Introduction
I’m writing my first blog post honouring the gifted human who didn’t live to see her vision for the world fulfilled - Jolie Egret Elan M.S., Founding Director of Go Wild Institute, teacher at Matthew Wood Institute of Herbalism and Work That Reconnects facilitator and community member.
She envisioned and worked continuously to bring into reality a society sustainable for all, nature and humans alike. This is my way of showing her that her vision stays alive and can come true one day.
The story that follows is a proof of what happens when a human being reconnects with Source within and follows the guidance that comes through the wisdom of the heart. It is also a way in which you can see manifested a saying like: “When the student is ready and has a mission called forth by the Soul the Universe conspires to support the student to fulfill that mission.”
Life Flowing Into Life
Meeting Jolie Elan online in the fall of 2020 was the perfect example of how Nature and Source guided different people to help two souls reconnect so that one of them can lead with more awareness from then on.
In case this is the first time you hear about her, she died on November 30th, 2020, shocking loved ones and all who knew her as it came too short after the bad news about her cancer. She left this world right on St. Andrew’s day when I was opening myself to grieve my mother’s death for the first time in 29 years...
When The Student Is Ready… She Meets Her Teachers
The full story of my encounter with Jolie starts in November 2019 when a woman named Carol listened to her guidance and came to a class she didn’t need because she took it before and was well on her way. As it turned out, I was in that class and she was there to meet me and guide me on my journey to heal my body and take a huge turn in my life.
Carol is a dear friend and Registered Holistic Nutritionist who opened my eyes to the field of health, nutrition and herbalism. She highly recommended Steven Horne as the go to source for learning about plants and their use.
As I always go down the rabbit hole, I took some of Steven’s classes that combined plants and emotions and little did I know I would hear he recommended a book that Matthew Wood from Matthew Wood Institute of Herbalism wrote. Right after reading this amazing book I signed up for Matthew’s newsletter in June 2020.
In July 2020 I read in their newsletter that they had a new class, Language of Nature, with Jolie Elan that was live online on October 13th, 2020.
I just remembered I started following Jolie as soon as I found out about her class. One day she shared on her Facebook Page that she spoke at the Center For Spiritual Living in Redding. When I heard her that day I became convinced she’s the one I need to listen and learn from.
Blessings of Life: Conversations With Jolie
What’s more, synchronicities happened long before her course started, ever since I laid my eyes on it. For example, as I wrote her in the email right after her course ended:
It was an emotional moment to see my son listening to his heart and starting his own journey.
Andrea petrut
...one evening after you wrote to me, my son came to me (after he went quietly on his own a bit closer to the trees in the park) to say that he prayed to Nature. I was very surprised! I am talking about prayers and gratitude but not much, just sharing here and there so definitely he didn't get that from me! LOL When I asked how come and [...] I finally found out he watched videos where he learned about how the Ancients were praying to Nature and all those things they did. He just felt like doing something in his own way.
WOW! It was an emotional moment to see my son listening to his heart and starting his own journey. He was actually THANKING Nature for different species he was fascinated about! WOW 
From the perspective of a mom who did her best to reconnect her child with himself and feel himself, the others and the environment around him, that experience was the moment where I knew he is ready to go beyond, and feel more, be more, do more. I am still not going to push but observe and just be there and live my way. Maybe children don't need us much - maybe they just need us out of their way more.
The Beauty of A Soul Shines Brighter Than The Pain
You know, dear reader, in hindsight in the videos Jolie looks so young and beautiful, open and smiling, and there’s no reason to suspect what goes beyond the look, inside the body or the soul.
You can feel her energy all the time - peaceful, loving, open, full of integrity, connection, knowingness, rooted in Mother Nature and deep values she lives and teaches by.
She’s magical, inspiring, empowering, caring and tenderly showing what is possible, guiding the listener through a forgotten terrain to remember in a way that is at the threshold between a world we can all see and another aspect of that world we all have the opportunity to understand and communicate with.
I kept sharing about her to friends and colleagues from different classes I’ve been part of, I shared on my Facebook page 🙂 Everybody had to know about her!
Ways In Which Jolie Touched Me and My Life
Here are summarized, some of the ways in which my interactions with and learning from Jolie and later joining her loved ones at her memorial impacted my being and my life:
- She taught me how to remember where I live and how to honour the original stewards of the land. She always has land acknowledgement in her videos and her emails and she had her own way of doing it. It opened my mind to inquiring and learning more about the land I live on.
- She helped me fulfill a lifelong dream of being one with Nature in my own way. Now I support others to reconnect with it.
- She made me realize I was not crazy and I wasn’t the only one who had experiences at the threshold between worlds and dimensions. When I heard others talking about her at the memorial I got courage to continue being me and ask for support and find my tribe as this path is one of the most challenging in these times. We need all the support we can get.
- Her responses to me and how life unfolded showed me again and again that life is precious and every moment matters. When I heard she died I traced our conversations looking for my heart’s answers to the question: “Did I let her know how she impacted me and my life? Did she hear how much I appreciated her and her work?” It was comforting to know that yes, I listened to my heart WHILE SHE WAS HERE WITH US, and wrote to her and especially told her live that day on October 13th, 2020.
- Her memorial service with family and dear friends had so much wisdom and so many life lessons for me as a Soul Seeker and Lightworker that I would need to write many books to show the complexity of what I received and what I understood that day. Maybe I will write some blog posts or shoot videos about it some time in the future… I know I shared some of it in that memorial service on December 17th (around 1h16min into the video and later on). I invite you to watch both memorials if you are strong enough as both are wonderful celebrations of a precious human being and an out-of-this-world soul that had ripples in the world.
Blessings Beyond The Veil
There is one extraordinary thing that happened after Jolie died. At the memorial I exchanged emails with a few people. Her friend Ahri Golden interviewed me and Amy Vanessa Smith, shared during the event that she knew my Sacred Storytelling teacher, Leah Lamb, who was another friend of Jolie Elan. That’s where I was in those moments of “what a small world we live in!”
And what I heard from Amy Vanessa Smith is another way in which Jolie touched my life - it’s about ALIVENESS.
Within seconds I would feel so incredibly seen.
Amy vanessa smith
I know both Leah and Jolie through a shared community that puts on a homegrown community festival gathering each year at summer solstice. Together, we create a yearly event full of connection, live music, "playshops", artistic parties, social justice sharings, and more. This group has also become a year-round community for me for the last 15 years. There are so many amazing, beautiful change-makers among us.
I always felt that it was a treat whenever I had the pleasure of connecting with Jolie. She was more of an acquaintance than a dear, close friend of mine, personally - although she was very close to dear friends of mine. In those moments of connection, she was just so PRESENT. Within seconds I would feel so incredibly seen. Whether we were talking about something deep and meaningful, or just laughing, dancing and playing (like in her Elvis costume!), she was WITH you and not looking beyond you or to what is next.
She was a straight-shooter and spoke her mind, and also did so from a place of love and vulnerability in herself as well. She was such a powerful being who was working so hard to protect the oaks and all connected beings. It is such a loss.
Did you see the word “PRESENT”? That’s what struck me. That she was present with people in any way she spoke to them. I am grateful to Amy for sharing this with me and allowing me to share with you as since I read this story I kept looking for mentors, coaches and teachers who could be present with me, who had the same aliveness in their bones, in their expression, in their presence. And I did.
Leah Lamb continued to be one of them.
Then I found Alina Mihai and her team and my colleagues in the program I followed with her.
Then I found Lauri Smith and Tanya Taylor Rubinstein.
Conclusion: The Legacy of An Oak Whisperer
Jolie Elan feels alive while looking at her in the video from her recorded class I first took. It’s like she never passed away. She left a huge legacy through her work and all the lives she touched.
If you are an intuitive person, activist, coach, teacher, healer, nature seeker, ecotherapist, herbalist, creative, nutritionist, writer, conscious entrepreneur, conscious leader, magic person, Soul Seeker, or anything in between and you want to deeply reconnect with nature in your own way and through the eyes of a unique ethnobotanist and ecologist, follow Jolie’s courses, see the memorial page and listen to Ahri Golden’s interview with Jolie, the “Oak Ancestor”.
I LOVE YOU, JOLIE! AND I THANK YOU!
I will always remember you. You live in my heart.
I love you all. May this inspire you and may you have the courage to be yourself whatever the world says about you.