I want to thank my Dad for always being my number one support system in my life. I owe my ability to travel in the first place to his dedication and love for me and my sister. To my mom for always loving me unconditionally and being there for me no matter what. To both of you who helped to raise me and my sister into the people we are today. I love you both. To Julie who stepped into my family’s life raising our awareness about mental health, nutrition and planting the seeds I needed to heal. To my sister, for being you and growing into a beautiful angel. To all my supportive friends and second family. I could give endless amounts of credit to all the people surrounding me in my life who helped and challenged me to find my voice and find my place in the world coming into who I am. I am eternally appreciative and grateful. I am so happy to have met the beautiful souls that exist in this cosmos and I AM SO READY to meet many more. Let love and light guide us all. I know that by sharing and living out my story that other people will wake up to the spirit of the universe and bask in all its joy, and pure love. I started to doubt myself. Thinking I was crazy for wanting to keep writing this. My friends and family at home would think I was absolutely nuts if I tried to tell them some of what I viii was going through. But I gave up on caring what they, or anyone else would think. I know how alone I felt while going through all of this. I understand that part of the journeying process IS made through being alone. Being alone is different than feeling alone, and no one should have to question whether their reality is delusional because they are feeling something unexplainable and extraordinary. If my story can reach someone who feels the same, then I accomplished my mission. If this story can reach someone who does not quite understand, but they want to understand then I accomplished my mission. If this story seems magical, and too good to be true then let it inspire you to create your own magic and become the wizard in your own life. We are all capable of accomplishing and wielding the wand of life. Something I have learned from interacting with so many people from all over the world is that everyone wants a chance to share their truth but so many people are afraid of what others might think of them. We lose our creativity when we fear that others might laugh at what we have created. This is my truth with all of my meraki. Amor Fati.

CHAPTER ONE

Coming home to the self

S miling, confused, awestruck at how life could be so fucking good. I almost deleted these words several times when I was unconfident about what even felt ‘good’ about writing this story anymore. Then I added the word fuck and felt satisfied. It’s just a WORD. Let me make that very clear in these first few sentences that words are words. We decide to give them meaning then understand what we will with them. Words give us courage. The words we encounter may be encouraging or discouraging for us, but we choose to experience it how we want to. For some people, the word fuck might be slightly discouraging and make them feel a little uncomfortable. For the others, they might be encouraged to keep reading because it excites them to see this fiery swear word fly out on the first page. My intention, for all the words on all the pages I write, is meant to be encouraging. I truly believe that every single being on this earth is capable of stepping into their greatest potential. What is our greatest potential? It is anything that we could dream up. Anything we could put in a movie, we can create. I sit on a painted stool while a cool breeze slowing down the heat 2 Abbey Castor of the afternoon brushes across my skin stopping the sweat from pouring down my back. I look out beyond the trees to see the clear blue ocean pushing up to the edge of the horizon. I am filled with gratitude. I did it. I live my dream life sitting in a treehouse in paradise. I sit here now because I let go. Life is so fucking good because I found the light within myself and found a way to start sharing it with the world. I let go of the need to control anything that comes my way because I know it is in my best interest. Amor fati- loving one’s fate. I have fallen in love with my destiny because I surrendered. I put all my trust into the guidance being placed in front of me. I found the clues, solved part of the puzzle. I share my story because the time is now. This journey is not easy, and I am not here to tell anyone that it is. In this book I will share with you my journey and lessons I learned along the way. I will give you guidance where I felt helpless. I will give you strength in understanding. My journey will not be the same as anyone else, but the feelings might be. Even when you feel alone you never are truly alone. I never had any interest at all in writing a book before. Not one bit. But then my life became a fairy tale. I followed my dreams. My intuition. The idea that I loved which was traveling the world. I had this uncanny desire to experience the earth fully and completely. Not knowing how that could ever be satisfied until my adventure on a sacred island in the middle of the ocean. I felt ragingly inspired to get this book going when I opened my manifestation journal for the day. I did not have much to write, which was quite unusual for me. I would fill pages upon pages the second I got the thing in my hands. I never stopped writing whatever thought I was thinking. But this day, I had nothing. So, I flipped through the pages thumbing for something inspiring when I found myself at the very beginning. “There is no remedy How to Get Here 3 for love but to love more.” Henry David Thoreau. A quote from an Urban Outfitters fortune cookie booklet which I had taped in the opening page. It had no real reason for being there. I grabbed one of the quotes then stuck it to the beginning because I thought that was what other people did in their journals. As I gazed upon the quote, it hit me. The real connection as to why I did put it there a month ago, to serve me in this present moment. At the time, it meant nothing other than a way to start my journaling process. But in that moment sitting in the hot summer heat I began to feel the love Thoreau was talking about. The giving kind of love. When we feel full of love everything in the world feels possible. The more love we put out into the world the more it can be felt around us. The more love we extend in even the smallest of details, the more it consumes us and grips us tight. The more love we give the more we receive but the idea is not to expect love because we receive. Our ego stands in the way of true love for true love is nothing at all because we must expect nothing in return. We should love because we want to feel nothing and everything at the same time. We should not give because we expect but give because we love. Love is limitless because it renounces all of its limits. Love loves to love, LOVE! It was in this moment that I wrote: Thank you ADHD for scattering my brain across the surface of thought, space and time. One thought leads to another and before I know it, I am way too far ahead of myself to catch up to the previous thought I was having. Lists upon lists upon lists that were always started and never finished. They say we have up to 60,000 thoughts per day, maybe more. And I know we all can think thoughts, but some of us have more organized filing cabinets than others. My thoughts were always hard to keep track of. Thousands of random inspirations that would never reveal themselves in physical form. Remaining fleeting 4 Abbey Castor thoughts lost in the void of non-completeness. Even the times that I would make the effort by inserting them in a note on my phone, they would become buried and non-remembered. That is why I started journaling. Writing down any thought, idea, memory, or moment that would appear in my head. I wanted to remember and reflect as much as I possibly could. I wanted to connect the dots. So, I did, and this story tells my constellations. The constellations of my life. This book is my commitment to myself and to all the fleeting thoughts that had yet to reveal themselves in a finished project. Jack of all trades, master of finally one. I put so much love into these pages. I poured so much soul, this book is my muse. These pages are filled with some of the happiest times of my life thus far. It is my intention that whoever picks up this book feels the light that runs through the black ink printed here. I want you to touch adventure and breathe discomfort. This is a life meant to be lived and a lot of us spend our time as slaves. Be as wild and creative as the inner child that runs trapped and lost within. Then one day you find her, him, or them and realize that growing up was a distraction.