About Me
Chelsea Wakefield's Story
I have always been drawn to deep questions. As early as high school I began to read the great philosophers and became fascinated by the field of psychology. I was on a quest to resolve my own internal struggles and what I was reading was helping. I was in California at the time, attending personal growth workshops, and I had the great opportunity to work with a few of the great therapists of the 1970’s. In small group workshops I watched skillful and innovative therapists work healing magic with people suffering from depression and anxiety. I wanted to learn to do this and to participate in this work of healing the psyche and freeing people from suffering.
I was also in search of a soul mate, a person with whom I could share a lifetime of love and adventure. My first marriage was a painful, but a valuable learning experience. I had no idea how much personal growth marriage requires and what it takes to build a life together. In 1989, I met Tom Wakefield, and we married on a sunny day in 1990, standing on the deck of the Wrigley Mansion, on the island of Catalina. The challenges we have faced together as we have navigated life’s challenges has built an enduring bond and made us both better people than we were on the day we married. Becoming a mother made me a more patient and compassionate person. Nowhere do we learn more about ourselves – shadow and light – than in our intimate love relationships, and what I have learned about love and relationship has become the center of my life work.
Part of that learning was losing my balance, regaining it, growing up some more, and learned to dance with the challenges of being a multi-faceted person. Over the years I've developed a rhythm of living by which I manage a busy professional life, find time for the people I love, and carve out retreat time to listen to the voice of my soul, and nourish my inner life. This oscillation of active involvement in life and occasional quiet retreat has helped me align my life goals with what emerges from my inner guidance system.
The teachings of Carl Jung have been important in my life. Jung taught about how we each have a unique essence, and a personalized inner compass, something he called the deep Self.
When we align our lives with this inner guidance system, a stream of interesting coincidences (Jung called them synchronicities) begin to occur. Our culture values outer achievements, but what has kept my life luminous has been the connection with my feminine depths where I find a cornucopia of amazing resources, which take me out of stressing, struggling, and striving, and create a sense of trust in life’s unfolding. The deep Self – our true and soulful essence – shows us where we are out of balance, what we need to let go of, the qualities we need to integrate, the paths we are to take, and how to best give our gifts to the world.
