Amanda N. C. Jones-Archer

I am the vessel in which Wandering Footprint was called into being. I created this vision out of the ether and I feel deeply it was in the collective consciousness, I merely grabbed it and attempted to create what I could to help. I am very clear I can only accomplish my dreams if I rise with those also called to this vision.
I drove Optimystic Prime into the mystic and now I drive this vision - I am Captain Archer.

I've been thinking since I wrote this first part that I need to write more. About me.. About this tale... Remembering who I was before this chapter, this book, this family.

Until 2013 I was lonely and broken.
But I always seemed to follow my heart.
I was raised on welfare by a single mom in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My mom was an aromatherapist, colonic therapist and massage therapist in the 70s. I've heard that she travelled Greece and turkey and France in the 70s following Tibetan dharma teaching... And then she fell in love with a man from Ireland who left to live on a boat on Vancouver Island. A month later she would find out she was pregnant, choose to keep me and go bankrupt, ending up at York Unveristy studying fine art. Which is where I grew up.

In grade 6 we moved to Lanark County, where my moms boyfriend and later husband lived - he had been commuting to see my mom every weekend for 4 years... And I witnessed what I came to know as true love.

In grade 9 I found out there was possibility of going on an exchange program - I had always wanted to go to Japan so I signed up... Only to be accepted and have the japan choice cancelled - so I ended up on a 200 year old (probably older) dairy farm in Normandy France for 3 months in grade 10. I got to drive through the tunnel where princess Diana was killed, climb the Eiffel tower, stand at the pyramids at the louvre and stand under l'arc de triumph... I walked the quick sands outside mont st Michel and I stood at Omaha beach and cried at a Canadian cemetery whose flowers were still tended so meticulously, feeling the weight of the truth of history.

When I returned to Canada and to high school I still had a longing for Japan and knew I'd never be able to afford it unless I could do it in high school and so I made it happen. I was accepted on exchange and spent my grade 12 year in Osaka Japan 1999/2000. I watched the millennia shift on the Pacific ocean from Japan. That year I climbed mt fuji, watched the cherry blossoms fall in Kyoto, stand under the dome building in Hiroshima (the only building left standing from the bomb)... I visited Nanjing in China with my class and learned about the atrocities and the rape of Nanking. I cried... For the brutal truth of this world. That war begets war... That the Tibetans knew the other side.

That year I leaned Kendo and tea ceremony and flower arranging, I saw kabuki and was given a yukata and bought a cheap kimono, I skiied at Nagano when my best friend in highschool came to visit. I felt more free that year than I ever had before and tested my resilience in ways I never knew I could overcome.

Then I came home, finished my OAC year (we still had grade 13) and went out to Banff for the summer - my last chance I feared before university.

I had chosen International Development. I didn't know what I wanted to do, I was an 82% avg student and the only thing I really loved was geometry and math lol. And I didn't want to be at a desk or lab for the rest of my life... I wanted to change the world, so when I found out international development was in fact specifically about how countries develop, the history of how the developed world became what it is and what holds back the rest of the world....I felt compelled to learn... I chose Guelph... And what I learned about the world and its mechanisms devestated me. I had always wanted to work for the large global organizations.. I thought they were benevolent, I thought the leaders of the world were honourable people. Only to find out everything was corrupt.

While I was at a mock NATO conference in Ottawa, representing the Ukraine, I found out my mother had a lump in her breast at dinner with my parents.

5 months later she would be gone.

And my world crumbled and I felt like the entire reality I had lived in was gone. I was alone. No one gave a shit about me. And everything I knew about everything was a complete lie.

I finished university - spent those next 2 years in a broken relationship with a man who never said I love you...
Then when I finally realized that I needed to let him break up with me... I decided to go to Africa. A dream I had had since I was around 10, a promise I made to my mother on her death bed. So I found a friend I had met through the exchange program and asked if he knew of a place I could help. I ended up going to Zimbabwe where I worked for his family's organization that supported rural associations to progress on their own terms. I got to gather sugar cane in the fields of rural zim and be invited to sit in a kitchen hutch, I played duck duck goose with 200 rural zim kids, I got to ride on a wheel well for 4 hours through rural zim with potholes the size of trucks. I got to be in a truck that got a flat tire in the wilderness of zim. I got to stand in Motopos, where the great seer had resided and feel my connection to the all that is - that my pull to Africa came from there... . The movie the power of one - and my favorite scene- was 'all the answers to life's questions can be found in nature' - was filmed there.. In motopos.. something that took me a few more years to figure out.
I got to drive next to a wild giraffe in the dark and have 3 wild elephant bulls stand just outside the gate of our hotel in Vic falls. And i got to do the Gorge swing at Vic falls. A 75 meter free fall with a harness at my waist - I said if I die here. I am ok with that. I will regret not doing this more than if I die doing This.. And so went my mantra of life.

One of the lessons I learned from Zim is- it is a dire mistake for the developed world to think they know better. No person should be off trying to help others when they are broken on the inside. I came back to Canada and I was broken. For the first time I truly felt my mothers death - and I felt the magnitude of my solitude and aloneness..

Broken men became my main occupation.. I was broken and I could only find broken men... And so it went on... In 2008 I decided to try and change my scene up and ended up teaching English in South Korea for a year - and I started regaining that sparkle I once had. - I felt free again and traveled to Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and back to Japan that year.
I was happier than I could remember... Spring 2009 I was off, with my bank account full ready for a trip of a life time - a trip I had been planning since grade 9... Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam- only to find myself in emergency surgery 12 hours after getting to Bangkok.


Yup. That's what happened. The story is so long... But through that experience I learned a shit tonne of things.
1 I had no regrets and if I was going to die that day I was happy with the life I lived.
2. Allopathic medicine is essential in critical situations - sometimes you just have to cut that shit out.
3. I can take care of me. I am capable to make choices for myself, by myself and I will survive.
4. My intuition completely saved me in this situation and so I came to see the truth of my inner knowing and my connection to something greater than myself.
AFTER surgery - they removed 80% of my left ovary - I spent 2 weeks at a reiki center in Bangkok then sailed down the coast of Thailand from Phuket to langkawi, stopping in Phi Phi Island - where I learned how to scuba dive - and a sea turtle came to say hi. - and I stood on the beach where thousands of ppl vanished during the tsunami.. And cried for the truth that is life.

The story is crazy long but I ended up coming back to Canada, realizing that I had convinced myself I was unloved and I had no friends or family that gave a shit about me.... I came to see I had learned to lie to myself about love and I knew I had to undo the lie.

And so my path to healing my heart began. - it's been a long journey. One that took me into another live-in relationship with someone who sparked the love of nature back in me but who did not see the world from my perspective and belittled me for what we didn't agree on.

And so finally it had become abusive and i was terrified to leave - he owned the jeep - he paid for the rent and i was in nursing school. But alas. My heart said to follow the bliss, follow the joy and being rid of him felt way f
more happy than being with him... Even if it meant losing everything else.. And that I knew if I continued this pattern, next stop would be having kids with this guy or the next - having to leave and it being way harder. I saw a glimpse into the control and I mustered every fiber of my being to declare to thr universe that I believed I deserve better - that I trust it - and that now is about the time it better prove that its conspiring in my favor.
Everything worked out, I got to keep my apartment, my mom's siblings helped me get a car and I got to continue going to my BScNursing.

And then summer 2013 happened. And the final straw for me was when I was told I ask too many questions in my acute mental health placment and that I was going to fail if I couldn't prove.... I had more than proven myself that summer and I was so over them - over the system - over the hypocrisy and the caddiness and the bullshit. Over the expectation that nurses should just pour love on everyone except - don't care too much or you'll get into trouble and don't care too little or youll get into trouble and - and we expect you to give a fuck about everyone else.. But we are not going to give a fuck about you.
The day I quit was the day I knew that leaving was going to be harder - my embarrassment of 'giving up'.. But my heart said run - this is never going to make you happy - and maybe that's the lesson - choosing me... Over everything else.
And over the next 3 months I fell - I fell in love with me, with the earth, with the little joys of my heart and then magic showed up and I made a symbol in the forest at the Warsaw Caves -.. I fell out of my entire life, my computer broke, I couldn't afford my phone, I had to give up my apartment and give notice at my job... I decided the universe was trying to push me west to meet my biological father... and them I met my noble, humble, farmer/baker - lover James Archer.
And magic happened. And I could let magic happen because I finally promised I would never give up on my dreams again and accepted me exactly as I was - and accepted him exactly how he was and promised I'd get to Vancouver Island one day to meet my Irish father.

And you know the rest... In the midst of the darkness - I live on a 1996 converted school bus named Optimystic Prime and she brought us into the mystic.. We now have 3 babies, Delilah Petrichor, Sterling Frost and Jameson Moon, our fur babies Tinsel and Arrow both passed this past summer and so it's just us 5 now... Just us 5... How quickly loneliness can change.... we live on Tsartlip first Nations land, wsanec territory, we pay our rent to the rightful owners of the land and we are honoured and humbled by their generosity in giving us a place to feel safe while we grow our dreams of the future....
We live on the road my father basically lives on - yet barely talks to me... And everyday I dream of providing other families with the same hospitality and safety this family has given us....
It has been this journey. Walking through fear time and time again with such hope in my heart that allows me to hold a candle to this little dream of mine. Where people can heal because they feel useful and seen and loved for being themselves. Exactly the same environment that helped me heal.
We are all broken. Our world was broken because we were little kids that didn't know any better. And now we do... Now we know that we can only change the world through changing ourselves and we can only change ourselves when we create an immediate environment around us that feels nurturing and safe. And that takes personal love and acceptance - and commitment to alone Ness. All ONE ness.

Well I didn't expect that much to get written but I suppose I haven't written much about the past in quite some time. I wrote a few blogs while I was going through those journeys but I am still a little nervous sharing... I have shared a few places but it's been a while... Maybe soon. Here.
Thank you for finding me. Thank you for being on this journey with me. Thanks for facing all your fears and still having hope with me. My deepest gratitude for your journey and what ever horror you endured to get here.

Love wins.
We will rise together. And humanity will finally dance in celebration for freedom and joy and bliss and serendipity and hope. For the dream we Cocreate together.
Angels on your pillow.
Pull back. Aim. Let Go.
Amanda Noelle Camellia Jones- Archer,