8/8/2019 By Ingrid Ricks: Loving Life at the Edge

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By Ingrid Ricks

Loving Lifeat the EDGE

And Helping OthersGet There, Too

8/8/2019 By Ingrid Ricks: Loving Life at the Edge

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It takes only one encounter with life mentor and songstress McCall Erickson tobecome captivated by the spirit, energy and beauty she exudes and know that

whatever she’s got, you want.

But things haven’t always been so clear for McCall. Only fou r and a half yearsago, she was caught in a religion and a way of life that was suffocating her soul.And when she finally listened to her internal guidance system and summonedthe courage to walk away in search of her own true self, she found herself in

such a dark place she briefly considered suicide.

“I remember the day I left so clearly,” says McCall. “I was sitting in church, andit was like I suddenly woke up. I got up in the middle of the meeting, walked outinto a beautiful day and knew with eve ry part of my being that I wasn’t ever going back. But walking

away turned out to be the easy part. I quickly became suicidally depressed because I didn’t know therewas another way to live. I had always been taught that there was no way to be happy outside of theChurch, so I was shit out of luck with no place to turn.”

McCall spent most of the next nine months locked in her bedroom, wrestling with depression, lonelinessand fear. The Mormon belief system she had rejected taught that there was no salvation outside of theChurch, meaning that in her family’s mind, she had sacrificed her eternal happiness and in many ways,them along with it. She felt that she had to temporarily isolate herself from them for fear she would

buckle under the pressure and go back toher old life. When she told her close

Mormon friends about her decision, therelationships immediately crumbled underthe strain. She was living in a smallMormon college town in Utah, surroundedby a culture that provided little to no

support for anyone who left the religion,and had nowhere to go for help.

McCall turned to alcohol to numb the pain.But she also found solace in music. She had

grown up singing in choirs, playing thepiano and occasionally strumming theguitar she had begged her parents for whenshe was a teenager. And as a creativewriting major in college, she had alwaysloved to write. For the first time in her life,she started putting words and music to the

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program that helps people heal and grow through songs, McCall has added individual mentoring and

group workshops to her list of menu offerings.

McCall’s dream is to help people blaze new trails by listening to th eir intuition – to help them find thecourage to move on and create new meaning when the familiar models for living have been outgrown.

“It’s really about helping people whose energy is shifting,” says McCall. “They know they need to find anew way of doing things but are at a loss for how to move forward. Those are the kinds of people I want

to help, and they are the ones who are drawn to me. ”

Along with mentoring others, McCall is reinventing her path with music. While she loves to perform,she’s bec ome more selective about the venues she plays and wants to ensure that she is taking heralready- inspirational music to a deeper level that has purpose in people’s lives. In that vein, she’s got a

new set of songs that she has written and hopes to release on a second album in early 2011.

McCall, a self- described “die hard life enthusiast with change -the- world aspirations”, says she is now

living life with a depth of happiness, joy and aliveness that she didn’t realize was possible in her old life.And having blazed a new life path for herself, she views it as her calling to help others do the same.

“However I help people is awesome,” says McCall. “If it’s through my music and they are inspired to diga little deeper into their inner guidance, that’s great. If it’s through my words, through Facebook, or

through my mentoring, that’s great, too.

“With all the changes taking place in the world, we don’t have any more maps for living and they onlytake you so far anyway,” she adds. “We are coming to the ed ge of everything and we need to look fornew ways of doing it. But don’t let it drag you down. Learn how to love it. That’s what Loving Life At

The Edge is all about.”

Here McCall Sing on YouTube!

For more on McCall Erickson, her music and her mentoring, please visit www.mccallerickson.com or joinher on Facebook: McCall Erickson: Loving Life At the Edge.

Dream Blog Author Ingrid Ricks is currently pursuing her dream to publishHippie Boy , a true story about a girl who escapes her abusive Mormonstepfather by joining her free-wheeling dad on the road as a tool-selling

vagabond – until his arrest forces her to take charge of her life. Read excerpts on Scribd or at www.hippieboybook.com , or join her at www.facebook.com/hippieboybook . If you are a publisher interested intalking to Ingrid or her agent, please email her at :ingridricks@comcast.net To read other Dream blog profiles, please visit: www.dreamitseekit.com