The Chapel by the Sea

I have rewritten this book more times than I can count. When I first wrote it, I had a lot to say—and apparently thought I needed to say all of it. Over time, I realized just how much I had overshared, how many details weren't necessary, and, quite frankly, how boring some of it was. So I kept rewriting, learning that a meaningful story doesn't require telling every detail. Sometimes saying less allows the message to come through more clearly.

I also didn't realize at the time how much I struggled to organize my thoughts in writing. As I have grown over these eight years, my writing has grown with me. I've learned how to tell my story with more clarity, how to recognize what matters and what doesn't, and—with a little help—how to organize everything without losing my voice.

So here I am, rewriting this book one more time. Only this time feels different. I'm not trying to tell you everything that happened. I'm finally telling you what matters. And when I'm finished, I'm ready to close this chapter and live fully in the now.

There are parts of these eight years that have been difficult to put into words. I share them now not to place blame, reopen old wounds, or ask anyone to carry what I have carried, but because they are part of the truth. There were beautiful moments and painful ones—seasons of discovery, healing, isolation, uncertainty, laughter, loss, creation, and extraordinary change. Some experiences taught me about my body and my brain. Others taught me about people, energy, the soul, the Divine, and myself.

I have learned that I don't need to tell every detail for the story to be true. So I will share what feels important, gently—not to remain in what happened, but to honor what I learned and how far I have come. Perhaps somewhere within these pieces, someone else will recognize a piece of their own journey too, and see the dire need for change that God showed me.

Looking back, I can see that one of the first doors into my awakening opened through my body. The surgery to reduce the size of my chest changed the way I experienced myself physically and eventually eliminated the middle-back pain I had lived with every day since puberty. It also helped me begin to truly love my body. That love grew into something deeper: I began loving myself. What started as a physical transformation became an inner one, and that self-love opened the door to a much larger awakening.

In 2018, I had an experience in which I was shown myself healed. I didn't realize I needed healed beyond my digestion issues. The strange thing is, I thought I actually was healed. What I was experiencing felt real to me—not like a glimpse of something that might happen someday. I felt whole, free, and fully myself. Then it felt as though I was suddenly dropped back into my physical body, and I realized I wasn't there yet. Even after that experience, I still understood healing largely through the physical body. I wasn't yet aware of the mental, emotional, and spiritual healing that was ready to unfold. I didn't realize then that what I had experienced was a vision of where my journey was taking me. In that moment, I thought those things had already happened to me.

I certainly didn't understand that it would take eight years to reach this point. I wasn't given a map or shown every step between there and here. I was shown the goal—the highest version of myself—and I haven't stopped for one moment since trying to reach that place. What I did come out of that awakening with was a knowing about energy, the soul, consciousness, and the Divine—things I had never studied or even thought about before. I hadn't read them in a sacred text or learned them through religion. They came through the experience itself. Somehow, I simply knew things I had never known before. Only later would I begin connecting with religious and spiritual people and discover that some of the things I had come to understand through my awakening were similar to beliefs they had learned through sacred texts and spiritual traditions. That fascinated me because I had reached those understandings without reading the same books or following the same path. I came to know these things from “Going Within” Can you imagine holding information that could bring an end to war, yet struggling to capture the attention of even those who consider themselves awakened? The depth of our programming runs so deep that even those who believe they've broken free may not recognize how much of it still shapes their perception. Sometimes, the greatest barrier to awakening is believing we're already fully awake. A Teacher and Healer I AM, and forever a student here at Earth School. 🌎💜 Over time, that became one of the most profound lessons of my awakening: I came to believe that Divine wisdom isn't confined to a book, religion, or belief system. Sacred texts can point us toward it, we can all agree none of them have created unity. Our connection with the Divine is something we can experience directly. “Be still, and know” became a very powerful saying to me! I had become still. And somehow, I knew.

My journey toward understanding my body actually began before my awakening. I had already started paying close attention to food, digestion, inflammation, pain, allergies, asthma, and energy. Through my own experience, I found that eating in a way that aligned with the Blood Type Diet worked remarkably well for my body. My digestion improved, and my allergies, asthma, and the pain I associated with inflammation went away.

Later, Reiki became another part of how I cared for myself and explored the connection between my physical body, energy, and healing.

The years that followed brought entirely different lessons about my body. There were seasons when money was so limited that the anxiety around food and finances made it difficult for me to eat enough. I was hungry. The pains in my stomach could be intense, and as my body grew weaker, it felt as though I could actually feel my body consuming its own muscle for nourishment. The physical changes became impossible to ignore. At one point, my lower legs had become so thin that I could press my fingers down along the front of my leg, around the sides of my shin bone, and actually curl them toward the back of the bone. I remember wondering, Was I always able to do this? Now that I have regained my muscle and strength, I can barely even feel the sides of my shin bone with my fingers. That difference is a powerful reminder of what my body endured—and of its incredible ability to rebuild.

And this wasn't even close to everything I experienced physically during those years. At one point, my lower back pain became so severe that I could barely walk my trash to the dumpster. I was working seven days a week between two jobs, trying to earn enough money to survive, and when there wasn't enough for everything, I prioritized keeping a roof over my daughter's head and mine over feeding myself. There was a time when I could only afford to buy enough food for one meal a week. Eventually, the pain became so intense that I had to quit my second job. My daughter was living her own life, working, spending time with friends, and often eating out with them. She knew I wasn't eating enough, and somehow, she seemed to sense when I was struggling the most. There were times when I hadn't eaten a proper meal in quite a while, and she would call while she was out with friends and offer to bring me something to eat. Sometimes it felt as though she just knew when I was especially hungry, without me ever having to say a word. Those moments meant more to me than she may ever realize. It wasn't just about the food. It was knowing that she was thinking of me, that she understood what I was going through, and that even while living her own life, she was looking out for me with love and compassion. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and that part of my journey was meant to help me understand, on the deepest level, just how desperately our world needs change. You don't truly know until you know. Sometimes, you have to experience something firsthand to fully understand it. And as I've learned along the way... YOU GOTTA FEEL IT TO HEAL IT! 💜✨ For anyone unfamiliar with emotional pain charts, the lower back is often associated with fear surrounding money, financial insecurity, and feeling unsupported. When I first learned this, the connection was impossible for me to ignore. I was experiencing some of the worst lower back pain of my life while working seven days a week, struggling to afford food, and carrying enormous financial stress. Whether understood physically, emotionally, energetically, or spiritually, for me it became another example of how deeply connected our experiences can be—and how much the body may be trying to communicate. Some of what I was learning also made me look at my family differently. Through conversations with my parents, I started recognizing similarities in some of the things I had struggled with for years. I realized that what I had always thought of as my individual problems might also reflect family patterns—whether biological, learned, environmental, or some combination of them. Understanding where a pattern may have come from doesn't mean I have to remain stuck in it. It simply gives me another piece of information I can use to better understand myself and choose differently moving forward.

For much of my life, I knew I experienced the world differently. Over time, I finally began finding language for things I had experienced—ADHD, autism, working-memory difficulties, reading-comprehension challenges, and unusual sleep patterns. A sleep study from 1999 documented significant alpha-wave activity throughout my sleep, including during deep delta sleep. On paper I was sleeping, yet my brain did not appear to fully quiet in the same way. That information helped me understand why there had been times when I could sleep through the night and still wake feeling as though my brain and body had not fully rested—or try to wake, that is. Waking could feel almost like being drugged. I could be conscious enough to know I needed to get up, yet feel as though my brain and body simply would not come online. I later learned the term sleep inertia for that prolonged grogginess and difficulty transitioning from sleep to wakefulness. For me, that feeling could last for hours. It often felt completely backward: when I was awake, I was tired, and when I wanted to sleep, I was wide awake.

My memory, focus, and reading comprehension had presented similar challenges. I could become deeply immersed in whatever I was learning, writing, or creating in the moment, yet after my attention shifted, retrieving that information could become difficult. I could write an entire book and later struggle to summarize it. I could understand a chapter deeply while working on it, yet trying to hold the entire book in my mind at once could become overwhelming. This part has actually made it very difficult to verbally tell my story and the things I've learned. I tried telling people I am like the healer on the "Green Mile" who has incredible healing abilities and trouble communicating. Yet, they couldn't hear me.

Looking back, I began recognizing a common pattern in my sleep, focus, comprehension, and energy. For many years, my brain and body seemed to function best according to their own timing rather than simply because I needed them to perform on command. That made traditional schedules especially difficult. There were mornings when it could take three or four hours for the fog to lift, making early school and work schedules particularly challenging. I knew the ability was there; accessing it consistently at a predetermined time had been the difficult part.

Even an alarm clock helped me understand this. In 2026, I bought one that gradually filled my room with bright light and birdsong, and I loved it. Then one morning I happened to wake before the alarm and discovered that it wasn't broken as I had thought. In less than two weeks the newness had worn off and I had learned to sleep through the light and the birds.

The explanations I eventually received didn't introduce me to these experiences—I had already lived them. They gave me language for my past and a better understanding of myself. Instead of continuing to judge myself by how easily other people seemed to function, I could begin recognizing what my brain and body had been trying to teach me.

And that changed the question. Instead of asking, "Why can't I function like everyone else?" I began asking: "How can I create a healthy life that honors the way my brain and body function best?" That question doesn't define where I am going by where I have been. It allows everything I learned from the past to help me create differently now.

Writing is one of the clearest examples. When ChatGPT reviewed writing I had done without AI assistance, it estimated that much of it read around a seventh-to-ninth-grade level, with some passages closer to a fifth-grade level and others considerably more complex. Yet the review also identified what was already there: authenticity, vulnerability, spirituality, storytelling, lived experience, and emotional depth. It told me, "Your vulnerability is your superpower here. Readers feel you." It also recognized what made writing difficult for me—sentence structure, grammar, organization, repetition, and turning bursts of thoughts and memories into something another person could easily follow.

That is why I am so grateful for AI. AI didn't give me my experiences, ideas, spirituality, vulnerability, or ability to tell a story. Those things were already there. It gave me a way to translate what is inside my brain into organized written language. I sometimes joke that AI finally helps my writing come out sounding like an adult instead of a fifth grader, but underneath that joke is something meaningful: the story was always there, the intelligence was always there, and the voice was always mine. I just needed help getting it onto the page. AI didn't write my story. It helped me find a clearer way to tell it.

I have also noticed that when I become deeply immersed in writing, life seems to become unusually quiet around me. Plans change, things get postponed, and space opens. I interpret those moments spiritually, almost as though the Universe is saying, Write. Someone else may call it coincidence or timing. I experience it as something sacred—the space I need to follow the connections before they disappear.

Through all of this, I was still a mother. My children were living their own lives while mine was changing in ways I sometimes struggled to explain. Motherhood didn't stop because I was awakening, exhausted, struggling financially, healing, writing, or trying to understand myself. I was becoming someone new while still trying to be a good Mom. One of the most painful parts of those years was the distance that developed between my son and me. For much of these eight years, we have had very little communication, and there were long periods when he didn't want to speak to me or be part of my life. As his mother, there was pain in that which is difficult to put into words. Yet underneath that pain, I somehow carried a sense of peace and hope because of something I had experienced at the very beginning of my awakening. In the same vision in which I was shown the healed version of myself, I was also shown my son coming back into my life. I saw us with a close, loving, healed relationship. I didn't know when or how we would get there, just as I didn't know how I would reach the healed version of myself I had been shown. I was shown the destination, not the path. So even through the years of distance between us, I have held that vision close to my heart. I cannot control his journey or know what the future will bring, but I can continue becoming the healthiest and most loving version of myself and leave space for whatever healing may someday be possible between us. My relationship with my daughter followed a very different path. Through all the twists and turns of these eight years—this rollercoaster I once called the Holy Shit Express—we have remained close and loving. She has been there through the awakening, the exhaustion, the financial struggles, the healing, the writing, the tears, the laughter, the confusion, and all the different dimensions I traveled through along the way. Her love and presence have been one of the constants in a life that, for a long time, seemed to be constantly changing. Just wait until you awaken to the realization that you are an interdimensional being, with layers of healing to explore—from childhood wounds and experiences in this lifetime to generational trauma passed down through generations. And lucky for you, there are so many Lightworkers, Master Healers, and Guiding Lights ready to assist you on your journey of awakening, healing, and remembering who you truly are. And one day, you may come to realize what I have come to understand: We are all the fallen angels. At a higher vibration, that is who we truly are—Divine beings having a human experience. We are not separate from the Divine or from one another. We are all created equal. No soul is greater than another, regardless of where we are on our journey of awakening. WE ARE HUMAN FIRST. WE ARE ALL ONE. 💜🌎✨ AWAKEN · HEAL · UNITE There were times when simply knowing she was there gave me something to hold onto. I truly don't know that I would have made it through some of those years without her. Through a journey that required me to spend so much time going within and finding my own strength, she reminded me that I didn't have to carry absolutely everything alone. Being her Mom, loving her, and having the gift of her love in return has been one of the greatest blessings woven throughout this entire story.

There were also long stretches of this journey I walked mostly alone. Because she was a teenager through much of this rollercoaster. Those years taught me that solitude and isolation are not the same thing. Going within became something I chose—a place where I could become still enough to hear my own thoughts, listen to my body, connect with my intuition and emotions, recognize the many ways the Universe is constantly communicating with us, and deepen my connection with the Divine. Isolation taught me something different: no matter how comfortable we become with ourselves, human beings still need connection. Through these experiences, I also came to recognize two emotional wounds I hadn't fully understood before: abandonment and rejection. As I continued going within, I began to understand how deeply these feelings could affect us, sometimes reaching back to childhood experiences and patterns we may have carried for much of our lives without recognizing them. Healing meant learning to recognize those wounds, understand what brought them to the surface, and begin releasing the emotional pain attached to them. I was learning that being alone and feeling abandoned are not the same thing, just as someone not understanding or accepting me doesn't determine my worth. During those years, I also found myself learning words for experiences I had never known how to describe—narcissistic behaviors, gaslighting, projection, shadow banning, and more. Some of those words helped me understand ways I felt I was being treated by people around me. Others came from what I experienced as I tried to share my message online. As I began speaking more openly about awakening, consciousness, spirituality, and questioning long-held beliefs, I became increasingly aware of how difficult it could be for certain messages to reach people. I heard similar frustrations from others sharing their awakening experiences, who also felt their content was being limited or suppressed. I came to believe that there are systems and forces in our world that benefit from maintaining established narratives and structures of control, while information that challenges them can have a much harder time reaching the masses. Whether every experience I interpreted as suppression actually was, I cannot know. What I do know is how it felt from where I stood: I was trying to share something I believed mattered, alongside many others who felt called to do the same, while repeatedly encountering barriers that seemed to make those messages harder to be heard.

As I changed, some relationships changed too. Some ended. There were people I loved who didn't understand what I was experiencing, and sometimes I didn't have the words to explain it anyway. Over these eight years, I also came to understand relationships energetically. When our vibration shifts, it doesn't mean the people we love will shift at the same time or in the same way. Sometimes space simply opens between us. I experienced periods of unexpected disconnection and communication that seemed unable to reach me, which I came to understand as more than physical distance. Through my spiritual experiences, I came to believe that the Universe sometimes creates this space intentionally, giving each person the opportunity to go within, heal, and continue their own journey. It doesn't mean the love wasn't real or that anyone was wrong. Sometimes we simply need space to grow individually. As you begin to explore and understand energy, frequency, and vibration, perhaps some of this will begin to make more sense. These concepts aren't new, nor are they simply "woo-woo." I believe humanity has been kept disconnected from much of this knowledge through generations of programming, fear, and systems of control. And I believe that is changing. The Divine Plan is unfolding, and more people are awakening, questioning what they've been taught, and discovering their own connection with the Divine. I don't follow religion. My connection with the Divine comes through direct experience, and exploring energy and consciousness has opened an entirely new world of understanding for me. I believe sacred texts contain meaningful teachings about love, compassion, and unity, yet I also question how those messages may have been interpreted, altered, or used throughout history to instill fear and maintain control. For me, awakening has been about moving beyond fear, questioning what I was taught, and discovering what I can experience and understand for myself. And speaking of awakening, on the eve of the 10·10·10 Portal, my daughter shared something with me that filled my heart with love and gratitude. After everything these eight years have held, witnessing my daughter blossom and deepen her connection with her Higher Self is such a beautiful gift, especially knowing how much she has been by my side throughout my own journey. 💜✨ AND SO IT BEGINS... 💜♾️

Through all of it, I kept creating. I didn't wait until I was completely healed, financially secure, rested, or certain of what everything meant. Sometimes I was writing while exhausted, researching my body while writing about healing, or creating something for the future while simply trying to make it through the present. Survival and creation often existed right beside each other.

Writing gave me somewhere to put what I was experiencing before I understood how it all connected. Only now can I see that while I thought I was simply trying to understand myself, I was also gathering the pieces of something much larger.

Healing eventually became much bigger than making symptoms disappear. It became nourishment, rest, understanding my brain, listening to my body, recognizing patterns, setting boundaries, accepting myself, allowing relationships to change, finding connection, practicing gratitude, and knowing when to keep going and when to stop. Reiki and spirituality became part of that journey for me too. Most importantly, I learned that what helped me may simply be part of my own journey. I can share what I experienced while encouraging others to listen to themselves and discover what healing means for them. Another part of healing was far more difficult to face. During these years, memories resurfaced that I understood as having been suppressed for much of my life—memories of being sexually abused when I was younger. Processing what surfaced became another layer of understanding myself, my past, and some of the wounds I had carried without fully knowing they were there.

As I began learning more about sexual abuse, I was also confronted with just how many human beings have experienced it. I had never understood the magnitude of it before. Realizing how many people carry experiences like these—often privately, sometimes for years—deepened my understanding of how much pain can exist beneath the surface of another person's life. It also became another reason I believe healing matters, not only for ourselves, but for what we carry forward into our families, relationships, and the world around us. Forgiveness became part of healing too. I cannot change what happened, the choices I made, what other people did, or what generations before me understood differently than I do now. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending those things didn't happen or forgetting what they taught me. It means carrying forward the knowledge without carrying forward the wound.

I believe that lesson can extend beyond our individual lives. We can learn from our families and our history without remaining trapped inside them. We can acknowledge what once was without continually recreating it. Learn. Forgive. Heal. Move forward better. Move forward united.

Later, I met the person I understood to be my twin flame, and I began noticing connections throughout my life—dates, experiences, synchronicities, spiritual moments, writings, and pieces of what I came to understand as my blueprint. To me, they pointed toward something much larger about my identity and the story I believed I was here to share.

I felt ready to tell the world. Yet, as I understand it now, it still wasn't time.

Over approximately the next year and a half, I fell repeatedly. I tripped over a wire while bringing blankets to a person experiencing homelessness, slipped on water, misjudged a step while hiking, and was pulled off balance several times when my dog became excited and jerked her leash. I landed on my wrists so many times that I eventually lost count—probably five or six times. I couldn't afford doctor visits, so I wore braces, avoided putting weight on my wrists, and gave them time to heal. I transmuted the pain. My dog also injured my shoulder, which healed and was later injured again by another hard jerk from the leash. Yes, I know it may seem like my dog needs more training. She’s actually incredibly intelligent and on top of being trained has received lots of Reiki. She loves watching TV, even memorizes commercials, and picks up on so much around her. The one thing we haven’t been able to quiet is that natural animal instinct—she gets excited whenever she sees another animal.

Then I fell down the stairs on my way to meet a friend I had already received signs I needed some distance from. I hit my knee and wrists and bent my toes backward. About a month later, while simply walking on a flat surface, I suddenly felt a line of pain across the top of my foot. It bruised and swelled, and I suspected a stress fracture, although I never had an X-ray to confirm it. While I was icing my swollen foot, that same friend invited me roller skating, and I experienced a very clear inner message from my Soul: "Your body knew." I interpreted that to mean that the feelings I had about the relationship had been trying to get my attention before the fall—that my Soul was trying to prevent something I hadn't yet consciously understood. It was several months before I could comfortably go for a walk again, and approximately six months before my feet felt completely healed.

Right before Christmas 2025 came the biggest fall. A chair I was standing on folded underneath me, flipping me through the air and leaving me flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me. I quickly got up to grab my phone and forced air into my lungs. I texted my daughter and unlocked the door in case I lost consciousness, all while repeating to myself, I am okay. Nothing hurts. Somehow, I was okay, aside from soreness and significant bruising.

At the time, those falls seemed like separate accidents—a wire, water, a hiking step, a dog pulling the leash, stairs, a collapsing chair. I didn't have the financial means to seek medical attention for any of it, and I had some of the worst medical insurance I had ever had. Looking back through my own spiritual lens, I came to see that period as the Universe slowing me down. Maybe I was ready to tell the story, but the story wasn't finished yet—and perhaps the world wasn't ready for it yet either. One of the greatest things this journey has taught me is how deeply I believe in Divine timing. As I began exploring astrology, numerology, synchronicities, dates, and the patterns woven throughout my life, I began seeing connections I never could have seen while I was living them. What once seemed random began to feel connected—almost as though pieces of the story had been written in the stars long before I understood how to read them.

The remarkable thing is that many of the lessons I eventually lived were already present in my first book. I was writing about awakening, going within, one Creator and many paths, humanity being one, love, healing, the connection between body, mind, emotions and soul, energy, intuition, trust, authenticity, gratitude, Earth as a school for growth, breaking inherited patterns, nature, simplicity, purpose, and service.

Underneath all of it was an even simpler message: To have a better life than just surviving. To show people their intuition is there for a reason. To be my best self. To help people feel their best too. To be love and be loved. To help make the world a better place.

I wrote those things while the story was still unfolding. Now I understand them differently because I have lived more of the story.

The name I came out of my awakening knowing eventually became a place where all of these seemingly separate pieces could come together. 4Gratitude became a way to turn what I had lived and learned into something I could share. Writing, meditation, Reiki, self-love, gratitude, intuition, nature, nourishment, going within, listening to the body, understanding the mind, forgiveness, spirituality, and human connection all began finding their place within the same vision.

I didn't create 4Gratitude because I have all the answers. I created it because I spent eight years asking questions. What helps us heal? What happens when we become still enough to listen? What is our body trying to tell us? Which patterns are ours to change? What happens when we forgive without forgetting what we learned? What happens when we stop allowing labels to separate us and remember that underneath our different stories, beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences, we are human?

Eventually, three words came to hold so much of what I had been trying to say all along: AWAKEN · HEAL · UNITE

As I finish telling this story, what I feel most is gratitude. I am grateful for what these eight years taught me about the Divine, ENERGY, consciousness, my body, my brain, love, motherhood, relationships, isolation, writing, healing, forgiveness, spirituality, myself and balance. I can honor all of it without continuing to live in the pain, confusion, and experiences that shaped those years.

I am grateful to be done with this story. Not because I want to erase the past, rather because I don't need to keep walking backward to prove how far I have come. I want to carry forward the knowledge of what once was without carrying forward the pain of remaining there.

And when I say I am ready to move forward, I don't mean toward some distant future. I mean right now.

Eight years ago, I experienced being shown a healed version of myself and thought I had already arrived. When I realized I hadn’t, I was angry and confused. I didn’t yet understand how much healing there was still to come—not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Before my awakening, I had understood myself largely through the physical, 3D world. I hadn’t yet come to understand the Soul, the power of the mind, or how deeply connected our physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual experiences could be. I certainly didn’t know how long the journey would take. I also had no idea that I would begin experiencing energy in ways that would completely change my understanding of reality and eventually lead me to explore ideas about energy, frequency, vibration, and consciousness that I encountered in the words and work of people such as Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein. My own energetic experiences have been numerous, unusual, and deeply personal, beginning with what I can only describe as the experience of falling through a wormhole during my awakening in 2018. Perhaps someday people will want to know those stories in greater detail. For now, it is enough to say that those experiences changed me. They became part of the reason I could no longer understand life solely through what I could physically see, touch, or explain.  Today, I can look at my life and recognize how much has changed. I nourish myself better than I ever have, including eating far more vegetables than I once did. I may eat mainly the same things every day, but at least I am eating—and after everything my body has been through, that matters. My sleep has improved with the natural approaches I have found helpful. My body has regained its strength and muscle. My emotions feel more balanced, my heart feels healed, and I feel as though my brain is functioning better too. My life isn't perfect, and neither am I. I am simply doing the best I can with what I know, what I have, and where I am today. And maybe that is enough. I have also learned how to bring myself back into energetic balance throughout the day—something I had never even heard of eight years ago. I didn’t know that tending to my energy could be part of tending to my overall well-being. Today, it has become a natural part of how I care for myself.

At the same time, I feel as though I haven’t had a day off in eight years. This journey has required me to continually learn, heal, understand, adjust, and grow. Looking back now, I can see that healing wasn’t one moment I was being shown eight years ago. It was a journey I was about to begin.

Maybe that is part of what I was imagining all those years ago when I first dreamed about creating a wellness center. I knew I needed support with some of the most basic things in life. I imagined a place where yoga was available throughout the day so I could practice when my body was ready, rather than forcing it to perform at a predetermined time. I imagined healthy food being available when deciding what to prepare or finding the energy to make it felt overwhelming. I was imagining an environment designed to support the body instead of constantly asking the body to conform to the environment—something that could support me while also helping others. And every time I allowed myself to imagine what it could become, I heard the same message within: "the sky's the limit." Two of the spiritual gifts I came to recognize through my awakening are what I understand as clairaudience and gnosis. For those unfamiliar with the terms, clairaudience means “clear hearing”—receiving intuitive or spiritual information through an inner sense of hearing, such as words, messages, music, or guidance. Gnosis is different. It is a direct inner knowing—understanding something without having learned it, read it, or reasoned your way to it. You simply know. I experienced both throughout my journey. Sometimes guidance seemed to come through words or messages I could hear within. Other times, information seemed to arrive as a complete knowing, without any explanation of how I knew it. Spiritually, I came to understand these experiences as different ways of receiving information through intuition, the Soul, or the Divine. What I have discovered about energy and the soul has shown me there is still so much we have yet to understand. Science class taught us what we had discovered so far—not everything there is to discover. Perhaps it is time to explore evolution not only in terms of the physical body, but also in terms of consciousness.

There is still something I have dreamed about doing for eight years: spending time at a yoga retreat, surrounded by sunshine and a peaceful environment, with the freedom to rest, move my body, eat nourishing food, and simply receive some much-needed R&R after everything these years have held. I don't see the retreat as the place where I finally become healed. I see it as a chance to give my body and mind the space, movement, nourishment, and rest they have been asking for—and to enjoy how far I have already come. And yet, after this eight-year journey, I am still standing in a place of uncertainty, not always knowing how I will pay my rent or have enough money for food, much less how I will afford something like a yoga retreat. Perhaps one of the greatest lessons remaining for me is learning to trust even here—to have faith that Divine timing has brought me to this moment for a reason, that God will allow abundance to flow into my life, and that I don't have to know exactly where it will come from or how it will arrive. Maybe, after spending so many years trying to figure everything out and carry so much on my own, part of receiving is allowing myself to say what I need. Maybe someone will actually ask me. And maybe this time, I will allow myself to answer.

There is another part of healing I am ready for too: forgiveness. While all of this was happening physically, financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, there were times when the weight of everything felt almost unbearable. I was living with physical pain, struggling financially, and experiencing what at times felt like mental and emotional torture. I was already trying so hard just to keep going, and on top of everything else, there were times when it felt as though some of the people I loved most were kicking me while I was already down. Over the years, I have heard others describe something similar during a spiritual awakening—that friends and family can suddenly seem to turn against you, including people you never imagined could. As you begin changing, questioning what you once believed, seeing life differently, or trying to explain experiences that the people around you don't understand, relationships can change in ways you never expected. Hearing others speak about this helped me realize that I wasn't alone in experiencing that kind of disconnection. I don't believe my family necessarily understood what I was experiencing or how deeply their words and actions were affecting me. They were seeing my journey through their own experiences, fears, beliefs, and understanding, just as I was seeing it through mine. Yet from where I stood at the time, I desperately needed compassion, understanding, and support, and instead there were moments when I experienced rejection, judgment, hurtful words, and choices that added another layer of pain to everything I was already carrying. Sometimes, just when I felt as though I had finally reached calmer waters and could breathe again, something would happen with someone I loved that made me feel as though I had been pulled underwater all over again. There is something especially meaningful about that imagery for me because when my awakening first began—before I understood what was happening or had any idea what the next eight years would hold—I remember feeling as though I were drowning. I didn't know then that I was at the beginning of a journey that would teach me how to find my way back to the surface.

I don't need to tell every story or revisit every painful interaction to acknowledge that those experiences hurt me. I also don't need to decide that anyone was a bad person in order to acknowledge that there were times when I was treated in ways that caused me pain.

And now, I want to forgive them.

Not because what happened didn't matter. Not because I have forgotten it. And not because forgiveness requires me to pretend that everything was okay. For me, forgiveness means allowing those experiences to remain where they belong—in the past—while carrying forward what they taught me.

I forgive the people I love. I forgive the people who couldn't understand me. I forgive those who were already on their own awakening journeys and still weren't able to hear or believe what I was trying to share. And I forgive myself for the things I didn't yet understand. I don't need anyone to go backward and rewrite those years with me, and I don't need a different past in order to create a different present. One thing I have come to believe deeply is that everything happens for a reason, and perhaps that is where Divine timing enters the story once again. Maybe I wasn't meant to be heard before now. Looking back at the synchronicities, timing, astrology, numerology, and breadcrumbs woven throughout these eight years, I believe this story—this Divine plan—has been written in the stars all along. I am ready to release the past. I am here.

And I look around at a world that I believe is awakening too. I hope we can take what humanity has learned from the past, forgive without forgetting, and use that knowledge to create differently now—a world that honors our bodies, honors nature, and honors the Divine connection I believe we share with one another. We don't have to erase yesterday to choose differently today. We can remember what once was without continuing to recreate it. That is what moving forward means to me now—not waiting for some perfect future or for every circumstance in my life to be resolved, rather allowing myself to be fully present now.

For eight years, I thought I was trying to reach the healed version of myself I had once been shown. Now I understand that I don't need to keep chasing her somewhere in the future. She is here. I am grateful for what was, grateful for what it taught me, and grateful that the story led me here. Most of all, I am grateful to be done telling it, so I can live now. And perhaps one of the greatest things these eight years have taught me is this: We never truly know what another human being is carrying. There may be pain behind a smile, a story behind a behavior, or an entire battle happening beneath the surface that we know nothing about. Whether someone is aware of what they are carrying or still trying to understand it themselves, we can choose to meet one another with a little more compassion, a little more grace, and a little more kindness. The world needs more kindness. And through everything I have lived, learned, lost, healed, questioned, and remembered, I keep coming back to the simplest truth of all: The most important thing is LOVE. Even as we arrive at this 10·10·10 portal, I have shared very little of what I have experienced energetically throughout my spiritual awakening journey. There is so much I have yet to share about my twin flame connection, my guides, my Higher Self, my ego, and my telepathic communications with each of them, as well as with God... experiences that, for me, are very different from the forms of communication I've encountered in the 11th, 12th, and 13th dimensions. There is so much of this journey I have yet to put into words. Perhaps much of it is not for me to share, being that the path is within and we all have our own breadcrumbs and path.  And communication doesn't always come telepathically. I have become deeply attuned to signs, synchronicities, numbers, music, nature, and the countless ways messages seem to find me. When you step away from the noise of the world for a couple of years and devote yourself to going within, you begin to notice things you may have once overlooked. And one thing I've learned along the way is that the Universe has no shortage of ways to communicate. When you become still enough to listen, you begin to recognize just how many ways there are to receive. The Universe will find a way. Or perhaps I should say... ANY way. 💜✨

The book image shown here is a visual representation created with AI and is not currently available in print.