Awakening Through Beautiful Moments and Through Hardship

Life presents us with a multitude of opportunities to awaken to our higher selves—if we only pay attention and grab hold of them.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I started on my spiritual journey after decades of traumatic experiences, toxic relationships, heartbreak, breaking hearts, disappointment, and pain. I dove into all the current spiritual texts at that time. I had studied Psychology and Sociology in college and my next step was to read up on everything spiritual. It made sense to me at the time. It gave me a feeling of control where I felt out of control. It made me feel like life would be okay so long as I had something bigger than me calling the shots in my life. I could surrender the control and have God/Source/Universe take over the reigns or at least we could co-create together. Phew! I am a person who loves the psycho-spiritual level of life and have found it to be the most healing and beneficial for my particular journey.

In 1999, on November 11, my first son was born. Talk about spiritual awakenings! Not only was bringing a new life into the world from my own body a moment of awakening, but the fact that he was born on 11/11/99 was also pretty cool, too. With my “spiritual baby” in tow, I seized the moment and I dove even more into my spiritual side. I watched as Oprah invited the most amazingly spiritual people onto her show and I followed them and read their books. My favorites were Marianne Williamson, Gary Zukav, John Gray, Neale Donald Walsh, and Wayne Dyer. I started to meditate and eat healthier, exercise often, and find balance in my sleep, my relationship with my husband, and feed my little baby homemade baby food and sleep him on a perfectly structured schedule. Life was grand!! And oh so easy! Anyone can lick this, I figured. I took classes and went to groups to reinforce my desire to set boundaries and not be codependent anymore. I studied the Law of Attraction and I just thought life would always be so easy.

The thing about a spiritual journey is this: You can read about spiritual concepts all day long, but the Universe won’t let you get off that easy. You have to have experiential learning in order to really know the lessons. So, life went on. I had three more children and I wasn’t really tuned into my spiritual side anymore. I was busy living my dreams as a mom and wife. I had good friends and my kids were involved in the various activities that kids do. I was on the school board, helped out in their classrooms, and was a soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball, art classes, and dance mom. I went on dates from time to time with my husband where I’d actually take off the food-stained jeans and t-shirts, slip on some cute heels, and put on make-up. My kids didn’t even recognize me when I was “all dressed up.” I’d go to birthday lunches with my friends and I led book clubs. I was doing it all and was not paying attention to my spiritual side. Who had time for all that? Occasionally, I’d read my spiritual books, but life was actually handing me my spiritual tools and lessons as I went along. I was living my LIFE, which was my spiritual journey, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.

Then, on January 6, 2010, on my 38th birthday, the unthinkable happened. My mother passed away suddenly. It came out of nowhere and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was a huge awakening moment and my life was never the same after. Right after she was taken out of her and my dad’s home, as I lay there, in the middle of the night, eyes wide open and in complete shock, my whole body was infused with her energy and of divine energy as I clearly recall. Tears of bliss poured out of my eyes. I was crying tears of JOY and I was not shaking in anguish as we do when we normally cry tears of sadness. I was almost laughing with KNOWING. Knowledge and wisdom permeated my entire being in one tiny moment. It was a moment that could have seemed like five lifetimes. It stretched on for a bit and yet was very fast at the same time. I came to recognize later that it was the truest feeling of PRESENCE that I had ever experienced. It reminded me of all the near-death experiences books I had read early on in my spiritual journey. It felt like I was Home—just for an instant and for millennia—at the same time. There was a distinct, complete, and all-consuming knowing that everything she had ever done in my life—to me (and even presently as she died ON MY BIRTHDAY)—was actually FOR me. It was like I knew that part of her journey in this lifetime was to help me awaken. And she put me through some trauma in my life, man, let me tell you! There were lessons galore that mama taught me!

After her death, everything in my life began to change. It did not feel like it was for the best either. Over the course of the next 12 years, I changed. In the first couple of years after she died, I went into a dark night of the soul that brought up all the fears and false beliefs I had held in my subconscious mind, which were hidden from me until then. People entered into my life to mirror to me these false beliefs about myself. They also mirrored to me the perfection and beauty of my soul. But, in order to walk in the soul space long-term, we must first purge and purify our mental, emotional, and physical bodies of all the trauma, the lies, and the fear we have carried up until now. This was what was happening to me and it was barely tolerable. It was hard. It was sad and lonely. I felt very alone and it was a dark time. I needed support and love and to have people letting me know it was okay and that I was okay. I did not have that. I was the most spiritual person I knew in my immediate circle of people. No one who knew me knew this about me or would understand. In fact, for the better part of 15 years, while I was doing the mom thing, I never even really talked about spirituality to my friends and it had been years since my husband and I had discussed my beliefs. I had created a life with a mask on that showed my friends and family I was part of their world and not some cosmic weirdo that they could not relate to at all.

So, with the mask firmly in place, and even still suffering in my dark moments, I walked around with a big smile on my face doing all the things I had done before—not as well, but I was still faking it as best I could. No one would understand what I was going through so why even tell them? I had never been a person who suffered from a true clinical depression before, so this was unpleasant at best. And besides, a true depression would have taken me down and this was not that. It was a purification of my soul, so while it was deeply painful, it was also liberating and wonderful. It was a roller coaster ride a bit, but it was for purpose. I liken it to the menstrual cycle. It was the tears of a child that had never been able to be expressed. Women often feel like this when they are about to menstruate. Life is stressful and so unfair at these times. Menstruating is actually meant to help women awaken. Did you know that? I do activities with my clients to help them come to a place where they can feel those childlike tears in order to release past trauma. This was that kind of thing. It is different from depression. I am sure a lot of it was still the grief from my mother’s passing, too, but it felt like it had a deeply spiritual aspect to it. There was more of a cosmic, deeper, and more meaningful purpose to it. I knew on some level that it was the way things happen when our egos are breaking down and we are surrendering to what something greater than us wants for our lives. With all of my spiritual studies and my belief and trust in the divine, paired with my experience at the time of my mother’s death, I just knew that all of this was for a bigger purpose in my life.

This change was not good for my regular life. Another awakening occurred at the demise of my 22-year marriage to my very best friend on earth. The marriage simply could not withstand my changes. I was deeply and profoundly “different” and there was no going back to the me that had been hiding and playing small in order to please everyone else. I always felt I had a mission to help people learn to love themselves and to have inner peace and my transformation was teaching me those things firsthand so that I could teach it to others. Some close to me thought I was too “woo woo” or that I was too sad or too negative. I was normally a pretty happy and easy-going person who loved to laugh and have fun, but who was seriously in denial of my true potential and sleepwalking through life until, suddenly and without notice, my soul started to stretch out of its slumber and awaken me to more. To bigger. To what could be.

The real me was buried by my trauma at a young age. I was not allowed to lead with my intuition or my feelings as that got me ridiculed and abused. In order to survive, I had to load up on the shame and bury my true self under loads of inner critic messages that told me I was “too much,” “stupid,” “chubby,” and “not lovable” in order to survive my home life. My shame protected me. My inner critic also protected me. I learned to be my mother’s amateur shrink from the time I was about six years old on in order to have a semblance of peace and possibly some approval and love instead of pure neglect, and I grew up living behind a mask of fawning and codependency. I found people who I could rescue and save—friends, other adults who saw me as “mature for my age,” and lovers. There was very little reciprocity. I was there for THEM. That was my role and I relished it. I never needed anyone to help me. I was the STRONG one! It was like a badge of honor for me until I actually needed support and no one I knew could give it to me or would give it to me. Once my awakening began, I could no longer live by someone else’s agenda for my life. I was doing my life in order to please people who needed me to be that way for them to feel okay. I was a puppet and it was my fault that I was living that way. Well, truly, I did not know I was doing it until I woke up to it. And then, it was my responsibility to change it.

My mother’s death, although she and I had our problems, left an empty space inside of me about what to do with my life. I had been her shoulder and her support system for so long that I didn’t really even know who I was and that confused me. I was scared and sad and the people in my life were not able to hold space and compassion for me as my role had always been to cater to their needs and not the other way around. Me taking time to grieve and meet myself in my pain was considered “selfish” and a waste of time since, by all accounts, she “never really loved me anyway.” And even if this was the case (it wasn’t), losing your mother exposes more trauma as you come to terms with the unmet needs you really wanted her to give you that she could not. It is a deep pain and loss like no other. I needed support, love, and compassion at this time and I got told I was “too emotional” for my tears and to “get a grip.” If you know me at all, this is directly counter to who I am and who I actually always have been, even before awakening. I am a person who holds endless space for others in compassion. I encourage tears and all emotional responses as a way to get through pain to the other side and onto joy. While I understand that emoting is uncomfortable for people sometimes and that some of my people were trying to help me be “strong,” they were not aligning or attuning with who I really am and that was devastatingly lonely and demoralizing for me. I needed support and got lectures and logic instead.

In truth, my spirituality is a very grounded and practical kind and it is meant to help the everyday person come to understand lofty and complex spiritual concepts while also connecting more to their inner selves and intuition. To me, that is not really “out there” but it really impacted the people in my close circle in ways that made me feel betrayed and misunderstood, which is not really any different than I have felt since I was born. But, when you have lived a life having to explain yourself to those closest to you, who should automatically understand and love you no matter what, it just felt like this was more of that. I could no longer live a life where I had to keep explaining who I am to the people who said they loved me when they were more interested in berating and judging me than really seeing or getting me. That is most assuredly NOT love. I was broken and lost, but I had to move forward.

Recently, a friend from high school passed away and his passing offered me yet another level of spiritual growth and awakening. After healing my trauma, I am now gifted with my intuitive gifts. That is the great part about trauma recovery and awakening to your true self. When you come home to your authentic self, you come home to all that the Universe wants for you. You remember your own divinity and that you are an aspect of Source/God/Universe, which means that you have your own power and gifts that you can use to make your life better. I was a bit taken aback by the profundity of my friend’s death on me. He and I were not especially close in life. After finding out about his passing, I almost immediately started to feel his spirit around me and around his best friends from high school and I can feel that he is happy, smiling, and knowing how loved he was by so very many. Sort of mediuming in this way is pretty new for me, and I am not sure that is what is happening, but I can tell you that whatever it is, I feel exalted and more filled with love now.


As a result of this energy of love I am infused with (sort of similar to what happened to me with my mother’s passing), I am filled with the belief that I can put myself, my heart, and my truest passions and desires to help people heal out into the world with less fear of rejection and more intention. I do not need to be afraid of losing people. I can never lose anyone. I believe that we are all connected. If people leave my life and are offended by my words, that saddens me, but I understand. I am not for everyone. That I do know is true. Due to my natural tendencies in personality and my trauma, I learned to react in a fawning way and to people please like a pro, so I truly do love people at a soul level and I want to be kind to all. I want happiness for everyone and I have been made fun of for being an idealist, but it is how I have always been. I am not a saint. Please know that I am not boasting or bragging here. I don’t know much about computers or library science or math or brain surgery, but I do know about emotional healing and love. That is my particular make-up in this lifetime. And, I just happen to prefer laughter and happiness to hatred and anger.

While there is a definite space and place for anger, hatred, grief, and other emotions that arise from being abused and traumatized throughout one’s life, holding onto anger and hatred destroys our bodies, minds, and souls, which is why I am a trauma and abuse recovery coach as well as a health coach. Living from fear and the negative lies the inner critic tells us creates dis-ease in our systems and war with others. Learning how to live in a state of inner peace is the way to go, if you ask me. And, it is completely learn-able.

You can be your true self too. My story in this article is not only to share with you how I am not so different from you (and, yet, I might be completely out there and totally different from you too!), but also to offer a message of illustration for you of how you can be in turmoil and lose those closest to you and still come back home to yourself in a grander, happier way and that you can pass along what you have learned to others who need help finding their way home too. Be free in who YOU are. Let me help you get to your truest version of self.