My Story
Welcome! My name is Fe(lix) Wild but the parentheses are silent.
“Fe(lix), you are sunshine in a UV Lit World.” RAS | Licensed Doula
I have been a person people have trusted with their most spectacular thoughts, stories, and ideas since I can remember. Perfect strangers seemed to want to connect about deep things with me in grocery stores, restaurants, and at various places I was employed. Casual conversations would make their way toward sensitive subjects, often surrounding big life shifts.
Strangers have looked to me for life-changing advice such as:
Should I get a divorce?
Can you tell me more about that spirit you are seeing next to me?
Wow, it’s funny you mentioned that intimate detail I’ve never told anyone in my entire life.
During these moments when our souls would connect, where the world around us fell silent, I realized I needed to share this skill with others.
Through it all, I kept getting the sense that I was different. Where most people would only see the surface of an issue I could often peer through what was really being said and connect with others in ways that left us both feeling more seen, whole, and shifted by the time we finished.
When I was a child I distinctly remember being able to connect with those who had passed. I could also communicate with nonphysical beings and get psychic messages that would turn out to be true. While practicing these skills a number of intense traumas happened in my youth including mental, sexual, and spiritual abuse. As a child growing up in Los Angeles, California I began to build walls between my inner gifts against a hardened big city which seemed to not align with my values. I changed my name many times over, often finding new aspects of myself within each identity. My life felt performative. I would force myself beyond my boundaries into periods of extreme exhaustion and over work fueled by perfectionism. I lived to be of value by others no matter the cost to my own needs and values. I was caught in a web of my own doing and didn’t even know it.
Finding purpose in life when I thought I needed to parent my parents was challenging. My then undiagnosed bipolar, depressive, and manic mom (who I have an incredibly warm and wonderful relationship with now) was a tumultuous rite of passage. My father (who shared a period of 10 years not talking to the other) was much closer to me at the time and often my savior from my mother during my youth. However, his Romanian origin story often put me in a box of gender norms and cultural expectations. His rage, that felt lifetimes deeper than the present, took center to anything he deemed negative. When I came home with C’s or worse I was sent to my mother’s. When my mother would have a manic episode and take it out on me, I would have my father pick me up and save me. Back and forth over 18 years I began to learn how to act and respond to what my parents wanted on the outside while I lived in a separate world internally.
This was perfectly aligned with my dream career of theater. Beginning in middle school I was sent to specialized programs where dance, theater, singing, and stage were part of the curriculum. These magnet programs continued through high school and were a way for me to begin to find my creative and expressive nature. It was through theater I learned to both channel my feelings into productivity while also being cast in edgy roles.
OVER ACHIEVING WASTED YOUTH
In High School, I had a boyfriend who listened religiously to Marilyn Manson (before we knew he was a schmuck).
We would wait for hours on Hollywood Boulevard at his art shows and concerts. I wanted to be a good student who was also a badass. I wanted to spit blood and watch fistfights while getting A’s on every paper. Liking boys turned into liking girls and I found myself in a series of relationships with women who were either incredibly demanding or downright cold. Each of these women attempted to control, manipulate, and shame me into actions that didn’t value me as a person.
By the end of high school, I wanted to run away from all I had known and become more myself. I chose a college in-state but far enough away so that anyone from my youth would be forced to call before visiting.
UC BANANA SLUGS
At UC, Santa Cruz I majored in Theater with an emphasis in Dance Theater. Contact improv and immersive theater began to take center stage to my interests. My youth’s interest in Musical Theater changed into connecting with the works of Boal’s Theater of The Oppressed, Pina Bausch’s seamless ability to transform her dance company’s bodies into masterful storytelling, and Marina Abramovićs long-lasting endurance pieces which both made my skin crawl while not being able to look away.
I also spent a solid three years performing various Rocky Horror Picture Show characters with Slugs in Fishnets. By the end of college, I wanted to start a queer theater troupe that would travel and create a platform that would change the minds of the masses. And then something incredible happened. I put myself through one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences ever.
CROSS COUNTRY TRIP
Traveling by myself as a non-binary, shaved headed, righteously outspoken femme across the United States for three months changed my entire outlook on life. I had seen the USA through TV, stereotypes cast across the nation by entirely relying on what was shown to me. Being on the road by myself for an entire summer changed my value system.
Where I thought I was stuck going at it alone, I found company. Where I thought of myself as independent, only relying on myself, I learned to be interdependent with people who were wanting to help me. I learned how to ask for help.
I learned that at the core of most people, we really want to connect!
THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS
In late 2009 I landed in my life’s long dream of New York City. Well, to be honest, I spent a handful of Winter months in Rahway, New Jersey. This was where I learned, during a several-day blizzard, that I was transgender.
It didn’t make sense to me at the time. How could I be so feminine and still want to transition? I moved to New York in early spring 2010 where I began to build an amazing support system of queers, theater makers, and my backbone. Identifying as transgender I learned I wanted to break the mold of what being male or female meant at all. I had always been a rebel who demanded to listen to my own life path without needing much validation from societal gestures.
For me, transitioning was an important rite of passage concerning growing up and becoming my full spiritual self. It was an arduous process that gave me more context around how fundamentally hormones could give us different lenses. I ended up falling for another transgender person who helped me at the beginning of my physical transition, giving me my first shot, and supporting me through much of my first year on testosterone.
We ended our relationship in a fury of Aries-Gemini unsustainably and I decided to leave NYC after two years of calling her home. I sought to finish the cross-country trip I started years before.
TRAVEL + MEDITATION + FARMING
I spent the next six months traveling. Seeing New England was cathartic since my former boyfriend was from Massachusetts. I also spent time through Northern Middle America and landing back on the West Coast. For a few months, I spent time with my spiritual sister Nikki Moon and her family at Inspiration Farm in Bellingham, Washington. Our time centered around family dinners, gathering stories, and shifting from my big city lifestyle. Eventually, I made my way back down to my college town of Santa Cruz, California.
It was there I decided to attend my first 10 day silent Vipassana Meditation Course in North Fork. A decision that would allow me to go so deep I healed past life-death experiences and shifted my trajectory from moving to New Orleans back to New York City.
Upon my return to Santa Cruz, I got the call to do some WWOOFING in my birth state of Arizona and spent time at a place called Windsong Peach and Leadership Center in Nogales, Az.
The first Arizona sunrise was amongst the most memorable as I walked down to the communal kitchen. I hadn’t met anyone on the property yet as I had arrived late the night before. There had been a welcome note left with some instructions to walk down a half a mile to the main house and make myself some breakfast when I awoke.
I grabbed some eggs from the fridge and was fully immersed in the ambiance of the South Western arid charm. Nearly completing my fried eggs I noticed a woman with long dark hair walk past the window of the rectangular courtyard. When I turned my head in her direction I noticed a cat standing at my feet, Jade who eventually let me befriend her.
I ran out to meet the dark-haired woman but when I opened the door there was no one was in sight. Ten minutes had passed before I found another person with short hair who said she would take me on a tour of the property and that her partner would be arriving later in the day. It did not seem odd to me at the time until a few night’s dinner later.
I asked my two hostesses about the woman with black hair. Their eyes both stared blankly at me. Well, it’s funny you mention that one of them began. It turned out Ginny was the property owner up until her death a few years prior. She did not often make herself known to guests, but the couple times she had it was always a short period of time. It was at that moment I decided to be unashamed of my spiritual gifts, to embrace myself fully, and come out of the “broom closet”.
Ghosts could let me see them and I was ready to hear their stories. Between farming, border work, and entirely reorganizing their full-sized library (Ginny had asked for my assistance when I walked by it one day as a cold draft went through my entire body) my life had transformed. I wasn’t afraid to tell people I could see ghosts and connect with other worlds.
THE SECOND COMING
After a little travel via the south up the East Coast, I decided to return to NYC based on my visions during my first 10 Day silent Vipassana Course. During the experience, I saw myself being back in Brooklyn and harvesting all the fruits of my heart’s foundational work in The City I had already planted.
Upon my second attempt at New York, I became the Production Manager for {Your Name Here}: A Queer Theater Company centered in Midtown Manhattan at TaDa Theater, was featured in my own show where I had immersed myself over a year around the subject of suicide in the Hot Festival, and peripherally volunteered for Mix Film Festival since my then-roommate and chosen family was a big collaborator.
I was piercing both at a studio in Williamsburg and also (although I would never attempt this now) performing ritualistic piercings out of my home. I knew I had made the right decision to return to the city that never sleeps.
That was – of course – until I started to not sleep.
EARTH SHATTERING CHANGES
I didn’t feel that my body was whole. I longed to be released from the confines of my chest. Top surgery became my main focus, after all, my personal and professional projects began to lack their same passion. In September 2013 I was blessed to be suited with a new chest which honestly saved my self-esteem and body connection. I wanted to be closer to my heart. Upon returning to NYC from Maryland where I had surgery, I found my world beginning to shatter.
My then-roommate and long-time chosen family had begun stacking resentments around my spiritual beliefs and community building. We had talks about cultural appropriation and ways he saw me actively participating in harmful practices that did not originate in my family of origin. We spent much of that winter growing apart and walled off from the other until my move to The South. In the end, I did take what he offered to heart, though it was some of the most painful medicine I had experienced. It opened a door to finding what my roots were, where my gifts could come all the way through, and the universal spiritual truths that were evident across cultures and people. I like to say that time period was my big wake-up call by getting pushed out of the nest. It made me walk in my white skin differently. It’s a chapter I learned a great deal from and am thankful for.
At the time it felt like the city that helped me find my backbone was also sucking all my marrow from its true purpose.
I packed up my life and headed to Asheville, North Carolina, where I had decided to move to after sitting with people of the Lakota Tribe during a Sacred Grandfather Ceremony.
ENERGY WORK
Spiritual opportunities started to find me in surprising ways. It was during a festival I learned I could channel people’s energy and that others wanted to hear the messages I could perceive and feel around them.
BURNS TRANSFORMED ME
Over the handful of years going to both small and large Burns I learned a great deal about alternate realities. Being around a bunch of people with adventure on their minds and an open attitude to experiencing life helped me cultivate a strong relationship to my curiosity. I saw the difference between these smaller communities against the big world’s expectations. Plus, never shying away from a chance to indulge in some fantastic costumes, I really enjoyed many life changing conversations, friendships, and connection to something more powerful than anything I had done a lot of before, energy work. After my first Burn I decided to join different camps who would offer some type of Spiritual Outreach. From tea ceremonies, to calling in the directions, to having one-on-one private energy sessions, I felt transformed by the power the community had to reciprocate. It was a beautiful avenue to explore for a period of time and I’m grateful to have participated.Being a queer and transgender person, I did however, find some aspects of Burn Culture problematic. When offering to sit with people (especially white folks) in my own spiritual community to question the places we had been practicing cultural oppressive representations I was met with unnerving resistance and cold shoulders. The notion of questioning my friends was difficult enough but to have them reject my concerns threw up red flags. I knew at some point I would have to make a choice.
I then vowed to stop going to Burns. It was a hard decision and one I still find myself wishing for big community changes. Burners have been some of the most exciting, spontaneous, and supportive friendships I have maintained. Still, I decided to live my life in ways that embody centering a person or group whose culture I do not have origins in. I learned to adapt my ways of viewing the spirit world and it has served me well since.
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
When I arrived in Asheville, I went into absolute culture shock. I began working full time as a piercer in Marion where I wore a lot of Carthartt and kept my femme parts to myself. Eventually, with the help of a little spell, I made my way toward working at their location in West Asheville. Between working four days a week, dating an entire city, and searching for my next trade school experience I had a pretty busy six months.
I knew I wanted to go back to some sort of trade school that was spiritually inclined while not wanting to overstep my cultural parameters.
BLUE RIDGE SCHOOL OF HERBAL MEDICINE
Herbs found their way to me sitting in my kitchen one day.
By the time I moved to Asheville before my 29th Spring Birthday, I knew it was exactly where I needed to be. Living on the east end of town I lived with a group of intentionally minded folks who took communal living to heart. Chores included daily chicken feedings, piles of dishes to do, and cooking communal meals for five people which changed a lot of my lifestyle needs and understand about community. Potlucks and random houseguests were the center of our universe at The Zebra Hill House with whom I still share community and love. It was in this kitchen, five months into living there, I learned that the previous renter of my room was the assistant to CoreyPine Shane of The Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine and suggested a meet up with him. A few months later I was accepted as one of his apprentices for the upcoming season without any prior training or deep understanding of herbs.BRSM HERBAL APPRENTICESHIP (900 HOURS)
Little did I know when I began this program I would be making lifelong connections that would transform my life.
I would also adapt many practices into my daily living that would transform my physical and emotional body.
Photo by Kate Terra
Photo by Kate Terra
LIFE’S A DRAG
Missing my New York performing life I started doing drag shows on a weekend basis at O’Henry’s. I was cast in a two act per weekend show that would help supplement my glitter habit and afford me three drink tickets. Sir Vex was a vehicle to help me shake off the school week and jump into Asheville’s nightlife.
By the time herb school ended I felt burnt out. Between full school immersion twice a week, full apprentice days of ethically wildcrafting twice a week, processing herbal medicine to help run Pine’s Herbals, and performing new drag numbers on the weekends where we eventually were asked to do more for less, I was exhausted. By making products from harvest to production using GMP’s, and working one day a week to coordinate upcoming classes and confirm scheduled meetings over a six month period I was getting really close to empty.
My long distance sweetheart was beginning to feel too far away and my Asheville life began to shift needs. A few weeks after graduating, my partner and I decided to share a living space and tried our hand at Atlanta, Georgia. The only little thing was, my Saturn Return was about to appear.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Moving to Atlanta, Ga was an important home away from home. My best femme of over ten years was gracious in their letting us coexist in the same house for a year. Much of that year was spent working for someone whose political ideas vastly differed from mine but who I could see eye to eye with during our honest discussions. I wasn’t making much money being the sole piercer at an all Tattoo Studio with limited foot traffic.
All of a sudden, one night I had a dream that I was supposed to move back out west. These pixies had come to me with a vision and said for my safety, I should move out west. This was the same voice I had heard a few snowy winters before that told me to slow down as I rounded a turn where my car gently spun out. So, yeah, I was listening to this suggestion.
I attended my first APP (Association of Professional Piercers) Conference over the summer of 2016. It was there I took sixteen classes over a week’s long conference where I met some of the most wonderful modified people I’ve had the pleasure of being in community with. Classes including cross contamination prevention made me realize I needed to change my piercing studio habits and immerse myself in higher skill levels of my chosen profession. During that conference the head Volunteer Coordinator (Momma Duck) pulled me aside and asked if my partner was still looking for employment. She threw out a few places but a studio in Seattle, Wa called to me. She smiled as she pointed to a high end jewelry booth, mentioning they were the owners. I spoke with my partner and we manifested a guest spot on the west coast. We were hired at the start of our third day and made plans to move during winter.
We returned to Atlanta where I quit my job and refocused our lives out west.
The end of 2016 was rough. After disappointing political news we spent eight days traveling with overloaded trailers in time to make it to our job, two days before Christmas.
Seattle, Washington
My life in Seattle is still hard to discuss.
It was there, I once again, found myself in a final apprenticeship so to speak. The studio with three locations carries the highest quality fine jewelry in the entire Washington State. The company marks itself as a leading contender in the body modification world with many years experience. Each studio looks immaculate and holds pounds worth of solid gold items and high ticket items. I worked my way quickly from counter to manager. Over a three and a half year period I mostly worked and went home. I chose to center my life around work and put my worthiness in other people’s hands based on my productivity level or sales quotas.
These were honestly some of the darkest years of my life. What looked beautiful on the outside was suffocating me behind closed doors. I ended up having two different overnight stays in the hospital where I thought I suffered a heart attack. These turned out to be panic attacks that were debilitating and terrifying. I also learned I had all the food allergies and that my lifestyle was not sustainable.
Toward the end of working for this company I decided to get serious about my personal professional goals and became an APP Member. It was exciting to reconnect with my roots about piercing being spiritual and a rite of passage. Doing so much manager work I would often forget I was in the Piercing and Tattoo Industry at all. It taught me a lot about the back end of running a business. But I missed the ritual, the helping people overcome scary situations, and most of all blood letting.
At the start of 2020 we both gave our notice. I had been offered a promotion of becoming their General Manager across all their locations. It was hard to sit with so many options but I could not unhear a thought I had during a meditation sit. “No amount of money can keep me in this abuse.” I gave my notice the same week as we set our sites back east.
Then, the world came crashing down.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
When the United States shut down I think I laid on our apartment floor for two hours. The earth seemed to keep on spinning but I was worried it would spin out of control. Up until then my plans were to visit Europe for my first attempt traveling to far away places solo. I wanted to connect with my father’s Romanian roots and see everything from the western part of the country to eastern civilizations. But, as the ban took effect I could feel my months of planning slipping away. I had already put in notice at my work in early January 2020 with an end date of May 1st. Instead, we spent seven weeks holed up in our apartment packing, cleaning, and being in a series of weird feelings.
In mid-May we made the move to join a fabulous studio in The Inland North West. It was here where we learned the importance of patience for unfolding life experiences. We made a couple moves after that first move and I exhausted my body to the point of physical harm. On our final move, I accidentally fell off the back of the U-Haul platform and suffered some major bruising and a head injury. My stubbornness kept me away from the doctor for months (due to my anxiety around covid-19 in hospitals) but eventually I found out I hadn’t broken any bones. It took me a solid four months to have full mobility and function of my brain to return to the level I had been at before this major trauma. It was around then, an old coworker and I were talking about the job I had just left. They went on a whole list of reasons they felt unhappy, how they wish their life could be, and that their life goals were not going to happen during this pandemic. I listened attentively and gave them solid feedback which they very much appreciated. At the end of our phone call they offhandedly commented, “Fe(lix), you should be a life coach”.
A chill ran down my arms and all the hair on them stood straight up. I had thought about it many years before, on and off for awhile, but always came up with Ok, maybe later. After hanging up the phone I could not shake the feeling. I felt a calling like I had never connected with before, even with my deep loves of theater and the piercing industry. Life Coaching felt different. It was the white noise of my experience in customer service, the way I connected with people in both my personal and professional life, and it gave me a burst of energy thinking of this being my true calling.
I am of the strong belief that I would not ask someone to do something if I had not undergone my own inner work. What kind of Life Coach would I be if I only dished and never took it too? Especially a Spiritual Life Coach. I began to meditate more regularly again. I began letting myself feel my true feelings. I stopped working myself into exhaustion. I realized I was in my own way of my greatness that was calling me into alignment. But then I realized, I could step back into my agency and live my most authentic life by simplifying my lifestyle and working with what I had. After all that, the world seemed to be excited that I finally showed up to it in this capacity.
It is from this place, where the story continues, I offer my gifts, insights, and reminders of who you are.
I can do that now because I came home to me.