An unexpected encounter with spiritual teacher Alana Fairchild brings together music, sobriety, spiritual practice and a Halloween gathering that invites Calgary to rediscover the joy of being human.
By Kimberley Dooshima Jev
A few days before my 41st birthday, I walked into a Calgary signing event carrying several oracle card decks by Alana Fairchild. I wasn’t intending to be the first person in line and I wasn't there as a journalist. In that moment, I was an everyday human with a genuine interest and perserverenace to do something that mattered to me solely. I had no interview prepared, no editorial pitch and no intention of introducing Afros in Tha City into the conversation. I was there because, for years, Alana's work had been part of my life. A practice, a ritual and a comfort in many moments. Too many to recount.
I had invested in her decks, marvelled at their artwork and meditated on the messages they carried. I had turned to those cards during difficult times and returned to them during moments of happiness and celebration. I had pulled cards for friends and members of my community, sharing not only their messages but witnessing the sometimes extraordinary emotional weight they carried for the people receiving them.
As a Black woman navigating identity, cultural expectations and the stories people tell about one another, I had found something in this spiritual practice that did not require me to explain myself.
Race had no say in the cards I pulled. They did not ask me to defend who I was or where I came from. They simply invited me to sit with myself, ask questions and consider possibilities.
That mattered, particularly after years of social upheaval and the exhausting pressure to participate in competing narratives about the world around us.
By September 2026, I had been sober for more than a year. This isn’t a journey I ever thought I would be on. I didn’t think I’d be here today saying all this. I never do. The truth is the truth and I face it daily.
As a DJ, my sobriety had become part of a much larger examination of my relationship with music, nightlife, community and myself. It was not simply about what I no longer consumed. It was about learning to remain present through change, discomfort and uncertainty.
I had also been thinking about the strange reconciliation that comes after living through a pandemic. About the years that changed us, the versions of ourselves we left behind and the unexpected growth that follows as we enter our forties.
Somewhere in the middle of all that reflection, I found myself standing in front of a woman whose work had quietly accompanied me through much of it. I just wanted my decks signed.
There is an old warning in journalism and entertainment: never meet your heroes.
After years of interviewing artists, musicians and cultural figures, I understand why people say it. Admiration creates expectations that real human encounters do not always satisfy.
Yet that afternoon, I wasn't expecting anything beyond a signature and perhaps a brief exchange.
What followed was something I could never have planned.
Alana Fairchild, author and spiritual teacher featured in “The Joy of Being Human”
by Kimberley Dooshima Jev for Afros in Tha City.
Something About Calgary
When Fairchild and I spoke again on September 23, she began by describing something she had experienced during previous visits to Calgary. There was an energy here that she could not quite explain.
"It's definitely a place that has a lot of spiritual vitality," she told Afros in Tha City.
She spoke about the Rocky Mountains, the land and the people, describing a feeling of awakening that seemed to connect Calgary to something larger.
"I wasn't expecting it, but I always feel very spiritually activated here."
I understood what she meant. There have been moments in my own life in Canada when I have felt unexpected connections to my grandmothers, my grandfather and the histories carried through generations of my family.
Some experiences do not arrive with clear explanations. They simply invite us to pay attention. For Fairchild, Calgary has become one of those places.
Her return this October is centred on a three-day spiritual immersion, including a Halloween night ritual rave designed to help participants reconnect with themselves through movement, meditation, music and shared experience.
At a time when so many people are searching for relief from the pressures of daily life, Fairchild is proposing something more deliberate than distraction.
She wants people to come back to themselves.
A Whiplash Year
During our conversation, I described 2026 with one word: whiplash. There have been moments of extraordinary optimism, followed almost immediately by another brutal piece of news. Another crisis. Another reason to worry.
One day, there is reason to celebrate. The next, the weight of the world feels impossible to ignore. Fairchild immediately recognized the feeling.
"This year, it's been like whiplash."
She sees the instability as part of a much larger process of personal and collective change. "There's so much chaos that's going on in the world," she explained, describing people struggling with fear, uncertainty and the sense that everything around them is shifting.
For Fairchild, the response is not to pretend that darkness does not exist. Instead, she wants people to experience moments of safety, connection and renewal without surrendering their ability to engage with the world.
"You don't have to have all the answers," she said.
Her upcoming gathering is intended to create space where people can step away from the constant stream of information telling them what to fear, how to react and how much control they should have over an increasingly unpredictable world.
The goal is to reconnect with intuition, creativity and a sense of possibility.
"What do we want to create," she asked, "not what are we being a victim of?"
It was a question that stayed with me. So much of the past several years has been spent responding to circumstances beyond our control. The pandemic. Social upheaval. Changes in relationships, careers and the communities we once relied upon.
For those of us trying to rebuild a relationship with ourselves, there is something powerful about remembering that we can still create.
Raving Without Escaping
When Fairchild mentioned a spiritual rave, I immediately wanted to know what that meant. After all, I am a DJ. Music, nightlife and dance floors have been part of my world for years. I understand the incredible sense of unity that can emerge when people gather around sound.
I also understand how closely nightlife has historically been associated with intoxication. That is what made Fairchild's description particularly interesting.
Her ritual rave is built around music, guided meditation, movement and simple rituals, with an emphasis on experiencing the body without relying on substances.
"It's about tuning into the natural wildness of the body in a safe space," she explained.
She does not describe it as simply gathering people together and asking them to dance. "I don't just chuck people in a room and put on some music and say, 'Dance.'"
Instead, Fairchild guides participants through an experience intended to encourage release, reflection and connection.
"It's playful. It's a little bit rebellious. It's healing, and it's very empowering."
The conversation naturally returned to sobriety. I had recently shared my own journey publicly, including the changes that had followed my decision to just lay it all to rest, put it to bed as they say, get the monkey off my back as some say.
For me, sobriety has been about more than the absence of elements, it has involved reconsidering how I socialize, how I create, how I respond to stress and how I experience joy.
Fairchild approached the subject from a similarly broad perspective.
"When you talk about sobriety, I'm talking about all kinds of addictions," she said, "but also just being able to be alive and awake to the entirety of your experience."
That distinction felt especially relevant.
We live in a world filled with ways to disconnect. Alcohol and drugs are only part of that conversation. Screens, endless scrolling, overwork and the constant demand for attention can also become ways of avoiding difficult feelings.
Learning to remain present is its own practice. For someone who has spent years behind DJ decks, the possibility of gathering people around music without making intoxication central to the experience is deeply meaningful.
It allows the music itself, and the people experiencing it, to become the focus. Fairchild describes that feeling as a reminder of "the joy of being human."
Holding Joy and Difficulty Together
What I appreciated most about our conversation was that Fairchild did not suggest that spiritual practice makes difficulty disappear.
She spoke openly about pain, trauma, fear and darkness as experiences that can exist alongside joy and personal growth. She described the current period as a kind of birthing process, where moments of bliss and moments of confrontation are often intertwined.
Her goal is to help people find stability without becoming overwhelmed by the difficult things happening around them.
"I want to help people find their stability," she said, "so they don't get swept away from the good stuff by the negative stuff that can come up."
There is something particularly meaningful about that idea when approaching a new decade of life.
By the time I reached my forties, I had already lived through experiences that altered my understanding of relationships, identity, belonging and what it means to begin again. Sobriety had introduced another kind of beginning. It had asked me to reconsider assumptions about myself and to recognize that growth does not always arrive through dramatic transformation.
Sometimes it arrives quietly. Through a decision made one day and repeated the next. Sometimes, maybe most times through sitting with discomfort instead of trying to escape it. Surprisingly, through discovering that joy is still available, even when life has been extraordinarily difficult. Through realizing that the practices which helped us survive one chapter may continue to guide us into another.
For me, Alana Fairchild's cards had been one of those practices.
The Joy of Being Human
Fairchild's Halloween gathering brings these ideas into a shared physical space.
The three-day immersion, taking place in Calgary from October 30 to November 1, includes a ritual rave on Halloween night at cSPACE Marda Loop.
Through music, movement and guided spiritual practice, the gathering invites participants to consider what it means to release fear, reconnect with their bodies and experience joy without having to leave themselves behind. It also opens an interesting conversation about how communities create spaces for connection outside conventional nightlife.
For Fairchild, the experience is intended to be accessible across generations, welcoming people who may be navigating different stages of personal growth and spiritual exploration.
Our conversation moved easily between these ideas and the possibilities for building community around them.
What began with a signing had become a discussion about music, sobriety, spirituality and the ways people find one another at unexpected moments in their lives. I had walked into that first encounter carrying decks that had accompanied me through years of personal reflection. I walked away with something I had not expected. It wasn’t a new spiritual revelation or an answer to every question I had been carrying. Something much simpler.
The opportunity to meet the person behind work that had mattered to me, and to discover a genuine connection beyond the pages, images and messages I had come to know so well.
After years of interviewing public figures, it is easy to forget what it feels like to approach someone with nothing to offer and nothing to ask.
Just admiration. Gratitude. Just simple ordinary excitement of having your favourite decks signed.
They say don't meet your heroes in this line of work. I'm glad I did.
Event Information
Alana Fairchild: Venus Empowerment Weekend and Halloween Ritual Rave
October 30 to November 1, 2026
Halloween Ritual Rave: Saturday, October 31, 7–9 p.m.
cSPACE Marda Loop, Calgary, Alberta
For program details and registration, visit Alana Fairchild's official event listings.