#61 The Peruvian Adventure - Part 1
Kelly shares a brand new story that’s unfolding right now. If you crave an adventure, or feel held back by responsibilities or needing to ask permission for the things you long to do, listen to this one. Maybe the apparent obstacles are only in your mind.
Pay attention to the signs and synchronicities along your breadcrumb trail, always leading you in the right direction.
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Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode 61 of the Project Me podcast. Hi there. Happy new year. I hope you're well in your part of the world. I'm cozy and super happy in my Ibiza home for the month of January. I'm here with Kathmandu. I don't think I've shared here that his sister, Bali, passed away at the end of October. She'd been ill.
We were so sad to lose her. She had a beautiful burial. under the fig tree in our garden here in Ibiza. So it's just Kathmandu and I, we're snuggling up and enjoying our time here together. The fresh air, the sunshine, the nature, just the energy of Ibiza in the non tourist season is so calm and soothing. I have a fresh hot off the press story to share with you today.
Part of me thought, hold off, see how it all unfolds and tell it as a whole complete story by. Even the story thus far is incredible and I want to capture this part now while it's all still fresh in my mind. Before I dive in, a little background and a couple of the main characters in this story. First up, my friend Amy.
Amy has come up in this podcast before, probably most memorably in the episode called Say a Little Prayer. Because I shared actual audio clips from our voice messages to each other after I'd had a hugely profound dream about the power of prayer. We got into a whole back and forth about God and our changing perceptions of God.
You might remember that one if you've heard it. Amy and I have been friends since we were about 15. We then became roommates at the University of Minnesota and then roommates again in California. For But after I moved to London, we didn't see each other for over 30 years until she came to Ibiza for a retreat that I ran here in 2022.
So that's a bit of background on Amy. There's another main character of this story whose name is Catherine. I have shared about Catherine before in episode 30 titled That Little Itch Should Be Telling You Something. As a recap, in 2019, I had a Zoom session with this consciousness consultant, Catherine, who took me on a profound guided journey that led me to meet one of my spirit guides and ultimately unlocked my fears over sharing my stories.
And it resulted in me Creating this podcast. If you heard that episode, you might recall that when my session with Catherine ended that day, I found myself asking her, do you like London? And do you like cats? I had just put it out to the universe to find me a cat sitter for three weeks in London.
Catherine said yes. And without us even knowing each other, she DC to London to look after my cats and to have her own adventure while I was in Ibiza. When I got back to London after Ibiza and before Catherine flew back to the U. S., we were talking about organization, and I showed her my Trello app and how I organize all my tasks and projects and ideas onto cards.
Amongst all of the list and all of the cards on my Trello board, her eyes landed on one of them. What's the high vibe journey, she asked. And that one innocuous question changed my life and the lives of hundreds of others who now have been through my High Vibe Journey program over the past four years.
The High Vibe Journey was just one of dozens of ideas I had parked on that Trello board. So for her eyes to land on that one, Catherine challenged me to email my list to that very day and tell them about this four week program. She held my shaking hand as I sent it out. And here we are. So four years later, it's actually the anniversary today, four years of when I launched my high vibe journey program.
And now here I am this week, I'm running it for the 10th time. So I very much consider Catherine to be a guide on my path. Oh, and we bumped into each other after that in New York city, we were both staying at the same hotel on the same night. I mean, how many hotels do you think there are in New York city?
Hashtag no coincidences. The incredible synchronicities that show up with this woman like we're in each other's lives for a reason. I just know it. Okay. I think that's the background you need to know to get into this true life story that's unfolding right now. Here we go. Episode 61. It was the summer of 2023.
And I was in Ibiza, enjoying meeting up with various friends. In a few separate conversations, on different occasions, the topic of travel came up, and I was asked, Where in the world have you not been yet that you'd love to visit? And I found myself saying, I love the idea of visiting the Lost Valley, Machu Picchu, and I'm super intrigued about the Inca civilization.
They built this incredible sacred site that the rest of the world didn't even know existed until it was rediscovered in the early 1900s. But anytime my husband Luca overheard me saying this to our friends, He'd intervene with a comment about Machu Picchu being overrun by tourists now and that you had to have been there a Decade or more ago.
He's never been there and clearly isn't interested. I remember each time he'd say this I'd feel a sense of I don't know kind of sadness and frustration. Why hadn't I gone when I was younger? The most pivotal book I read in my 20s was The Celestian Prophecy, all about a guy who has an adventure in Peru to find a lost manuscript that the church had hidden.
It contained powerful messages for how we need to be living our lives. I remember that book had such a big impact on me, and it was a huge bestseller. I know many listeners of this podcast have also read The Celestian Prophecy. It was the story I shared back in episode one of this podcast. It's where my journey into the magic and synchronicities of life began.
So last summer, perhaps inspired by these conversations with friends about travel adventures and my longing for Peru, a book jumped off my bookshelf. that I'd read back in 2020. The Shaman's Last Apprentice by Rebecca Shaman. This is the true life story of a girl from London whose breadcrumb trail leads her on an incredible adventure to Peru.
I met the author, Rebecca, at a speaking event in London in February of 2020, just before the pandemic. She had a wonderful stage presence as she kind of wrapped out a poem that she'd written. She had a stand at the back of the event selling her book. So I remember I went up to her to say hi and I ended up buying her book and she said, well, I'm selling the sequel to my book too.
So I couldn't resist buying her second book too, even though I hadn't read the first one yet. Second book was called Beyond Illusion. She signed both copies for me and I got back, I read them back to back during the start of the pandemic. I remember really enjoying them both. But when I stumbled upon The Shaman's Last Apprentice again last summer, I was amazed to find so many passages circled and underlined and pages dog eared, always the sign of a really powerful book when I do that.
So I started reading it again. And although the story, the story sounded familiar, I really wasn't sure what was going to happen next. I just got just as caught up in the adventure as the first time I read it. And the messages that she weaved into it all. spoke to me at an even deeper level this time around.
I was just finishing the Shaman's Last Apprentice and eager to begin the sequel Beyond Delusion again, when I got a text message. It was from Catherine, my cat sitter from 2019. I'd not heard from her in a very long time, but the last time we caught up on the phone, maybe, I don't know, a year and a half earlier, she told me she'd stopped doing her consciousness consulting.
And gone back into law. She was a partner at a law firm and really enjoying it. I was a bit disappointed as I saw her as this incredible spiritual guide and couldn't really picture her as a lawyer. But of course I was happy that she was happy. I then shared with her that I was now a soul plan practitioner doing zoom calls with clients the way she'd done with me.
So when I got this message from her asking me if I would like to chat, I said, sure. And we jumped on a FaceTime call. I showed her my garden in Ibiza. She was so happy that my dream had come true, that I'd manifested my house here. And then I asked her where she was. I was looking at her background. I'm like, where are you?
And she said, Peru, just below Machu Picchu. She had just moved there a month earlier with her daughter. She had a sudden calling to leave her law career, leave the USA, and just move to Peru. She went on to tell me how beautiful it is, how wonderful the people, the energy there, and how she's not quite sure what she's meant to be doing there, but the calling was too strong to ignore.
That's when I told her about my calling to travel to Peru. The book I was currently reading, the conversations with friends, my, my kind of yearning to see it for myself. And Catherine said, come. I got goosebumps. I felt so excited. This wasn't just anyone. This was the woman who shows up in my life for important reasons.
Then my energy switched into reality. My husband has no interest in Peru and we traveled together. Couldn't exactly go off to Peru without him. Could I? But I had another voice telling me. You always thought, think you need to wait until the kids were grown up, you know, before all those years before I thought you got, when the kids grow up, you can get away.
Now you're an empty nester. And you're still making excuses. I see the women who come away on my Ibiza retreats, most with young children, and I think, Wow, I never felt like I could do that. Why did I not think that was possible for me? Well, after that conversation with Catherine, the seed was planted. I kept reading Rebecca's second book, and thinking about Peru.
Oh, and on that same day that I had the conversation with Catherine, I walked onto my local print shop here in Ibiza to have some copies made. And there on the wall was a big blown up photo of Machu Picchu. I was like, okay, okay. The signs are here. I see you. And this kind of thing kept happening. I was walking down a weird back street in Madrid with my son telling him about me wanting to visit Peru.
And just then we turned a corner and there was this Peruvian restaurant on a road with nothing else on it. More and more crazy examples of this. It's just been happening over and over again. I mean the signs, the synchronicities. It's like, yes, I'm paying attention. Several weeks went by and it was now mid November.
I was in my mother's hospital room, waiting for her to be wheeled back from surgery to remove breast cancer. As I sat there waiting and praying, a message came in from Catherine. Can you speak? So we had another call right there in the hospital room. She updated me on her life in Peru. Her daughter was now settled into school.
Catherine had made some great new friends and was feeling a part of the community already. There was a local shaman and with his family, and she felt a beautiful connection with them. She'd followed her soul's calling, even when it hadn't made much sense. And it was feeling so aligned and so right. I told her I still had a yearning to travel there.
And she said, come. And I said, yeah, but Lucas's Machu Picchu is overridden with tourists and I can't see him wanting to come. Even as I was saying it, I realized I was making him into an excuse for me not going. But it's just that we do everything together, I told her. We're best friends and it would just feel so weird to just tell him I want to have an adventure without him.
But as Catherine began telling me about the many sacred sites in this area, the local family that helps to organize authentic tours of these places where you, you aren't just looking at it and taking a few souvenir pictures, you are properly experiencing the magic of these special sites and experiencing it all in a deeply spiritual level.
So I had to ask her, is this tour centered around taking ayahuasca with a shaman? If you don't know, ayahuasca is a plant medicine, a psychedelic brew traditionally used by indigenous cultures in the Amazon. It's used for spiritual and healing purposes. It leads to vivid visions, deep introspection, and sometimes intense physical reactions like purging, i.
e. vomiting profusely as negativity and burdens and blockages are released to make way for transformations and inner peace, even though I'd read Rebecca's book, all about her experiences of taking ayahuasca with her shaman. And even though I knew how much it helped her to heal. I honestly have no interest in it.
It feels to me like something one would do who has a lot of deep rooted emotional wounds to heal and release and I just don't feel I need this kind of excavation. I just want to expand my consciousness. I want to deepen my understanding of the universe and my place in it and feel that unity consciousness and connection to all.
I know I'm on a spiritual journey but I'm just not really feeling like I need the ayahuasca part of it. I've also heard negative things about ayahuasca tourism, mainly from my husband, about people who travel to these places to take this plant medicine that's indigenous to these tribes, and it creates a kind of subculture that leads to competition and corruption.
Some argue that this new form of tourism brings money to local communities, whilst others highlight the negative consequences, like environmental destruction and worse. I told Catherine, I'd love to come experience this culture, but I'm not there to be an ayahuasca tourist. She shared that this is not the focus of this tour.
Although since being there she had been introduced to some heart opening, consciousness expanding plant medicines like San Pedro. And she'd taken part in some incredible ceremonies and spiritual events, but she wasn't aware of this kind of exploitation amongst these people and feels very safe and respected there.
She thinks these big purges people describe from taking plant medicines is because of the quantities that Westerners are given in order to give them these kind of over the top feelings of deep transformation. Her experience has been nothing like that. Always full of love. Heart opening and beautiful connection and expansiveness.
She said for her, Peru is all about the nature and the exquisite beauty that surrounds her there and the local community, their stories, their traditions. And I realized that is what's been missing for me in my travels for so many years now. I've been lucky enough to stay in super comfy resorts in beautiful locations and of course I'm immersed in nature and beauty and often doing things like surfing or snorkeling or zip wiring high in the trees.
But I'm craving a simple immersion with a local community and its traditions. I realize I've been craving this for such a long time. I said to Catherine, I really want to come, I just need to find a way to tell Luca without him thinking I don't want to be with him, it's not that, it's just that Peru is not calling him, it's calling me, and I don't want to not go just because he doesn't want to.
And in that moment, I had a flash of my old school friend Amy, and I found myself telling Catherine, Oh, I think maybe Amy is meant to come with me. Catherine and I talked about May as being a great month to go to Peru, and then my mom's surgeon was calling me and I needed to go. The surgery was a success.
He told me she'd be wheeled back to the room in about an hour or so. Fast forward to the following week. I was back at work running my hire program. I was doing the program along with my students. And in week four, I did the homework of writing down some of the things I wish to manifest from this higher frequency that we'd all created over the last four weeks.
And I wrote down a trip to Peru, a way for me to build a go to Peru. I mean, I had the funds. I had the support of Catherine to help me organize things on that end, but I still didn't have the guts to speak to Luca about it. I suddenly remembered that flash I'd had of Amy, kind of forgotten about it. Would she possibly want to go with me?
I messaged her in Santa Barbara, California, and she said to give her 20 minutes. When she called me back, she said, yeah, I needed 20 minutes because I had a sudden urge that I had to drive down to the beach. Weirdly, she felt she must speak to me from the beach. So I told her this story. The one I just told you.
And when I got to the part about her flashing up in front of me during my call to Catherine, I said, so, Amy, would you like to come to Peru with me this May? And she said, sure, why not? Wow, that was so easy. And then she said, hey, some seagulls that have been hanging out on the beach all suddenly took flight and they are circling like mad over my car.
I'm like, it's a sign, Amy, it's a sign. Oh, and at the end of our call, she was again going, Wow, what the heck? There were dolphins jumping out of the ocean right in front of her. Dolphins, the creatures of harmony, playfulness, and flow. Spirit animals representing love, life, and joy. How amazing is that? I now had a travel buddy, my oldest friend in the world.
I asked Amy, um, don't you need to run it past your husband first? I And she was like, nah, he'll be fine with it. He's been to Peru a couple of times with his hiking buddies. We sometimes take separate trips. And I felt that pang again. Luke and I don't take separate trips. How do I ask him? And Amy said, you know what?
I'm going to turn around what you always tell us. Meaning my Soul Explorers membership community and the women who do my programs. She said rather than being in the energy of asking him for permission to go, just excitedly be in the energy of I'm going to Peru and tell him how it all unfolded. And suddenly that did make sense.
By asking him if he would mind if I did a trip without him, it would automatically put him in the position of feeling that he needs to either grant me permission or not. He'd need to understand every detail, he'd need to weigh it all up, he'd need to understand it so he could make the decision. Why put him in that position to feel responsible for this decision?
By excitedly sharing with him about it, he's not put into that position, he's not being asked to do anything. So, whew, I planned that evening when he came home from work to just excitedly share about my Peru news with him because I genuinely was so excited. He walked in that door after work in a visibly bad mood, office politics, horrible traffic.
He was tired and Hey, after 25 years of marriage, I know about choosing your moments and this was not it, but listen to this, I'm in bed reading that same night, I'm reading the sequel set in Peru, I was almost done with the book, I was just about to switch off the lights cause my eyes were going blurry and I was just super tired.
And he's next to me and he's on his phone. He's kind of typing something up and he says, Um, what do you think about this list of guys I'm going to invite to Ibiza in May for a sporty few days? Note, not honey, do you mind if I invite a few of my friends to Ibiza in May, but rather, what do you think about this list of potential invites?
This is how he naturally does it, without any coaching from Amy. And I'm there in bed, I'm so tired, my eyes are half closed, and there's a voice in my head saying, this is your in, Kelly. Excitedly tell him about Peru in May, and what great timing if he does his thing at the same time. But another voice is saying, Kelly, you are too tired to be in that energy of excitement, and too tired to go into the details you might ask.
You just need to support his idea and go to sleep, which I did. The following morning, I'm giving a soul plan session to one of my lovely clients, Natalie. She'd Ibiza retreat next April. And so I asked her at the end of our session whether she was coming or not, and she said she was afraid to ask her husband.
The dates fall over his birthday, and she's never gone away on her own like this or for so many days away. And I confessed I was in a similar situation over Peru. I told her about what Amy said. about excitedly telling him about it rather than putting him into a position to have to give or deny permission and how I'd blown my golden opportunity the night before and then she gave me a whole lovely pep talk around my husband wanting me to be happy and how he would not want to prevent me from doing something that would make me so happy and fulfilled and I said back at ya and so now my vibes were shifted back into the right place again.
I would just wait for my next opening and do it. Well, I didn't have to wait. My husband then sent me a message. This is right after my call with Natalie. He sent me a message to say that the men he'd invited to Ibiza for the sporty retreat could all come in May. He sounded excited that it was all coming together so quickly.
I was excited too that the stars were aligning. So I took this opportunity and I texted back to him. I wrote, It all seems to be flowing together very easily. A sign that it's right. And then I wrote, A plan is emerging for Amy and I to go on an adventure together in Peru. Mid May feels like a great time to go, and with you organizing your thing for mid May, it feels like divine timing.
I could not seem to stop myself from adding this line. I hope you'd be okay with this. Praying hands emoji. His reply, Can you promise me that this doesn't turn into an ayahuasca tourism retreat? Me, laughing emoji, I promise. And that was that. I'm going to Peru. And for the last couple of months, I've been feeling so extra close to Luca.
I have to say, it's like there was a hidden subconscious resentment that I'd burdened, invisible divide I'd created for myself, an ongoing story that seems to reoccur in my mind over not getting to do the things I want to do. And that was suddenly lifted. Just gone. I felt like a 20 something version of me who used to take risks, have adventures, make intuitive decisions without weighing everything up.
I just did things because I felt like it. Not over researching, just following my heart. I would not call this trip to Peru a midlife crisis, although I am closer to 60 than 50 now, so I'd be ripe and ready for one. I have no crisis. I'm not escaping from anything. I absolutely love my life. I love my marriage, I love my work, I love all of it.
This just feels like an exciting adventure, like more breadcrumbs on my trail. Amy has since had a very strong vision too that this trip to Peru is going to be very powerful for her, which I believe to be true as well. Why would two old friends who have not seen each other in over 30 years be brought back together again, if not for some higher reasons?
I'm going to read to you what Rebecca Shaman wrote to me in the inside cover of her book, The Shaman's Last Apprentice. Stated February of 2020, dearest Kelly, enjoy the dream, live the journey, shine the light. The world needs your light. Oh, she wrote shine bright. The world needs your light. Love and blessings on your journey, Rebecca.
Stay tuned for part two of this episode sometime after May.
Dear listener, relax your forehead. Take a long, slow, deep breath in, and let it out with a sigh. Do you have a longing for adventure? Do you crave doing something just for you? To nurture your soul? To feel like your younger you again? Do you create your own limitations and barriers by making excuses for why you can't?
Even if those reasons feel valid, lack of finances, lack of time, too many responsibilities, what if they are not actually the barriers you believe them to be?
What might happen if you put it on a vision board? A photo representing your dream vision? If you have something in mind right now, take a moment to visualize it. As if you were there,
see the colors, feel the temperature, hear the sounds. What does it feel like to be there?
Now ask the universe for support with this dream vision. Ask, believe, receive.
And now if you're able to put your hands over your heart and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you for listening to the Project Me podcast. If you liked this episode, please subscribe in your favorite podcast listening app. I really appreciate your reviews in Apple podcast and in Spotify. You can now leave stars and comments. Thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends and in your Instagram or your Facebook stories.
Tag me, Kelly Project Me. If you long to have an adventure, go to the retreats page on my website, kellypietrangeli. com. I offer group and bespoke one on one retreats. You can share this adventure with a friend or come for a solo adventure. I will create an incredible itinerary based around what you most need.
Write to me, hello, at myprojectme. com. Spaces are almost filled for my April retreat, but I'm looking to run another smaller one in June here in Ibiza. Let me know if you're interested. And put a project me retreat on your vision board until next time, open your mind, open your heart and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.