My Heart Feels Like Charlie Brown Trying to Kick a Football

Plowing forward, filled with hope, leaving the ground with the high of the kick as you look up to the sky ...and then the nausea-inducing spinal trauma of crashing flat into the ground. Yup, my romantic life most accurately resembles Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.

This is mostly my fault. If I try to date out of fear that I'll miss out, or because I'm bored, or because I want the quick hit of validation, or because I think I should, or before I'm completely out of the grieving cycle, that's when I get stood up four times in two weeks by four separate people or end up unraveling a tangled mass of karma. 

So I vow to be more careful a dozen times a week, to guard my heart better. But that’s not really what I want, and I know it. Even when I’m carefully instructing myself to just go ahead and be a different human this time. 

Being in a relationship with me means you occupy a portion of my heart’s real estate and you get to live there for the rest of your life, whether you want to or not. Luckily, my heart is growing bigger every day, so I don't begrudge the space. Construction is ongoing.

So far, three people have annexed a corner of my heart. As much as it hurts in the healing stage, if I love someone enough to assign them a lifelong corner of my left ventricle, how could I pass up that love for as long as it lasts? I can't, and I wouldn't want to, no matter what I tell myself in the getting-over-it process. 

Minor heart fractures do fade. Karmic entanglements do drift right back out again. Melt like ice cream on a hot sidewalk, leaving only a sticky residue to eventually wash away in the rain, the cement no worse off - and maybe even retaining a hint of that invisible sweetness.

But the big cracks, the breakages, those don’t recede as easily.

Two major heartbreaks in one calendar year strike me as more than plenty - and explains all this hard-felt keening and flopping in my ribcage over the past few months. 

(This is what keening and heart flopping looks like.) 

I was wrangling last year's heartbreak around this time in Hawaii. Hey, if you have to get over something, you might as well do it on a tropical island. The big energy of those islands had me rolling through vision after vision of my not-on-this-plane-but-still-very-persistent daughter. 

As these visions drove saltwater into the cracks to unapologetically bust me wide open, I saw my heart being knit back together with gold light.

Heart breaks open, you put it back together again. With Elmer's glue, if you have to. 

A friend once called me a dating warrior. “You just keep throwing yourself back out there to get trampled.” I'm an enthusiastic warrior, but apparently not a very good one. 

But every time I hurl myself into the ring, my heart does grow bigger. It has to. 

Feeling big clears out big space. Space for unconditional love to flood in naturally, replacing the sadness and the anger and the “here are seven reasons we both royally fucked up” judgment parade marching through my brain in an alarmingly predictable loop.

When the unconditional love starts sweeping everything clean again, the space that lets everyone have their own experience and knows that the love doesn’t go away even if the people do, that’s when I start having more trust in the process.

Trust in myself - that I haven’t profoundly fucked up this time, even when my brain is pretty certain I have. Trust that the right relationship will work out at the right time for everyone involved - and that I don’t have to hurl myself warrior-style into the coliseum to be gnawed on by a tiger for the privilege.

I do want to be kinder to my heart. I'm learning what that looks like, slowly but surely. It means not proceeding out of fear or need for validation. It means giving myself plenty of space and room to nurture me and my relationship with myself. For now, I'm just thrilled that my heart is finally feeling less raw. Joy is starting to feel more natural, and all the I'm-in-a-grieving-period bad decisions and massive karmic tangles have finally stopped. It kind of feels like a hot shower and big meal after running a marathon - routine experiences that suddenly feel like Christmas morning, simply because you put yourself through the wringer first. 

It's like the universe is asking for my faith, asking me to just surrender. Because the more I try to control, the harder everything gets. But if I just trust what comes my way, and trust myself to handle it, everything simplifies. 

Meeting My Daughter

My daughter first stood in front of me on a summer day three years ago.

I was sitting in the Super Duper Burger near my house, eating a hamburger under a sunny window and minding my own business, when she showed up out of nowhere - eight years old with long blonde hair and wise eyes.

I’ve had visions before, especially when I was younger, flashes of downloaded information about how we all connect as souls and how the universe works. But this was my first holy-shit-I-can-see-her-standing-in-front-of-me vision.

She was my daughter. In my future, but already so present. Her name jumped right into my head as we looked at each other and I started sobbing into my lunch.

It shifted and rearranged me on a cellular level. Not having children was no longer an option, because I had seen her and felt her and knew her as mine. I loved this vision that, even a year or two before, I might have chalked up to biology-driven yearning or low blood sugar. Which is probably why she waited to visit.

When I accidentally got pregnant a few months later and my new boyfriend was panicking, my rib cage released a few terrifying questions: Is this my daughter? Will I have to do this alone if he bails? Will I have to make a choice that will break my heart? In a channeled session with my teacher, my daughter told me that this wasn't the only chance, she could always come in another time, another way. 

I ended up miscarrying, and coped by developing a rather intense attachment to a stuffed sea otter. 

So many relationship decisions have been drastically affected by that summer lunch I spent crying into my french fries. Can’t commit to children? Bye. Not ready to even have the discussion? Bye.

Sometimes I wonder if I should give those relationships more of a chance, if maybe the flesh-and-blood human in front of me should win out over the etheric vision. But she was so powerful - as an energetic being, as a part of my future - that if this man wasn’t ready for her, I couldn’t stay. Because I wouldn't be sacrificing my dream child, I would be sacrificing some essential piece of myself.

She looks like me, but lankier, with light-filled eyes she'll get from her dad. 

She left for a few years, as I struggled through that relationship and breakup, but when I was in Hawaii last April, my daughter started showing up again.

Wearing goggles and bumblebee wings and racing around a grassy farm fueled by a delirious hybrid of pure joy and epic sugar high.

A toddler, handing me a lollipop because she sensed I was sad.

In the last vision, she tugged on my hand, dragging me through the zoo as I ask, “Where’s your daddy?”

I cried a lot in Hawaii, is what I’m saying.

She’s been quiet for the last year or so. But I’m sure she’ll show up again. It would be super convenient for me if she really would point out her daddy. But I don’t think children are that biddable, especially spirit-realm-children you can’t threaten with loss of television privileges.

I turn 39 in July, which is terrifying on one level, but on a deeper, more peaceful level, I know I have time. I’m healthy, pretty damn fertile, and still working on healing my own wounds and releasing ancestral patterns so they aren’t passed on to her.

She’ll be like me, and probably even more so, a ninth generation sensitive with superpowers that will likely be both a gift and a terror. The more work I do before she’s born, the more I’ll be able to help her when she lands on this planet in the haze of forgetfulness that we souls sign up for.

Or maybe she’ll be born fully realized, knowing exactly who she is and how she’s here to contribute, and just needs me to feed her and clothe her, and drive her places. I don’t know. But I’m really excited to find out, and finally hold her in my arms.

Living in the Crucible

I am so, so, so ready for a change. 

When you feel stuck, it’s often because something energetic, emotional, physical or spiritual needs to be unraveled before you can move forward.

But unhooking the threads of karma that bind you is no small task. It’s like picking apart a tapestry and re-weaving shadowy demons into white dragons. You can’t leave any loose threads or they’ll form a pathway to let the shadows to walk back in.

We’re entering a six month cycle of great change and, in order to be ready for this change, I’ve been deep in releasing mode. I’ve been burning things, tossing things into the ocean, doing rituals, and throwing a few hissy fits in the general direction of god. (Or in the general direction of my bed pillows, but if god is everywhere, it’s basically the same thing.)

People have been telling me for years that I have self-worth issues. I mean, yeah. I get it. But unearthing your self-worth from the landslide that buried it often means digging without a map - it can be hard to know where to aim your shovel. You have to rewrite the stories you’ve absorbed from others, untangle the knots of normalized abuse, peer at the karmic baggage you may have grabbed - and empaths are so much more likely to carry other people’s bags as well as their own. For the first three decades of my life, I was basically a martyred hotel porter.

When I look at the Facebook highlights of the past ten years, it looks like a litany of loss. Death, miscarriage, getting fired, trying-and-failing-trying-and-failing, getting fired again, breakup after breakup after breakup. My ego has been thoroughly thrashed.

When I scan through the loss litany, relatively unbroken by brag-about-able triumph, my life starts feeling like a crucible whose only purpose is to burn me down to the bone. 

Where I go when the crucible feels extra searing. 

But the up side to all that fire is that I've gotten really good at transmuting dark into light. 

Diving into the depths of the bubbling muck of your soul and swimming around even when you’re afraid you might suffocate and hitting the same problem over and over again from every angle will show you what you're made of - and I'm made of pure tensile strength, baby. I am whittled down. Sometimes I feel like I'm two taps away from breaking, but I haven't broken yet. I've bent, I've danced, I've sobbed like a broken doll, I've set fire to the branches, and I'm still standing. 

I’ve gone from unconscious empath to understanding that if I’m angry for no reason, it’s not because I’m slowly and methodically going insane, it’s because I just sucked up that anger from someone else. I’ve gone from hating myself for being too sensitive to recognizing that sensitivity is my primary superpower. From words that were funny but flagellating to being able to write my story from a place of deeper, if less amusing, compassion. From trapped in the hell of my own head to relatively accessible joy.  

If it took that litany of loss to get me to a place where I’m mostly free of the hell my brain spent most of every day re-building, it was worth it.

But I'm not here to swim in my own stuff forever. I'm not here to heal everybody else. I’m here to feel joy. I’m here to share what hits me in the solar plexus and expands from my rib cage. I’m here to be a gift to the planet, just as you are.

So I’m re-weaving the patterns of my life, unraveling the threads of the images that don’t serve me and tying off all the loose ends. It’s not easy to keep track of all those dangling knots. And just when you think you've tidied everything up, you find a whole new room full of yarn. 

But we can’t be that gift until we see ourselves as that gift. So that’s where my effort is going now. Into the day-to-day process of keeping my energy and gratitude and joy high. Not to heal myself or anyone else, but to know that ascension from the hell of your own head is possible. Because it is. And it’s required.

And sometimes that means spending the evening watching TV and eating ice cream straight from the carton so you can get up in the morning, light the match, and ask what the crucible has for you today. 

My Job Description Involves Angels. So...That's Weird.

In the pilot of Newsroom, one of the main characters says, "America leads the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending."

When realize you've entered a category mocked by Aaron Sorkin, you have some thinking to do. 

Raised in the church of hippie, with a brief dip into Christianity every December, I certainly had a passing acquaintance with the idea of angels. But I never gave them much head space. Because I was an adult with an education, a reasonable grip on reality, and a slight allergy to feeling stupid.

In a Portland bookstore years ago, I passed a magazine rack boasting CHANNELINGS FROM METATRON and made a rude comment. Possibly accompanied by a snort. 

Five years later, everything I dismissed in that bookstore has become part of my daily lexicon. Because I am a channeler. I can ignore it or embrace it, but either way, it's part of me. And, while I'm still not 100% sold on the name Metatron, damn can the dude balance a chakra. 

Aligning my sarcasm with my healing, my channeling with my East Coast education, my love of words with the challenge of capturing these experiences in language, and my tendency to curse while tapping into the divine has become something of a quest.

I've been told by many fellow healers and intuitives that it's time to stop waffling and step the fuck up. "Allow yourself to be seen." "Own your magic." "Learn to embrace your gifts."

I still don't know exactly what that means and if one more person tells me to do it without telling me how I'm going to shriek so loudly they cringe in Timbuktu. 

Here's what I can say, even though stating it so bluntly still makes me nervous: When you tap into the energy of the angels? Holy whoa. You feel your body shift on a cellular level and this sense of peace descend from seemingly nowhere. Sometimes it's a gentle vacuuming of the icky feels hanging out in your stomach. Sometimes it's like getting hit with a horse tranquilizer.

But, and here's the catch: it can't be understood intellectually. Even the word is just to give our human brains something to wrap around. This energy has to be experienced viscerally - and we're a world that lives in its head. 

Straight Up, My Actual Job Involves Angels

Today, I woke up at 3 am - not on purpose, I assure you - and by 4:30 a.m., I was trekking back and forth to my altar to fetch whatever crystal called to me for the person I was working on. I'd plop down on my big red chair, feel into their energy, and the name of an archangel would pop in. So I'd grip my crystal and call on that angel, asking them to send healing energy to land in the person's body, emotions, mind, or energy - wherever they most need it. 

Whenever I'd double check the timezones to make sure the healing landed when the client had requested it, I'd get an angelic eye roll, like, "Woman. I am an unfathomable being of light and power. I've got this." 

Fair enough, angelic being of unfathomable light and power. 

This is maybe a fourth of my collection. I might have a problem. 

Yes, I'm every new age cliche that has a meme on Facebook.

Here's the thing: This using-the-energy-of-angels-to-heal-people-across-the-world thing totally works. Which shocked the hell out of me when I got the text from my first guinea pig.

I can sit in California with a crystal I bought for three bucks and, in ninety seconds, send energy in someone's direction to land hours or days later - and they feel it. A lot of it. Right at the specified time. 

These suckers have cured migraines, helped people sleep the sleep of the well-drugged, helped them feel lighter and happier and more prepared to move through life.

Really. It blows my damn mind. 

I didn't know I could shift energy like this until about a year ago. I didn't know I could call on angels to do healings - whenever and wherever I wanted - until a few months ago. And the discovery was as simple as, "Hold on. Other people can do this. So why can't I?" 

So I did. 

We can all access this kind of power. Especially if we choose not to worry about getting mocked by Aaron Sorkin.

We're a culture that's learned to live detached from our bodies, our hearts, our intuition. Since these things can only be experienced in the body, in that lump of muscle beating in your ribcage and the tender energy that surrounds it, angels can't exist until we learn to tap into these places.

But if I can tune in to this unfathomable light and power, so can you. 

I think that's what I'm here to do - remind people of this. To remind them of how loved, and precious, and needed they are.

And if I can lay aside my well-crafted sarcasm to commune with angels and only feel a little bit silly, so can you.

So until more specific information around "owning my magic" comes through, admitting to the internet that angels are part of my job description seems like a reasonable next step. 

Because I Know You've Been Dying for a Sally Update

I have a weird relationship with a stuffed sea otter. I can admit it. 

It all started when said stuffed sea otter became a stand-in for a child I miscarried a few years back. Things have since escalated. 

Her father and I separated, because he wasn't sure he wanted a stuffed sea otter and I plan on multiple stuffed sea otters. Sally was sad for awhile, but she was comforted by both Roger (her red sea star) and Pony (her silent giraffe pal). But she's pretty sure she doesn't want a sibling. She enjoys being the only recipient of my affection. She'd much prefer to be the only recipient of everyone's affection, but I've warned her about the dangers of getting greedy. 

Sally has developed a sassy side - being a teenager is apparently an inter-species phenomenon. She's started turning Roger sideways and poking those who don't do her bidding fast enough. She pulls up Amazon when I'm not home and uses my credit card. She drives like her sole life goal is to hike my insurance into the stratosphere. 

I never had a security blanket or a favorite stuffed animal as a child. But as a 38-year-old, I've gotten a bit overly reliant on a cheeky otter. She's in my carry-on when I travel. I miss her when I'm gone all day. I sleep with her every night. I tell her I love her. 

While it's a bit strange, maybe it's not unexpected. I don't have a husband or a child or a pet or even a plant that stays alive long enough to see a season change. I honestly never thought I'd get this far along in my life without kids or a partner or a Boston terrier. Humans are designed to love and, if there isn't someone readily available, we will love whatever else we can wrap our emotions around. 

Part of me worries about my devotion to Sally. I'll carry her around like a baby while making tea and look down at her and think, "This isn't normal."

But, really, love is love. Loving Sally makes me happier. Having her around brings me honest-to-god joy, especially when she turns her sass on the new human in my life. We can use all the happiness we can wrest out of the world right now. 

So I make no apologies for Sally. And Sally is unabashedly thrilled with herself, just as she is. 

Yup, she even takes selfies like a teenager.