Spiritual Awakening Journey: Pt. I - The Trigger

I was was born on christmas eve, a few days past my original due date which was the winter solstice. The energy of a winter solstice brings a new cycle, a turning point, a call to action. Coinciding with the winter solstice, I was also born under a waxing crescent moon which represents emerging light, optimism and new beginnings from the depths and darkness of the winter nights. From the moment I was born my father told me I had these big, bright, curious eyes that loved to explore the world.



Throughout my childhood and adulthood I was a very stoic person. Never revealing my feelings and emotions on the outside, but deeply perceptive and feeling on the inside. Always maintaining an external facade of perfectionism and capability, I learned to protect myself with a hard shell when I was young. I naturally observed and absorbed everyone’s feelings and anxieties, recognizing them as my own. I was like an energetic sponge. Absorbing and absorbing until I was completely depleted with no way to replenish and care for myself. My own emotions becoming so far removed until I could no longer differentiate between my own and someone else’s. With time, I unconsciously took on layers and layers of other people.

Through the ups and downs I always managed to keep going and to the best of my ability to rise above it, learn from it, and come out stronger. I would never accept defeat. I always strived to succeed and achieve. But throughout those experiences I neglected to care for myself; to accept and allow myself to feel all of the feelings and emotions that I had a right to feel but never allowed myself to. Because if I did, I was afraid I would get sucked into the dark nights of winter. Instead, I always focused on that 10% of shining light, the possibility and potential in everything. It is what always motivated me to keep looking ahead and stay focused on moving into the future.



When I was about 8 years old I developed extreme asthma in which I had trouble breathing and sometimes needed a machine to help me breathe. At age 13 I developed a serious health and skin condition that programmed all sorts of self-conscious behaviors. At age 25 I loss my father to a rare form of cancer after a 6-year battle. I remember going back to work the week after. Ill-equipped with the skills and support to process my grief, I pushed it down and kept moving forward. In the years after I worked hard, striving to build a career but my health suffered and I experienced a series of health conditions. All of which were chronic and could not be explained. Then covid hit and I found my life on pause. I was recently married and my future plans to buy a house and start a family were put on hold.

My life and the relationship during those covid years were incredibly hard. It was a constant struggle. Back-to-back work calls mixed with angry, tearful fights. Having to put on a happy face for work while suffering quietly inside. I was operating on an empty tank of gas while trying to keep my life together. I was suffering greatly and was not healthy and happy, and my significant other was not happy either. I remember thinking, what if it could be different if only I tried harder? But I tried so hard and it didn’t matter. I didn’t understand how I could love someone for so long and then feel like the love turned sour. My future no longer felt bright, full of dreams and of possibility. I remember feeling like I needed to save myself because I was getting lost down a path that felt increasingly small, dark and constraining. I felt myself disappearing.
 The person I spent almost a decade with became unrecognizable to me and I became unrecognizable to myself.

And then I had a dream one night. It was the first dream I ever had after nearly a decade of zero dreams. It was the most vivid, visceral dream I’ve ever had in my life. I felt as if I was alive, feeling, fearing, and moving in a different realm. It was as if something inside of me was starting to emerge with great force. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the start of my spiritual initiation.

“I followed a path out of a medieval town under sunny blue skies. The town is set high on a hill overlooking vast land that rolls on forever. We stopped along the way to talk with jovial townspeople. But the girl, Anne (of Green Gables), had something important to show me and so we hurry along. She had freckles and red hair tied in braided pig tails. She skipped ahead and I followed. We left the outer edges of the town and we reached a dark and eerie forest. All the bright sunlight and colors of the town had faded away, and here in this forest were colors of dark blue, black and grey. I immediately began to feel cold. Large boulders grew from the ground as I hopped across. And there, nestled in the trees, was a small wooden shed. Immediately I grew cold. Anne led me to the entrance. I felt my heart racing as I moved my hands to open the door. And there, behind the old wooden door, was a frozen girl. Crammed in the shed upright like an ice block. Preserved in time and forgotten in the woods. I felt a strange pang of familiarity, as if It was me. Suddenly, a girl ghost rose out and with great speed began to ominously chase me away from the shed. I ran back towards the path, zooming across the growing expanse of boulders as she chased me from behind. The path seemed to go on forever. I looked back at her electric blue and white whispy form, she had terrifying black eyes and sharp teeth. I feared that she’d catch me. Her ghostly scream haunting me and in the darkness of the night, I woke up. Paralyzed, it took me some time before I was able to actually move my body. My body frozen like an ice block.”

That dream has stayed with me forever. Whether I knew it or not it was the great call to make a great change in my life. At the time a part of me was still in denial, still fighting, still holding on. I was so afraid and so lost. I didn’t know what to do or how to get my life in order. It just wasn’t possible. The forces were greatly out of my control. I just kept feeling like everything was on fire and I just had to let it burn. But deep down I knew, it was also time to do something different. A few weeks later I suddenly made a decision to separate from my ex-husband. This would be the first of many major decisions to end my old life, and start anew. And progress me along in the initiation process for my eventual spiritual awakening.