Who am I?

Hello! Welcome to 'It's not all happiness and coconuts'.

This is a longer post but I wanted to give you a bit of a context about who I am and what has been happening in my life in the last couple of years. At the end of the post there is a bit about financial support and it will make sense if you read this all. Hope you enjoy it.

My name is Pelagia Pais, not long ago (2016) I was introducing myself in the following way:

'Hi, my name is Pelagia and I am the Manager of the Arts & Humanities Research Institute (AHRI) at King's College London'

2016 was quite the year for me, but maybe I could say the same about 2017 and 2018. Let me give you some background information. I am a forty something year old woman who had dedicated her energy, creativity and many other abilities into working for a University in a job that I went from loving and calling it my 'baby', to a job that all of a sudden was no longer fulfilling me and if anything, was depleting life energy out of me at great speed. Yes, the job was changing and still had exciting elements, the people I worked with were great, but...there is always a but... I changed. There was both nothing in particular,  as there were many things in particular. It was a cascade of events in previous years that led me to be in a space of not wanting to continue doing what I was doing and also a space of new possibilities. All the things I had told myself I could not do because (insert any excuse you can think of) all of a sudden were pushed aside and I could see a way out. I had trained to be a Reiki Practitioner earlier that year, I had been doing lots of art and I sat down, produced an excel spreadsheet and made previsions of how many clients I needed to see a week and how many paintings I needed to sell and for what money, in order to be able to maintain at least the way of living at that time.

Me, being me, I threw myself at work even harder. I worked a full time job, I was doing a 10 month Foundation Course in Psychotherapy, I was writing and setting up a website from scratch, I was seeing friends and family for Reiki sessions so I could practice, I was doing Reiki on myself and exchanging healing sessions with other healers, I was pushing myself big time. There were days where everything seemed possible and I was feeling super good and there were days when I was feeling super doubtful and I was not feeling good at all.

It got to a stage where the idea of leaving my job had taken over my whole being and I did it. By the end of 2016 I no longer worked in a University. During my three month notice period I quickly realised that, even though I thought I had something special to offer as a Reiki Practitioner and an artist, it was not happening, the clients were not coming in and the extra money was not coming in either. I realised very quickly that I was also burnt out, tired to the core from all the recent years of pushing myself to do a job I no longer liked, from the year of extreme learning, healing and all the extra physical and emotional work that comes with this.

A break was needed, space to set up my business in a more relaxed pace and time for gentler healing was needed. I felt that London, the city I always loved, could not offer this to me. I needed to find a place to live where I could live cheaply. A series of synchronistic events led me to choose Thailand and the tropical island of Koh Phangan. These were some of the first steps into living a life following the signs from the Universe.

The first two months of 2017 were spent enjoying my lovely cocoon like flat in Putney, an area I had lived in and around for the last 15 years. I wished then I could live this flexible life of following my own individual flow and not having a specific time or rules to what I needed to do each day. I was happy to be out of the 9-5 and I was terrified for the future and the consequences of the decision I had made in 2016. I sold all my belongings and all the art I could in order to fund as much of my time away as possible. I decided I would go away for 8 months. I only really bought the ticket out a couple of weeks before I travelled, the 15 March, with a return ticket on the 15 November, once again the numbers felt right, I was following my inner knowing and intuition.

To put you a bit more in context: I had never travelled anywhere on my own for such a long period of time, I had never been to South East Asia before, I was struggling to find information about visas and at some point, I thought I would had to move countries every two months when all I was craving was to stay in the same place for those 8 months. I had moved from Portugal to the UK back in 2002, which was in itself a big change for me, but nothing compared to what I was about to experience.

When in Koh Phangan, I soon learnt that there was indeed ways of me staying there for the 8 months, I would just have to do regular visa runs. It was all a bit of a shock to start with but slowly, step by step and with a little help from here and there, I found my way around. The time on this beautiful island was both beautiful and very uncomfortable. I'm not sure you are aware, but I could be in the most beautiful of places, surrounded by wonderful nature, but my burnt out and all the other issues I had no time to deal with before, they came with me. They were amplified by the energy of that island as well as me spending the most amount of time with myself on my own, I had ever done in my life. I also met loads of new people whom in some way or other were doing something similar to me. I had incredible healing experiences and for the first time in my life I experienced and understood what it is like to live life with an open heart.

With hindsight, I can now see, that those 8 months prepared me to be able to live the life I chose to live in 2018. It all makes sense.

When I returned to the UK on the 15 November, I had some accommodation planned for the rest of the year and after I would go back home to Portugal for Christmas. At around that time, an idea popped into my head. I wanted to be able to continue to stay and live in London, and I set the intention and said it out loud, that I would like to live in London during 2018 without paying rent. This intention was both thrilling and terrifying, once again I was making plans that didn't really feel like plans and I was very much putting to the test 'the Universe will provide' theory. I like that theory, it sounds great, right?

My experience with this theory, is that there is a lot of learning happening on the sidelines of believing and trusting in this. Also, that often you get provided with what you need, not exactly what you want. Trust has become an important word, and many others have joined since.

So far, this year, I have been able to live without paying rent in the UK. I was taken out of London for quite a few months, for what I can now see, that is what I needed at that time. At an energetic level, I was not ready to stay in London and needed more gentle energies to allow for further healing, rest and recuperation.

And I see myself today, looking back to all these decisions and changes I made in these recent years and a part of me seems to click. Can you see what I am doing? Can you see that a part of these changes has been my decision to follow the signs from the Universe? And that following my intuition and inner wisdom helped me navigate those signs. Have you ever wondered what living a life following the Universe's signs looks like? Follow my blog posts, my Instagram and Facebook pages and this will give you a glimpse of what happens when I decided to live a life outside of the 'norm'. Where I am learning to balance ‘doing’ and ‘being’, the masculine and the feminine, but also exploring why it means to follow my nature as a woman. 

Since 2017 I have introduced myself in the following ways:

'Hi, my name is Pelagia Pais and I am a Reiki Practitioner, Nia Technique Teacher and Artist'

'Hi, my name is Pelagia Pais and I am a Reiki Healer and Artist'

'Hi, my name is Pelagia Pais and I am an Intuitive Healer and Artist'

My latest:

'Hi, my name is Pelagia Pais and I am an Intuitive Guide and Artist.'

This is one example showing an aspect of what happens when I choose to live my life following my personal flow.

And now let's talk finances. I mentioned on this post that I had made these excel spreadsheets showing how I could financially support myself in the future. I also shared how life doesn't really follow directions from an excel spreadsheet and things did not go according to plan. I love plans. Yet, living a life following flow, signs from the Universe and my own inner wisdom do not follow plans. There is always a bigger picture and plan, but I do not have control over this. I control my choices, by that, I mean that I have choices and I can choose what to follow and what my next steps are. I always have choice.

I want to choose to continue to live my life in the way I am currently doing. For this, I will need your help and support. I will be setting up a Patreon page in the coming weeks and months, which I am hoping will help me achieve my choice and make it more sustainable for the future and for as long as it is needed. For now, I would like to ask you to support my personal life project and choice with whatever donation you think you can at the moment.

Why am I asking for your financial support? I am choosing to live life in this way because I truly believe I have something special to offer the world. At the moment I am able to reach people I have encountered on my journey but I would like to reach a much wider audience as I think I can offer many more people something of value, not only with what I do as an Intuitive Guide & Artist, but with sharing my story and the way I am living with people all over the world, in a way that inspires them and ultimately that I can, in my own way, change the world.

Ultimately, I believe my task in this life is to work with and heal the Feminine. What this means in more practical terms, I am yet to fully find out, I am only just starting to unpack this. I want to be able to explore this and much more and at this point in my journey I would like to invite you to support this new way of living on a financial level. I am adding a donation button to my website where you can either leave a one time donation or a regular donation. For now, if you so feel called to, you can send a donation to this paypall account: https://www.paypal.me/PelagiaPais

The projects I currently need support with are:

Women's Circles 2018:

Space rental for 3 months: £240 for three 4 hour slots for the month of September, October and November

Material: £180 for general material for the running of these three Circles

Publicity: Facebook ads £150 for advertising these three Circles

Total: £570

I will be adding more to these in the coming weeks as I get more clarity into what areas I need support in.

I thank you for reading this to the very end. I thank you for following this journey with me. I thank you for your support at all levels, be it by reading on, liking my posts, sharing or coming to my events.

Thank you Universe and Thank you Me.