#216 The Ulu Return

Healing, Recovery, Soul Contracts, and Finding My Way Home Again...

I travelled down to Uluwatu this weekend for the first time in a year.

Or maybe more accurately: for the first time on my own terms.

I had come back twice in March 2025 to teach yoga, but I couldn’t be there without nightmares. I barely remember those visits. Then I came back once more in June when an ex-boyfriend planned a holiday for us there. But this weekend was different. This was the first time I consciously chose to return, on my own. The first time I wanted to be there.

When I left Uluwatu in February 2025, I left because I was terrified.

If you’ve been following the CNN “Motherless” / “62 Million” story — that’s what happened to me. I knew immediately after it happened how widespread this kind of experience must be, because it was so easy for me to have absolutely no idea the person I was dating had done it. I genuinely believed I had simply had the deepest sleep of my life beside him.

We continued dating until a physical assault a week later triggered my memories and forced the pieces together.

After that, I left Uluwatu and never came back. My year became a year of deep recovery, and absolute transformation in positive ways. I am not the person I was before.

This weekend, though, I was struck by how much space this part of the island gives me — and why I had been drawn there in the first place.

A very good old friend of mine messaged me and said she was flying into town and would be in the area for the weekend. My first thought was, “that’s way too far from where I live.” And then I thought - why not make the trip? It felt right.

For so long, I didn’t really know why I was being guided to live in Uluwatu in 2024. I never truly connected to the land itself in Uluwatu. And yet, this is where I joined my first 12-step fellowship. It’s where I taught my first public drop-in yoga classes in nearly five years after moving to Bali and building my own business. The routines and rituals I established there quietly set me on a path of recovery long before I knew how deeply I would need it.

Now, looking back, I can see that I was guided all along. I believe me and him had a soul contract to meet in this lifetime, and that’s why I went to Uluwatu. I think of this quote from Liz Gilbert’s All the Way to the River when I think of him…

“My friend Barb Morrison—a fellow recovering addict and old friend of Rayya’s—calls this notion “Greetings from the Boardroom” and imagines it more or less like this . . .

Long before we were born, our souls gathered in a giant cosmic conference center and decided what curriculum we each needed to sign up for in order to best learn the lessons we would seek in this lifetime. Some of us asked for tender assistance—for patient guides, devoted friends, loving parents, faithful partners, wise spiritual teachers. Some of us volunteered to provide that tender assistance.

But some of the really brave students—the ones who wanted to make the most of their experience in Earth School—asked, “Okay, who will volunteer to be my abuser this time?” or “Who will be my alcoholic family member?” or “Who will be the lover who betrays me?” or “Who will be the child who breaks my heart?” or “Who will be the one who dies and leaves me all alone?”

Now here comes the miracle.

To each request, some benevolent soul on the other side of the boardroom raised their hand and said, “I’ll do that for you, my love. I’ll do that.”

And so our teachers arranged to meet us. They agreed to bring us gifts not only of kindness and compassion but also of pain and trauma—by being exactly the people we needed to crash into at some prearranged moment so we could be broken open enough to perhaps learn something essential from the encounter, graduate from that lesson, and evolve ever closer to the light.

Wouldn’t that be incredibly generous of someone, to do that for you? To help you grow like that?

And what if a moment of clarity came—right in the middle of your suffering and struggling—when the two of you recognized each other from the boardroom?

What if you were like: “Oh, wow, I remember you!”

And all you could do was laugh, or weep, with gratitude?

And then—having served your purpose (having delivered or received the critical lesson)—what if you both released each other from your respective jobs?

What if you set each other free?

Wouldn’t that be magical?

My friends, my friends—wouldn’t that be something?”

As painful as it was, the experience changed the course of my life in ways I can now honestly say I’m grateful for. I don’t know whether I changed his path at all, but I hope I did. I pray for his well being every day. I heard the “Sick Man” prayer in an AA meeting once which I love, and I think of often when I think of him…

As I rebuilt my life this year after trauma, it changed. I no longer work evenings or weekends. I no longer work for under my worth. I have set structure around my life. Transition time. I meditate every day at 5:15am. My life now feels structured in a way it never did before. Simpler. Softer. More grounded. And I’ve changed too. In such positive ways.

Yesterday, after my friend’s yoga class, we hugged goodbye, and she said to me was as I was walking away:

“You look like you’re at peace.”

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This morning, I went to an incredible Eleventh Step meeting in Nusa Dua about spiritual awakening.

Someone shared an analogy that stayed with me all day: they described the relationship between ego & spirit like an umbrella with a broken click-stop mechanism. Normally, the little stopper keeps the umbrella open (in the spirit realm), but when it’s broken, the umbrella constantly wants to collapse in on itself (the egoic realm). You have to keep actively holding it open to stay connected to spirit, to see the bigger picture.

That’s how recovery feels sometimes. That’s how healing feels.

We have to keep returning to meditation. To prayer. To awareness. To spiritual practice. To truth. To community. To rest. To love. We have to keep choosing wellness over and over again.

I’m moving through some enormous identity shifts right now that I’m still slowly integrating, and as I look back on how everything unfolded - I believe many of them were set in motion during my time in Uluwatu a year and a half ago.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it was part of both of our soul contracts to meet there — to catalyze each other into the next evolution of our lives.

I don’t know what his karma was in all of this. I don’t know what he was meant to learn.

But I know what I was meant to learn, the next evolution closer to the light. (I’ll share more about that soon — probably in a podcast episode when I’m ready.)

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In the end, Zero and I came back to Ubud tonight one night earlier than planned.

I had intentionally blocked off Monday and cancelled my classes so we could stay in Uluwatu for three nights.

But Zero wasn’t sleeping well. Around 3am, he kept meowing and pacing around the room. Honestly, every time I’ve returned to Ulu since last February, I’ve been the one waking up from nightmares — so maybe this time he decided to play the role for me. 😂

And somewhere in the middle of the morning today, I realized something:

I had already done everything I came there to do. I went to the AA meetings. I went to my friends’ yoga classes. I ate at the restaurants I loved. I walked the beaches. I felt complete.

So I called Kadek and booked a ride home to Ubud tonight.

Now I’m back at my villa, listening to the hum of the jungle outside my window as I tuck myself into bed.

And for the first time in a very long time, I know:

I am finally home.

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