06 Apr How I moved to Bali
This post is about life in Bali. If you like this, make sure to get in real-time touch with me over on my Facebook community, Soul-Level Shifts, where I do weekly free trainings on topics just like this one. You can also follow my life in Bali on Instagram @heyelainaray and DM me anytime to say hi! Btw every year I launch a business mastermind for entrepreneurs looking to grow to 6-figures and beyond, so stay tuned to find out when the next round launches. If you’re interested in strategic 1-1 support, you can also apply for a 6-month mentorship. I would love to work with you now or in the future! Drop me a line if this blog helps you. ~ Elaina
3 years ago I moved to Bali.
I remember the moment I knew I had to leave Hawaii, where I was living in literally a converted Home Depot tool shed with a mattress inside on a hippie farm doing a work exchange (and I left prestigious city ops for Uber and turned down a high level international development role in Kenya to be there… clearly I was going through something).
Within days I booked a flight to Denpasar, honoring the whisper of guidance that had never failed me in 5 years of traveling on one-way tickets around the world.
Just a few weeks later, the volcano on the Big Island erupted and the farm (and the entire neighborhood) that had been my Hawaiian home for 2 months was covered in about 50 feet of molten lava.
Like many people, I arrived in Bali on a 2 month tourist visa and could never have imagined that just 3 years later I’d be fully settled in with an Indonesian company, a large real estate investment under my belt, a thriving coaching business, and be fully immersed in the long-term expat community along with my soul-aligned man.
I got everything I ever asked for and so much more.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing over these 3 years, Bali working her magic by CONSTANTLY bringing up all of my shadows for healing…
There have been many times out here that I felt so lost,
So broke, trying to run little workshops or teach yoga just to get by,
Questioning why I ever left a safe corporate career.
I was determined not to have to go back but not quite believing myself to be an entrepreneur yet.
There were long, lonely periods of celibacy and womb healing as 9 years of singlehood was being cleansed away by brutal confrontations with my attachment patterning and childhood wounding.
There were many times I realized that I’d never quiiiite fit in with the super woo-woo side of Bali,
But also knowing I was never going back where I came from.
I was somewhere in the middle.
Still a little too restless and ambitious for the average island expat hub, a little too off the deep end for a life anywhere else.
The community wound up being perfect for me.
I found my role here as someone who crosses multiple worlds and frequencies, grounded enough to support the healers and magicians, witchy enough to understand the real depths of their gifts as I help the New Earth become wealthy and grow real legs in the online business world.
I found friends and the kind of conversational resonance where you drop in, all the way in, and feel a stillness beneath the words, a readiness and willingness to go there, say the thing, feel the thing.
You are my daily inspiration, all of you. Shamelessly living out the lives many people want but are too scared to go after.
I’m forever indebted to this island, and to the whisper of guidance that brought me here and has since told me to never leave.
The voice that brought Rene and I back from India early last year in March, feeling a sudden pull back to the island.
I remember us saying to each other somewhere in Goa: “I feel like we’ve outgrown this kind of travel-centered lifestyle, let’s go back and stay for awhile and focus on work and building a serious life in Bali.”
And the rest is history. We landed in the best place on the planet to ride out a pandemic and we are so grateful to have been spared a lot of the chaos and mania that other parts of the world have endured.
Thank you, sweet whisper.
Thank you, divine timing.
Thank you, badass Elaina who left behind everything as a 23 year old to travel the world and figure it out.
You didn’t think you had what it takes to really make it out here as a free-wilding, successful entrepreneur like those Bali expats you used to look up to… and you were wrong. Blissfully, happily, delightfully wrong.
I’ve learned that I don’t need to be right when the surprise of making the leap of faith and going for it anyway gets to be this good.
I love that part of me and I love that part of you.
The part that holds the faith.
Not belief, not knowing, not even trust… just pure, wild, blind, got-no-other-choice FAITH.
Faith brought me here and it will take me where I’m going next.