We’re Off To See the Wizard!

Before you read this story, you must know that I have never seen the Wizard of Oz. I know, this may be unforgivable and I won’t blame any of you if you stop reading now. But I hope this knowledge illustrates how wild it is that symbolism from this classic movie has pulled me along on my own journey.

A year ago - exactly a year as I drafted this - I sat at a table in Danielle Searanke’s home. Also, known as The Squamish Medium, this phenomenally gifted woman spoke to me about the struggles I’d been having with my health. (This was after she brought through my loved ones in Spirit with incredible clarity and evidence.) Over the previous five years, I’d struggled with exhaustion to the point where much of my regular outdoor activity had faded into the background as I struggled to stay awake through an entire day. Danielle described a future me shedding these challenges as I walked down a yellow brick road towards a healed state.

‘Hmmmmm,’ I thought. ‘The yellow brick road is an interesting reference. I wonder why that came up.’

Six months later I met and read tarot for my (now) dear friend Sam. In the fall of 2020, Sam launched a virtual walking program through her company She Walks the Walk that invited participants to commit to being active for 21 days. The program included yoga, journal prompts, vision boards, and a whole host of other transformative and motivational tools. When she invited me to be involved and told me that the program would be benefitting the non-profit, Her Future Coalition and their work saving women and children from human trafficking and gender abuse, I knew I had to say yes!

The very first tarot reading I did through the program was for a woman who lives near the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas. Of course, this came up in our conversation and I was fascinated to find out that the city had once been embarrassed by its Hollywood notoriety but now embraces and celebrates it.

‘There’s that Wizard of Oz reference again,’ I thought to myself. ‘Hmmmmm.’

Over the past six weeks, I’ve been developing my mediumship skills through Danielle Searancke’s Initiation 2021 course. Last week, while being a diligent student, I pressed play on a guided mediation for solar plexus and self-worth healing - and there I was, walking down the yellow brick road.

‘This is cool,’ I thought as Danielle’s voice guided me to skip along in my ruby red slippers.

The very next morning in a tarot reading, my sitter brought up her love of the Wizard of Oz and introduced me to the archetypes that best-selling author Caroline Myss pulls from the story.

“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz presents the challenges of survival that we all face on our own Yellow Brick Roads.”

— Caroline Myss

“In this well-known story, Dorothy has to seek out aspects of herself that she didn’t know she had, including courage and intelligence well beyond those of the young orphan who left her Auntie Em back in Kansas,” writes Myss in her book Sacred Contracts. “Seen as an archetypal adventure, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz presents the challenges of survival that we all face on our own Yellow Brick Roads.”

That evening as archetypes bounced around in my head with the song ‘we’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz’ and I typed phrases like ‘Wizard of Oz meaning of life’ into Google, I was interrupted by a text. My friend Becky and I have dreamed of hiking the Camino Way together since my mom did back in 2014 with her best friend.

Becky shared a Tiktok of another woman’s experience of the famous pilgrimage.

“We have to do this,” I immediately typed back to her.

“We have to,” she replied. “Like it has moved up very high on my bucket list. And I can’t imagine doing it with anyone else.”

As I sat on the couch with Netflix playing in the background, an alignment came into focus in my mind’s eye. I suddenly asked my husband, “what if the Camino Way is my yellow brick road?”

“What if the Camino Way is my yellow brick road?”

When I woke up in the morning, the confirmation was on my phone. Someone had accidentally posted in my mom’s Facebook group from her hike seven years ago. I forgot the group even existed but there it was in my notifications ‘such-and-such posted in Spain Our Way 2014’. Clicking on it, I found all the photos and memories she had shared of her journey.

I related all of this to Sam in a very long voice message to which she responded, “well, here’s another layer - all the directional arrows and signs to the Camino way are yellow.”

Sam’s life changed in 2019 when she hiked the Camino Way and came home with a plan to empower other women through walking - and so much more. After I had the honour of reading tarot for her last summer, I was floored when she gifted me an arrow bracelet on a yellow cord that she had bought at the start of her pilgrimage - and hadn’t taken off since! I’ve kept that bracelet on my altar where I see it every day and suddenly it all made sense: The yellow brick road that Danielle had seen me walking down as I healed, is my pilgrimage and that journey is destined to be the Camino Way.

So here I am - at the time of writing this - in the middle of a pandemic, unable to travel, but knowing there is something calling me towards this trip. What can I do in the meantime?

I can lean into the Imrama card from the Work Your Light deck by Rebecca Campbell. It asks ‘where are you being called to journey.’ While it speaks to a journey that our soul is taking us on, perhaps to one of the world’s sacred sites, the last paragraph of its description feels especially relevant.

“If a physical voyage isn’t possible, journey through the portal of your heart.”

‘If a physical voyage isn’t possible, journey through the portal of your heart. Follow the invisible soul trail and be willing to explore. Maybe read a book or watch a movie about a sacred time or place. Or perhaps you are being called to study an ancient lineage or body of work. Whatever your circumstances, your soul is ready to journey deep.”

In the middle of my flurry of realization and text to Becky she asked me if I’d read Paulo Coelho’s famous novel, The Alchemist - a story about the importance of following your dreams and personal legend. “I believe so much in following little signs like this,” Becky texted, as the protagonist had in the story, “and all things are definitely starting to point us to that trail, aren’t they?”

The Alchemist has long been one of my favourite books, but something I never knew until now is that the author’s first book - and what is considered a companion to The Alchemist - is called The Pilgrimage and details his experience hiking the Camino Way.

“There’s no place like home!”

So for now, I will journey through my heart. Clearly, I need to watch the Wizard of Oz and I have already ordered a copy of The Pilgrimage. After all, the last line of the Wizard of Oz is the most pandemic-friendly one imaginable: “Home! And this is my room -- and you're all here! And I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And -- Oh, Auntie Em -- there's no place like home!”

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