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I think it's time to tell this story!
My family wasn’t particularly religious, but growing up, I felt a strange force around me - impressions of my passed great grandmother wafting through my bedroom, moments of nature harmonizing effortlessly, unexplainable noises & sights that no logical deduction could reach.
Curious & hoping for some kind of explanation, I tagged along with friends & extended family to different churches. But the deeper into religion I dove, the more it felt like crashing into an iron wall.
Of course, religion can be a beautiful thing and we all experience it differently. But in my story, religion felt limiting and confusing. I couldn't make sense of all the rules, judgments, and punishments. Frustrated with more questions than answers, I threw my hands up & decided it would make more sense for there to be nothing at all than this strange God character.
Hurt by it all, I closed my heart and became a staunch atheist for over a decade.
That is, until three years into my PTSD recovery when I found myself at one of those rock bottom moments. Puttering my time between dozens of obligations that drained me, I unraveled - I didn’t feel like myself, and honestly, I didn’t even know what feeling like myself would feel like.
Starting Small
I decided to start "seriously working on myself", whatever that meant.
But I knew to make a sustainable impact I would have to start small. So I began by addressing the anxiety I experienced during my commute to school. Just one thing to get some momentum towards better health.
I started listening to Your Own Magic, a self-development podcast that completely restructured my experience of rush hour traffic. These drives transformed and were not just manageable, but truly became a sanctuary - a place I dedicated to myself, to feeling good, being curious, & opening my heart.
It's almost strange looking back now, that truly this one decision, this one ritual catalyzed everything else that was to follow. I tuned in every day & absorbed stories of expanders who overcame adversity, anxiety, & trauma and found a way to live fully & fearlessly. I tiptoed around the more obviously spiritual episodes, yet somehow even in avoidance, the breadcrumbs kept leading me back to the unseen.
It was the secret sauce, the chemical X infused into every story.
These people found themselves, but they also found something much larger - their own understanding & connection to source.
The Experiment
In my incredibly stubborn & investigative type of way, I decided to put all this mumbo jumbo I was hearing to the test. Yeah, I almost hate to admit it but here's the truth:
I booked four different sessions with intuitives connected to this spirit world and asked them all the same exact questions to cross-examine and evaluate.
These powerful women didn't just show me, they chewed me up & spit me out - pointing out things in my life I was only beginning to scratch the conscious surface of.
I sat in the middle of a circle of eight mediums, completely cracked open as they described my grandfather in vivid detail & passed along insight on how my family should handle a specific property with an uncanny awareness of the most minute energetics. I watched countless predictions as they came to manifest and inflamed with rage when I didn't get what I wanted, but somehow exactly what I needed from these readings.
Part of me truthfully hoped this process would solidify my doubts and I would be able to sleep soundly over data sheets and forget it all. At first, and for a sustained while, it actually felt like waking up into a nightmare.
I worked up the courage for three weeks to sign up for my first intuitive boot camp - an all-day intensive workshop to learn how to tap into your own intuitive senses. I shly moved through the morning exercises and quite literally made a break for it when the teacher channeled information that shattered my worldview.
I paced down the street thinking absolutely no, do not sign me up, I don't want to pass go, I quit, I want to run home and take it all back, rewind the tapes, start even slower...
My entire belief template that used to provide comfort came crumbling down and I was questioning everything. In a slowly, & then all at once type of way, I ran screaming in every direction as my investigations continuously could not disprove the presence of this unseen force/universe/God.
A Not-So Tidy "End"
Everyone's story is different but mine goes like screaming in all directions, getting burned in many of them, turning away in fear, and turning back in curiosity over and over.
Over time I learned to let the possibility in, to run a little less, and let these ideas sit with me. But in the process of listening to what's out there, I really learned how to tune into my body and filter any perspective through my own truth.
I got honest with myself and started letting things go - the master's degree I convinced myself I wanted, my victim mindset, relationships, and beliefs that just weren't good for me anymore. I met regularly with a licensed therapist, started writing again, and learned slowly over so much time how to manage, then heal my anxiety.
I picked up a tarot deck in a local metaphysical shop and started reading for myself. Not long after, I packed that deck and everything else with me when I moved to Maui with Riley in 2019. So much expanded there, and I began offering free readings for anyone who wanted one, which turned out to be hundreds of people in the Your Own Magic Facebook group.
In 2020, I took yet another leap of faith and attended a spiritual retreat in Sedona. Being surrounded by incredible, intuitive women made me feel so much less alone and confident in what I could embody and offer. Five months later, I launched my business.
For over three years I investigated, received all kinds of readings and insight, and tried lots of beliefs on for size. I gained so much through all kinds of practitioners and leaders I've met along the way, but most of all, this unexpected path has reconnected me to myself.
Even strung together in these sentences, it still doesn't seem to sum the story up. Really, this path has felt like a million small moments all coming into one - it's difficult to pinpoint which ones most influenced the story.
It has just been a process that turned me towards myself and my own truth over and over. Back into possibility and that same sense of infinity I felt walking through the garden as a child. It all tumbles me around and somehow drops me where I began, into wholeness and source.
Explore the Resources that Impacted my Journey
I would absolutely not be where I am today without these people, businesses, podcasts, and resources that held my hand through these years. Check these out if you'd like more tools to support your own!
Your Own Magic: the podcast that burst the doors open
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron: a 12-week program and book designed to reinspire and free the artist within each of us.
(and check your local bookstore!)
To Be Magnetic: as a pathway member of almost three years, the community, podcast, and deep hypnosis library are bar none.
Katie Surbeck: psychic, medium, and an incredible friend. she's the real deal and has supported me and her clients unconditionally since we first connected in Sedona
E-Squared by Pam Grout: a book for the skeptics like me
(and check your local bookstore!)
Madison Rutledge: my fav breathwork facilitator to date. Breathwork overall has been an incredibly impactful tool for a full mind/body/spirit release.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk MD: for understanding trauma in the body
(and check your local bookstore!)