My Journey

It took me a really long while to consciously choose my healing. My hopes of sharing my story and journey with you is that it may help some of you in your own healing, as well as shed some understanding of where I’m coming from when it comes to assisting you in your healing if you choose me to be your practitioner. My journey hasn’t been an easy or happy one. My journey has been very pain filled and heavy so I would just like you to be aware of that before reading further. I recommend reading this section if you’re in the right place mentally to do so.

The Understanding

To start, I would just like to set the tone for what you’re about to read with a quote by C. Jung, “To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light.” Just because someone is able to see you clearly, doesn’t mean they are holding any judgment against you, it just means they see you. When someone can see you with compassion and not only separate your actions from who you are, but also understand why you did those actions, you’re able to be loved in that moment. I recognize that forgiving the people that have given me their pain is a lifelong process and not one that can be rushed in any kind of way. I also recognize that I allowed that pain I got from my family, parents, step family, step in-laws, friends, classmates, ex partners, etc. to have power over me and control my life for an incredibly long time. I was stuck in so much pain and my anger for so long. They tried to break me, and they succeeded, however it did give me the opportunity to rebuild stronger and I did that without them. Every single person that has given me their pain was suffering incredibly deeply within themselves. I recognize that it isn’t their fault, they just didn’t have the tools to be kind, loving, respectful, honest, gentle, compassionate, real, or strong and they didn’t know how to find the tools either at the time (or even now). I truly hope that each and every one of them find the ability to see themselves with love, compassion, patience, and understanding to forgive themselves because they deserve to have peace and freedom. I hope you also carry that understanding with you as you read this.

I want to acknowledge something else too. For the parents of kids that have estranged themselves from you and for the kids who have estranged themselves from their parents. No one removes a parent from their life because they want to. They do that because the parent was unable to find the strength to find the tools to fix what they broke years ago and they continued that pattern of breaking things. I also want to acknowledge that if you have a rocky relationship with your parent or with your adult child, it isn't the child’s job to fix the relationship. It isn’t the child’s fault you couldn’t love them in the way they needed you to. If you’re the child reading this, it isn’t your fault your parent couldn’t love you, you deserved so much more than that but your parent didn’t have the tools to be more. There was nothing and there is nothing you can do to fix them. All you can do now is love yourself the way you needed your parent to when you were a kid. As the parent, it’s important that you take accountability for your actions in the past and now if you want a relationship with your child (and possible grandchildren) in the future. Typically when someone is unable to be gentle, loving, and compassionate it’s because they’re operating from their wounded inner child. Depending on how old that person was when they were wounded, that part of them gets trapped in time and continues to act from that place. A lot of grown ups in society are really just kids that never got the chance to grow up because they never had the safety to (internally or externally). When you look at someone as a child that’s just having a really hard time, it makes it a lot easier to love them, show them compassion, and understanding. Abusers and narcissists are just kids that never grew up and you see that when they are in the middle of a reaction and when they're hurting people. When someone is too afraid of admitting to the faults of their abusers, that is also a childhood coping mechanism at play that’s trying to protect them from experiencing pain. Admitting that there was pain that happened, often hurts 10 times more than the experience itself, because in the moment we were most likely in such a shocked state that we felt nothing or we felt something but then pushed that feeling away.

The Abuse

Narcissism is really misunderstood in society. There is also a really large difference between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and having some narcissistic tendencies. With NPD, you have a high sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a sense of entitlement. With narcissistic tendencies you have empathy and you have a high sense of self-importance. With both NPD and narcissistic tendencies it stems from an exceptionally large amount of trauma. With NPD, one over compensates for the trauma they faced by becoming the victor of their pain instead of a victim. Underneath narcissism, their inflated sense of self really stems from a deep set insecurity within them. Narcissism is treatable with therapy (because narcissism is a reaction to wounding).

Abusers thrive in the shadows where they cannot be seen. As soon as you expose an abuser, they lose their power and they’re seen for what they truly are. I definitely don’t recommend doing this if you’re in a situation where saying something to the wrong person could put you in danger. I do recommend getting the help of a therapist, police (if it won’t make the situation worse), a trusted friend, a trusted adult (if you’re a kid or teenager reading this), a doctor, a trusted teacher, a trusted principal, or a trusted family member (I recommend one that doesn’t have a close relationship with your abuser or isn't an abuser themselves). Getting out of an abusive situation is really hard, but it is worth it when you do. 

I struggled with depression and anxiety for as long as I have been alive. I was suicidal by the time I was 9 and almost took my own life when I was 12. I never thought I’d make it past the age of 12. I was cutting from ages 14-17. As you can imagine, I was in therapy for most of my life (yes that was a joke and it's okay to laugh). Growing up I always acted like a happy, cheerful, warm, and kind kid so no one ever knew there were any issues at all because my signs were so subtle they were missed. With mental abuse from people you’re close to, you develop Stockholm syndrome so you think they could never cause you any kind of harm and you end up trying to protect them. I had Stockholm syndrome with all of my abusers and tried to protect all of them so I told no one either. When I came back from university, I was able to actually see the kinds of people my parents were and I told everyone. I ended up suffering alone for all of it until I found the right people to share my story with.

Remembering

My spiritual awakening started when I chose to take yoga as an elective when I was 15 in high school. Yoga is certainly a powerful healing modality and it’s definitely something that works for me. My relationship to my spirituality was a bit of a rocky one and one I held a lot of shame towards for most of my life. Since I was a toddler I remember having a connection to spirits but I just always thought I was making stuff up because I couldn’t see anything with my physical eyeballs or hear them with my physical ears. I’ve always been able to see them with my mind’s eye and hear them like a stream of consciousness in my head. My biological mother took an energy healing workshop and showed me a few tricks growing up when it comes to energy healing. Later in life, I took the same workshop. My biological mother was definitely more open to the concept of spirituality and shared very few things with me growing up. Both of my parents were raised catholic and decided to abandon the church and give me the option to come up with whatever I believed in. When I was 6 I lost faith in God and just said he doesn’t exist and only believed in science. When I was 15 I started questioning whether or not a god or higher power existed. It was in asking this question that I found the universe as a higher power. It made the most sense to me because it felt tangible and balanced. Science felt strictly physical and religion felt too unreal to me, both extremes felt like they had no grounding or weight to them. Believing in the universe however, felt like it encompassed everything (science and spirituality) together in unity.

In March of 2017, my family and I went to Panama. I started developing chronic back pain (from trauma) at this time and yoga, energy healing, and massages were the only way to alleviate it. I was talking to my biological mother about boys and she said something fairly insightful that her energy healer told her. She told me to just ask the universe for the qualities you wanted in a person so I did. I was looking up at the stars talking to them and I just felt the energy I wanted and I said, “Hey universe, if there’s someone out there for me, please send them my way. Thanks.” Exactly a year later I met my first twin flame. I think when I asked that question I wasn’t really asking for a person, I was really just asking for something new and different and I opened up and let the universe help me. 

In the month of July 2018, I reached out to my first twin flame and we ended up talking everyday and continued for 3 years. My first twin flame and I met in March 2018 and after that my boyfriend and I started having some issues between us and we broke up quite promptly. I’m pretty sure it was because I was energetically pushing him out to make space for my twin flame at the time. 

My first twin and I stayed friends for 3 years even though I wanted to be with him he didn’t want that. Neither of us were ready or willing to put our pain down fully and just go into it with complete trust. We showed each other what needed to be healed and integrated but we didn’t have the tools to grow together so we separated in October of 2021. It was a very toxic situation. I stayed strongly attached to him for a year after our separation. With him, I discovered what twin flames are and I believed everything I saw online about twin flames.

I met my second twin flame in August of 2021, however we didn't really pick up the connection properly until March of 2022. With my second twin flame, the beliefs I held about twin flames rapidly began falling. With him, we truly loved one another and treated each other as such, we just needed to learn more lessons without each other to get ready to be together later down the road. We ended up separating in January of 2023.

I met my third twin flame in high school when I was 14 and he was 15. Growing up, the most we would interact with one another was just saying hello to each other in the hallways at school. In January of 2023, it was time for us to reunite and get to know each other and we did just that. We slowly began discovering just how many similarities we shared with one another and how easily things flowed between us because of our shared interests, life experiences, and shared emotional needs. It was as if we were loving ourselves in another body. In this connection, I ended up learning how to use the tools to co-create a union together. 

With every twin flame I had, I learned more and more about the twin flame experience and what it needs for union to occur. I healed different layers of my wounding in each connection I had and raised my self worth with every person (which is the goal and purpose of relationships). The third one really felt like a huge culmination of everything I had learned from all of the other connections I had, and the result of them both was just peace and ease. The twin flame experience is a unique one, but it definitely isn't one I regret or wish I never started. 

Getting Distance

When I was 18, all of my trauma came up about 2-3 months before my final exams in highschool. I went off to university with the intent of healing my trauma but when I got there I just wasn’t ready to choose that and I stuffed my pain down with alcohol and weed. My alcohol addiction became a really large issue. When I drank, I became someone completely unrecognizable and I devolved so far deeply into my pain that I fell into an incredibly deep depression. It was then that I decided it was time I started making changes. In March 2020, I had my first session with my therapist. She has guided me through some incredibly hard moments. It was in healing my trauma that the rest of my abilities came pouring in exceptionally quickly and the veil of forgetfulness was completely ripped off my eyes.

I have now distanced myself from all of my abusers and all connections I had that were unhealthy. It took an incredible amount of work to get to the point of being able to leave and not go back to the abuse. Something they really don’t tell you about healing, is how much you lose. You lose a lot when you heal. You lose everything that wasn’t based on respect, trust, harmony, love, or expansion to make room for everything else that is. It’s really hard to heal when you can’t get distance from the pain, whether that means physically moving, ending relationships, quitting jobs, or even just finding the compassion you need within yourself to hold space for your pain.

The Diagnosis that Freed Me

My whole life I have always carried worry, anxiety, fear, and uncertainty in my stomach. When I was 16, I started having digestion issues and would get frequent loose stools. I thought it was because of a food sensitivity so I got tested for them when I was 17 and cut out a whole bunch of food from my diet, but it still continued on like this for 5 years.

In 2022 I finally got diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (an inflammatory bowel disease) when I had a flare up so serious I was unable to eat or drink for 2 weeks and almost died. Flare ups can occur either because of the food you’re eating or because of stress. This flare up was caused by stress. I almost died from a lack of nutrients, hydration, and an extremely large loss of blood. I lost a lot of weight in muscle and fat and was a skeleton of a person for many months. I was unable to walk for about 2 weeks. I developed a hemorrhage in my eye (broken blood vessel). I was laying in my bed and was thinking to myself, “Is this how I’m going to die?” and just accepted that fate, made peace with my life and let go… but then I said, “FUCK THAT! I have more I need to experience and do.” I fought exceptionally hard to keep going and heal my body. I was surrounded by my guides and ancestors throughout this whole transition. After getting rushed back into emergency the same day I rejected death (I went a week prior but they said they couldn't find anything wrong and sent me home), the doctors took every single test they could (stool sample, urine sample, blood test, CT scan, and colonoscopy) and discovered I have Ulcerative Colitis and put me on steroids, IV fluids, and antibiotics. I was hospitalized for a week. The doctors hadn’t gotten my test results back from my colonoscopy yet, but they decided to put me on steroids anyway because they said either it wouldn’t do anything or it could help, so I agreed to that. After starting the steroids I was able to eat and start walking again. I regained my weight in 5 months, and the doctors said I was recovering fairly quickly. I would typically sleep during the day and go for walks around the facility at night. I would get a blood test once everyday and a blood thinner injection in my stomach once everyday. I had bruises all up and down my forearms and all over my lower stomach. At the end of the week, my veins had been poked so many times, they were no longer viable to take blood from and there are still scars from where I had my IV needle. I was so weak I needed a wheelchair to get around and I needed someone to shower me (when you’re that sick, you get extremely comfortable being naked around people). The nurses there were absolutely incredible and so kind. This was by far the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through physically.

While I was healing from my flare up, it was the first time I was ever allowed to make my life about me and I was allowed to take up space for myself. Before I always had to worry about what was going on in my environment to survive, but I finally had the freedom to surrender.

After almost losing your life, it’s a lot easier to look at your fears and put them down. Your life and joy is everything and your fears, money, physical possessions, and everything else that doesn’t add to you becomes nothing really fast when you almost die. You realize how fleeting life is and that living life based on your fears is completely pointless because that isn’t what living is. For the first time my whole life, I was able to free myself and stop living life so mediocrely and live life with passion and freedom.

Finding Forgiveness

Again, I hold so much compassion and understanding for the people that have hurt me and their wounds that made them act the way they did and I don’t blame them for what happened anymore. I’ve also done a lot of really shitty things to people and have hurt a lot of people, so I understand where they’re coming from. A lot of people do really shitty things because they were taught to be like that by other people that were also taught to be like that. Trying to find the person that started the chain of abuse to blame them is kind of pointless because it just goes on and on and on, you won’t ever find the start of it. All you can really do is just accept and grieve what happened to you and give yourself what you need moment to moment. That’s how you heal from pain. I am genuinely so grateful for every single ounce of pain I have received my whole life and if I could, I would do my whole life over again. I’d still make all the same choices and wouldn’t change a thing. Every single ounce of deep pain I have received has given me the ability to feel love at that same depth and even deeper. Throughout my life, I was gifted so many beautiful people, animals, plants, guides, and beings to help me through this transition to learn new lessons, levels, and depths of love. I finally became the person I’ve always dreamt of being. The person I used to be that continuously hurt people is dead now. When parts of the old me come up, I just give them the acceptance and love they’ve always craved. After all I have been through, I was still able to find my way home, and so are you.

The Lessons I Learned from Death

Humans have developed a really strong attachment to life (which is understandable) so they either want to die or they don’t ever want to die because they want to have some kind of control over when death happens. When you fear death, you don’t actually leave room for life because you waste your time fearing an inevitability. Without surrendering, trusting, being grateful, or letting go you leave no space for joy, peace, or fun and life becomes very desolate and meaningless so you don’t end up making the most of what you have. Life is fleeting. No one knows how long they have until it’s their time. When they know it’s their time they get visited by loved ones from the spirit realm to guide them and a sense of peace, gentleness, trust, harmony, acceptance, and love washes over them and they let go and become one with everything once again (this phenomenon has been documented in hospices). It's important to make the most out of what you have before it’s gone. Healing always means dying. Sometimes healing means emotionally dying and sometimes it means physically dying, but either way you always come home. Your soul always tries to give you the option for healing, if you don’t choose it when you’re alive, you’re forced to when you die. You can either choose to be a slave to your fears for the rest of your life or you can free yourself. Either way, you’ll find freedom. In starting my journey, I have died many times, each time I get reborn into someone new. Every time I die, I just get that much closer to life. I am eternally grateful for getting the chance to see the world through new eyes each and everyday. Thank you for accompanying me on my journey, and giving me the honour to accompany you on yours.