This Little Light of Mine

One year ago today, I received an amazing gift - I was nearly scared…to death! Until 2025, nothing actually scared me. Unlike “normal” people, I didn't have a healthy sense of fear about anything, and damn, I liked it that way! While others were wringing their hands in worry, fretting about what might happen, I had already jumped into my next “adventure”. 

I had no idea why I didn’t have fear, and I really didn’t care. I didn’t consider it a problem, as I didn’t suffer any horrible consequences in the moment. In fact, I would often say, “I had the time of my life!” I definitely have some wild stories in my “I Should Be Dead” archives.

I don’t know the statistics, but I would say that’s par for the course for those of us who came up in traumatic circumstances. We are desensitized to things that would frighten or even terrify those who were not exposed to similar horrors. When you’re surrounded by monsters, well then, nothing looks like a monster, now does it?

I began my personal healing journey in earnest in 2019, as so much was stirred up and happening in my life, and my once capable being simply couldn’t handle any more. Of course, I didn’t know that, so I allowed even more to be piled onto me, most often seeking out more myself! That’s another part of being a trauma survivor - until we have healed, we will create and stir up our own versions of drama, just to feel at ease. Peace is uncomfortable for those of us who only know chaos. That is, until something shakes us awake enough to know there are other ways to live and be in the world.

In 2019, I began the work. The work of knowing myself wholly and completely. Acknowledging and accepting even the most wretched pieces of myself, my shadow. The pieces I abandoned due to trauma as a child. The pieces I believed weren’t worth anything because other people showed me they weren’t. The pieces I didn’t even know I was missing! Of course, I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I was just “seeing a counselor” because I didn’t want to feel so awful anymore.

Reintegrating fragmented pieces of ourselves is no small matter, and it does not happen overnight, no matter how determined we are to heal and to know ourselves, to seek our own truth. And so, layer by layer, piece by piece, I began putting the puzzle of me together. It is a tedious process most days, and I would like to skip the dodgy middle part and just get to the end already. If anyone has figured out how to do that, please let me know. It does get easier and faster once we have faced the fear of knowing ourselves, of knowing the truth.

Yes, in 2025, I unearthed a huge personal truth, but I had to be shaken first, or in my case, nearly scared to death! I had been losing large amounts of blood for several months from what I found women consider a “normal” part of perimenopause. I was physically weakened and experiencing episodes similar to low blood sugar, but not exactly. I was in complete denial of how compromised my body had become, and I didn’t feel I had enough time to care for myself. I had to just keep trying to run a business, be a mom, a friend, a co-parent, a community member, and on this particular day, I was trying to keep a dream alive that I had been hoping I’d finally have time for, right after… [insert next catastrophe].

As I drove north for my coffee order and radio shift doing the “Linnertime Takeover” on Happy Production Studios’ streaming radio station, I started to feel weak, and maybe like I could pass out. I thought I’d better eat something, and a burger was one of the items I should be eating more of, so I hit a drive-through, parked in the lot of a nearby strip mall, and gobbled down my meal as though it would save my life. I rested a moment after I ate and took some deep breaths, gathering myself for the last hour of my drive.

I “woke up” almost an hour later, car running, my heart racing, my palms and body clammy, as I looked around and had no idea where I was or why I was there! I was scared…for real!! As my memory started to filter back into my mind, this familiar feeling was exactly how I felt after passing out or after being under anesthesia. Since I wasn’t in an OR, I quickly realized I had lost consciousness for nearly an hour, and I was going to be late for my radio shift!!

I made it to the studio just in time, but it was a rough shift. I wasn’t “all there”. I forgot to turn on a microphone for an entire conversation, and I just felt awful in all the ways, and this foreign fear cast over the whole ordeal. I wanted to cry, and I totally did most of the way home. On top of barely being able to make it through a day, now this super fun thing I took great joy in doing, a pathway to a dream, well, I couldn’t have that either.

But I can, we all can, if we choose it for ourselves. I will continue sharing my healing journey because it is important, now more than ever. I don’t know how much you’ve noticed what’s happening in the world, but it is time to change. Each and every one of us can choose to take responsibility for our own healing, so the world that is collapsing today is not the one we recreate for tomorrow. And as much as we want to point to something outside of ourselves that “did this TO us”, we must turn our focus to ourselves. How do we become our authentic selves, unable to be victimized by the darkness in this world?

Each of our stories will be different, and our ways into the light will be just as varied, but the oneness of all things is real. Whether we believe it or not, we are all connected. We can see this truth coming to light on a global stage. How we allow the least of us to be treated is how we treat the whole, whether we intend to or not.

It is time, my friends and my enemies, this suffering need not continue, but we must each choose to know ourselves to walk in the light. Pick up our rosaries, our mala beads, our stones, our spells, our cards, and our gifts. Invite the Ancestors, Jesus, Buddha, the Angels, the Elements, whoever speaks to us from the light, and ask for their guidance. When we come home to ourselves, we can no longer be manipulated by the darkness. Each of us has great power, and with great power comes great responsibility. Use it for the light within you, and watch how that light helps grow the light within us all!

I'm so glad I scrolled down a few more options for this gem!! This is right up there with The Boss singin' Santa Claus is Comin' to Town! See how his light helps ours shine too?! Go on then - do it for ourselves!!

Baby, What You Want from Me?

"I try to pretend I'm the strongest. 

That one friend you have that can endure pain the longest. 

I try to bury my feelings so far you can't see them 

and try to put meaning to all the bad things I'm thinking.

And one by one they come to the edge

and everyone slips and falls in the trench. 

But I warned you to stay away, they said I'm damaged in every way..."

Except I didn't warn anyone...I told everyone! There's a difference between a warning label and an explanation of benefits. Maybe I should come with both...hehe.  And, I didn't tell anyone to stay away, either. I invited those I thought were of like mind in with my genuine warmth, energy, and vision of co-creating something really special in the world, part of a new existence that I feel we are all moving toward collectively. I ignored all sorts of signs that not everyone is ready or even wants to be a part of something so different from what we are used to, or maybe just not in the way that I want them to be. I know better now, but it took some hard knocks to understand. I had to learn a few things about myself, pieces I left abandoned in the shadows before I could see the forest through the trees.

In 2018, I went through a radical transformation - mind, body, and soul. With the help of many different resources, including Julia Cameron's, The Artist's Way, and Connie Kaplan's, The Invisible Garment, I discovered parts of myself I didn't know existed and read about the way I "be" in the world within the pages of those books.

In my blog post from August of 2021, The Artist's Way...My Way!, I describe the life-changing experiences I had working through that book. The Invisible Garment is a body of work delivered to the author from the divine, from Angels. I've had a few real-life angelic visits myself, so Kaplan's work piqued my interest for sure. Kaplan received an explanation of 30 life principles, our primary reasons for incarnating in this life, and was instructed to share them with the world. Using my natal birth chart, I found which principle matches with aspects of my chart. My primary life principle is Resistance, but it doesn't mean what you think.

In this context, Kaplan defines resistance as a resistor in an electrical circuit, which changes the flow of energy within the circuit. I change the flow of energy everywhere I go. I am the thing that one comes in contact with that allows one's authentic self to be seen, to be heard. The good, the bad, the ugly - whatever is meant to come up within our experience together. I am dying to be truly seen and heard, so it never occurred to me that others may not feel the same way. I am a big-ideas and future-focused vision person, looking for other dreamers who share in my kind of vision for the future, one filled with more light, love, respect, cooperation, and willingness to give of ourselves for the greater good. So far, the ones most resistant to the energy shifts I unintentionally create are filled with fear...of change. I've upset more than a few apple carts so far on this journey...oops!

I read Kaplan's four-page explanation of "Resistance" and I wept with relief. I have walked through my entire life feeling as though I was unloveable, unwanted, and a problem for everyone close to me. While I no longer believe I'm unloveable, I kinda am a problem for those close to me. I am definitely viewed as the problem for people not ready or unwilling to change and evolve, which is not entirely untrue. It just isn't the whole truth.

I can't know in every instance, but I've been shown enough to know that once I go away, the "problem" still remains. We can blame the messenger, but we can't unhear the message without numbing ourselves into oblivion. Believe me, I've tried. I am not the only "resistor" out there in the world, and I have run into a few mirrors of my own. I am not the problem, I am the one flowing the energy available to make those life changes. Just like our gifts of music, art, and words, my gift flows through me, regardless of one's readiness to receive it.

Even when I read this definition of myself, my primary reason for existing in this lifetime, I didn't recognize it as a gift. It was a thing, for sure, but certainly more of a curse than anything. It has led to a lonely existence at times, as people who are not a match for what I bring (and vice versa), fall away, and many run screaming. The ones who feel they must stick around are super uncomfortable around me, and I, them, if they want to stand still, or I want to push. I am sure many of those people feel tremendous relief outside of my presence after such an experience, but I've yet to meet one who doesn't want to either feed off of my energy or diminish me so they feel better. I have tried to diminish myself and behave more like how others want me to, but I just can't shut off the way I be in the world. I know better now. Before this understanding of myself, there was no good explanation beyond discomfort to describe what was actually happening. Until now that is...you've been warned. 😂

In fairness, being fully seen, especially in our darkness, is mostly an unwanted experience. I know when this happens to me, it is at the very least uncomfortable, if not downright painful. Sometimes I will deny what I'm being shown, but it's like trying to un-ring a bell. Once I see it (and that can take a while, at least for me), I am compelled to remain awake and aware, to take those rose-colored glasses off, and to truly see. Until that pea is removed from under my mattress, I cannot know the sleep of the just. I cannot show up fully in the world. I can no longer be me. If I know some truth about myself that I deny, I am just a fraud...and human. I now allow some grace between the initial awareness of a thing I can't quite square with, and the action to change said thing. That work is not instantaneous, but a willingness to go there is absolutely required.

"Dad, I just have to experience things myself!" I remember saying to my father in exasperation as a teenager about what felt like his unrelenting need to control. 

"You can't live long enough to make all the mistakes, I'm just trying to help," he replied. 

And so he was, at least in part, and I still needed to experience things for myself to truly understand. My dad and I were often at odds, but his heart was in the right place a lot of the time. I couldn't accept his gifts back then, but now I understand what he was trying to do. We enjoyed more than a few laughs together as I grew up...and I have had to eat a lot of crow. It's becoming a delicacy in my life.

So, here I am, with a much fuller understanding of how and why I walk through this world at this time. I know just enough or maybe have experienced just enough, to truly trust in the Universe...most of the time. I have been given so much in my life, especially in recent years. Since learning that operating as a "resistor" is my gift, I now know I am meant to give my gift freely, without expectation or control over what anyone chooses to do with my gift. Like with my dad, I can acknowledge the times I have been unable to accept someone's gift in the moment, and have appreciated the compassion and autonomy I required to grow in my own ways and in my own time. I am learning the true meaning of non-attachment, non-judgment, and flow. It is not easy for this recovering control freak, but it is work I am committed to after having been shown...the way.

"At times I look into the mirror,
And wonder what they see and why they couldn't see me clearer.
I try to hide in the shadows
To protect my ego
From all the dangerous people
Who threw my smile out the window."

Yes, some may "throw my smile out the window", but I now know my smile is my gift. My gift is not for everyone at the time I give it, and maybe they will never be able to accept it, but that doesn't mean I stop giving it. I couldn't even if I tried. I just cherish the time with those who can accept my gift, cuz sometimes I get to witness pure magic and I am so happy to have been a part of it!

I have lifetimes of anecdotal evidence that allows me to believe, to know, that the Universe truly has my back. And I'll have yours...when you're ready.

"Now I'm just sitting at the cafè deluxe
And saying "Baby, what you want from me?
You're the only one I know would ever talk to me.
And I know I shouldn't be talking to a coffee cup,
But you're the only one who lets me open up".

~Osei The Seventh

My Dark Night of the Soul Journey was necessary to reach where I am today. While I am still working through the residue of a lifetime of beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve me, I am so grateful to be the most authentic version of myself I have ever known. If you're curious, please join me at the beginning of this adventure of me. It has been a journey worth taking, for sure!

If God Will Send His Angels

I am writing the beginning of this post days after I received the inspiration for what follows. As I write this opening paragraph, I feel so utterly alone, abandoned, misunderstood, unappreciated, unloved and frightened. Where my heart existed, a void now exists. I now know I was given the following memories to fill this void with something other than the darkness and despair I feel at this moment. For that, I am so very grateful.

As I think about what is to come in the not-too-distant-future, my mind goes back to my childhood, and the Gatlin Brothers song, All the Gold in California. My dad used to play this when I was a kid - it was "our song". I loved it because of the deep bass voice and acapella harmonies at the beginning and middle of the song, and because it lit my dad up! I don't know exactly why Dad loved it, but he would play it both when he was happy and when we needed a pick-me-up.

I remember one of those needed pick-me-up times distinctly, when I was five years old, the summer before I started Kindergarten. I had just gotten my MMR booster shot required before entering public school. Like many others, the booster shot made me quite ill. I don't know the severity relative to others in the same boat, but I was very ill...deathly ill.

I didn't know that at the time, and if you spoke to my family they would likely laugh and scoff at me for being so "dramatic" about getting sick after that shot. I was only five and had a terribly high fever, so my memory is not clear, but it is distinctly real.

I was in and out of consciousness as I lay on our ridiculously long couch in the dark living room, underneath the tapestry of da Vinci's "The Last Supper". Father Murphy, St. Mary's parish priest in Galesville, WI, was close with the previous owners of my parents' home in Trempealeau, so he knew their house had "just the wall" to fit such an immense piece, and that my mother could not say "no" to the offer. The left bottom corner of the tapestry became a little ragged and slightly darkened over the years, as I loved to run my hand over the soft corner I could reach while lying beneath it. There was no reaching for the velvet of the tapestry on that bright summer day, as I was too weak and too consumed by pain to move. Instead, I remember looking at Christ's open palm and taking comfort in his serene face, as compared to the angry lot of disciples around him at the table.

The only light came in from the attached dining room, and it was hard to believe outside it was a beautiful summer day. Inside, I fevered, I shook and whimpered and moaned. There was no place to be comfortable and at some point, I didn't just feel sick, I felt scared. Shortly after that tremendous fear took over me, I was out again. When I came to, my Aunt Doris was praying over me. I don't remember the exact prayers, but I imagine The Our Father, The Hail Mary, you know, traditional Catholic penance fare, and likely some of her own lovely words to the heavenly beings with which she had a close connection. Had I known about the Seven Sacraments at that age, I would have asked for my last rites...for real.

As Aunt Doris prayed over me, I felt so comforted. I felt wave after wave of unconditional love showering over me. Yes, some from my Auntie for sure, but the source of that unconditional love I received through her prayer was Angels. They were BIG, they were BRIGHT, and they surrounded us and filled my parents' living room. I can't tell you how many were there, as their brightness made their outlines fuzzy. I see four distinct angels in my mind's eye, and it felt like a lot more from my small child's perspective.

I don't know if any of my other family members were in the room as Aunt Doris and the Angels prayed over me, and I don't know how long after their visit my fever broke. I don't know if I was as close to death as I now imagine I was, but I do know I was protected and I was loved. I know the fear disappeared as soon as I felt the waves of unconditional love showering over me as the Angels watched and Aunt Doris prayed.

As of this writing, I've only told one other person about the angels 'round me and my Auntie that day, and it was only in recent months. I didn't really remember the event as a child, and certainly never spoke of it. Now that I have had several experiences as an awake, aware adult, I know the events of that day really happened. I have felt the Angels' presence in my life in this last year several times, the most profound experience happened early this summer, just as I had begun my "Dark Night of the Soul" journey. 

As my children played at Copeland Park in the splash pad with one of their friends, I sat at a picnic table just outside of the playground fray, completely immersed in my internal state of coming undone. I played a beautiful song an acquaintance had just sent to me because they could "feel" that I needed it. As I listened, a very thin girl, about my own daughter's age, came walking by with her caregiver. Although she could only look off in the distance to my left, she marched right over to me and asked, "Were you just listening to a song"? 

"Yes, would you like me to play it again for you"? I replied. She excitedly shook her head "YES"!! As the song played, she did her own little unique dance, completely lost in her own world. When it finished, her caregiver and I just looked at each other, the young girl looking off in the distance to my left. I didn't know what to do or say, so I asked "Do you want to hang out with me for a little while"?

"No," she cheerfully replied, and my heart kind of sank. Never looking at me, she then asked if she could give me a hug. 

"Sure," I replied, and I opened my arms. That frail little girl held me, this big, grown-up stranger, in the middle of Copeland Park. 

"Ok, bye!" she said as she released her embrace. Her caregiver gave me a big smile as the tears started to roll down my cheeks, and off they went. Through that little girl, I felt the unconditional love of the Angels, the same as when I was five years old. I allowed myself to come undone, "right there in front of God and Everybody", as Ma would say. My own daughter had seen the interaction from afar, and as soon as the girl had walked away, Stella was at my side asking what that little girl wanted.

Through heaving and sobbing, just as I am doing as I write this, I told my Stella girl, "That was an Angel, baby, sent to give Mama love when I needed it more than ever".

I'm making a map of my life, and the terrain ahead looks rough and I'm not sure how I will navigate all the mountains and valleys. I'm not sure how things will turn out, nor how long my fellow travelers will be with me on this journey. I do know I will never be alone. I will always be held in the arms of the Angels - both Earth-side and Etheric. I love and appreciate all the support that surrounds me and those I love. We're gonna need it!

Usually, one distinct song jumps out for each of my posts. This one has two! I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. After all, "It's the stuff of country songs..." ~U2, If God Will Send His Angels

My Dark Night of the Soul Journey was necessary to reach where I am today. While I am still working through the residue of a lifetime of beliefs and behaviors that no longer serve me, I am so grateful to be the most authentic version of myself I have ever known. If you're curious, please join me at the beginning of this adventure of me. It has been a journey worth taking, for sure!