Guidelines for psychic Readings
Healers, psychics, curanderas, priestesses, witches — this is a realm I have been comfortable with since birth. I can spot the fakes from the pure-hearted and everything in between.
Readings and healings can be revelatory or feel grossly transactional. I’m not undupable, I’ve just learned how to read the reader.
Below are my personal rules for navigating the weird world of witches and intuitives, but obviously we’re here on this Earth as consciousness explorers and you can do whatever the hell you want.
No roadside stands with neon-lit palms.
Never do love spells. There’s more creative ways to pull love into your life.
Remember, no one can read your mind, only energy — so learn how to protect yourself and how to create energetic boundaries and how to cut cords.
Walk or run away from any psychic that approaches you or becomes demanding or aggressive once you sit down.
Don’t let any one tell you you’re cursed. You’re not cursed.
You don’t need to pay for a cleansing. You can learn to cleanse yourself and rid yourself of negativity/blockages/entities/etc.
Everything is always in flux — card readings are not set in stone, no one can see your death — you are creating your own life along with the Universe.
Even experienced, gifted seers can get things wrong. Don’t let this turn you off or become a non-believer. They are only conduits and they can be biased and sometimes filter incorrectly. Align your heart with the messages you’re given, you’ll know what’s true.
To be continued …
Healing your inner child is time travel
When I was in Sedona, Arizona last year for my 37th birthday, I met with four different healers. A shaman, dream weaver, reiki therapist and someone whose business card said multidimensional intuitive. Each one talked about the importance of healing your inner child.
During one of the sessions, I was given a visualization exercise that had profound effects on my psyche and was definitely a form of time travel.
The exercise:
I was told to go back in my mind to my first moment of shame. I was told to see myself as a child and let myself feel every painful thing Little Claudia was feeling. To induce tears. To let that moment in time break through me and cry. I did. Then I was told to swoop in — as myself from this current point of existence — knowing everything I know now, with all the love I have now, and to pick up that little version of me and heal her with my compassion and wisdom and tell her all the things she needed to hear back then.
My first moment of shame:
I was 4 years old and I was in an upstairs bedroom listening to the radio. There was a Spanish love song playing and I was singing along with it. I had a pen and a piece of paper and I was writing a love letter. I don’t know to who, but I suspect it was to God. My mother came into the room and asked me what I was doing. I told her I was writing a love letter. She laughed at me and I felt embarrassed for the first time in my life. I didn’t want to finish my letter. I didn’t want to sing along to the love song. I thought I had done something wrong — and I was ashamed of being so in love.
How I healed Little Claudia:
In Sedona I was 37 years old when I went back in time and picked up my 4-year-old self and I hugged her, and I kissed her and I told her she had done nothing wrong. I told her she came into this world in love and that’s how she was supposed to remain. I told her to write more and more love letters, and to sing along to all the Spanish love songs and to never — for one moment — feel embarrassed about it. I told her that her heart was pure and that was her super power and to let herself be guided by that for the rest of her life.
We walked out of that bedroom together, Little Claudia and I, and she’s been with me ever since.
Things that do not belong to me
For the past month, I’ve been dreaming a lot about things that don’t belong to me — things like houses, lovers, jewelry. I covet them. I steal them. I fall in love with them. But in the end I wake up with none of it.
When I was a child, I would sometimes burst into tears upon waking, because the really cool thing I found in a dream did not exist. I still remember how badly I wanted those x-ray glasses, or the treasure chest filled with gold, or that fallen star gleaming in my hand.
I don’t cry about that anymore. As an adult I learned the hard way that not every beautiful thing belongs to me. “Sometimes the grown-up thing to do is ooh & ahh & walk away.”
But there are dream gifts that you can pull into real life. They come in the form of words, or images or in the spatial dimensions of an emotion.
I pay closest attention to Full Moon dreams, New Moon dreams, dreams while traveling or menstruating, birthday dreams, and even dreams on holidays can carry gifts.
Last night’s Full Moon dream had edges.
I found myself at an open house. As I walked through, each room was more beautiful and extravagant than the last. Exalted ceilings, ornate wood, gilded mouldings, stained glass. There were murals and mosaics and unearthed marble tile that had been restored. All the colors were rich and lustrous, and my heart ached to be bathed in their light.
I knew I could never own this house. It wasn’t for sale. They were only looking for a subletter, anyway. Someone who would live in the smallest room, without a view, and remain fairly unknown. There would be no lease or binding contract. No proof that I ever belonged there.
At the end of the dream, I stood there in the largest room — a Turkish-style bath — staring at the fairy-tale like murals. So much history that I was not a part of, so much future that I would never know. And I cried. Not like a child. Not because I couldn’t have something beautiful. I cried because I loved it anyway. I cried because it existed, and I appreciated it, and I would never forget it. And it didn’t matter who would live in this house or own it, I was here now, grounded in the moment, surrounded by walls that I loved — walls that I would let keep me forever.
Even after I awoke, I was still within those walls. That is the gift I brought back with me. My heart had a new shape — as if the dream had tugged on its edges and stretched it out further into the world. A new appreciation for all the beautiful things that will never belong to me, but that I get to see and love anyway.
Living Libraries
In my continuing journey to connect with “whale” consciousness, I began a correspondence with June Sananjaleen Hughes, who wrote Whale Wisdom Dolphin Joy: Ascension Teachings from the Cetaceans (mentioned here). Through her I learned of the term: living libraries — anchor points for truths.
Whales are living libraries. So are master crystals, she says, and flight patterns of migratory birds.
I want to be a living library. I carry memories in my finger tips. Each day I go out into the world and I expand my library of sensory experiences, emotions, ideas.
Someday I will be a living library of nostalgia, dreams, potentials and love.
Related: Choosing your form and Whale wisdom
Updated: Dreaming as a technology
Dream imagery: Mental Clouds
Dreaming is a technology. Every night I become more adept at translating the language (symbols) of dreams.
On March 8, I dreamed someone who loved me hired a skywriter to write my name in the night sky in neon light, but there was so much cloud coverage that I could barely see it.
When I woke up, I had a knowing that the clouds were my thoughts getting in the way. My mental body was building a wall between love and me. Suddenly, so many other dreams from before made sense!
From Symbolic and the Real by Ira Progoff:
If the dream goes unheeded, or if it is not understood, and if its subject matter remains important, the dream will usually be repeated, either with the same or with equivalent symbols. It seems that if an important part of the process taking place in the depths of the psyche is not recognized on the conscious level so that the person cannot cooperate with it and draw it forward in the acts of his life, the process of growth is stymied. The individual then remains in a condition of self-stalemate until he learns to recognize the tendency of his inner life and manages to bring his outer life into accord with it.
I thought about the other coded symbols I had unlocked (specific to me or universal):
Water/Waves/Ocean — subconscious, different levels of consciousness or what is repressed.
Landscapes/Cities — usually depicts the state/shape/territory of my heart.
Movement/Transportation/Airplanes/Buses — journeys, mental/subconscious/emotional or otherwise.
Spaces/Rooms/Furniture — usually calls for rearranging of mental structures. perspective shifting. mental baggage.
Clouds — my thoughts, a system of intelligence that differs from my intuition or emotional body.
Dream imagery does what self-help books cannot do.
How dream imagery works for me: First it is the image, then the understanding or knowing of what the image represents, followed by the emotion that’s anchored to the dream which makes it so meaningful and has the power to transform something inside of me.
UPDATE:
El Candado (the Spanish word for padlock) is a provoker-symbol in dreams. It show me doors I’ve neglected to lock or unlock. Sometimes there is an intruder, other times I’ve locked someone out when they needed to be let in.
Dream language will never be entirely translatable — but the energy from dreams is what we need to carry with us in our waking lives.
When I dream of El Candado and wake up, I ask myself throughout the day: who I am locking out or what I am letting in?
Every dream has a request, and when I dream of El Candado, it is asking me to pay attention to my emotional boundaries and physical space. So I do exactly that.
Planetary objects as the heart
Are you a comet? Or are you a planet?
I woke up in the middle of the night asking this question. What I really meant to ask is are you passing me by or can I live on you? I don’t have a satisfactory answer for this.
I have been a comet to some people and a planet to others. In all cases, it’s the heart’s gravitational pull that influences the orbit.
Something beautiful I read this week:
How to Connect by Thich Nhat Hanh
Every morning, I go out into my backyard and I worship the Sun. I stand facing the East. I let the Sun warm my body. I whisper my prayers and gratitudes for life, for love, for inspiration, intuition and intelligence — all of which helps me to participate in the creation of the universe. Now I know the Sun is my heart.
Heart exercise” day
A love doodle I made when I was dating my husband (2014). Back then there were a lot of “heart exercise” days …
When I have a hard day I reframe it as a “heart exercise” day. I wish I could say I never resist what is out of my control, but of course I do. Nothing goes my way and I resist harder, past the point I think is possible. Eventually, I am forced to give in. I always feel defeated by the day, but the resistance still strengthens my heart in the end.
I am grateful for all my hard — heart exercise — days.
Everything is Sine Waves
My mind was blown 🤯 by this video podcast on Psilocybin, Depression, Synchronicity, Connectedness. The talk about empathic environments and the outside world mirroring your mind is true to my direct experience with psilocybin. But my most favorite takeaway is that “fundamental to reality is the sine wave.”
I heard this and I felt a very deep yes.
My period tracker Stardust syncs my cycle to the moon, connects me to the universe and displays my hormonal journey in sine waves. Every month, I track as my estrogen, progesterone and testosterone oscillate and with that I oscillate in energy — physical, mental and emotional. I am a sine wave and when I see myself in that way, I allow myself the space to act, to retreat, and to flow.
Everything is sine waves, even love — at times wavering, but never ceasing. Allowing love to ebb and flow is something I am still learning.
Find the higher, essential aspect of yourself
One of the most magical books I own is The Encyclopedia of Mental Imagery: Visualization Exercises for Personal Development, Healing, and Self-Knowledge. It is a collection of self-guided visualizations to make your imagination malleable, practice movement and instantaneous transformation.
How to sit for visualization exercises, page 12
The prompt I did this week was simple. Close your eyes, breathe out 3 times, and:
See yourself as a seed becoming a tree and then reverse back into a seed.
I became a row of Italian Cypress trees. The process of growing taller and taller felt like love, and the promise of a higher vantage point fueled my self-assurance. This is what fulfillment feels like. I knew what I was destined to become.
Then I had to shrink back into a seed, and when I was a seed, I asked, “Am I not still the same tree?” The potential is latent but it exists. I remember what it is like to see the world from up high.
And it’s the same thing with my body. The cellular memory of being beyond this life is there, but concealed. As long as I live close to my heart and purpose, the potential is activated. The seed has no choice but to continue growing. There has been movement since the beginning.
Landscapes and movements as symbols
Last night around 1AM, I woke up from a dream about Oakland. The cities and towns you live in have energies and histories and destinies, just like we do. I found myself there when I was at the lowest point in my consciousness. Oakland cradled me when no one else cared.
My apartments were shit holes. I was chased, cussed at or threatened everyday. I listened to a man get stabbed and bleed out right underneath my window. I heard my neighbor — a young mother and sex worker — get bargained down to a ten dollar blow job. My best friend’s car riddled with gun shots. My building raided by the FBI. West Oakland was a ring of Dante’s Inferno, but it was my lovely hell.
The ley lines of cities map your heart. I was poor. I was broken. I was depressed. There were no pretenses. I was sad and so was everyone else around me, and I found solace in that.
In last night’s dream, I parked my car at the top of the highest hill in Oakland, got out and set off on foot to search for my love. The town became the edge of a cliff. There was no railing, just a single-track trail. I almost slipped twice, and I was scared, but I kept going. Eventually, I hit a chain-link fence and remembered how I tore my wrist open climbing one just like it when I was 8, so I chickened-out and turn back toward my car. At that moment, I woke up.
A love note I wrote in 2010, while living in Oakland.
Some dream symbolism is so blatantly obvious it slaps you in the face. I still have chain-link fences posted up in my heart. It keeps me from loving the way I want to love. I need to tear those fuckers down.
Our personal journeys to evolve/ascend/bloom-then-wither-gracefully unfold like archetypes and legends and myths. The key to discovering what story you might be living, and obstacles you are to overcome, is to learn your symbols and patterns and rhythms. There has been movement since the beginning.
The ladder of divine ascent or how to love better
If life and growth is a ladder, we are meant to go up and down. The whole ladder is made of love. You fall only from shame, guilt and repression. Sometimes I find myself on that first rung — possessive and guarded. I know I’ve been up higher than this. I can love better than this. It’s easier to get back up there once you’ve descended so many times. Each step is a perspective you’ve inhabited before. The ascent is no longer arduous but swift. Just climb back up. Someday we’ll all reach the top of this goddamn ladder. There has been movement since the beginning.
My Kingdom of Heaven
My mother was a cult. Spiritually liberal and Bipolar. I was dragged from dogma to dogma, church to church. I’ve been baptized at least 10 times that I can remember. If you ask her, by the time I was two I had bible verses memorized. We walked door to door as Jehovah Witnesses on the hunt to convert. I remember the books and pamphlets we would hand out — the depictions of Heaven — I would get lost in those images.
I remember asking if there would be sharks and if I would have to swim with them, and being told Yes. I tried to wrap my baby brain around this ecological paradox. I truly felt this would be my heaven, but I was terrified of it at the same time. Now I understand the importance of accepting these polarities — pure love.
From Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming: Awakening the Visionary Life by Catherine Shainberg:
…sink into the body of the experience, the domain of the subconscious mind, where two seemingly opposite tendencies can co-exist. It is in this cauldron of paradox that "something other" can emerge…
… Having brought all the elements together we can only "let go and let God!” In the experimental alembic that is the womb or the mind is formed the new creation, a mixing of two seemingly incompatible parts…. The mix confuses the eye, amuses, astounds, disjoints, and unbalances our preconceived notions. Our hearts leap at the surprising freedom of the creative force to break inflexible boundaries, to mix incompatible forms. The shift, so shocking, so exciting, liberates our "True Imagination."
Imagination purified, pure love.
ISAIAH 11:6-9
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
The leopard lie down with the kid;
The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together
With a little boy to herd them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
Their young shall lie down together;
And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.
A babe shall play
Over a viper's hole,
And an infant pass his hand
Over an adder's den.
In all of My sacred mount
Nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord
As water covers the sea.
Choosing your form and Whale wisdom
From my dream book, A New Temple
In the last two psychedelic journeys (October 29, 2021 and January 8, 2022), the cosmic whales popped in. I resurfaced from the October journey with the ability to breathe deeper than I had before. They said this was important. The breath is a tool for rebirth.
Last month, I found myself with them again. The whales said, Look at your form. You choose the form you hold here on Earth.
Psychedelic journeys — like dreams and waking visions — are a gift. How you honor them is by action. I googled “whale breathing” and “whale messages.” I discovered a whole subculture of (mostly) women who swim with whales. Some of them have direct channels of communication with whales and can receive transmissions of wisdom.
I followed the path presented to me and I signed up for WhaleBreathing zoom sessions and began reading the book: Whale Wisdom Dolphin Joy: Ascension Teachings from the Cetaceans by June Sananjaleen Hughes.
The WhaleBreathing classes left me in an altered state. Euphoric. Like mini-journeys. I breathe deeper now. My breath is an anchor in the sea of my subconscious. It is a gift and a tool.
Regarding “the form we hold here on Earth” — I found clarity in the book:
…the Whales you see, are ever at this point of integration between the dimensions. Their physical body resides in the world of form, but their consciousness remains aware of their spiritual existence, their spirituality … They hold the balance between the dimensions, a statement you find hard to follow ~ but without the Whales the seas would be in chaos. And the seas represent the subconscious, that hidden and little understood part of your mind that dwells within your rhythm of awareness. … The Whales are at peace. Oblivious to outside interference, they live their dream in the ocean depths. They experience the turmoil, the turbulence, the inharmonious frequencies of the outer world, oh yes. But they allow it not to penetrate their inner being, their inner calm, the heart of their awareness. Their centeredness, or point of focus. Were they to allow the discord of an outer or alien world to penetrate their own, they would disintegrate, their form dispelled, annihilated by thought patterns of aggressiveness. The waves of calamitous sound would shatter their form. For their form is held in shape by a frequency that borders on Divine. Angelic perhaps would be more to your understanding. At any rate, there is a very fine frequency that holds their shape in form. And they have learned to hold fast to their ideal or focus that All is One, that they are not separate from the whole, from the Godhead, from the Source. And we encourage you and your cohorts to emulate the Whales, to practice steadfastness in holding true to a thought or pattern that is Divine in origin. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall follow. And it is for you to determine what is meant by kingdom of heaven. A State of Grace maybe. An elevated concept of consciousness, in which you may hold or carry your tune of intent with dedication and commitment to purpose. And here we are assuming that your purpose is the divine blueprint that you drew for yourselves, before you entered embodiment. Be like the Whales and allow nothing external to detract from this purpose. Insulate yourself. Pad your aura with an extra wad of good humor, of joie de vivre, of tolerance and respect. Glue it all together with the love of understanding, and wear this armor amour on all occasions….
I see whales now as satellites — spaceships in the sea. Divine consciousness. Something to emulate.
The ways we protect our hearts
The ways we protect our hearts. “He took certain liberties to protect his heart.” Only in costumes, only comedies, only short plays. But then he said we could wear whatever we wanted to wear on stage, and write our own lines, and as he told us his new plan for our show, his whole face lit up and I thought I saw God in the room.
Answer all your self questions or else they float there like your lost bodies
The younger version of me could not be pulled through the dimension. Her skeletal frame was frozen and split and hanging from a branch. Her consciousness could not translate. I was sad but I accepted it. What else could I do? Answer the question, they say. Answer all your self questions or else they float there like your lost bodies. The girl drops from the tree as an egg 🥚. I bend in between the worlds to pick myself up. The egg is glowing. Obviously I’m fertile. A man is speaking on a PA system. I only hear the words … “Come be …. Your future is bright.”
A still-frame from a dream
I’m out in the backyard of a strange home that is my home. The sky is dim, like a French noir film. There is a little girl bathing in a kiddie pool. She is not mine, but she is an aspect of me — the young, feminine psyche baptizing herself in the shallow end of her subconscious. I look up and see an inflatable pool toy in the shape of a butterfly floating across the sky. It is colorful and striking against the grey light. The butterfly is both the spirit and the psyche and it belongs to me. It has broken free and glides across the forefront of my mind and thoughts. I reach for my phone to take a picture. I knew it would make a beautiful picture.
Claudia, The Growler
Three nights ago (02-08-2022), I felt embarrassed in a dream. The polar opposite of this dream experience:
Another version of me resurfaced from The Wild. She was on the news, and word had gotten around that she was me, and she was called Claudia, The Growler.
A Growler is someone who one day leaves behind their life and recedes into the wild to go crazy in peace. My mother had wanted to be a Growler too. (This is what I knew to be true in the dream).
Apparently, she had been in exile. I was embarrassed because now everyone knew that this Claudia existed, without ethos or etiquette. And that whoever I had become in the past 37 years would be replaced by this wild woman. Then I woke up.
I immediately thought of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the mother figure to all wild women. I went back into the book “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype” and searched for solace and clarity. What I found was a manifesto and a newfound responsibility for my life and self:
The things that have been lost to women for centuries can be found again by following the shadows they cast. And make a candle to Guadalupe, for these lost and stolen treasures still cast shadows across our nightdreams and in our imaginal daydreams and in old, old stories, in poetry, and in any inspired moment. Women across the world—your mother, my mother, you and I, your sister, your friend, our daughters, all the tribes of women not yet met—we all dream what is lost, what next must rise from the unconscious. We all dream the same dreams worldwide. We are never without the map. We are never without each other. We unite through our dreams.
Dreams are compensatory, they provide a mirror into the deep unconscious most often reflecting what is lost, and, what is yet needed for correction and balance. Through dreams, the unconscious constantly produces teaching images. So, like a fabled lost continent, the wild dreamland rises out of our sleeping bodies, rises steaming and streaming to create a sheltering motherland over all of us. This is the continent of our knowing. It is the land of our Self.
And this is what we dream: We dream the archetype of Wild Woman, we dream of reunion. And we are born and reborn from this dream every day and create from its energy all during the daytime. We are born and reborn night after night from this same wild dream, and we return to daylight grasping a coarse hair, the soles of our feet black with damp earth, our hair smelling like ocean, or forest or cook fire.
It is from that land that we step into our day clothes, our day lives. We travel from that wildish place in order to sit before the computer, in front of the cook pot, before the window, in front of the teacher, the book, the customer. We breathe the wild into our corporate work, our business creations, our decisions, our art, the work of our hands and hearts, our politics, spirituality, plans, homelife, education, industry, foreign affairs, freedoms, rights, and duties. The wild feminine is not only sustainable in all worlds; it sustains all worlds.
Let us admit it. We women are building a motherland; each with her own plot of soil eked from a night of dreams, a day of work. We are spreading this soil in larger and larger circles, slowly, slowly. One day it will be a continuous land, a resurrected land come back from the dead. Munda de la Madre, psychic motherworld, coexisting and coequal with all other worlds. This world is being made from our lives, our cries, our laughter, our bones. It is a world worth making, a world worth living in, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity.
The imagery of spreading the soil of my psyche in larger and larger circles until it becomes a continuous land, resurrected from the dead, is the same imagery as last week’s resurfaced audio. The Universe confirms your journey over and over and over again until you pay it attention.
I can’t be embarrassed or ignore Claudia, The Growler. I know the answer is to not feel embarrassed, and to instead wear her like my soul. She’s returned from exile. She wants to live beside me. I breathe her wild and it infuses everything I do.
How to draw closer to your mystery
The above audio is a reading from a transcript. It is a thirdhand creation story. They are not my words, but the story was told to me orally by someone I loved, and for almost twenty years has lived on a microcassette unplayed. It is an unearthed treasure and I wanted to share it with you.
TRANSCRIPT:
My dad used to tell this story about the beginning of the world. And initially all is covered in water and there are two animals on a row boat. And one was a Coyote and one was a Duck. And the Coyote was the creator but he didn’t have any raw material with which to create the world because all around was water and the boat. And the duck didn’t have any creative powers of his own but he could dive and the duck did dive down and took up a little piece of mud in his beak and brought it back to the Coyote. And the Coyote took that piece of mud and spread it out, spread it out, spread it out, kept working it and working it until he had a continent - and that’s how the earth came about. And it’s the same with the creative process in that you have all the raw material you need to create but it’s sediment at the very bottom of your mind. The bottom of consciousness and the layers of the subconscious and you can’t get to it, but at some point when you keep trying and trying you discover a diver – you discover a duck that will go down in to your subconscious and bring back pieces of raw material with which to work and you don’t really know where they came from, but you found some part of your mind that is capable of retrieving that information. And then where do your stories come from? I don’t know from the bottom of your mind.
Here’s another way to put it. John Lennon was talking about George Harrison. He said George Harrison is not a very interesting man, but what is interesting is the mystery inside of George, and watching George discover that mystery over the years. And it’s the same thing, we’re all boring people, but in you is a mystery that’s very interesting and the closer you live to that mystery the more interesting your life will be. And that’s what you’re doing when you’re writing - you’re living close to your mystery.
Here’s another one, Annie Dillard said “Some people can go to bed at night and sleep well without having written a single beautiful sentence all day long.” And it’s true - some people can sleep without a single beautiful sentence. But the question you should ask yourself is, “What do I have to do everyday? What do I so deeply need everyday that if I don’t do it, I don’t sleep or I don’t sleep as well?” And that’s your mystery. Whatever it is, whatever your deepest, deepest need is, so deep that you need it each day, that’s your mystery. And just draw closer and closer and closer to that need and you’ll be more and more centered and more and more beautiful and more and more radiant and ever more transcendent.
The Grounding Stakes or a Resolution for Trauma
You can feel free and blow in the wind and be grounded.
The psychic language of images is intimate. There is no universal visual dictionary to help you decipher your visions or dreams. Why would you want one anyway?
You are a Psyche Archeologist and this is a solo expedition. Your mission is to discover new aspects of your self, interpret your personal images, and then merge this new meaning into your soul. This is a long journey we are on.
On the inside of my left wrist is the word heal tattooed in white ink. It is fourteen years old and fading and it is a monument to my suffering.
After years of therapy and talking about the trauma and then not talking about the trauma, I wondered what the end game would be. What does a healed person look like?
What do I feel like? Someone who has sovereignty over her mind, body and spirit. Someone who can pause and reflect in the face of strong emotions. Someone who is grounded and open-minded, and most of all, open-hearted.
Still, the question persisted. What does a healed person look like? The answer came in the form of an image — an image infused with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love and freedom.
I saw myself as an expansive tent — if not tied down — I would blow away. I saw the traumatic event in my life as a stake grounding me to the Earth. I felt grateful for my grounding stake.
I recognize and accept the event as a part of my history. It is not the suffering I appreciate, but the journey to heal and how it has widened my capacity to love.
Not all of my stakes are made of trauma. One of them is my loving husband. The others I am still getting to know, but each day I am grateful for them.
How beautiful that I can be a sprawling tent with the wind blowing in my face, and how it feels like I am flying, all because of my grounding stakes.
Guide Posts as God Posts
Confession: I have been carrying the belief that one day I would get to the peak of the mountain I’ve been climbing and awarded with all the answers to the unknown. I had a realization yesterday that there is no mountain peak with answers, only guide posts along this never-ending path. So, I speech-to-texted myself this epiphany and it auto-corrected “guide posts” to “God posts.” Maybe that is one answer.
