This is a story so intimate that up until now only two people knew of it. This is my answer to The Morrigan Call. I am laying bare the truth of me, for reasons I don’t fully understand.
When I was a little thing, my brother grabbed a doll from me. I tried to get it back, but couldn’t. In my young anger I screamed “I hate you”. My mother descended on me with fear and wrath “don’t ever sat that, you can never say hate!” Considering I heard my whole family refer to things and people they hated, it made no sense, but it remained a rule just for me, as long as she lived. My mother’s mother and her two step sisters were, for lack of a better word, witches. My mother was a God fearing woman and would have none of it. They didn’t have a cauldron, cast spells or perform rituals, but they could see things, declare things and as they weren’t good people in general, it showed up as something evil and dark. My mother saw that in me and assumed I would be the same. And she was right. I am, just not dark.
After giving birth to my first child a series of events led me to lose contact with both my parents, not by my choice. A long forgotten abuse made it’s way back to consciousness and rather than face truth, my parents opted to disappear from my life. Then came the dreaded phone call from a sibling to let me know my mother was gravely ill. She had a stroke and against doctors advice she was going to be placed in a nursing home. A sad, dirty nursing home. I knew in that phone call I would have to get on a plane and leave my babies for the first time and help my mother. But she had chosen this, I told myself. She had placed herself in the care of those that were making the decisions. She chose to not be in my life and the life of her grandchildren. Why would I put myself through such heartache for someone who had chosen their fate? But I knew I must go, stand face to face with my abuser and demand he give her the care she needed.
It felt like an awful choice, but from the actual moment I made the decision to go, turned my chair to my computer and pulled up Expedia to buy a plane ticket, things began changing.
I could give a detailed account of the extraordinary happenings of those 5 days in Texas, but I’m attempting to tell a fluid story in a short period of time. Suffice it to say, in those 5 days I learned how to experience unbelievable joy and gratitude while simultaneously suffering. I also heard the first faint whisper of a guide. I was given a mantra, “You don’t have to do anything, just be there”. And I didn’t have to do anything, no coercion, no bribes, I literally was just there. My mother was placed in a top notch rehabilitation center 30 minutes before I was due to leave to make my plane. I orchestrated at best. Everything else just played out right in front of me. I did what I was called to do. I did the hard thing, and was rewarded with more than I understood at the time.
In 2020 I began to experience what I thought was a resurgence of chronic illness. Headaches, body pains, but also an anxiety that didn’t make sense. A fear I was dying. I don’t fear death. I don’t want to leave my children, but I know death is the next adventure and as someone who craves knowledge of mysteries it’s just not something I fear. So for me to have these terrors, sometimes to the point of panic and tears, was unnerving. Fear and pain were clawing at me and I could do nothing to stop it. I tried all the things I had used previously to heal and it wasn’t working. I lived in this state for months.
Then came the moment I walked into my woods and screamed at God out loud and with wrath. I demanded to be left alone or to be given truth. I would not suggest this as a course of action, because the universe is a little sick sometimes. You may not enjoy the course you will be set on. In my case, the jury is still out.
Out of answers, and filled with worry for the family I could not support in my present state, I sought a different a kind of answer. Several decades before I had been given a tarot reading by a mutual friend, she felt the cards liked me and gave me the deck. I had never used them, but had put them in a box 7 years ago during a move. Somewhere in my hoarder basement was a new kind of answer and I went to find it. I never did find that deck. I had answered an ad for a futon and the lady moving was only too happy to also pass on a great many books. In them was a different tarot deck she had thrown in, and that’s what I found instead.
So I laid them out on the bed and proceeded to read tarot cards for the first time. I wept through the reading, because firstly I felt connection, to this deck, but also something greater. And secondly, I knew I was going to have to do something I didn’t want to do….. again. The cards insisted I needed spiritual guidance and to go to the desert. Once again leaving my life, home and children to get on a plane. I felt I was being given an impossible and unhelpful answer. But I knew, like I just know sometimes, I would go.
A few days later I watched a 4 hour lecture on the Knights Templar, it offered an alternative view on this historical group and I was entranced. I hopped online to find the speaker’s book only to find he was holding a “Templemaking” course” in Sedona, Arizona. I tensed when I saw it, I knew, I knew, but I did not want it. Ah, but there was a reprieve, or so I thought. The class was full, waiting list of 17 people with a venue that sat 30. Over half would have to cancel. Now, if you’ve ever had the universe call you to do something and you didn’t do it, you know, that life gets a little harder. And so in my naivety I thought, “if I put my name on the list, maybe God will leave me alone for a time.” A week later I received an email letting me know, a second course was being offered.
And so I went to the vortex, to the desert and I found the first of the answers.
My initial experience of Sedona was a complete remission of all pain. I felt normal for the first time in months. There I met women who claimed empathy as one of their many skills. The problem with being empathic they said, was being able to differentiate between one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. They all shared stories of the physical pain they were experiencing, after all this was in the middle of a pandemic. But I was reticent to call myself empathic. Empaths must protect themselves, cleanse themselves, and all around live in a state of hyper security for their person. I didn’t think that was for me, it didn’t sound like something I should be doing. I can’t tell when people lie, I don’t know what people are thinking or feeling. I often misread humans. Empath was not an answer, but it was a start.
It was when I found a woman named Delores Cannon that I finally understood what was happening and how it played itself out in my life. She was a regressionist, and regressed people through former lives. In a video she shared the different roles that people play in each incarnation. One of those roles, the crystal, gave me the final understanding. Simply put, people whom she calls crystals, experience energy. She explained that crystals love humans, but find it difficult to be around them. And she gave this piece of advice, “You don’t have to do anything, just be.” Almost exactly the first understanding I was given many years ago. It’s why high voltage power lines make me itch, or why I can tell if a tv has been turned on and off downstairs. I experience energy. All kinds.
I receive, experience, give back or take away energy. I don’t get to cleanse that energy, I don’t get to protect myself. I must take energy as I find it. So understandably, I don’t go out in to the world a lot. But when I do, I am found by those that have pain to share and my place in this world is to listen, to ask the right questions, to take all they have to offer, without judgment, and without protection for myself. Which means I often find myself ugly crying in the parking lot after a simple store trip.
I can also experience people through pictures. I didn’t realize how intensely until I spent time looking at pictures and posts of someone I knew almost 30 years ago. His energy swept into my life and hasn’t left. He has remained with me for days. Whether I want it or not. I’ve tried to make sense of it, I’ve come to some understanding. It’s raw, vulnerable, as if I’ve opened some line of communication I can’t turn off.
But while his energy is angry, fierce and intimidating, it’s also passionate and creative. I have not stopped writing since this energy came into my life. I have a voice again. This post in itself is an acknowledgment of the power of that energy. Being this open and raw, feels comfy. I found a new place to exist and it’s all down to this metaphysical invasion. I’m not sure I want this line of communication turned off. What’s more, I’m pretty sure I can now suck off that energy anytime I need to, like a vampire.
And the final act, I must also reach out to this man in reality. This is what I’m being called to do. Perhaps he has something to share, perhaps I do or perhaps it’s just an exercise in vulnerability. If I’m honest, I’d like to say no. Tell God to find another person for this mystery task, but if I refuse, it will be a good old fashioned spiritual ass whoopin’ until I do what I was called to do. This much I fully understand.