The Camino

A True Story from Debby Kevin

I didn’t realize my life had stopped fitting me until the seams finally gave way.

For years, I wore every role like armor—mother, partner, teacher, leader, business owner—layer upon layer until I couldn’t tell where the costumes ended and I began. Striving became my language. Hustling became my heartbeat. And one day, without warning, even the smallest parts of me felt threadbare.

It took a journey halfway around the world for me to finally be able to hear the voice that was inside of me all along, yelling itself hoarse. I thought I was looking for an escape. The Camino taught me I was looking for a place to breathe, I was moving in order to find stillness, I was fighting through the noise to hear a whisper.

I finally took my first long trek in 2017. Over the years, I’d walked miles across France and Spain, shedding stories I never chose but carried anyway. But this final journey—from Santiago to Muxía—felt different from the very first step.

The Camino has a way of stripping life down to its barest truths: your breath, your footsteps, the pain in your legs, the kindness of strangers, and the silence of your own mind.

There were mornings when I woke to a cathedral bathed in the stunning glow of the rising sun and felt something inside soften. There were afternoons of eucalyptus forests and sleepy villages, where the world seemed to whisper that nothing was as urgent as I’d made it. And then there were days I trudged along hot pavement with swollen feet, sweating through my resolve, wondering why on earth I’d chosen this path again.

It was day six of my final Camino trek, I was slowly climbing the first sun-baked incline, the ocean stretching behind me like a promise I couldn’t cash in yet.

The road was hot. Wide open and busy, with the kind of traffic that makes you question every life choice, including the one that brought you to this godforsaken, gorgeous corner of the world.

No shade. Just miles of hot pavement, my own shadow for company, and the occasional blaring horn from drivers who apparently thought the Camino was a racetrack.

I was sweating in places I didn’t know could produce sweat. My knees. My actual knees. Who knew knees could glisten like that? By hour three, the sun peeled back any illusions of comfort, and my feet—bless them—were bloated into unrecognizable bags of stubbornness and regret.

Still, the beauty was undeniable. Rolling hills, wildflowers clinging to dry earth, olive-skinned trees waving gently in the breeze. That breeze. God, the way it moved through the eucalyptus leaves, the rustle soft and meditative—until the next truck roared past and shattered the moment like glass.

Somewhere around mile four, I thought I’d reward myself with a break. I dropped my pack, sat down, and exhaled with something like joy.

That joy lasted exactly 4.7 seconds.

I had sat on an anthill. Not beside. Not near. Directly on.

The moment was pure chaos. They were everywhere—down my shorts, up my shirt, biting with the coordinated fury of an army scorned. I leapt up, flailing and swatting at my clothes, hopping around like someone who’d just discovered interpretive dance. I yanked at my waistband and cursing in languages I don’t speak. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t half-convinced I’d be consumed alive.

I finally shook them off—mostly—and limped back onto the path, itchy, bitten, and full of a fresh kind of rage.

But The Camino was having none of it. Out of nowhere: kittens. Literal kittens, chasing each other in the dust outside a crumbling farmhouse. And dogs—so many dogs, lounging in the sun, padding alongside fences, wagging their tails like I was someone worth noticing.

It was absurd, this mix of pain and beauty. The kind of contrast that makes you question whether you’re alive or dreaming, or hallucinating from heatstroke.

By the end of the day, my body felt as though it’d been through a car wash set to “scalding sandpaper.” I was a little broken. A little bitten. And…content.

But the true turning point wasn’t dramatic.

It happened the morning my feet refused my shoes. Hokas, Birkenstocks—nothing fit. My legs throbbed, my body begged, and for the first time I didn’t force myself forward. I listened. I rested. I finally understood the quiet power in allowing, instead of pushing, of listening to that quiet inner voice.

And when three other women chose rest too, I realized how deeply ingrained these ideas of self-sacrifice, enduring, and submitting are in the female psyche. I realized that all of us were so busy listening to the voices of outside expectations that we’d all stopped listening to ourselves.

Permission, it turns out, is a contagion more healing than determination.

Reaching Muxía didn’t feel like arriving at the “end of the earth.” It felt like walking back into myself. The waves crashed against the ancient rocks with a kind of honest ferocity, as if they knew exactly what I had been holding. I carried a small stone from Santiago—symbolizing every year I’d put my own needs last—and when I threw it into the Atlantic, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt free. It was a homecoming, not a victory lap.

The woman who first stepped onto the Camino in 2017 isn’t the woman who stood beside the ocean in 2025.

I’ve grown softer in the places that once hardened. Clearer in the places that once scattered. I’ve learned to listen inward even when it’s inconvenient, even when it shifts the shape of my life. I’ve stopped apologizing for needing rest, silence, and truth.

And if there’s anything I want another woman to know, it’s this:

Your return to yourself won’t announce itself with a bang. It will come in a quiet moment—a refusal to push, a choice to listen, a truth you finally stop outrunning. That’s when the path home opens. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But unmistakably.

Meet Debby Kevin

Highlander Press

Deborah helps women authors turn their powerful stories into professionally published books—without overwhelm, confusion, or compromise. Through guided publishing cohorts, interactive education, and full-service support, she leads writers from messy idea to polished manuscript to meaningful, impactful book launch.

Wisdom in the Deck

Card 2: Coming home to yourself isn’t some big dramatic moment. It’s just the quiet decision to stop second-guessing what you already know.

Theme: This card teaches that clarity is not something to chase, earn, or force—it is something to remember. It invites the reader to step out of relentless striving and return to the quiet intelligence of instinct and discernment. The wisdom here honors rest, listening, and subtle inner knowing as legitimate forms of power. It reminds us that transformation does not always arrive with spectacle; sometimes it arrives when we finally stop running from ourselves.

Own Your Voice

A True Story from Debby Kevin

There was a long stretch of my life when I believed chapters of my story needed to stay hidden. Not because they weren’t true—but because I feared what would happen if I actually told them. I’d been taught, like so many women, that the messy chapters should stay tucked away. Keep it neat. Keep it palatable. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. I was told being me could discredit me! And I followed those rules for far too long.

The cost of that silence was subtle but relentless. I was capable and accomplished, yet always slightly out of alignment with myself. I shaped my voice around what I thought the world wanted to hear, rather than the truth that wanted to be spoken through me. I was accomplished on the outside, but muted on the inside. I second-guessed myself.

Everything changed the day I let one piece of my real story slip into daylight. It wasn’t dramatic or strategic—it was honest. And the response startled me. Instead of rejection or judgment, I witnessed recognition. People leaned in. They softened. Hearts opened. They recognized themselves in my story and I saw the unmistakable spark that appears when someone hears a shared truth they’ve quietly carried alone.

In that moment, I realized the thing I had feared for years was the very thing that could free me. The truth doesn’t diminish us. The truth strengthens us.

And when women own their voices and tell their stories, they don’t just change their lives—they change the world.

That realization became the foundation of everything I do now. I help women bring their full, unfiltered stories onto the page—not the polished mask, not the version they think they’re “supposed” to share, but the one with heat and heartbeat and humanity. The kind of books that transform the writer as much as they touch the reader. Because when a woman stops hiding, her energy shifts. She becomes grounded. Clear. Unshakable. Her story becomes a bridge—for connection, for leadership, for change.

I don’t help authors write perfect books. I help them write real ones.

Books that hold truth, structure, and transformation.

Books that make both the writer and the reader feel profoundly seen.

If there’s one thing I want you to hear, it’s this:

You don’t need to wait until you feel ready.

Your story, exactly as it exists today, carries power, resonance, and the potential to change someone’s life—including your own. Claim it without apology. Speak it without shrinking. The world shifts when you do.

Meet Debby Kevin

Highlander Press

Deborah helps women authors turn their powerful stories into professionally published books—without overwhelm, confusion, or compromise. Through guided publishing cohorts, interactive education, and full-service support, she leads writers from messy idea to polished manuscript to meaningful, impactful book launch.

Wisdom in the Deck

Card 1: When you own your voice, you don’t just change your life—you change the world.

Theme: This card teaches that untold truth creates inner distortion, while spoken truth creates alignment. It invites the reader to honor the story pressing forward and to let it reshape them from the inside out.

My Friends and Fellow Travelers,

Last week I left you just after a very judgmental cat, living in a small village in Spain, gave me a beautiful card with a shimmering picture of a butterfly on it. Further inspection revealed the words, “When you own your voice, you don’t just change your life—you change the world.”

This week, we resume the act of continuously falling forward and catching ourselves. I really do recommend you grow some wings, they are a far more graceful way to travel, and also, much more fun.

Anyway, Debbie, myself and the other ladies started walking again, and I shuffled up beside the author because I am incapable of minding my own business.

“What are you writing?” I asked, attempting to sound casual and failing spectacularly.

“My story,” she said.

I waited for the exciting part.

She added, “It’s not glamorous.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment like a polite gremlin. “Then why are you writing it?”

She hesitated, then said, very softly, “Because I survived things people don’t like to hear about. And every time I say them out loud, someone else breathes differently. Like they’ve been holding it too.”

That was… inconveniently beautiful.

“Oh!” I said, finally getting it. “So now that you’re on the other side, living your happily ever after, you’re telling people how you got there!”

And then she said something that cracked my brain open like an egg:

“Not quite. I kept thinking I had to be finished. Like I had to arrive somewhere before I was allowed to write about how I got here. And I don’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere. I’m just me. Just living each day, waiting for the next shoe to drop. But then, I met Debby. She helped me to understand that I don’t have to arrive as some mythical pinnacle. I don’t have to be finished, polished, done. I just have to have lived and learned something that someone else hasn’t yet.” She laughed then. “Debby actually said, I’ll never forget this, she said, ‘You’re not done until you’re dead and it’s a lot harder to write a book when you’re dead.’”

We walked in silence after that, but my brain was loud. Because I have stories too. Stacks of them. Hoards. Half-written scrolls shoved into drawers labeled:

• “Later”

• “When I’m Better”

• “When I’m Less Weird”

• “When I’m Successful”

When I think about sharing them, they feel too much like standing in the middle of the road without my shoes. (Remind me to tell you about that nightmare sometime!)

I looked over at the woman next to me. She didn’t look armored. She looked tired, sweaty, and little bit sunburned.

Day six arrived like a slap.
Hot pavement. No shade. Trucks screaming past like destiny had a deadline.
One of the women started limping.

“You okay?” someone asked.

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

Debby stopped walking.

“No,” she said gently. “You’re not.”

There was no edge to it. No judgment. Just a firmness that said, ‘Un-god you dastardly peddlers of oppression! I refuse to participate in the ancient ritual of women pretending they’re fine while their bodies scream.’

The limping woman tried to wave it off. “It’s nothing. I don’t want to slow everyone down.”

Debby set her pack down.

“We’re not in a race,” she said. “And you’re not a burden.”

And then something wild happened.

Your reading the words, but you’re missing out on the rest of the pictures from my travels and even a few short video clips!

Three other women set their packs down too.
No speech. No manifesto. No “This Is A Movement.”
Just: Okay. We’re resting now.

I watched it like a magic trick. Like Debby had cast a spell called Permission, and it settled over the entire group in an instant.

One woman peeled off her socks and started tending blisters with the focused tenderness of a battlefield medic.

Another rubbed her hip like it had personally betrayed her.

A third lay down in the tiny scrap of shade and fell asleep within two minutes, which honestly? Iconic.

I, too, sat down. Because I am extremely brave when a group is already doing something brave.

Someone passed around almonds.
Nobody apologized.
Nobody explained.
Nobody talked.

Moogie licked sunscreen off my elbow.

I don’t know why. He’s a stuffed bat-cow. He does not require nourishment. He is made of felt and misplaced confidence. Yet there he was, tongue out, tasting SPF 50 like he was reviewing it for a dairy blog.

I stared at him.
Debby stared at him.

The napping woman snorted awake and said, “Am I dreaming? Or is that… alive?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, because admitting you’ve brought an animate plush into a sacred pilgrimage is a social risk.

Moogie burped.
A tiny puff of glitter came out.
Everyone froze.

It drifted on the wind like a cursed dandelion.

And that’s when I learned something important about the Camino:
The truth you’re trying not to face will always rise to the surface.

The glitter puff drifted toward the road.
The road… reacted.
Not metaphorically. Literally.

The dust on the path began to lift in delicate curls, like it was inhaling. The pebbles shivered. A low hum rose from the ground—subtle, almost polite—like the earth was clearing its throat.

Debby blinked.
I blinked back.

The author whispered, “I think I need electrolytes. I think I’m hallucinating. This isn’t normal.”

“No,” Debby said, very calmly. “But neither is Ophelia.”

Correct. Thank you. Finally, someone recognizes my brand value.

I should probably explain: I had been trying very hard to be normal this whole trip. I had been doing human walking. I had been keeping my magic folded up like a travel umbrella. But apparently the Camino has rules about authenticity and gets offended when you pretend.

So when Debby stopped the group and made rest contagious…

…and when everyone just… accepted it…

…and when nobody apologized for being who they were and needing what they needed…

…something in the world loosened.

And my magic—being chaos-aligned and deeply opportunistic—popped its head up like, Oh! We’re being honest now? Great! I will participate.

The ground hummed again.

A small gust of wind spun through us, and—this is not a joke—my satchel unzipped itself and began coughing up items I did not pack.

A tiny scroll unrolled at my feet.

I picked it up.
It read:

I stared at it.
Then, because I’m me, I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen it.

The author leaned over. “What does it say?”

“It’s… nothing,” I lied, holding it behind my back like a child hiding a frog.

The scroll burned gently in my claws until I sighed and read it aloud.

Debby nodded like that made perfect sense.
Of course it did. She’s Debby. She probably gets truth rewards in her cereal.

Then the weirdest part:
The scroll changed.
It turned into a little blank card—thick paper, clean edges, the size of an oracle card.

The author gasped. “Did you do that?”

I pointed at Moogie. “He did it.”

Moogie mooed innocently and licked more sunscreen.

The card shimmered once, like it was waiting.

For what?
A truth.
And I suddenly—very inconveniently—understood what it was asking for.
Not a speech. Not a performance. Not a branding statement.

Just… a true sentence.

So I did the bravest thing I could do in front of a group of capable women with barely functioning knees:

I said something small.

Silence.
Not the awkward kind.
The listening kind.

The card warmed in my claws like a purring animal. And on its surface, ink appeared—slowly, like the truth was being written by the air itself:

Coming home to yourself isn’t some big dramatic moment. It’s just the quiet decision to stop second-guessing what you already know.

I swallowed.

The ground hummed again, but this time, it carried a low voice:

The humming stopped.

Debby whispered, “The Camino.”

And in that moment, I watched the author’s shoulders drop by half an inch, like she’d been carrying a secret sack of shame and someone had just taken it off her without even touching it.

She reached into her notebook. Flipped to chapter three. And drew a line through the words REMOVE THIS.

Then she wrote above it:

LEAVE IT IN ANYWAY.

The limping woman exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for years.

The woman who’d been snoring sat up and said, “Oh no. I think I’ve been doing life wrong.”

Debby smiled. “You haven’t been doing it wrong. You’ve been doing it the way you were trained.”

We stayed resting for a while longer. Someone found the almonds. Someone else offered electrolyte tablets like they were contraband. Moogie tried to eat one and fizzed gently for ten seconds.

No one apologized for existing.
No one justified needing a pause.

And I watched Debby do something I think is her truest magic:
She made it normal.
She made truth normal.
She made rest normal.

She made “I’m not fine” and “I’m not finished” and “I don’t know yet” feel like allowed sentences.

Eventually we got up and kept walking, because rest isn’t quitting—it’s listening.

When the group reached the place where they’d continue on toward Muxía, Debby hugged me.

Sun-warmed. Salt in the air. A hug that said: you’re allowed to be real here.

“You continuing on?” someone called.

I looked at them—these women walking forward not as martyrs, not as performers, but as actual humans with bodies and stories and blisters.

I felt my satchel on my back becoming uncomfortably warm.
The teleportation muffin was waking up.
I looked down at my new card of wisdom.

Moogie blinked back at me like, Adventure?

I opened my mouth to answer and in that exact moment -

The card in my hand loudly announces:

Moogie gasped. Which is impressive for felt.

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

The card called out again:

Debby did not look surprised. Cheryl must have warned her.

The author clutched her notebook like she might write this down.

The limping woman whispered, “Is this… part of the Camino?”

Debby tilted her head. “It is now.”

By now my Teleportation Muffin felt like it had just been taken out of the oven. It burst out of my satchel and began rotating slowly in midair with an air of corporate bossiness.

The sky ripped open like poorly hemmed curtains and a very annoyed Irish goat falls through screaming, “WRONG DRAGON.”

Fenris. Cheryl’s suspiciously poetic goat. He landed directly on the teleportation muffin. The muffin exploded into scones.

Reality folded.
Moogie saluted.

And before I could make one more dramatic comment about my sunscreen budget—I was sucked sideways into the pastry vortex.

The last thing I heard was Debby calling out:

Then—
pop.

Silence.

The Camino remained.
The women kept walking.

And somewhere far from Spain, I landed face-first on a velvet rug in a place that smelled faintly of roses and expensive decisions.

There was a pause. A teacup clinked.

Someone above me said, very calmly,

“Um, Hi. Can I help you?”

I sat up, still tasting sunscreen and almonds and dirt and looked around. “Oh good,” I said. “You have furniture. This is already an upgrade.” I promptly toppled to my left and was sound asleep by the time my face hit the velvet again.

With love, mild whiplash, and a time crumb in my ear,
Ophelia 🌈
Pilgrim (not the funny hat kind) | Scone Traveler | Truth Card Holder

P. S. Moogie says moo.
P.P.S. If you don’t hear from me soon, assume I’ve been swallowed by a giant monster with a velvet rug camouflaged tongue.
Or a different decade.
Or kidnapped by a crazy Irish Goat with a teleportation problem.

Dearest Magical Friends, Besties, Chaos Cousins, and Whoever Keeps Mailing Me Unsolicited “7-Figure Funnel” Scrolls,

I am writing to you from Spain.

Yes. Spain.

Do not ask why, because I tried asking me and I just blinked a lot and then ate a cookie like it was an answer.

Here’s what happened.

You know how I was going to rest? Like a responsible creature? Like a dragon-fae adult Doxie who doesn’t treat “summer break” like an invitation to do something unhinged?

Anyway.

When the universe places an order for you with express shipping, you pack your snacks and go.

So I did.

The teleportation muffin coughed up Spain like a hairball of destiny, and I landed in a ditch beside a dusty road under a sun that clearly had unresolved anger.

Moogie the stuffed bat-cow was tangled in my tail.

And a woman in hiking boots was laughing at me with the warm confidence of someone who has survived at least one spiritual reckoning and possibly several PTA meetings.

“You must be Ophelia,” she said.

“I was promised snacks,” I replied, because introductions are hard and hunger is honest.

She handed me a fig.

This is how I met Debby.

Now, I assumed Debby had summoned me for something dramatic. A curse. A treasure map. A dragon duel. A business intervention.

Instead she said, “Welcome to the Camino.”

“I LOVE HORSEBACK RIDING,” I shouted, whipping my head around to locate the adorable beasts.

Debby stared at me like she was watching a tiny weather system form.

“No, not a Palomino. The Camino de Santiago. It’s a walking pilgrimage.”

I looked down at my feet.

They looked back at me like, Oh no. Not this again.

“Is there a starting line?” I asked, scanning the landscape for a ribbon to burst through heroically.

“No,” she said. “That’s the point.” (That sentence should come with a warning label.)

Then she helped me out of the ditch—very kindly, despite the fact I had twigs in my horns—and we started walking. Not because a bell rang. Not because someone announced, “LET THE SACRED JOURNEY BEGIN.” We just… angled in a direction and proceeded to fall forward and catch ourselves.

The road didn’t care about me. Which was rude. Olive trees leaned into the breeze like they’d seen a thousand melodramatic pilgrimages and were not impressed.

Up ahead, I saw a small group of women walking together—sun-warmed, quiet, like they belonged to the road.

“Who are they?” I whispered.

“Pilgrims,” Debby said.

“Are we pilgrims?”

“If you’re walking, you are.”

That seemed suspiciously inclusive.

Now listen. The first two days were ordinary in a way that made me itch. People were just… walking. Sweating. Drinking water. Being present. No one tried to monetize the moment. No one put a ring light on a rock.

I kept waiting for the twist.

The Camino, apparently, is allergic to spectacle. It prefers quiet violence: blisters, introspection, and the slow unpeeling of your protective armor of lies, assumptions and expectations.

Debby walked like someone who had once carried too much and finally set it down.

On the third day we stopped in a village so tiny it felt like it might apologize for existing. There was a stone fountain in the square with a peeing cherub that spurted intermittently like it needed it’s prostate checked, a café with exactly one round table and three chairs that wobbled on the uneven stones like they were auditioning for a teeter-totter competition, and one very judgmental cat.

Debby was talking to another woman who had a notebook clutched like it was either a baby or a grenade.

“I think I’m going to remove chapter three,” the woman said.

Debby’s eyebrows lifted. “Why?”

“It’s too much,” the woman said. “Too honest.”

Debby shrugged like this was the easiest thing in the world. Like she was suggesting a different brand of tea.

“Put it in anyway,” she said. “It’s actually my favorite part. I’d love to see more like that.”

Friends. The air shifted. Not dramatically, like thunder. More like… the world quietly made room.

The very judgmental cat leap down of her perch, picked up something sitting in the dirt and brought it over to me. I reached out to take it, brushed the dirt away and found I was looking at a beautiful card with a shimmering picture of a butterfly on it. A light breeze blew across it and revealed the words “When you own your voice, you don’t just change your life—you change the world.”

I wasn’t quite sure why, but it felt important so I tucked it away in my satchel, giving Moogie a pat on the head while I was at it.

With snacks, suspicious optimism, and mild teleportation concerns,
Ophelia 🌈
Pilgrim (not the funny hat kind) | Scone Traveler | Truth Card Holder

Dear luminous pen-pal who keeps all my secrets (and, hopefully, this draft),

School’s out. The cauldrons are cold.
The floating quills have stopped twitching.

Cheryl’s off gallivanting in Ireland with a suspiciously poetic goat named Fenris, leaving behind nothing but a cryptic voice message and a half-drunk bottle of potion labeled…

“FOR EXISTENTIAL MARKETING CRISES ONLY.”

I promised myself I’d rest.

No new product launches. No enchanted sticker sets. No dramatic reinventions of my entire brand at 2:17am on a Tuesday.

That lasted all of a week. Tuesdays are hard!

Today started normally, if “normally” means hand-feeding caffeine to a teacup that thinks it’s a motivational speaker. The enchanted planners were rearranging themselves into suspiciously ambitious life plans. And Mortimer had opened a consulting desk on a crate labeled “Mildly Cursed but Cute,” which I am 82% sure violates at least one zoning law.

Then the word coherent tried to ruin my life.

I was minding my own business (literally), by reorganizing the Enchanted Sticker Wall by emotional volatility.

This is a very normal thing to do.

You start with mild rebellion on the left (“Drink Water, Hex Later”), move gently through existential defiance (“Capitalism Is a Weird Cult, Brenda”), and end in full apocalyptic glitter (“If I Am Too Much, Go Find Less”).

It’s important for customers to escalate properly.

After that, just naps. Snacks. Maybe a bit of casual hoard reorganization.

And then... the order arrived.

At first glance, it was a massive purchase. Every item pulled from a different collection. Some weren’t even public. One came from a timeline I haven’t invented yet. Which is when I knew something must be wrong.

I stared at the list more closely. The item names weren’t exactly the item names from my website, similar, but not the same. And some of them contained additional instructions or options that were not available in online store.

• Walking Cloak – Dust Resistant.

• Blister Balm – Extra Strength.

• Field Journal – Weatherproof.

• Snack Satchel – Expandable.

• Stone Pouch – Small.

It read more like a packing list. Then I noticed, nestled at the bottom of the glowing invoice, where shipping details should have been, was a note:

Below that:

There was no delivery address. Only coordinates that reshaped as I read them into a mystical landscape, shrouded in mist, and glowing by the light of a setting sun.

I felt it then. That gravitational tug. The kind that happens when fate taps you on the shoulder and pretends it’s casual about it.

This wasn’t an order. It was a summons disguised as one.

The pull was instant. The kind of gravity that only exists when fate, fear, and possibility collide in the same magical muffin.

Before I knew what was happening, the balm was in my claws, the snack satchel was stuffed, and I was tearing a page out of my journal to scribble a note to Cheryl.

I didn’t plan for this quest. I don’t know who summoned me or where I’m going.

But my wings are twitching.
My claws are itching.
And when the universe sends you your own packing list?
You pack.
And you go.

I left a note with a glitter bomb in Cheryl’s desk drawer (for when she returns—you’re welcome, goat boy).

And summoned my teleportation muffin.
(Don’t ask for the recipe. Seriously. It involves time crumbs and regret berries.)

Later, Gator 🐊
Ophelia 🌈
Unleashing Enchantment, One Oddity at a Time

Hey there friend! I’m Ophelia🌈

It all started last summer…

I didn’t mean to go on a pilgrimage. I didn’t plan on building an oracle deck. I didn’t intend on writing a bunch of stories about my adventures.

In fact, I was in the middle of one of my dramatic existential reorganizations—you know, where you decide to burn down everything you’ve ever believed in and alphabetize your trauma by flavor—when I received a very large, very custom order.

Which, in hindsight, should have been my first red flag.

Orders are not supposed to include coordinates that rearrange themselves and a note that says, “Bring snacks.”

So, there I was filling this order, when I was:

1. dragon-napped by a teleportation muffin made with time crumbles and regret berries;

2. Accidentally inducted into a sisterhood of wise sages; and

3. Forcibly handed a suspicious number of symbolic cards by the universe

And now-
I have a stack of stories I cannot un-know.
A handful of truths that will not leave me alone.
And a very strong suspicion that this was never about the destination at all.

But here we are, nine months later, and I have birthed an oracle deck into the world and published the first book about my adventures.

Who knew this was where I’d end up when Cheryl went off gallivanting in Ireland with a suspiciously poetic goat named Fenris?

The book is called Dragon-Napped by a Teleportation Muffin, because apparently “Everything Became Extremely Complicated While Cheryl Was Out of the Country” was considered too long.

It contains the beginning of my journey, the first Wise Sister I met, the stories she trusted us to carry, and the first two cards the universe deposited into my claws without explanation or a return policy.

You can find the print and ebook versions here:

Get the Book

Or if you want to ruin the surprise and peak inside at some of the pages, I guess you can look at the sample booklet I gave out to my friends at the Sisterhood Soiree…

View the Sample Version

And if you would rather begin by rifling through all 36 pieces of wisdom and asking them alarming personal questions, the Wisdom of the Sisterhood Oracle Deck is here:

Check Out the Oracle Deck

Next week, I’ll tell you how this whole thing began—with a brand-new customer and the largest order Ophelia’s Bazaar had ever received.

For approximately eleven glorious minutes, I thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to my business.

Then I noticed something impossible.
I probably should have cancelled the order.
I did not cancel the order.

Yours ’til the Teleportation Muffin Activates,
Ophelia 🌈
Time-Sideways Dragon | Accidental Pilgrim | Collector of Stories & Wisdom & Apparently Cards?

P.S. The order said, “Bring snacks.” Honestly, what was I supposed to do? Ignore it and risk arriving snackless?