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<3 My spiritual awakening <3
A few years ago, my body began to experience some burning, painful, and deeply irritating physical symptoms. At the time, these symptoms looked like the inability to keep food or beverage down along with an internal burning and itching in my neck and down the left side of my chest, collarbone, breast, and belly. My left breast felt like it was growing. It ached and throbbed and felt like it was going to explode. All the while, the right side of my body felt normal and unbothered.
Breast cancer is prevalent on one side of my family, and according to allopathic medicine, I should have started getting mammograms at age 30. I was about 31 at the time of these physical symptoms. After freaking out a bit, I made an appointment with a doctor and explained to them my symptoms. I had my first and only mammogram and then an ultrasound. Nothing showed up. I got a second opinion. Nothing showed up. The doctor felt my chest. They said that nothing showed up.
But still, my body burned, ached, and itched, and still, I puked up so much of what I ate and drank. I made another appointment and I begged doctors to tell me something was wrong. I wanted a diagnosis of some kind so I could deal with whatever was happening.
They had nothing for me and told me it was all in my head. Meanwhile, my body was on fire, and I felt sick.
At the time, I was a professional Thai Bodyworker, and a new client, a friend of a friend, had booked their first appointment with me. The meeting was for Friday morning, and that Thursday, I received a call from a doctor I was hoping to get an appointment with, informing me that they could squeeze me in last minute on Friday.
It wasn’t in my nature to cancel a massage appointment with a client, but I was panicking and grateful for another appointment that could hopefully offer me some answers. So I sent a note to this new client, letting her know I needed to cancel. I briefly mentioned to her that I got a last-minute doctor’s appointment that I needed to attend because something might be happening with my health. Though I didn’t know her well, this client asked me if I wanted to tell her what I was experiencing. Despite her being almost a stranger, something in me decided to open up and share. I explained my symptoms, family history, and what I thought was happening.
Her response, though I am paraphrasing, was, “If they (doctors) give you a diagnosis of any kind, do not cling to that diagnosis. Let the information flow through you. And also, read the book ‘When The Body Says No.'”
I had no idea what she meant by “Let the information flow through you.” But I was intrigued and willing to explore anything that could lead to solutions and understanding, even if it was a new approach. I bought the book she recommended, and I dug in.
“When the Body Says No” opened me up to understanding stress in the body and how that can pertain to disease. I was fascinated. I could see myself in the stories shared on these pages.
This book led me to dig deeper into understanding more about cancer and dis-ease. It led me to hear from doctors and practitioners who challenge pharma and treat lifestyle as medicine. I dug deeper. I listened to stories from folks who healed their bodies from cancer through lifestyle and I did my best to listen, explore, and play with the ideas they were lying down. Everything I learned changed my perspective on the body and our health industry in the USA. But I still needed to know more.
After my last doctor’s appointment, on that Friday morning, I was waiting for the train on the platform (in Chicago) to head home. I was in a daze, staring into space, wondering about the worst-case scenario. I believed I was dying and that my time on Earth was ending too soon. Until then, I had never contemplated my mortality this way, looking death in the face or the idea of death and my temporary presence on this Earth. The whole thing felt too heavy.
As I was daydreaming and sitting with the discomfort of death, I was shaken back to the moment when the loud horn of the incoming train was blaring, demanding me to step back up from the edge of the platform that I was mindlessly standing next to. I jumped back from the edge and shook off the shock of the experience. I had to laugh. If I continued moving forward this way, daydreaming about how I thought I was dying, I would die getting hit by a train.
This moment helped to wake me up a bit. “If I’m here, on Earth, I have to live while I’m here. I have to look life and death square in the eye,” I thought on that train platform. It was then, that I knew then that I had to step even more into the unknown. I was still scared but slowly gaining a new perspective and willing to dive deeper.
I stopped going to the doctor and begging for a diagnosis. Instead, I turned my energy in another direction, and I began to learn more about how my lifestyle affects my health. I began to look at my life HONESTLY and every aspect of it. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.
If there is one thing I learned from the books and videos I was watching and from people’s personal stories of healing, it’s that if I want to FEEL better, I need to be incredibly honest with myself.
And I found myself at a fork in the road. My body was screaming at me. I could listen or not, but the choice was mine. Who knows what would happen if I ignored the signs, but I decided to go inward and onward.
Going inward and onward meant looking at my whole life and getting honest about how I was eating and how much I was drinking (alcohol). I needed to look at my relationships with men and the friends I kept around, many of whom weren’t real friends. I had to get honest about the fact that I wasn’t living the life of my dreams. It was mediocre and full of fear, anger, resentment, constant jealousy, and misalignment.
This experience was humbling. Making changes was not easy, but it was necessary to feel better. The time had come for change.
In the process, I lost friends and community and I stopped drinking for the time being. I hired someone to help me learn about my emotions because I wasn’t emotionally intelligent and living with stuck emotions in my body. I turned off my phone, social media, and TV for a while.
And, in the process, my whole world crumbled. Reality as I knew it was crumbling. My perception of health and the body and cancer was crumbling. Some of my “friends” disappeared. Everything that shoddily composed my reality was crumbling, and I was left to see with new eyes and build something new, but first, it crumbled.
I hadn’t spent this much time alone or in sobriety in many years. The truth is hard to ignore in quiet moments with a clear mind. Is that why I filled my time with booze, overeating, friends who were not meeting my standards, and men who hated me and sometimes hurt me, so I didn’t have to look honestly at my life and make big changes? Was this my body’s way of getting my attention by screaming, “GIRL, WAKE UP AND PULL IT TOGETHER!!”
Most probably.
But there I sat, in the quiet, sometimes in meditation, often with my phone and computer turned off, just feeling my life, body, and stories. There was nowhere else to run. I was now requiring deep honesty and movement. Movement of resentment, anger, insecurities, thoughts, and perceptions of the world that I no longer wanted to cling to.
Time passed, and I didn’t know if the symptoms would disappear, improve or consume me whole. I was still scared, petrified, really. I was learning a lot but still hadn’t embodied all the changes I wanted and needed to make. Some things take time.
At the time, I was going to yoga classes in my neighborhood. At the end of one of the classes, I sat in the final pose, eyes closed, laying back on the ground, feet up the wall, and breathing slowly and intentionally. Then, out of nowhere, behind my eyelids, a bright blue hummingbird appeared to drink the nectar of a flower. The hummingbird fluttered momentarily and then flew away, out of sight.
I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen anything behind my closed eyelids other than random shapes and lines made by the light. This visual was magnificent and unlike anything I had experienced before. I knew it was a sign of some sort, even as someone who had never believed in signs. When the class was over, I opened my eyes and walked home, grinning from ear to ear. And though I lived just a quarter mile from the yoga studio, I meandered through the neighborhood to savor this feeling, walking several miles before finally heading to my apartment.
I didn’t look up the meaning of the hummingbird because I knew it was a sign that everything would be ok, always and forever. I knew it meant I could trust the process and was on the right path. How did I know? How on Earth did I know? I just did. The sign was crystal clear.
With everything I learned, in that time, from the body’s ability to heal and learning about its divine design while observing my own divine body, to moving emotions through my body and releasing them after being stuck for too long, to meeting humans that helped me to see new possibilities and resources, to witnessing the hummingbird, I slowly, with active steps and engagement, began to see how the universe is all connected and how this world is divine. First, it took my reality, full of chaos, distractions, and busyness, to crumble, then I was given space to see clearly.
I hadn’t believed much in a God or a higher power before this experience. I felt alone, believing nothing had no profound importance or purpose. But now I was awakening to this spiritual experience occurring in human form. I didn’t go looking for it, at least not consciously. It looked for me and said, “it’s time.”
I began to trust my body more, trust the wisdom of those who came before me. Trust that I am here, doing my part and best and that I should keep going no matter what. I began to trust that there are synchronicities and messages everywhere and that there is something greater than just me. I began to see the limitations placed on us through education and our health system, and I learned to break free of those.
All of this to say, it’s been mind-blowingly beautiful, but first, I was scared. I know people are awakening all the time. Is this you?
There have been so many before me, and there will be so many after me. When I had this experience, I didn’t know this was a spiritual awakening. I didn’t know what was going on at all. Some people called me crazy, and I wondered if I was going crazy, so every step of the way, when I met someone or encountered a moment where I felt peace and guidance, I was immensely grateful.
I share this story to offer even an ounce of support or understanding to someone going through something similar. Stories can be powerful like that. I hope you find the peace and guidance you’re looking for.
It’s worth mentioning that my spiritual awakening continues. There is so much to unlearn and relearn. Connecting to God and getting out of my head is a daily practice. Layers continue to fall away, and profound wisdom continues to find me. It’s ongoing, but these months of my life that I write about were when I first became aware in a new way. And first, it was scary. It felt like I was dying, and in a way, I was. Life as I knew it was ending so that I could start anew.
Of course, I can still feel fear, worry, resentment, and anxiety, but it’s never been the same since before this awakening. Deep down, I know that everything will be ok because it is, in life and death, hard times and good times, for you and me and everyone.
Happy Travels!
Have you experienced something similar to this? Feel free to share anything you feel called to share in the comments below.
Nothing I write here is medical advice. You are responsible for your health and well-being, and if and when you need help, please find it and pursue it.
