Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sierra Sophia Mercier. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sierra Sophia, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
One look at the news and it’s pretty obvious that the planet is suffering. People are suffering, animals are suffering, plants and our environment are all suffering. I had a vision one day while chanting and meditating on a moment of my own suffering and I saw these two polarizing forces surrounding Earth at war with each other. They were Love and Fear, synonymous with Light and Dark. Unfortunately Fear and Darkness is winning right now. It’s rampant, self-fulfilling and is spoon fed to us in media. I realized that I want to be part of the Love & Light movement. I have experienced my own personal transformation of Darkness into Light through the power of Love and so I’ve decided to dedicate my time and energy to helping others tap into the power of Love not just to transform their own lives, but to help contribute to the collective force of Love.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
One of my fondest memories is from childhood. Every time it would rain and puddles would collect outside in our driveway, earthworms would get caught in the puddles and drown, so I was the kid out there rescuing the drowning earthworms and carrying them safely back to the grass. This memory is a reminder of who I am, and it always reminds me of the depth of my heart. I have always been a lover of nature, but I have also always had a lot of anger in my life and in my family, especially in my youth. It is part of my family’s karma.
From a young age I grasped onto sports, one of which became my passion: figure skating. I ended up devoting my childhood and teen years to becoming a competitive figure skater, leaving home at 16 to train in an international training center surrounded by champions like Michelle Kwan, Jeffrey Buttle, and Mao Asada, to name a few. I moved there to work with a particular coach, but this coach saw an opportunity and took advantage of me, psychologically manipulating me and sexually abusing me.
In my early twenties I began a Buddhist practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism. My daily spiritual practice awakened within me an awareness that I didn’t value my life and therefore I was attracting men and relationships that didn’t value me back. This encouraged me to set my determination and intention on valuing myself as a woman. Within three years I had completely transformed the way I thought of myself, my self-worth, and what I felt like I deserved in regards to a relationship. Then in the most whimsical of ways, I met my husband. We met the second day after I moved to Los Angeles through a roommate ad on Craigslist. It wasn’t long before we realized that we liked each other a bit more than roommates.
Everything moved fast with us – a month after living together was New Year’s Eve 2011. We went to a concert that night and we acknowledged our true love for one another and knew we would spend the rest of our lives together. The following day I had one of the most profound experiences of my life. I found myself sobbing uncontrollably for eight hours straight while Andre just held me, no questions asked. It was like a damn had burst and lifetimes of tears flowed from my eyes. Except these were tears of joy coupled with the feeling that, “I found you, again.” I had a clear vision of our souls out in the cosmos reuniting in a collision of love, a “lovesplosion” as we affectionately call it. Our love felt so deep and rare and healing, and to this day has been something of mystic proportions.
In 2020, I received a download to write a book called, “How To Attract Your Cosmic Love Partner” It’s a collection of all the steps I took and things I did that I felt helped me attract this cosmic kind of love, and I compiled it into an interactive workbook. It’s currently in the process of being published, so stay tuned for that! In the meantime, I offer one-on-one Cosmic Love Coaching, dating profile makeovers, as well as photography sessions. In the future I plan to offer workshops, retreats, and many other things Love related.
I am also on a mission to spread awareness around “conscious conception” after creating our own conscious conception ceremony to successfully call in our first child. Andre and I have a travel series on YouTube called, “Love Set Run,” which in it’s first season encourages people to get involved with local organizations and do volunteer work abroad, and our most recent second season takes you with us to French Polynesia where we swam with humpback whales and consciously conceived our daughter.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I was 19 I severely sprained my ankle, which as a competitive figure skater was like a nail in a coffin. I tried to rehab it, but was too impatient and pushed myself far too hard before I was ready which lead to re-injury. After nearly three years of on and off again training and repeated ankle sprains, I had to make the hard and devastating decision to retire my competitive career.
Initially this was a bitter pill to swallow. I had devoted my life to figure skating, I didn’t know who I was without it. Right around this time is when I was introduced to Buddhism. My practice saved me. Without it I would have felt so lost and defeated, but instead I had a philosophy encouraging me around every corner. I was able to see possibility rather than defeat. So I began doing many things I was interested in. I got into Muay Thai martial arts, I apprenticed a sushi chef in a restaurant, I taught figure skating, and I started taking acting classes. It was in acting class where my heart began to fill up again and I found myself with a new passion which ultimately is what lead me to move to Los Angeles.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Acting is just as challenging as figure skating. They have so many similarities which is what made my transition from one to the other so seamless, but there’s a lot more rejection in acting than skating. In 2018 I experienced some high highs and some low lows. Within the first few months of the year I had had more auditions than ever and I booked the lead in two short films back to back. One week I was filming one movie, the next I was on a different set, then the week after that I was back onto the first film. I felt like, “This is what it’s like to be a working actress!” I was on cloud nine! Then came a wave of at least a couple months of dead silence. These lows always made me question if I was good enough, or meant for this. Then one day while I was chanting, a teaching came to me: “Make your efforts the rewards.” I had put so much weight on getting auditions and booking the jobs as the rewards, but now I was training myself to see every submission, every self-tape, every class as the reward itself. One night while dragging my feet and not feeling it when it came to submitting a self-tape, I reminded myself that my efforts are the rewards. I got the self-tape done, got called in for a callback, and booked another lead in a film.
This microcosm of experiences really taught me how our mindset is everything. This doesn’t mean I have a perfectly positive mindset all the time, working on it! But around every turn, over every bump in the road, we can either choose to be defeated and allow our circumstances to bring us down, or we can redetermine and allow our circumstances to expand us, teach us, and ultimately be able to encourage others struggling in the same way.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sierramercier.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sierrasophiamercier
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sierramercier/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/lovesetrun
- Other: This is a direct link to a downloadable PDF version of my book: http://www.sierramercier.com/cosmiclove/download
Image Credits
Amanda Rene Photography Andre Mercier Photography Kitta Bodmer Photography