(In my last few blogs, I’ve shared the relationship I’ve built with the catalpa tree off the deck of the tiny home I’ve lived in this summer.
If you missed them and want to catch the backstory, they are here and here.)
For the first time in my Colorado mountain town life, I spent the summer outside courtesy of a catalpa tree.
Under her shade, I took my client calls, had meals, hard convos with my daughter and spent most evenings reading or staring up at the stars through her canopy.
Mid-summer my landlord asked me if I planned to stay for the winter, which threw me into a temporary panic.
I didn’t feel ready to make a decision. And there were no (as in ZERO) rentals listings in my town.
Should I stay tucked into this beautiful property with minimal rent?
Or find a bigger place where my daughter and I would have some space, privacy and a place to sit down together indoors?
You may remember that I asked the catalpa tree to help me find my next home and she told me that she’d reach out to her kin.
On a deeper level, the unsettled feeling within wasn’t about the size of our house.
I’ve been journeying what it means to be at home within myself when my physical home, my family and my way of moving through the world have all drastically changed through my divorce.
I’ve been centering myself in my own life – as a person who matters, with needs and feelings – especially when what’s true for me conflicts with what someone I care about wants.
So I started looking for a new home.
I shared in my last email that I had made a courageous decision.
I resisted an owner’s urgency about a possible rental earlier this summer and paused because I knew I needed to go on a retreat to the East Coast before I’d receive my next clear step.
Holding the tension of not knowing was uncomfortable yet felt right in this new way of navigating decisions.
On a layover on the way there, I received some information about why this rental was absolutely not right for me. (Thank you Goddess.)
At the retreat, I received a vision of myself as an 88-year-old who was living in a stone cottage on the coast of Maine.
She cupped my face in her hands and told me, “You will live around the world.”
Instant delight. Connected many of the threads in my life. And definitely scared me. (How would I feel “at home” without a home base?!?)
And what about my 12-year old?!?
The knowing arrived quickly after the vision: I needed to find a home in my current hometown for at least this next year to really nestle in and show up for my daughter.
These messages felt contradictory. And yet not.
I felt a maturity in being able to receive a message and trust it was true without racing off to force it to happen now, on my timeline.
So I spent the next month wrestling where to live.
Then within 24 hours, three friends texted me “Have you seen this place?”
I went to look.
A stone cottage. Gorgeously built. Trees carved into heavy wooden doors. One-bedroom. Workable price.
Then I watched myself start to try to make it work. I could put a bed in the living room for my daughter. Finagle a complex move in schedule. Have to move out in the spring.
But the kicker?
The place is named Catalpa Cottage.
And it’s on Freedom Lane.
I had a flash of a prior vision of this very house months earlier as a place I’d love to live.
Years ago, a retreat participant had received a huge healing there.
Another friend independently had a hit that I was going to live there.
It was like receiving a neon sign from the universe!
How many times have you received a sign so perfect that you assumed it had to be a yes?
Except my body was saying, Wait.
Old Meghan could easily have said: Obviously, the universe has spoken.
Yet these days I treat those signs from the universe as winks instead of an automatic “this must be it!”
If the thread doesn’t feel right in my body, it doesn’t match what I truly want, or it doesn’t match the practicalities, I pause.
So I sent another prayer up to the universe.
“Please universe, if there is a better fit for me and my daughter, clearly let me know within the next week. People are waiting for me to make a decision!”
The next day a new 2-bedroom listing popped up.
Charming. Quirky. Just my style. Rocking chairs on the front porch.
And a rock-climbing wall inside with a treehouse out back?!?
I thought my daughter would be delighted.
I went to see it. Loved it. Loved the owners. It felt energetically clean.
But what about all those winks?
After talking through the details with the owner, I felt a nudge to take a risk and share the catalpa tree story with her. I wasn’t sure how she’d take this rather esoteric tale or even why I was telling her.
Then she said, “Oh I love catalpa trees. And our dog’s sister? [The one that had licked my legs obsessively the whole time I was there.] Her name is Catalpa.”
I would love to say this story is tied up in a bow.
But it’s not.
My daughter wasn’t particularly thrilled with the place – she prefers a more contemporary aesthetic.
This is where listening gets harder for me.
I hear myself clearly – yet when what I know inconveniences or disappoints someone else then it’s a challenge to stay true to myself.
You too??
The old people pleaser, do anything for my children part of me had to really find her roots to choose the place that feels right for me – and know it will also work and support my daughter.
Then I realized.
The catalpa wasn’t telling me which house to choose.
She was saying, “Keep listening.“
I’ve taught countless times that when we receive a sign from the universe, the message isn’t necessarily “GO!”
It’s simply: Pay attention.
Catalpa Cottage was showing me an old, perfectly familiar pathway: make it work, accommodate, choose the less expensive option, accept some chaos and tell myself it was fine.
And because it arrived wrapped in synchronicity, I could have easily spiritualized choosing the familiar pattern.
Maybe that was the invitation:
Do you want to learn this one again?
Or are you ready to choose differently?
I chose the house that feels more supportive of the life I’m building.
And I’m still having to hold myself through what that choice brings up.
This is what I’m practicing right now:
Deep listening.
Discerning the practical alongside the spiritual.
Choosing what’s true even when someone else may be disappointed.
Maybe you are too.
So if you’re in between deconstructing a relationship, a home, a job or business, an old way of being and creating the new, I feel you.
What do you already know but struggle to actually live?
Comment below. I’d love to know.
Meghan Gilroy is a shamanic healer and spiritual mentor who helps women hear what’s true underneath all the noise, trust what you’re hearing, and actually live it. Rooted in the teachings of don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, she blends timeless feminine wisdom with modern spiritual practices to spark transformation in individuals, families, and communities.
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If you’re having trouble hearing your truth and living it on your own, I can help.
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