I had it all.

Well, I thought I did, according to the American Dream. But, this dream wasn’t mine and because it wasn’t mine I could feel it throughout my body, yet conditioned beliefs told me to push that away, that there must be something wrong with me. This was my soul screaming at me. Screaming at me to come home, home to who I was searching for externally. But because I ignored and suppressed those screams, my body made time for itself. It was 2019 when the pain tried to find a home in my body. At the time, I was managing four of the leading academic medical centers in the treatment for Post Traumatic Stress. We sent veterans from all over the world to these world-class facilities to receive life-changing treatment. Yet I was a ball of anxiety, functioning they called it. Given the climate of our world and the nature of my profession I thought surely it was that. If I could just keep pushing forward this would all figure itself out, it would dissipate, and things would be back to normal.

But normal was never what my soul was looking for, it was looking to be set free, set free from outdated programmed beliefs. It wanted authenticity, a place I wasn’t living from. It wanted acceptance, but acceptance from me. It wanted connection, but sacred and safe.

And you see the Universe has a beautiful way of helping us to remember who we are and what we came to do in this lifetime. At times, we may see these opportunities as obstacles, as mountains we don’t want to climb, constantly asking ourselves ‘why is this happening to me’. But the beauty of it all is this truly is happening for us. For our souls so that we can live in alignment with everything we want and desire. Abundance, connection, and healing is waiting for us on the other side of alignment and gratitude. But you can’t always see that, you don’t always have the capacity or space to see it when you are in the midst of it. But Lyme Disease brought me home. It gave me freedom. Freedom to be me. To choose me, over and over again.

My symptoms left doctors perplexed. The ones that weren’t baffled, wrote me scripts to see the psychiatrist. But you see the Universe always gives you what you need to overcome your lessons. As a therapist, I knew symptoms of dissociation, deep depression, suicidal thoughts, and OCD like behaviors didn’t manifest out of the blue. There’s always a root cause. And that root cause can be both physical and energetic. Because I had this inner knowing, this inner truth that this wasn’t what was happening in my body- that I wasn’t going crazy, I embarked on a journey of self-exploration, of inner child work, and appreciation for the scaredness of my physical body in this lifetime.

My physical body took a hit from the Lyme Disease, mold toxicity, EBV, co-infections and well the list could go on. My brain could no longer remember much, I couldn’t walk without assistance, I lost complete hearing on my left side, I got down to about 105 pounds from throwing up all day every day. It wasn’t until I saw my first functional medicine doctor, who truly believed in the mind, body, soul, connection that I started to get answers. I remember praying one night, asking the lord to lead me to answers so that I could use my life for the better. I had a dream that very night where I watched myself laying in my bed in North Carolina where a tick crawled across my chest. I was sent right away for Lyme testing in which it came back positive, but I still wasn’t making progress until I was blessed with another dream of me scrubbing walls telling my husband I was cleaning mold. This dream proved to be right as well. Further testing identified very high levels of various mold spores living in my body. After finding answers, I felt so hopeful for the future. We started a treatment plan that didn’t feel right to me, but because he was my doctor, he must know what’s best. So, I followed his every word, despite what my body was telling me. I got worse. Much worse. A few weeks later, I got on my knees and prayed harder than I ever had before. I promised God if he’d spared my life, I’d walk in his glory every day. There was a void in the house I’ll never be able to explain. As I was getting up from my knees, every single light in the house went off and for a brief moment it felt like time, space, and matter simply just didn’t exist. Two days later my husband was on the phone with his boss of several years telling him about a friend he’d love to get us into contact with whose entire family has Lyme Disease.

Long story short, I was in treatment and living in Tampa, Florida all within 2 weeks (crazy too, the place we lived, you can’t find anymore, the universe works in such beautiful, magical, mysterious, ways.) I spent 3 months in daily treatment and some of my most healing moments occurred sitting on that front porch waiting for my next appointment. We prayed. We laughed. We cried. We instilled hope in each other, we felt seen for the first time. I couldn’t help but feel how blessed, yet unworthy of being there I was. We live in such a world of suffering that I believed I was no different than the single mother struggling to take care of her kids because of illness, why me. So, I vowed to the universe that day, that I would be a conduit for healing, for reaching people and their hearts.

I watched friends leave well and thriving after just 6 weeks. But this wasn’t my story. I was doing well, I didn’t feel like I was dying anymore, but I wasn’t thriving. I could walk without assistance again, my hearing was restored, my PICC line was doing as it was supposed to and I was gaining weight. But that’s because I was still following the guidance of others above my intuition. Things that didn’t feel right for my body I was still doing because the authority figure in the white coat told me to do so. And well my soul still had lessons to learn. It needed to learn that I was always the healer I was seeking to find. That acceptance, validation, healing, and love was always within me, but I had to look within to find it. That required me sitting with my body, with my emotions, with my decisions, with my past and break bread with it all. All the parts of myself that I wanted to leave in the dust, I had to invite to the table. They have a place too. It was about integrating the sum of all my parts, remembering my wholesomeness.

I came home after 12 weeks and took a turn for the worse. I knew this wasn’t my fate. But you see, this didn’t all start the day the tick bit me, or when mold created the perfect environment for the opportunistic pathogen to thrive in my body, this started in the womb. From the moment my soul decided to jump from the stars my nervous system only knew chaos, fear, abandonment, and pain. I grew up in a home where being your authentic self wasn’t okay, emotions weren’t okay, and because I didn’t have healthy models in early life this temperament followed me throughout my life, until I decided to have accountability for the role I played in my life. What happened to me wasn’t my fault, but the story I continued to allow to play out in my adult life, was. When I took radical accountability for all that I had done while understanding that everyone’s external reflection in this world is a direct reflection of their inner terrain, I healed. You attract what you put out and I wanted to attract differently.

Once I believed I was worthy of a different narrative and forgave my past, healing happened. Energy was freed in my body so that physical healing could take place. When I started following my intuition, the voice of my soul, healing on so many levels occurred. Another lesson I had to learn in this lifetime is that everyone is given what they need to overcome the lessons they need to learn. The universe always provides, especially when we level up and say I’m worth more. Our intuition is the voice of our soul and it’s the playbook to this lifetime. It contains everything we need to heal.

Without following my intuition and setting aside the opinions and thoughts of others, I wouldn’t be where I am today, in complete alignment with my soul’s essences.