Hunting For Redheads
When I was 4, a hawk attacked me through the kitchen window.
I was sitting down to eat, and I turned to look out the window.
My Dad was about to put the plate down in front of me, when he yanked me as fast as he could away from the window.
A hawk had burst into the screen full speed.
There was a loud bang as the talons of the hawk hit the glass window, scratching as if I was supposed to be lifted from the chair into the sky.
Luckily, the hawk only managed to rip the screen off the window, and scratch the glass behind it.
I was fine, just a little frazzled, but that moment changed my life.
Animals Are Super Intuitive
Upon reflecting at the mysterious hawk encounters in my life, I now understand why the hawk attempted to attack me when I was so young.
Animals are highly intuitive.
This warning came 4 years before my parent’s got divorced.
The divorce was messy, full of rage, and amplified my existing anxieties about safety, autonomy, and worthiness.
The attack of the hawk was a warning to my soul, yet my mind didn’t fully process it.
On a soul level, instability was coming and this triggered protective parts of me to be on high alert.
I lost the stable family structure that I depended on at such a young age.
The attack symbolized and triggered aggressive hawklike traits within me that would soon manifest in my reality.
Internally, this looked like me embodying the characteristics of protectiveness, aggression, control, vigilance, and a preference for independence.
Externally, this looked like me being over-protective and controlling over my brother (acting like a mother rather than a sister), hyper vigilant and not welcoming to new friends, isolation and numbing with TV, sports as a coping mechanism and a release of repressed emotions (unconsciously).
I understand now that it was this was a psychological “initiation” or an invitation for me to face difficult experiences/emotions that were arising/ahead of me with conscious awareness so that I could receive profound truths about myself, and my destiny.
It would still be a while longer until I really honed in on the conscious awareness required to tame the hawk inside me.
Glitches & The Ghost of Me
In college I was still clinging onto control of my psyche with my talons.
Not only had I experienced the divorce at a young age, but I had gone through 3 ACL reconstruction surgeries in High school.
Almost 1 per year.
These perceived traumas put me in a state of defense.
My inner cry for stability, safety, protection, and vulnerability were not met by me or my environment at the time.
This lead me into a people-pleasing pattern.
It became a strategy for me to cope as I externally derived my worth and control over my authentic expression onto other people.
During college, COVID happened.
This justified my need to isolate, alienate and become separate from the world.
I was tapping into a hawklike deep solitude, there was anger and anger only.
I started picking up vices heavily.
During this time, I got all A’s in school regardless, almost as a foreshadow to the idea that the educational system was becoming more and more a joke and a waste of capital.
One day, I was headed out to the garage to enjoy a new vice and I saw a hawk sitting on my back deck.
Watching me.
This felt like a glitch.
A hawk in the suburbs of a small town?
Landing on my back porch as soon as I was headed to do something I knew I shouldn’t?
I didn’t know at the time, but this hawk was observing my journey.
It understood my untapped resilience within but it was letting the natural unfolding of my life to happen without interference.
Finally we went back to school.
Things got a little bit better, but my hawklike aggression, isolation, and control continued. My people-pleasing pattern continued.
It was really noticeable in my work/sport life.
In soccer I was borderline mean on the pitch. Confident, arrogant, determined to be the best. I wanted to control the game for my team. I felt like I had to, as if I was the only person who could do it.
As if I had to prove myself to someone.
In work, I over-stretched myself.
Took on too much responsibility & guilt trying to please people who were using me for my “reliability” when they knew it was really my inability to say “no” and protect my energy that they took advantage of.
This continued for a few more months, it soon became fall.
I felt directionless, angry, alone, and numb.
My emotions needed to leave my body.
They were finally coming to the surface.
In this state, I took a walk.
******
I want to pause the story briefly to explain the significance of the hawk.
Let’s dive in…
In most spiritual circles and religious texts, the hawk holds significant meaning.
In Native American traditions, hawks are messengers of the Great Spirit and represent courage, integrity, vision into subtle realms. They guide healing, and wisdom-seeking journeys. For the Lakota, hawk power is a gift from the Great Mystery (Wakan Tanka). They believe hawks can astral project and visit dreamers, acting as spiritual protectors.
In Egyptian mythology, the god Horus often appears as a hawk, representing attributes like sovereignty, healing, and resurrection.
In Celtic symbolism, hawks signify the ability to navigate between worlds -to access both terrestrial and celestial energies/insights.
To the Aztec and other Meso-american cultures, the hawk symbolized rulership, sun power, transitioning consciously between realms below and above.
Within Hinduism, the Goddess Arthanareeswara encompasses energy and intuition connected to hawks.
Here is the timeline:
2004- Attacked through the window.
2020 – First conscious reappearance of a hawk in my backyard.
December 2023 – October 2024- Seeing a hawk every 3-4 weeks, consistently and solo.
March 24, 2024 – Bought Hawk necklace intuitively.
October 7, 2024 – Witnessed a trio of hawks circling above. This was an interesting turn of events – details below…
October 8, 2024 – As I am writing this piece, I heard a hawk screeching from the tree in my backyard. Intuitively I got up, and watched it fly away from my house. Solo hawk.
Okay… back to my story.
Another Encounter (4 years later)
It was a cold sunny Sunday morning, after a weekend of soccer coaching, reading and isolating myself to my room, I had fallen into my simple routine of listening to the world news over a cup of coffee.
I got on my jacket and drove to a nearby hiking trail before most of the other college kids woke up.
They were all still hungover, I wasn’t.
The fresh, cold morning air woke me up.
The coffee was kicking in, I felt free.
I love hiking in the woods because it takes me to a place of presence. It’s meditative to hear my feet crunch on leaves and pine needles, to look up at the big oak trees, and to hear the cattails whisper in the wind.
On this walk, I decided to reflect upon the last few years of college.
I was sad, angry, and didn’t know who I was.
As I was walking, I got deeper into a pine-tree forest. My favorite.
Suddenly, I heard a very familiar noise but couldn’t place it.
A screech that felt very close. Above me.
I stopped and held my breath, trying to place the creature within my awareness.
A hawk.
I tried to look for it but it was hidden.
The screech continued as I searched and all I heard next was the flapping of wings flying away.
This satori, or moment of presence felt like a glitch.
The screech of the hawk unlocked a new awareness within me.
In the days following, I realized my people pleasing & self-sabotaging patterns.
I got a therapist.
Therapy was going, I am not sure if you could say it was going well.
Among the fears, lack of self-trust, and people-pleasing patterns, I had one piece of evidence that built up some confidence within me.
I had shone myself the ultimate comeback.
The anger paired with a hawklike focus and vision, had helped me achieve one glorious season of soccer.
My senior season I became unstoppable, scoring 10 goals in 10 games and not once playing in the position I was assigned. (That’s really the secret to soccer).
Riding the high of appearing in the national tournament, I suddenly forgot I had no plans after graduating.
I was in a state of denial and athletic bliss.
The control felt good. The anger released.
I finally left a glimpse of who I could be (or who I thought I was).
This soon faded.
As reality set in, I was forced to move home.
To return home to myself.
The Descent into Chaos
The last week of college I will never forget.
As always, I had aced my projects and exams, but something inside me was screaming.
It was as if all my repressed emotions were exploding out of my body at once.
My girlfriend at the time had asked me to move to Colorado with her.
I avoided the question until I realized it wouldn’t be feasible.
I barely had any money, didn’t have a career lined up, or a job.
I was already miserable. I was mediocre, or below it.
I said no to moving.
We had a horrible, messy, emotionally pointless breakup and then I was suddenly back home in my childhood room.
All I could do was sleep, cry, and write.
I had no job, no future in which I could see myself enjoying, horrible vices, and a tendency toward extreme isolation.
All I knew to do was write.
I tried hunting for answers within the depths of my thinking mind.
At least, I was allowing myself to start feeling all that was surfacing.
Hunting for Answers
2 months into the journey of writing, and feeling all my repressed emotions I began re-reading my work.
This was the biggest moment.
I noticed all my patterns.
My people-pleasing pattern first and foremost.
My pattern of lack which had limited my self-confidence, self-trust, and left me feeling unworthy.
My pattern of anger as a weapon to avoid the truth.
My pattern of self-sabotage in work, relationships, and life.
As I read the pages of despair, heartbreak, and loss, I realized something.
The words on the page were not mine.
They felt fake.
They were whatever ego was still in control.
They were searching for answers they couldn’t find.
They would never find the answers because the answers to my problems were not solved by thinking.
The words didn’t resonate.
I laughed at them.
Yet something inside me held me back from change.
Flash forward a few months… it’s now October again.
I had just graduated in May and spent the last months deeply feeling and thinking.
At this point, I had a stable job, and fell back into the patterns of before.
My ego was not giving up control.
I had again chosen a job I was over-qualified for (as if to signal my lack of self-worth) and got bored fast.
I began writing on scrap pieces of paper.
I brain-dumped everything.
During the time I wrote the most, I was also the top saleswoman of the month.
After 6 months of writing, I finally stopped.
Again I recognized the pattern of the ego.
These words weren’t mine.
I laughed at them, and then became silent.
What do I want with my life? I thought.
Then, I did something crazy.
I quit.
Strength, Taking Flight & The Necklace
I quit my job and got quiet.
I started meditation.
I was desperate for a sign, an answer, a direction.
I wanted to return home to myself, to “find out who I was”.
I had always been drawn to the concepts of spirituality, psychology, philosophy and such.
This time I really leaned in.
This time, with no plans for the future again, I felt calm.
I started to go on long walks.
Finding hiking trails. Finding pine trees.
I noticed my mind chattering louder than ever.
I just let it chatter without any judgment. A small breakthrough.
After another jobless month of walking, napping, and meditating, I realized something.
I was still in chronic knee pain.
This became my only problem to solve.
I was on the hunt to return home to myself and it started with my body.
As I now searched again for a job I truly wanted, I had a conversation that changed my life.
I met up with a soccer coach named Cookie.
I told him my entire story, what I’m telling you now.
He asked me one question: have you heard of Knees Over Toes Guy?
We finished the conversation, and I almost accepted his job offer.
Before I texted him back, an intuitive hit told me to look up this “Knees Over Toes Guy”.
I did, and it saved my life.
I found a community of unconventional coaches that had a different approach to solving chronic pain that made sense to me.
Following their unique methods of training and experimenting with myself, I got out of chronic knee pain in 3 months after 8+ years.
This inspired me.
It lit a flame in me.
Soon later, I had gotten myself a new job.
I soaked it up.
I trained athletes of all kinds.
I visited Clearwater Florida to meet Ben Patrick (Founder of ATG) and train with some of the best coaches in the world.
One night in Clearwater, I was walking home from a solo dinner with myself.
As I walked along the beach, I noticed there was an impromptu art/street fair.
There was a guy performing magic, lots of booths, food and music.
I explored.
As I was strolling along the boardwalk, I noticed a stand of necklaces and rings.
I bought my partner a ring, and pondered over the necklaces.
I am not one to buy myself jewelry, but something told me to buy a necklace.
I searched, and finally decided on this one:
I hadn’t consciously put together the hawk encounters and their meaning.
I just thought it looked cool, and in my new field I wanted a simple (low-key hard) necklace.
I guess the hawk resonated with my intuition.
Hawks Galore (And A New Power)
I wore the necklace almost everyday.
It was now May.
I had officially decided to start my business.
I continued my habit of long walks in the mornings.
This time with a renewed sense of purpose.
I hired a new therapist.
I could tell the vibe was different, not a hierarchical or vertical relationship but a horizontal one, because good things were on the horizon.
As soon as I started working with Molly the therapist I started seeing hawks.
I didn’t just see one, but multiple sightings in a few weeks.
This played out for months.
As I was releasing old patterns of conditioning, regaining my self-trust, and building sustainable reframes & habits, hawks kept appearing.
When I needed an extra bit of strength or courage, I saw a hawk.
During moments or seasons I endured hard times, the hawks would not emerge.
As soon as I got to an insight, reframe, or shift in perspective, the hawk resurfaced.
These patterns continue to this day.
Sightings were so frequent I would text my girlfriend to tell her and she’d respond with again?!
In two weeks, I saw two hawks on the highway flying above my car.
I saw one close to my neighborhood perched on a telephone pole.
I saw them flying through the air.
I saw them driving while taking detour to work.
Every time, I saw a solo hawk.
10 hawks in 10 months.
**Profanity warning in video, but enjoy ¨̮ **
Their presence signaled two things:
- I was on the path toward actualizing my highest potential and creating my ideal lifestyle.
- I would need to embody the characteristics of the hawk in order to expand my horizons for the next phase of my life.
With these two realizations understood, I dove into the real work.
Trio of Hawks (A Signal To Collaborate)
As I embarked on the path toward building myself a sustainable online business and designing a lifestyle of balance, harmony and being I paused to take a walk.
I love long walks and thought I needed to continue this habit if I was going to go all in on a new business idea.
As I was walking one day, I saw a trio of hawks for the first time.
All of the other encounters had been solo, but this time was different.
I watched the hawks circle and the first thing that came to mind was collaboration, friendship, network.
The hawks unity was signaling to me that I needed to take opportunities presented in my life to form alliances, partnerships or connections.
They were telling me NOT to go solo anymore.
It just so happened that a creator and friend of mine, Jack Moses was opening up opportunities to connect with him before an upcoming trip.
I took the hawks as a signal to jump on the connection.
With clarity from Jack and following my own intuition, I am setting up the next stages of business.
I’ve channeled my inner hawk to help guide me as I navigate entrepreneurship, athletics, and a big move into a new city.
I cannot be more grateful to have experienced the guiding wisdom of this animal & its continued appearance will guide me toward the path of my highest self.
More soon,
Iz Quane