Sacred Self Love Session - Rachel

I love you forever, Rachel.

Below is a beautiful note from Rachel about her experience working together:

“It has been an incredible gift to have been showered in Olivia's Ashton's compassionate ever growing creative light since the first time we met, over three years ago.

This beloved Woman holds a most beautiful frequency of love and care that she came to Earth to share. When I look closely into the energy of Olivia's lifes work I see time after time that she offers us all a powerful gift to be captured in our authenticity. I have had the personal pleasure to have been in closeness with this beautiful woman in many different ways. I've journeyed with her and her camera within some of the most monumental moments of my life. Olivia has held space to celebrate the growth of my own lifes work timeless amounts. I have seen her artistry touch sisters right before my eyes at our Retreats and in the light of the every day. She is the sweetest Creative with a passion to share into the depths of human and heart connections.

I will never forget our Sacred Self Love session at the Colombia River Gorge. This was a powerful time for me as I was laying down many life transitional intentions and she was there to full heartedly capture my experience of merging into the sunset and revealing into the truest shades of my own beauty. Together we opened an experienced something "so much more" then our precious minds could have ever imagined. It was a soulful journey and for me personally it was a lifting of the veil.

I hold all images that this beloved sister has gifted my way as true treasures, they are my touch stones, pure medicine pieces representing the most personal symbols that empower my lifes path of sacred self love.

Thank you Beloved Sister for your grace, thank you for your heart that weaves behind your work, we are so blessed to have you along this lifes journey. I love you.

- Rachel Maroudas // www.essenceofthemother.life

Essence of the Mother

I had the truest honor of creating imagery with Rachel for her wild, exquisitely divine flower essence line before her big move down to the California sunshine! Rachel is a powerful healer, mystic, sacred ceremonialist, intuitive counselor, beloved soul sister, and creator of “Essence of the Mother” her potent flower essence line. I hope you feel the deep love that flows through Rachel’s work through these images. She is the purest heart. If you feel the call to connect with Rachel further, a link to her beautiful corner of the internet lives here: www.essenceofthemother.life Enjoy exploring her portal of magic!!

"To be embodied is to live centered from within ones self, it is creating a loving relationship of sacred respect and self care that allows all parts of you to be held in the light of your truest source of love.” – Rachel. Flower Essences are botanical medicine known as homeopathy; they are created from the mature blossoms of vibrant flowers, stored in spring water and combined into an infusion process of sun or moon light which allows the vibrational remedy of a flower's essence to be transferred and come alive in medicinal form. Each flower holds its own unique imprint of medicine and messages that can assist within your own path of healing, revealing, transformation, self love and emotional freedom.

Flower Essences work to bring about overall balance and healing to the whole self, which includes the physical body, the emotions, mental outlook, attitudes and spiritual understanding. When working with flower essences you are connecting to the life force or spirit of that individual flora and opening yourself to an ancient modality of  Nature as a powerful catalyst to your own therapeutic pathways.

Rachel Maroudas the creator of Essence of the Mother is a medium between plants and human, she has studied the Secrets of the flora since her adolescents. What was once a means of running to nature to find comfort, stillness and truth soon became a life long discovery of the secret healing world within a single flower. Essence of the Mothers flower essences are crafted from the un touched flora that grow vast and wild within the deep forests, deserts, tropics and high mountain plains. 

On Life + Death

It’s an epic act of courage, faith and resilience to simply exist. We are born into these bodies, gifted with the capacity to love, connect and feel exponentially, yet promised nothing but the inevitable disintegration of it all. I’ve found that the more I open my heart to the full spectrum of this mysterious human experience, and peer into the depths of both life and death, the wider my heart expands and the more I can hold.

I called the suicide prevention hotline twice before I got the courage to talk to a loved one. The thought of leaving this life felt like relief in contrast to the cyclical thoughts and feelings I didn’t yet have the skills to navigate. But sharing what I thought was my darkest secret, and having it lovingly held by another being, showed me that what I was feeling was okay. It showed me that looking directly at my life, and compassionately allowing ALL of my darkness in, could be seen as just another part of the dance here. Just another expression of life. Once exposed to the light, this feeling of despair lost some of it’s gravity. Shame loves the dark, and sharing my experience cracked open what I thought was a dense, unchanging, forever feeling and showed me that it too, would change.

I’ve since learned that through sitting quietly and observing my internal world, that fear, anxiety, loneliness, joy, elation, love, excitement, despair, gratitude, inspiration, suicidal thoughts — it’s all just energy flowing through me, and it changes. I’ve also learned that behind it all is calm, abiding, awareness. I’m learning that I can rest here in this awareness, even as the waves of emotion flow through me. I can feel and hold it all. I’m learning that I can trust my unique experience of life here.

Know that each of our unique expressions are intrinsically valuable. There is nothing we need to DO to earn our place here on this planet. Know that our hearts beat along side one another, and that if we might have ONE duty here, it’s to intimately get to know ourselves, love those around us, reflect their inherent goodness back at them, and in moments of need, help carry each others burdens.

Its an epic act of courage, faith and resilience to simply exist. The suicide prevention hotline number is 1-800-273-8255 - available 24/7 365. You can always direct message me too. I love you, it’s an honor to be here with you 🌎#SuicidePreventionMonth #SuicidePreventionDay