a glance at my journey…

Q & A with maricel Hecimovich

Who are you and where did you come from? Could you tell me about your name?

I have lived in so many different places and moved around a lot ever since I was a young girl. My father was very impulsive and temperamental and had difficulty keeping his family in one spot, so we moved houses like we were playing musical chairs, in this case, musical dwellings. I guess I have gotten used to the lifestyle, which I didn’t know at the time would prepare me for what was to come in my adulthood. Growing up in the Philippines felt easy and natural. I loved playing outside with my cousins from morning until nighttime; we’d only come in for meals and then go back out. We experienced many electrical outages at night, but we made the most of it. We just had to make sure that we were always equipped with candles. I remember the noises the neighbors would make outside while we sat silently inside our tiny home. We did not have much growing up; we even had to live in a house that was only about 12x12, where we slept, cooked, and ate all in one space and had an outhouse for a bathroom. My father would travel abroad for two years, so my mom was left to care for us. It was not the ideal circumstance, but in retrospect, it was for the best that my parents were separated by distance because, sadly, by not choosing to heal their inner wounds, they fought a lot when they were near each other, further projecting those wounds onto us, unconsciously.

At the age of 11, my whole family had the opportunity to immigrate to Hawaii. My grandmother on my mom’s side was born in Hawaii, where her parents worked as farmers at a sugar plantation but eventually moved back to the Philippines to raise a family. When we arrived in Honolulu, I barely spoke any English, but I was excited to be reunited with my parents. They had to move first and left us in the care of our neighbor for a year, so we learned to be self-sufficient at a young age. I had a tough time adjusting at first to being in a new place, but I started meeting many friends from school who were also from the Philippines. My parents’ marriage ended shortly after we got there. It was painful to see how they treated each other, but I was also glad they chose what was best for them.

After a few years of enjoying the island life. I found myself having to choose between leaving Oahu or staying — I chose to leave, and I was off to my next adventure in Texas. I lived there for several years and met so many good people (and not-so-good people). It seemed at the time I was the only Asian in Amarillo, so I received interesting looks from others. This big change was quite shocking to my young self (I was in my early twenties); I missed my family so much, but I put on a tough exterior and resigned to my fate. As years passed with failed relationships and facing a few other hardships, I continued to focus on the positive aspects of my Texas journey — work and fun. I traveled to Santa Fe (one of my favorite places) often on road trips with friends and also made frequent visits to Dallas, Austin, and Oklahoma. I became a Dallas Cowboys fan automatically. LOL. I went to many of their football games, which I surprisingly enjoyed.

Fast forward to 2009, on a fateful flight from Phoenix to Honolulu, I met the father of my children, who was residing in Chicago at the time. We dated long-distance for several months until we decided it was time to merge lives — this is how I ended up in Chicago and how I ended up with a Croatian last name (LOL). My maiden name is actually Cruz — Maricel Enanoria Cruz is where it all started for me. Anyway, we explored a two-year city life until he found a job in Richmond, Indiana, where we lived for six years. We attempted to swap the wintery months of Indiana for the milder climate of Scottsdale, but the universe intervened and brought me back to the Midwest — Fishers, Indiana, this time. I said to myself, “This is all for a good reason,” because I was bitter about moving back (LOL).

Well, I thought this was going to be my forever and ever relationship, but it turned out to be a huge life lesson for me. Darn! I should have known I didn’t belong in the matrix; my soul was longing for growth and expansion, and he was satisfied with living a highly material-based lifestyle — completely two different life paths. If I wanted to continue to live under someone else’s control and experience a surface-level relationship, then yes, I would have stayed. Let’s say that there was an unequal give-and-take situation in the mix as well, in which my disempowered and self-sacrificing being willingly participated, causing a major depletion of my life force. Yikes! The one amazing thing about me is I have this undying commitment to internally better myself no matter what, but I learned it was difficult to achieve this with someone who did not share the same values, so I made a self-honoring choice to follow my path and sent him off to learn his own lessons. There was resistance on both ends, but the universe made sure our situation became so uncomfortable that there was no other choice but to part ways.

Life Lesson # 1000 (LOL): Never dilute myself to fit in someone else’s idea of life. If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it at all! Have the courage to send people off who are not aligned with my soul’s path with love, kindness, and forgiveness.

Through many timeline shifts, I realized I was leaving pieces of myself while picking up pieces of others and intertwining my energy with theirs, building blockages in my energy field and drowning my intuition. With the accumulation of unhealed wounds and past traumas, I got so lost in the process and eventually became very uncomfortable with the false security/identity (with an enlarged ego) I created for self-protection; I could hear my soul cry out, “Let me out, let me out!”. Then, sometime in 2021, God put me on a grueling journey to self-discovery, unpacking layers and layers of subconscious societal programming, not to mention healing the generational wounds I inherited from birth. Fun! There was no going back once the wheel started turning, and there was no unseeing what I had been shown.

Ultimately, my soul succeeded in this massive internal battle. This was not an easy task, to say the least, but I did it! It took years of self-reflection, a long period of isolation, trials and tribulations, ego-deaths, many tower moments, triggers, tears, and LOTS OF PRAYERS. Oh, and by the way, the healing process went on (and is still going) while keeping an open heart, trying to start a business, and raising two children. It seems I’ve been on this journey for so long, and I am just exhausted. I need to sit down. LOL. God is consistently poking at me, making sure that I was not going back to the old negative patterns I had healed within myself and for my family lineage. He still pokes me occasionally, but luckily, I’ve become so good at recognizing His pokes and learning the lessons quicker than I did in the past. I must say, when your soul is ready to be awakened, God will send you everything and anyone you need to help you get through the darkness. Just be obedient and do the inner work, for heaven's sake!

As I step back, I see that all of my decisions and actions were guided to help me become the version I am now. I am just so thankful for this gift of life and journey to self-discovery. I had to make peace with doing everything backward—wisdom first, then authentic living. I don’t think that I would have it any other way because whatever I’ve gone through was part of my soul’s blueprint that could not be altered even if I tried.

Life lesson # 2000 (Yep!): I can’t heal others if I don’t heal myself first. Heal silently and maintain self-preservation. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary to fully heal.

With all of this happening, how did you manage to still pursue design?

I have always been an ambitious person with many goals and dreams. Most of the time, I followed my intuition when making any career moves without even realizing I was doing it. However, this path was anything but linear because I was being led by my soul, and the soul is not familiar with time or a straight pathway; it’s messy and chaotic from an ego’s perspective. I tried several different venues and pathways through logic, but the universe always pushed me into a more challenging direction, which ultimately aligned me back with design and other passions I didn’t know I had.

I finally talked myself into attending school for design, and with luck on my side, I had an opportunity to work for a talented designer, Don Reid, in Amarillo. At the time, our design style did not mesh because I was young and naive; his style was classic and sophisticated, while mine was all over the place. He passed away a few years ago, and although my experience there was short, his essence lingered with me. He was a gentle soul, and I have so much appreciation for his influence.

Right before I graduated, I was mentored by Gregg Bliss, an architect who taught me how to fall in love with architecture even more. This experience stimulated both my practical and logical side. I was so enthralled by how the buildings were constructed and how the details came together. I particularly enjoyed developing building sections and detail drawings because I loved how it challenged me.

I am forever indebted to these experiences, however, here’s the kicker: practicing design in my unhealed state versus my healed state, regardless of experience, is completely different — trust me, I’ve done the legwork. Practicing design from an unhealed state felt robotic, forced, limiting, and draining to me. It’s doable but highly unsatisfactory. Practicing design in a healed state is liberating, fulfilling, expansive, non-competitive, and, most of all, it comes from the heart, which gives the outcome a soulful essence. Having built a solid and stable foundation within myself through my personal experiences opened my eyes to a much broader career path aligned with my soul’s purpose. From a human’s perspective, it may look like I am just starting over or could even be perceived as crazy, but that’s okay because anything that happens now is for pure bliss and enjoyment. I have my definition of success, which will not always mesh with how others define it, but I am content with where I stand because it makes my inner child happy. This is more important to me than any success the material world offers.

Life Lesson #3000 (a good one!): Protect your dreams and visions through silence until you are internally ready because others might not understand them. Negative energies are good about projecting their insecurities, consciously or subconsciously.

This is it for now, but I will be sharing with you my relationship journey soon, which is a huge part of my healing journey — FINDING UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

Stay tuned!!!