Priestess Training: Expectations vs Reality

My actual Aphrodisia application, with post-crowning commentary

This summer, I was crowned a priestess. 🤩It’s time to tell the tale. 

What happens in six months of intensive priestess training? Our story starts last summer, when I applied for Bria Nuccio’s Aphrodisia programme. 

August, the Meadows, my solar system notebook, and me. Atop a tree stump, I penned by hand the words that led me to my apprenticeship. This very draft is included below, alongside present day commentary. My current reality is not quite what past Xandra envisioned. Instead it is beyond her imaginings. 🌈

First, a note on where I am now: stretching out in the first summer vacation I’ve granted myself since childhood. 

I’ve felt incapable of work, beyond the bare minimum I’ve committed to. In the past, I’ve churned on, desperate to discover the next big thing that — if I’m being honest about my motives — will legitimise me, and promise me financial security. But right now, I am truly happy and at peace in the present, and oddly, that is not only enough. It is everything. 

Financially, I have enough regular income to pay my bills and sustain my coffeeshop writer habit, but no savings, and no guarantee that I can afford my Alton Towers Scarefest trip I’ve been dreaming of all year. However — I’m okay with this. I know that my worth is not the same as my income. I know that if I can’t go to (another) theme park this year, it’s because there’s more fun to be had at home. I trust the divine timing of my life, and the abundance that always finds me, in ways money can’t buy.

So here it is, an actual entry from my Priestess Diaries. Below you’ll find my raw, unedited Aphrodisia application, a preservation of my past being, in conversation with this summer’s self, on what beautiful things have happened instead. ❤️