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.

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 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. 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. I was angry with the Divine. I didn't understand why I had been allowed to experience myself as healed only to return to a body and a life that still had so much healing ahead. I didn't understand then that what I had experienced was a vision. 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. What I did come out of that awakening with was an entirely different understanding of energy, the soul, consciousness, and the Divine—and one name that I somehow knew: 4Gratitude. I had no idea what 4Gratitude would become. I only knew the name.

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. I can't say exactly what caused each change or separate one thing from another. I can only share what I experienced and what seemed to help me.

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, lost a significant amount of muscle, and became physically weak. At one point, there was so little muscle and tissue around my lower legs that I could slide my fingers underneath the edge of my shin bone. Today, I have regained my muscle and strength, and there is no way I could do that now. That difference is a physical reminder of both what my body endured and its ability to rebuild.

Some of what I was learning also made me look at my family differently. Recently, my mom told me she can never think of what to eat—something I have struggled with for years. My dad has described his reading comprehension in a way that sounds remarkably similar to mine. I began realizing that some of the things I had always thought of as my 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. After only about thirteen days, 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.

There were also long stretches of this journey I walked mostly alone. 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, body, intuition, emotions, and connection with the Divine. Isolation taught me something different: no matter how comfortable we become with ourselves, human beings still need connection.

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.

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.

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 repeated doctor visits or X-rays, 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.

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 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 go for a walk.

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. 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 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 there.

I am grateful to be done with this story. Not because I want to erase the past, but 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, and spiritual experiences could be. I certainly didn't know how long the journey would take. 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. 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. I have also learned how to bring myself back into energetic balance throughout the day.

At the same time, I am exhausted. There are days when it feels as though I haven't truly had a day off in eight years. Living for so long in what felt like a constant fight-or-flight response—wondering where I was going to live, whether I would have enough money for food, and eventually how the world might respond to me and my story—was exhausting. I am writing these words during another period of tremendous uncertainty. I don't currently know how I am going to pay my rent, my money for food is running low, and I don't know exactly what the next step will be. Yet something inside me feels different this time. Instead of being consumed by financial anxiety, I have a sense that something is going to change. I don't know exactly what that will look like, and I don't need to pretend that I do.

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.

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.

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 already carrying so much, and some of the people I loved most didn't understand what I was going through. There were words, choices, rejection, judgment, and moments when I desperately needed support and didn't feel it was there. At times, it felt as though I was trying to survive everything happening within and around me while also carrying the pain of feeling misunderstood by the people I loved.

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. The people I love were seeing my journey through their own experiences, fears, beliefs, and understanding, just as I was seeing it through mine.

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, but 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.

The book shown here is a visual representation created with AI and is not currently available in print. Most of all, I am grateful to be done telling it, so I can live now.