Finally, my overthinking is letting me post this! My Breakthrough Story 💗

You know back in the day, when you were a child, and you played as your future self, mimicking adults' lives in your imagination? I was this child big time. I was really living it! I knew everything about what I wanted and why; what I didn’t want and why; and even who I was. Truth is, I was channelling my higher self.

I used to always be driven to experience life to the fullest. Always wanted to do the best activities, always had the best ideas (Aquarius Jupiter in my 5th house of play + my sidereal Pisces Moon sextile Neptune, play really was fire). I was a businesswoman, I was a mother, I was channelling everything I wished to be (the ancient female warriors of my family line were alive and well in me).

In my teenage and young adult years, I was actively engaged in a children's non-profit association; my friends and I were actors in the local theatre club; I was involved in political organisations and met some great people; and even had other friends and colleagues in different political organisations. I was vibing, and it wasn’t even about politics; it was about the aliveness of being part of the collective! Politics has always been in my family line; I even have some really good stories about the Portuguese “Revolução dos Cravos”.

For me, the collective experience has always been about the amazing energy one can feel when everyone has the same intention. And funny enough, I never had a rigid belief; I always thought the light force behind it was what made it alive and real. I even noticed first-hand that when the collective's intention fades or gets corrupted (because the water bearers drank all the water) the whole system breaks. I believe it’s not even the time, space, or even the people that make it; it’s a higher purpose. I really thought life was always going to be like that; an ever-ending collective search for an ideal.

Growing up, school was a bit of a struggle. I only liked school because I could hang out with my friends. Classes were boring, and I couldn’t stand still without looking outside the window, imagining whatever I wished to be happening. The public school system became increasingly dysfunctional; some of my teachers were struggling with serious depression and even addiction. Then came college, and my witnessing of dysfunction only grew larger, as I experienced huge irresponsibility and social dysfunction in a collapsing and unequal system (the city was collapsing, I spent 4 hours in public transports per day, for four years, just to be able to get my degree).

I later became an engineer and worked for a small Portuguese business that, over the course of two years, became a huge corporation and later fired half of its workers (including me). We were overworked, undervalued, and doing extra hours for no money with below-average salaries. Plus, I’ve witnessed serious irresponsibility in the construction sector: people died and were injured because of the company's weak responsibility in security systems — it was deeply upsetting.

As a woman in a man’s world of business and industry, I’ve struggled hard to maintain my feminine softness without the need to exert too much masculine energy. I was in a constant fight or flight mode, stressed and burned out. I couldn’t shut up about all the wrong things in the company (oh, the Virgo in me). I even knew I was on their blacklist. Looking back, I see now that some of us simply knew too much because we were there since the beginning — and they weren’t ok about that. Still, and even after I left, I was nominated as one of the best site managers (twice) and I was the only female site manager — which brought me many other problems, including harassment from my boss.

One day, I was supervising a construction site with a colleague, on the roof of a 16-meter-high building on a hot and sunny day. Out of nowhere, I started sweating, feeling super-hot one minute, cold the next, extremely dizzy; my blood pressure was crazy low, and I almost fainted. Ended up in the infirmary of the client's firm, feeling unwell in my body and embarrassed as hell. What happened was: my period. I still had to make it through the rest of my working day, couldn’t go home because I was in a location far away from my home with a male colleague (who, to my amazement - NOT - seemed completely unaware and unbothered by what I was going through as a woman).

I couldn’t coordinate the 24-hour masculine day cycle with my intense (emotionally, spiritually and physically) charged experiences during the variation of my four-week cycle. I decided I was done with the system; I was no longer trying to fit in to feel worthy, especially as a woman, in a man’s world. I decided I was going to create my own thing, just like I did in my imagination when I was a child.

I even remember the disbelief when I first noticed my astrological birth chart showing that I would try on a career path, only to realise that it was not in alignment with my purpose and identity. My Midheaven showed that I had the potential to be a writer or a speaker, and my Sun tried to illuminate the house of the “taboo”, tarot, astrology and psychology; the occult house of the zodiac (the 8th house). I realised that just like Gemini in my Midheaven, I had two distinct, but simultaneous and intertwined occupations; suddenly, the two paths appeared in my mind's eye. I knew what I wanted again.

I realised I still needed to unpack everything about myself, because everything I thought I was, I wasn’t; and what I thought I was not, I was. I realised that my life had always been a struggle because I was trying to fit a mould that couldn’t fit me. I said, “F*CK THAT! I was never meant to do things their way either.” I realised my intuition had been telling me all along, “You can do whatever the fuck you want”.

Even though I was still lost and broken, going through all these ego deaths, young Ana Miguel had always been “cooking” in her subconscious! I realised that all along my hobbies had been guiding me, and that psychology, astrology, psychedelics, spirituality, geology, and lost ancient wisdom were not just “hobbies”, they were my oxygen. I felt myself dying and rebirthing over and over again. This was not my first ego death, but this time I felt it stronger than ever.

The solitude that came with the depression (that I later realised started at 17, I'm 28 now), the struggling, the unemployment, the redirecting, the learning and the unlearning of some heavy shit made me face my shadows. Even this last year, as my body finally learns how to relax and as I'm trying to rewire my nervous system, I've been heavily dealing with some persistent health issues from my past. Shadows have been distracting me as I still struggle to listen to my sacred intuition. I realised that sometimes, when shadows yelled at me “Go!” and I followed, by impulse, it was also just another distraction. I needed to pause. I knew that what I was searching for, I had never really lost it; it was deep inside me the whole time.

I dived even deeper into my subconscious, like a mermaid looking for a hidden treasure; and eventually, I found it. It is still being polished; it was in the deep sea, covered in mud for some time, but now it’s mine again. I am also trying to forgive myself for not hearing my higher-self more often. I try to remind myself: “It’s not your fault, it was taken from you, numbed out”. I have been realising, more than ever, that I am out of this machine for good.

Looking back, I think the most important thing was letting go of the ancestral baggage and expectation to be a strong woman, leaning into my masculine energy to materialise my desires. Just like my grandmother's ancestral line, on my mother’s side, I was forcing my way into abundance and success like a man. I was strong indeed, but I realised that masculine and feminine energy materialise differently, and that simple thought freed me. I realised I could be; I could appear; and I could be seen, as soft as a daisy and still manifest every single thing I wanted! I am determined to live the life my grandmothers weren’t allowed to because of the times and their suffering, and I want to help others do the same 💕 If you stayed till the end, thank you 🙏🏻

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