Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Follmar.
Hi Rachel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I am coming up on the other side of a four year journey into the underworld, so to speak. Earth becomes our school for whatever we came to this earth to bring to humanity in this lifetime. As I provide music, education, remembrance, and guided reclamation of the feminine mysteries, I am schooled on it. Every day.
Just as the feminine mysteries work on a grander scale, some of that schooling is comprised of short moments in my day-to-day life, while some of that schooling may be years of lessons and integrations. I can safely say that these last 4 years have been some of the most intensive schooling, so much so that I needed to close my former business in order to move through it. I’ve found that I cannot paint the picture of where I am without paying homage to where I was or where I’ve been, so I will start there.
In 2016, I opened my former business, Doorway to Self. I was focused on helping people to view mental health from a metaphysical lens- metaphysical meaning beyond the “logical” or the physical- and I was extremely successful at doing such. However, if I’m honest, my ego got the best of me, and I started to believe that I knew everything there was to know about the unseen realms. I didn’t. And I never will. I was also operating from “ascension” teachings and clinical counselling training from my licensure (I have my LLPC and my masters in clinical mental health counselling), which had me in my head making “logic” of the unseen realms, rather than utilising deep discernment in my feeling body to decipher what was and was not Truth.
Every woman on the oracular, feminine path has a Hades. It is a Rite of Passage. Hades shows up when we have a lesson to learn, and we have not been listening to or learning that lesson. It took not one, but three Hades within one year to bring me to my knees, and realise where I had been out of my body, chasing false light paradigms. It was the first two who led me to closing my business in summer of ‘22, and the third who- after I returned to professional music after many years- unexpectedly ghosted me, cut me from his album, and had stolen some of my writing from me and produced it without giving me any credit.
I travelled. I shed. I remembered who I was off of a pedestal with myself centred, rather than clients and a business (because I had forgotten). I began teaching voice lessons through Grand Rapids Voice Collective in downtown Grand Rapids (big shoutout to them- they’re incredible!), and I did that for three years. I loved working with people in that capacity, helping them to deepen into their true voices, remember themselves, and shed fears around being seen. It also helped me to do the same for myself while I recovered from the trauma of abuse around my voice and performance.
In that time, I trusted more, I surrendered more, and I started playing my original music again for the first time in ten years, which led me to opening for my all-time favourite artist, Ayla Nereo, at the Stache in downtown Grand Rapids. I didn’t even have a single out, or a website, or anything. I just trusted, and God orchestrated. Simultaneously, my now-husband- the man I had been having dreams about and praying for since I was a young child- came into my life in the most serendipitous way. I would never have been able to receive him were it not for the work I was doing on myself after closing my business.
I also learned where God wanted me to deepen into my craft. I was shown that “mental health” was just the surface. I was shown that I was not just a metaphysical practitioner (as I used to call myself), but a vessel of the Void; a soul midwife; a steward of feminine remembrance.
This is not to be confused with feminism (which is actually an attempt at masculinising the feminine and calling it femininity- more on this in future writings to come which you can receive by signing up for my email list).
This is about the true feminine: the art of listening; of feeling; of slowing down… or speeding up, depending on what is happening in the “field”. It is about the unseen realms; the womb; the voice; the connection between the two.
This work is not just for women, either. Everyone has access to the feminine mysteries. We are living in them. And they are missing from our consciousness and our allowance as a society. They are pathologised, misunderstood, and shunned. Because of that, we tend to do the same to ourselves. And it is time to remember them, destigmatise them, and properly reintegrate them, which will lead us- both as individuals and as a society- to our liberation.
It is from this that I opened this new venture, which is currently called Rachel of the Rose. I say currently because I know this is not the final name, but a name under which I am operating at the moment just to be able to have a container within which to work. It’s all part of that feminine flow…
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It most certainly has not been. As I mentioned above, the feminine has been pathologised. Because of that- despite having my license in clinical mental health and also having undergone psychological testing to make sure that I’m speaking from truth, I have also been pretty wildly pathologised. I have been gaslit. I have been projected onto. I have had my words twisted. My voice stolen. My voice quieted. I am a survivor of narcissistic abuse. I hesitate to write words like “gaslit” and “narcissistic abuse” because they have become so popularised and stripped of actual definition-based meaning, but I assure you that I have experienced both of these things in accordance with the true meaning (speaking as a licensed clinician with technical, diagnostic understanding of the criterium for such).
I have lost friends. I have had tensions with my family. I have felt lost, myself, for several years. I have gone through major health issues. I have been in unsteady living situations. I have been broke.
But here’s the beauty: Where I have fallen, God has picked me up.
Where I have lost friends, I have gained truer ones.
Where I have had tensions with my family, we have all learned incredible communication skills and self-responsibility to move through to the other side.
Where I have felt lost, I have both pushed to no avail, and also allowed for myself to feel lost, which is when God has shown me the next step of the way, and also that I was never really lost, at all. Swimming in the Void is being everywhere in the midst of being nowhere, after all. So it’s both, yeah?
Where I have had health issues- which have all been reproductive in nature- I have been led into deeper womb studies, which has also led me to a larger part of the feminine mystery, womb work, and to an embodied understanding of the womb-voice connection.
Where I had no place to live, God sent friends and family to offer their homes in the most serendipitous of ways, including someone who I had only met once who had heard about the work I did for the community with my past business, and offered me his spare bedroom for several months rent-free while I got back up on my feet.
Where I was broke, I was offered job opportunities out of the blue that fit me absolutely perfectly, right at the moment in times when I was most fearful that I wasn’t going to be able to pay my bills.
And everything around my voice being shut down and me falling into a pit of fear that I was delusional? It has given me the background; the understanding; the strength… to turn this world around through my offerings.
When we trust, God provides.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
There are many different things that I “do” and offerings that I provide, but the core of it all is helping people to unleash their truest Selves, not only so that they can live the lives of their dreams, but so that- even more-so- on a grander scale, we can live in truth and authenticity as a society at large.
When we move from Truth, there is more self-responsibility, more capability and space for self-reflection, more ability and room to create and cocreate, which leads to less violence, less divisiveness, and more ease (even in the hardest moments).
A massive part of my work is therefore, also, reintegrating the remembrance and destigmatisation of the feminine, which includes bringing back spaciousness, embodied receptivity and feeling, acceptance of liminal spaces and the unkown, the “Sword of Truth” as it is colloquially known (aka oracular speech), creativity, rest, play, connection with nature, using discernment, tapping into/destigmatising/normalising the unseen, and more.
This is not only women’s work. We all have the feminine within us and around us, and the majority of our society has forgotten that piece, pathologised it, judged it, and/or shut it out entirely. In my opinion, it is the reason why we are so easily programmed, controlled, and pitted against one another. It is the reason for a majority of (if not all of) the unrest and mental illness in our world today.
What does success mean to you?
If you can honestly look at yourself and your life and say, “I’m living in integrity, honesty, authenticity, and following in the footsteps of Mother-Father God” and “I feel like I’m right on track and on path” (even if you feel like you’re in a place of liminality or like you’re completely lost); if you know you’re held in love; if you’re speaking truth (that you can feel in your body); if your heart is full; if you’re giving to your community (though only when you have a full cup, or when it genuinely fills your cup)… I would say you’re successful. And usually, when those things are the case, the rest- career, money, relationships, etc.- flow in, expounding on the definition in a more societally-acknowledged way.
Pricing:
- Vox Illuminated: Initial 60-minute voice work consultation session for those who are wanting to explore singing and/or harsh vocals, and their relationship to their voice/body/soul and the divine more deeply through their voice: $155
- Alchemical Breakthrough: 1-1 depth mentorship for those seeking to remember themselves in Truth, and therefore change the world; 90 minute session+ 1 week of voice note and texting support via Telegram $333
Contact Info:
- Website: https://racheloftherose.com
- Instagram: @rachel.of.the.rose and @racheloftherosemusic
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/racheloftherose
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/track/6InMXUykYgm9PeQNxok5f4
