Awakening the Healed Body

I’ve always considered myself to be a go getter, a hard worker, someone who saw a goal and went for it - no matter what. The proof of this is in my following experiences that I’ve listed here. I am not gloating but just proving to my audience that I always TRIED AT LIFE. If something didn’t work out, I moved on and for the most part, I never really felt sorry for myself… until that was all I did.

What I had done with my life prior to 2015: I’ve moved crossed country several times, married twice, had two beautiful children, graduated Summa Cum Laude from college, and went on to get my master’s degree. I wrote twelve novels (Alisa Mullen, Romance), worked for a missing persons agency and started my own jewelry line. I’ve owned homes, cars, traveled on beautiful trips and essentially done exactly what I wanted and when I wanted. I was always eager to do more, know more, be more. I knew systems. I knew business. But what I could never truly figure out was how to deal with the anxiety and depression I felt deep inside my soul where I felt that something was truly missing.

Everything changed in 2015, when I literally lost all my energy. All the passion, all the angst, all the go-getting mojo magic went POOF! Instead of ambition and passion for furthering myself in life, I found myself wondering “What the hell is the point of all of this anyway?”  My body hurt, my heart hurt, my mind hurt and ultimately my soul was partially gone. Some days I would sleep 22 hours out of the day and still felt completely and utterly exhausted. I suffered a low back injury when I was running marathons from years earlier and that pain was so crippling, some days it took me almost forty-five minutes to just sit up from my bed. I couldn’t bend over to pick things up. My family would gift me heating pads and tongs to pick items up off the ground. I spent most of my time sitting or lying down.

The culmination of the fatigue, the body aches, the low back pain and the severe depression left me feeling completely useless in life. Where I was once who loved to jump out of bed to see what the day would bring, I just didn’t give a shit. I was dead weight to my husband and my two young children. I never had enough energy to contribute much to their lives. I missed school events and bowed out when there was anything that I needed to be physically there for because I just wasn’t sure what my pain level would be like from day to day. I was a monster, always grumpy and ungrateful and sad. They would watch me in a helpless stare, never really knowing what they could do to help me. It was all too too too much.

I remember the last family trip my husband and I took to Marble Falls, Texas. We stayed at a beautiful resort and lounged by the pool. That trip literally took all the energy out of me. I spent most of the time in bed in the hotel room, begging my husband to take care of all the activities the kids wanted to do. I would guilt him into it, making him feel bad for my lack of energy and passion for living. Later that night when we arrived home, he left to go meet a friend for drinks at a music concert and I remember wondering how he found the energy to do so much in one day. Part of me was so angry that I had lost my will to live. My body was broken.

I should probably mention that up until this point, I was seeing a pain management doctor for my back and a psychiatrist for the depression and anxiety as well as my regular OBGYN for yearly checkups. In 2017, after years of feeling awful and useless, I went to a regular General Practitioner who I heard was good at narrowing down diagnosis. This appointment resulted in a positive lab test for Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, a condition that causes extreme fatigue. I was so relieved to have an answer to why my energy was zapped and immediately went on Synthroid to help with the thyroid levels. I was also referred to an Endocrinologist for high ANA antibodies, which means that my body was basically attacking itself. This next part of my story lasts about nine months. It includes blood tests, scans, feces tests, urine tests and basically a lot of waiting. What I came out with was a positive HLA-B27 gene indicator and absolutely no hope that I would ever feel better. Sometimes I wonder if I felt worse knowing what was causing the fatigue and pain without any real plan on improving. My new rheumatologist was probably the coldest person I’d ever met and didn’t even examine me during any of our five-minute visits together. I felt like I was more of a burden to her day than anything. The most informed or compassionate I ever really saw in her was when she was explaining how getting on the Humira plan worked. I should also mention that every single time I visited the office, some drug rep was planning an in-office lunch to discuss their drug’s effectiveness. It was at that point I lost all hope in getting better. No one gave a shit that I couldn’t move or that I couldn’t find the energy to live my life. I was on my own and so…I gave up.

My husband and I divorced. We both had been so lonely together. I could not give him all the attention he needed and he didn’t speak my language any longer, so we split, and we still very much love one another to this day. I also got to a point at my very physical job that I couldn’t keep up. In November 2018, I was divorced, unemployed, smoking cigarettes like they were going out of style and basically waited to die. I’d sleep all day and night but continued to take my pills and injections that were prescribed and often thought of suicide. I’d had several friends choose to end their lives in the years proceeding this, so it wasn’t out of the question. Between November and February, something started to change in me. I would hear voices in the deep silence that I needed to get better, that I had a job to do in 2020 and people were going to need me. I also started seeing flashes of people in my mind that I had never met before. Later, I would find out that I was seeing people that would become a bigger part of my journey.  It’s hard to describe in words other than a divine intervention. I had an out of body experience after a few days of being heavily medicated and I felt like the universe was starting to give me signs of hope and trust.

One day I decided that for my 42^nd birthday (the meaning of life, of course) I would travel to Belize. I had never heard of anyone who traveled there and for all intents and purposes, I had no business traveling to Belize. And yet, it made all the sense to me in the moment. There was always this little niggle inside of me, urging me by reminding me and making me wonder, “What if?”  I knew I would find the answer to the questions I had been asking about for years. What happens when you know you have to jump and the way down looks so scary? What happens when you completely surrender to the fall? If all you have is Belize, maybe that’s where the answer to why I am even here on this Earth. When I looked at the map, I immediately imagined being on the beach, as I am particularly fond of the beach. But no. I looked towards the Guatemala border and decided to spend my week in the San Ignacio area. People said, “it’s dangerous!” and “Wow, that’s really brave!”  It was apparent that according to the rules of life, a single, white woman traveling alone in Belize was appalling. I was excited. Eventually, I stopped telling people about my trip because it was met with opposition from everyone. I cancelled once but rescheduled. I knew I had to go.

When I arrived in San Ignacio after an uneventful day of travel, I was immediately drawn to the Mayan ruins. Cahal Pech and Xunantunich called to me and even writing those beautiful words here, I am embraced by the people and the energy that was re-introduced back into my soul during that trip. I remember finding spots in nature, away from the bustling of the marketplace or tourist hot spots. I BELONGED there. People living off the Earth, replenishing in the nature, vibrating at the same level as ancient people who could predict the mathematical solutions without any modern-day scientific tool. Something reminded me of just how powerful we are as human beings. I felt like I was missing the whole point of life when I was there and I remember knowing how very ready I was to feel anything but my old life of trauma, drama and pain.

Part of my early healing tools included meditation and EFT tapping. I will say that the tapping helped so much to get my mind into a Theta state of meditation. There were days that all I could do was sit with my anxiety and my pain. Being present with that pain was the only way through it. So, there in Belize, amongst tourists, plush green valleys of rainforest, Howler Monkeys reminding me that I was alive, so very very alive, I began to hope that there was an unknown path I’d never really thought of in my old mind. I was already regenerating the energy I was expelling from my soul. I could feel the change. I imagined myself fully healing from all these labels the modern-day instruments had cast onto me and then making that exactly my life’s work. First, I really had to heal every little thing that wasn’t in alignment with this soul’s purpose.

When I returned home, I dedicated my life to detoxing off all the medications I had been on for ten and twenty years. I started with the ones I didn’t feel like were really doing anything anyway. The one milligram per day of Klonopin was the first to go. I remember meditating a lot and staying inside. I remember baths and short walks outside. I limited my time in large groups of people and I talked a lot about how I felt to close ones. I used EFT and Reiki as well as binaural beats. I prayed a lot, too. Many times, I wondered if I was dying because the change in mind shift was different from anything I had experienced before. I stopped the Humira shots cold turkey and the Xelchanz I had only one month supply of, to I tapered that. The Celexa was next. I think that was the hardest one because I had been on some form of an antidepressant for twenty years. They were my crutch. If I was feeling blue, I should adjust the dose. If I was feeling manic, switch the drug to something else. If I didn’t feel happy and productive at least 50% of my life, I was depressed and needed a pill. And that’s all I ever knew, what my parents always knew, what their parents had believed to be true. I would like to let it be known in this moment that I was never ever going to fit into this world of working for the weekend and saving for the rainy day and fun. We get one life and we never know when we are going to pass on so why the hell are, we waiting to feel free and have fun? Who the hell came up with that bullshit?

The mind shifts were tumultuous but also the autoimmune disorders were front and center in my healing.  I immediately must find alternative ways to deal with the symptoms that Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto’s, and Ankylosing Spondylitis had on my way of being, of moving through my walk every day. It would be a great disservice to those reading this if I said I was fully confident and without fear of what this unknown journey would bring to me. In my mind, however, there was no other option. I had been down the road of no answers, no solutions, no hope, no will to live. This other way was about choosing life. To practice mindfulness with no expectation of the result or outcome will always be the road that is both the hardest and the most rewarding.

The trial and error during that next six months were sometimes blissful and often terrifying. I vacillated between doubt and confidence, which I have to say is par for any unknown journey anyone is on. I knew I was going in the right direction, however and that’s how I kept my faith.  I quickly realized it was all about releasing energy stored up in certain areas of my body and once I knew the tricks and tools to help those “stuck” areas along, the healing became larger and more profound. I remember just wanting the lower right back pain to go away. If I healed nothing else, I wanted to be able to stand up straight within thirty minutes of getting out of bed and without wincing in pain. When I was able to do that, and rather quickly, I should say, I wanted for more and more freedoms in my body. I got rid of the fatigue and the blanket of pain. I got rid of the heartburn and the restless leg syndrome. I got rid of the headaches and neck pain.

Things began to get a little strange about 3 months into my self-healing journey.  I discovered that I was, an always had been a sensitive person (HSP) who has spiritual abilities that were muted due to the plethora of medications I was taking. That is the magic I never knew I would find from the free fall into the unknown. I quickly uncovered my gift of clair-cognizance and clairsentience- two psychic abilities that got me feeling and knowing things about life that I had no reason to. I began to develop those abilities more as they became indicators on my journey of what and who I was supposed to help next.

If someone had told me three years ago that I would be sitting here today, a medical intuitive with the purpose of showing others their inner healing power, I would have laughed and told them they were so crazy. I’ve needed a lot of validation from my own healed body, which tests in normal ranges for all blood levels and zero pain. It has also taken a lot of validation for the people whom I have helped already in my short journey. We can cure and heal anything and everything. Our world, however, has made us feel small and turn our power over to people who don’t really know how strong we are as a species. My life purpose is to spread joy and bring awareness to healing our bodies, our minds and our hearts.