We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Felissia Mae a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Felissia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
Taking a risk can be big or small. In the last few months I decided to take a risk. It was a risk I didn’t necessarily see as a risk at the time yet now looking back it definitely was one.
About a year ago I had found two different colleges I wanted to attend, they both were colleges that seemed great for me yet they had two different career paths. One was in holistic health and one was in my creative endeavors as an artist. I didn’t know too much about either yet I did know they both were calling my name. I struggled listening to my intuition at the time and was going through various different challenges as well. It was an overwhelming time for me yet it was a very new chapter in my life, I just knew I wanted to continue to work on myself and look into a new direction that could aid in my journey so far. I loved creating and helping others through a holistic approach like reiki along with learning about the body and prevention of sickness and being able to aid in your healing. I also had my music that I was and of course still am very passionate about that I needed support in too. Due to a lot going on I chose the college that at the time made sense along with it was less than a year to complete. I told myself after going here I’ll then focus on possibly starting the other one. It was the holistic college I decided to choose. Yet after starting and doing my best to adjust to my new schedule it was only the first week and I just new within my spirit I couldn’t continue. I didn’t really understand why I just new that I couldn’t force myself to continue something that at the time didn’t make sense anymore. It was a scary thing to just back out because of the investment along with many other obligations I had already made yet I took a risk and listen to what I felt my soul was telling me too do. Afterwards even though my decision was hard it provided me some relief. I had been experiencing more challenges within my personal life so allowing myself that freedom of choice it aided it more healing I needed to do for myself a long with many other things I could put more focus on. Here we are about a year later now with a much more understanding why things happened the way they do the college I didn’t choose came back around as a option for me this year. It was a month prior to there start date and after carefully taking my time to better understand this college along with having a healthier mindset and able to tune into my intuition better I decided this was the perfect college for me. It was just weeks earlier that I was wanting to go in a different direction yet it lead me towards this college I didn’t choose from last year. I had no plans of even attending college again yet it was almost the same feeling I got from last year in my spirit telling me this is what I needed to do. It was another risk I was willing to take knowing the fear behind it of, what if what happened last year happens again, what if I’m making the wrong choice. I was also faced with some challenges of just voicing to certain individuals why it made sense to me this time to do this. Sometimes there are no words to explain why something isn’t right for you yet also why something is. It’s now been almost a month since I started at this new college and the amount of unexpected blessings from attending has been overwhelming but in the best way possible. Sometimes taking certain risk that don’t necessarily always work out can still lead you to things that were always meant to work out just in a way that you’d never expect. I can say the growth I’ve gained from making certain choices and taking certain risk has helped me learn how to listen to my inner voice more and understand it better even through the risk that didn’t necessarily work out for me yet I like to say no matter what everything works out in my favor even if I don’t realize it right away. I can happily say I’m an official student at John Paul the great catholic university in Escondido Ca and am currently working on my bachelors degree in Digital Music along with Creative Entrepreneurship. Being part of such a beautiful community that truly accepts me for who I am as an individual, Yet it’s more than a university to me, it’s a soul family I never thought I needed, it’s what my soul was guided too and all I had to do was continue down the yellow brick road.
Felissia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I consider myself an artist. My life is my work. I am a Singer/songwriter and have been creating music since I was 12 years old. It’s been a journey, I’m currently 33 now and have had many challenges a long my journey yet the challenges have helped me understand myself better to be able to expand my creative expression. I believe I’m an old soul that has a purpose to not only share my gifts yet also guide others with their own gifts. I’ve worked in the mental health field, trained within the military fields along with experienced many health issues along with trauma. I have overcome and continue to overcome a lot of these challenges by looking within and allowing myself the healing I need and deserve. I create music that can touch others in a way they can relate too along with choose to heal as well and know they are worthy of greatness too. I am currently now attending John Paul the great catholic university to help me to continue to build my business and continue my music journey of spreading a message of Unconditional love, hope and inspiration. I’ve learned a lot of my experiences has brought me wisdom that can provide others a guiding light in there journey in whichever direction they choose to go in. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find our true calling that can give back in a big way. Mine took 33 years yet within that 33 years it allowed me to see the bigger picture and continue too. Everything happens for a reason. It’s one of my motos of life and it’s something I plan to connect within my business that I’m currently in the process of organizing to launch. I do a lot of content creation work on social media and am open to collaborations along with support in funding to build this empire that not only will raise more awareness within healing and understanding what that means for ppl individually wether that’s from certain traumas, relationship abuse, understanding who they are as an individual and how they can live there best life by starting where there at in life. Yet also to be able to not only use my music to guide others, yet also guide others within sharing my story and the obstacles I’ve overcome yet that challenges I still struggle with today. Faith plays a big part in this as well. My spiritual connection within the divine is something I believe that has prepared for this journey. There’s a lot within my journey and I know it’s no simple task yet I look at those who inspired me and kept going even when they were told it was impossible. My brand is to not only inspire others to open up there creative spark no matter what title they hold, yet it’s also about challenging that status quo and finding happiness from within no matter your belief system, or your situation. I was homeless, I was assaulted, I was put through a lot of unnecessary trauma, I experienced many challenges that could have killed me yet I’m still standing, I’m not surviving, I’m thriving and you can too!
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I believe we are all creative in our own way. We have the ability to tap into our creative gifts if we tap into ourselves. Looking at the word creative is looking at the word creator. If you made something within your life whether that’s coffee or a painting that’s not so great you’re still creative. You just have to find what drives you to create, along with not just focusing on an aspect like writing, music, painting or acting. There’s many ways you can look at being creative. An engineer is a creator, doing certain things at your job in a way ppl don’t understand is a form of creativity. Allowing yourself to tap into your inner child is a form of understanding the magic of life even if you experience a terrible childhood. Look at your life like you’re in a movie and you go back into your childhood to heal the wounds that affect you today. This is something I had to do for myself to help me believe I deserved love, that I was enough even though I was told I wasn’t from a young age. When your told certain things as a child or experience things through certain traumatic events and don’t allow yourself to heal it continues to affect you throughout your life. Being creative can be simple yet complex. It’s all about allowing yourself to be open to the unknown forces that can guide you in a way you never thought possible.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I was 19 years old I tried out for American idol and was actually selected to meet the famous judges yet during the waiting period I was in a terrible school bus accident that kept me from going back to American Idol. I look at it has a blessing in disguise now because yes it was terrible, yes I had to do a lot of healing and still have do yet it lead me in a direction that allowed me to see the world in a different perspective. It allowed me to meet ppl I might not have met if it didn’t happen. Either way it lead me into a world that I’m grateful I was guided into. We look at storms and natural disasters that happen and cause so much damage that we don’t even know if there’s any coming back from it yet there’s always hope even if it’s just a lil match of hope. My journey allowed me to write my album “Beautiful Disaster” which is currently available on SoundCloud to listen too. I’m called “That Ancient Artist”(Faefae Mae) if anyone wants to take a listen. Each song tells a story that connects to the many experiences of my life. I have a lot of other music that helped aid in my healing journey and allowed me to understand why might these certain things happen in the way they did. We may believe at times we have control over our life yet I believe in the unseen forces of the universe and how it sees the bigger picture. Yes I believe in free will and it allowing us to choose our destiny along with working with the universe to guide us within tapping into our higher selves. However the looks too you, wether your more spiritual or religious. Everything is spiritual I believe, It takes resilience and some intense spiritual faith to go thru certain storms that are meant to destroy all of you yet you come out looking like there’s no scratches on you, yet the scars run deeper than the physical eye can see. The depths of me are like a badge of honor. I wear it very well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/faefaeempire
- Instagram: @faefaeempire
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thatancientartist?si=gX-z7KmuhBs-e8ST
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/zEB3U3B9nnX6DnHM8
