I wrote those words, I felt a tightness in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t believe it myself. Does someone who has lived such an easy life, one so free from trauma or hardship, really have the right to attempt to ‘guide’ others who have quite possibly endured significant turmoil, trauma, and tragedy? No. Like the Life By Fire novel, the non-fiction book stalled.

Strangely enough, on June 8, 2016, our family had endured significant trauma when my husband sustained a serious concussion while mountain biking. At the time, we continued in survival mode, assuming that his recovery would be fast and full. It was not. Over 5 years later, notwithstanding the advice from numerous allopathic and alternative doctors, he continues to suffer ceaselessly from post-concussion symptoms. They have continued to prevent him from enjoying many activities that were a significant part of his life and his family has felt the effects of those limitations along with him. Whether we realised it at the time or not, it has shaped us.

And then, in May 2019, as my eldest daughter’s grade 8 graduation approached, everything fell apart. A call brought us into her school for an emergency meeting in which we were told that she had confided to a teacher that she was having suicidal thoughts. How could we have been so oblivious? All focus turned to organizing an endless stream of resources—doctors, social workers, psychologists—to attempt to identify the source of her depression and anxiety, which appeared to have come out of nowhere (but actually hadn’t). A very difficult year of ‘coping mechanisms’ followed as we attempted to support our eldest to explore their gender identity, sexual orientation, and the source of their deep sadness. In that time, their pronouns changed from she/her to they/them and they chose a new first name. Our Fynn found themselves and we thought we had stumbled our way back to comfort and ‘normalcy.’

Forward to April 2020 and the infamous beginning of the coronavirus, when Fynn matter-of-factly informed me that a close family member who also lived close-by had sexually molested them for a number of years and that sexual abuse had morphed into emotional abuse. I felt the walls of emotional security collapse around me. Then, when we confronted the family member, we experienced the shock and horror of gaslighting to a degree we had never imagined possible—not only from the abuser but also from other close family members. And that's when I felt the emotional foundation of my life completely collapse in on me.

Like Gandalf battling the balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm, I stood between my abusive family members and my children, and decreed, “you shall not pass,” with an intensity I had never experienced before. I felt the iron chains of lifetimes of negative family karma severing forever. Then, as the rest of the world was forced into another lockdown, I gratefully contracted inward, retreating from everyone and everything—happily dropping so many commitments that now felt meaningless. I needed solitude.

Adventure books and movies tend not to focus on the devastating destruction faced in the aftermath of the epic battle, all of which takes significantly longer to clean up and rebuild. But, like most people do, my family has steadfastly worked to dig ourselves out from under the emotional rubble, clear it away, and slowly but surely rebuild on a stronger foundation—our own solid-granite foundation—freed from the shackles of unhealthy, dysfunctional relationships and codependencies.

The process has led me to dig deeply into my own repressed trauma, bring it to the surface, and endeavour to release it once and for all. It continues to rise to the surface of my awareness in waves, over and over, to be felt and dissolved. Again and again, I am reborn. And, the Life By Fire blog has also been reborn as Thrivival.

After a lifetime of intensely disliking my given name, it has even led me to choose to write under a different one—yet another departure from expectation. I no longer identify with the person I was five years ago. I have embarked on a new path as a new me. This is true freedom. And it has been hard-won. This is my epic journey to finding Thrivival—a metaphysical place of my own imagining where comfort and freedom reside—my own safe place to land. I humbly invite you to cross through the mist, over the narrow bridge, and enter through the gate to sit with me at the centre, in the warmth of a communal fire, in the realm of Thrivival. Freedom lives here.

Please join me here and now,

Finding Thrivival

* This post is the Forward to The Dragon Book

In 2020, the infamous year of covid (which I refuse to capitalize), I felt a fundamental shift—a positive, energetic change in frequency. In actuality, I started to experience it before the onset of the pandemic—I seemed to experience everything just a little bit sooner than those around me. In fact, the week leading up to government-imposed isolation, I came down with a very uncomfortable flu that laid me out in bed for several days. Did I actually contract the acute illness and recover from it before I became acutely aware that I even could contract it and possibly not recover from it? Who knows.

I do know that I had, only a few weeks before, openly asked the universe for a reprieve—I asked and wished for a break, a time in which my family could simply live together, without all of the usual commitments, responsibilities, and stresses—some down time, not just for a week, but for long enough for us to truly rest and relax into life. I only wished it for my family personally; I could never have imagined how it would play out for humanity collectively. Be careful what you wish for.

Six months into this new pandemic-enforced isolation, I felt deep, fundamental shifts in reality. But, on the surface, my family grew bored—we sought leisurely entertainment like TV shows and movies, anything to bring a little excitement to an otherwise tedious stretch of time. At first, I indulged in a variety of distractions—re-watching Downton Abbey for the sixth time; binge-watching eco-home, tiny home, and off-grid homesteading videos at twice the normal speed; attempting unsuccessfully to introduce my kids to Lord of the Rings; following my favourite YouTube channellers like a new religion; and signing up for more free or almost-free online courses than I could possibly complete—everything from unified physics, to Ho’oponopono, to horse communication.

But, I felt increasingly antsy—nothing satisfied me anymore—the books I’d revelled in repeatedly fell flat; videos from my favourite YouTubers lacked substance; movies and TV shows I had enjoyed in the past and attempted to revive now seemed downright dumb, or worse—violent and angry, overwhelmingly victim-based and dystopian to the point that they turned my stomach. Why did I respond so differently to them now?

And then I realized, they no longer matched the frequency of my new energy. I had shifted; they had not. I needed something new. I felt that all of humanity needed something new—something to both reflect and inspire a new reality, a new perspective. The time for dystopian stories had passed. We needed a utopian story, a story to focus us optimistically on what could be—Visionary Activism. After all, consciousness always comes first—you have to imagine it before you can manifest it. I sat in silence, searching to articulate what I yearned for.

I yearned for starlight under an open sky; for wood fires in open hearths. I yearned for graph paper, compasses, and sharp pencils; I yearned for circles. I retreated into my own imagination, conjuring and combining images of everything I had been contemplating, from off-grid homes, to mythical creatures, to sacred geometry, astronomy, astrology, and way beyond. And the place I architected within the depths of my inner vision resonated more clearly, more harmonically, more fluidly than anything I experienced outwardly, to the point that retreating into it felt like a trance. In short, it felt like coming home.

Welcome home. Freedom lives here.

* A section of Chapter 1 of The Dragon Book is available at the end of the post, Architecting Thrivival.

Architecting Thrivival

Thrivival is a metaphysical place of my own imagining where comfort and freedom reside; it has become my ‘safe place,’ where I retreat inward to find calm and solace. Here, on Thrivival.ca, I’ve represented Thrivival with a seven-petaled geometric symbol of my own creation. I spent significant time designing and evolving this symbol (with the help of my dear, talented, sweet soul sister, Celeste Alles and my daughter, Fynn—thank you, Celeste and Fynn!).

Thrivival Symbol

Thrivival Symbol Elements

Here’s an overview of the elements of the Thrivival symbol and what they represent to me:

  1. Seven Circles: Based on the sacred geometric symbol of the Seed of Life, 7 overlapping circles form the symbol’s shape; these represent the Seven Universal Laws we explore in the Thrivival course.
  2. Seven Colours: 7 colours of the rainbow, overlapping, representing the full spectrum of experience.
  3. Seven-Pointed Star: The centre forms a 7-pointed star or heptagram. Known as the Faery Star or Elven Star, it has been used in times past to ward off evil; in Christianity, the heptagram traditionally symbolizes the seven days of creation. As the zero point in the centre of the circle, it expresses elemental reality in the eternal now.
  4. Seed of Life: Like a dandilion seed pod, incorporating the Fibonacci Spiral, nature’s archetypal pattern and like an Imaginal Disc, containing the master plan for manifesting physical reality.
  5. Big Top of a Circus Tent: The ariel view of the top of a circus tent—a place for festivals, frivolity, fun, and a reprieve from the stresses of everyday life.
  6. Ferris Wheel: The side view of a ferris wheel—as envisioned in my Ho’oponopono practice—raising us to new heights with broader perspectives, and then bringing us safely back down to earth again.
  7. Torus: As seen from above—and represented by the infinity symbol when viewed as a cross-section—this deeply symbolic geometric shape represents the universe and is fundamental to harnessing zero-point energy.

The Sacred Number Seven & Septimal Law, as illustrated in:

  • 7 Colors in a Rainbow
  • 7 Days of the Week
  • 7 Days for each Phase of the Moon
  • 7 Musical Notes
  • 7 Bodily Chakras
  • 7 Earthly Chakras
  • 7 Days for Skin to completely Regenerate
  • 7 Years for the Skeleton to completely Regenerate
  • 7-Year Biological Cycles
  • 7 Levels of Consciousness in the Tarot
  • 7 Dimensions experienced physically on Earth

Heptagram with Pythagorean Reduction:

Schläfli symbol: 7/3
7 + 3 = 10
1 + 0 = 1 unity consciousness

Dual polygon: self

Edges and vertices: 7

Internal angle (degrees): ≈25.714°
2 + 5 + 7 + 1 + 4 = 19
1 + 9 = 10
1 + 0 = 1 unity consciousness

Thrivival Categories

The 7 ‘petals’ of the Thrivival symbol also represent the 7 categories into which I have divided the Thrivival blog posts. The Five Platonic Solids formed the basis of these categories, but I have added two more to form seven. So, though I have taken some liberties with interpretation and connections, these categories do align with archetypal patterns and symbols associated with the esoteric teachings of Hermes in the Emerald Tablet, the Egyptian mystery schools, and beyond.

    Here’s an overview of the elements of the seven categories of Thrivival thoughts and what they represent to me:

    1. EARTH: Grounding Down
      Symbolized by the hexahedron, aligned with the root chakra, and governing the universal Law of Cause & Effect, Earth situates us within the physical body. Embodied through each individual breath, Earth beckons us to ground ourselves to terra firma, reconnecting with the natural world.
    2. FIRE: Igniting Creativity
      Symbolized by the tetrahedron, aligned with the sacral chakra, and governing the universal Law of Gender and Gestation, Fire ignites our powers of creativity.Expressed through art and sexuality, Fire inspires us to engage our imaginations with passionate enthusiasm.
    3. METAL: Rising Up
      Symbolized by the star tetrahedron, aligned with the solar plexus chakra, and governing the universal Law of Polarity, Metal incites courage.Perceived through the mind, Metal rallies us to rise up against tyranny and injustice, to break down old patterns that no longer serve us, and rebuild societal norms—spiritual alchemy—Iron sharpens iron.
    4. ENERGY: Seeing Connections
      Symbolized by the torus or sphere, aligned with the heart chakra, and governing the universal Law of Rhythm, Energy rationalizes compassion on the Earthly plain.Perceived through the intellect, Energy is the empathy that encourages us to see connections—I am that and that and that.
    5. WATER: Navigating Life
      Symbolized by the icosahedron, aligned with the throat chakra, and governing the universal Law of Vibration, Water pluralizes memory within the 3rd dimensional construct of time.Perceived through the personality, Water is the mental gravity that anchors us within this lifetime—I am that.
    6. AIR: Ascending Dimensions
      Symbolized by the octahedron, aligned with the third eye chakra, and governing the universal Law of Correspondence, Air integrates consciousness with physical reality.Perceived through the ego, Air is the emotional levity that empowers us to ascend dimensions—i am that I AM.“The all are the One.”
    7. AETHER: Enacting Consciousness
      Symbolized by the dodecahedron, aligned with the crown chakra, and governing the universal Law of the Perpetual Transmutation of Energy, Aether transcends physical reality into '7th Heaven.' Perceived through the spirit as divine source, harmonious and whole, Aether arises from elemental reality in the eternal now—unity consciousness—I AM.“The One is the All.”

    I’ve expressed my fascination with numbers and symbols through the main character in my middle-grade novel, Genevieve’s Worlds—in which 11-year-old Genevieve Harris loves math, geometry, and big words.

    * From Chapter 1 of Genevieve’s Worlds

    “Gennie,” my Granny calls from the little galley kitchen, “the ladies will be here to play cards at seven. You need to clear your art stuff off the table.”

    “Okay,” I reply without taking my eyes off my notebook.

    Today is my 8th month birthday. With my purple felt-tipped pen, I write out today’s date again:

    08-21-2024
    0+8+2+1+2+0+2+4=19
    1+9=10
    1+0=1

    1 always represents new beginnings. And yet, it’s been same-old, same-old here all day today.
    Regardless, Happy 8-month birthday to me.
    Four more months ‘til I turn 12.

    From the other side of the couch, I hear a knock at my Granny’s screen door and the squeak of it opening—somebody’s here early or I’ve lost track of time. I crawl quickly backward out of my tent, and climb up over the back of the couch to clean up my stuff.

    “Hi Lenora,” I say, politely, if unenthusiastically. Of Granny’s four ‘cronies,' as she calls them, I like Lenora the least. (The first time I heard it, I had to ‘Define: crony.’ Cro·ny. A close friend or companion, especially a long-standing one. From the Greek word khronios meaning ‘long-lasting’ and from khronos meaning ‘time.')

    Lenora unceremoniously slumps into one of the two bench seats around the built-in kitchen table and watches me as I gather up my scattered sheets of graph paper—each one covered with lines and circles, geometric shapes and patterns. I form them into a neat pile with my pencils, eraser, rulers, and compass on top. On the table, still sit six small three-dimensional shapes carved out of different shades of natural quartz rock.

    “What are these?” asks Lenora, picking one up and running her fingers over its smooth edges.

    “The Platonic Solids,” I reply flatly, automatically reciting the explanation I wrote in a school project in Grade Four and stood at the front of the class to present: “They’re special geometric shapes named after Plato. He was a Greek philosopher. Plato said they represented the earthly elements. Some people believe they are the building blocks of the universe. It’s called ‘sacred geometry’…”

    “Really?” she interrupts with a sarcastic snort as she tosses my precious crystal back down onto the table with a thud.

    Really mature, I think to myself. Unlike my smoothly polished Platonic solids, Lenora’s pretty rough around the edges. Ah, well, my Grade Four classmates didn’t ‘get’ them either.

    I’ve also explored this metaphysical place I've called Thrivival in The Dragon Book—in which Hannah, a girl about the same age as Genevieve, runs away with her horse and finds her true home where she reunites with all her other aspects.

    * From Chapter 1 of The Dragon Book

    My park bench sits atop the ‘living roof’ of my humble home—humble by choice for I need little and spend even less-than-little time within it; I prefer to live outdoors with my companions. But, I enjoy spending time atop my home! From this rooftop vantage point, a storey-and-a-half up, I can see much of the community in which I live. The community that I founded—or, perhaps more accurately, the community that found and founded me.

    Our little commune sits comfortably in the shape of a wagon wheel (or, from a three-dimensional perspective, you could say in the shape of a half-torus). I sit on the outer rim, looking inward across seven pie-shaped gardens, separated by ‘spokes’ in the form of gravel walkways. They all meet at a circular moat that surrounds a giant, ancient tree with seven broad limbs that curve out and up to form the shape of a shallow cup. Nestled within the chalice of the tree’s limbs, hovers an ornate globe, the shape of an interconnected double-torus, that rotates smoothly around itself. It looks like a sculpture; it acts like a perpetual motion machine; and it accomplishes much more than either of these. For, this sculpture is actually a free-energy apparatus that fuels our entire community—silently, cleanly, and completely independently—our own Tree of Life.

    Our interconnected homes form the outer rim of the wagon-wheel circle. They have the beauty of a Frank Lloyd Wright design, the environmental ingenuity of the most eco-friendly earthship, and the comfort of every convenience one could desire in this newest of new millenniums—all encapsulated into the charm of a hobbit house, complete with plump round doors, domed ceilings, bevelled skylights, and pot-belly stoves. For, although each home looks inward toward the centre through expansive greenhouse windows, the outer edge of the circle has been covered over with earth to form the living roof on which I sit.

    Over the last hundred years, the population of this community has grown and the architecture has expanded outward to match it. I don’t mean that we have constructed extension upon extension, addition upon addition—that would not create a pleasing plan. I mean that the circle, and the land itself, has expanded in size to not only accommodate but anticipate our needs, naturally and completely without mechanical intervention—as inconspicuously and fluidly as the earth spins on its axis around the sun. It is a master architecture, envisioned by a master architect, and executed equally masterfully—the epitome of ‘intelligent design’ (even if I do say so myself, having been the one to design it).

    I hope that the symbols, thoughts, and ideas throughout this blog intrigue you as much as they fascinate me. Welcome to Thrivival—happy exploring!

    Thoughts

    Do you think and feel deeply? Set sail with us on a metaphysical adventure to ponder all aspects of multi-dimensional reality—from grounding down to fully perceive and embody the earthly elements, to rising up to the intangible realms of creativity, spirituality, infinity, eternity, and unity—all in the here and now.

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    Do you dream of a more inspired life? Join us at our gatherings, guilds, and circles to connect with like minds and kindred spirits. Together, we will spark imagination, explore ideas, share inspiration, and expand exponentially—locally in person or online from afar.