For as long as I can remember, I had what I was told growing up were “vivid dreams” stemming from a “creative mind.” But if you’re someone who dreams often, especially in a lucid state, experiences those horrific night terrors that you swear feel real, or repeatedly find yourself wandering astral realms, we might have quite a bit in common.
Night after night through childhood, my teen years, and now as an adult, I’ve experienced enough wild things while sleeping that I’m certain much of what I’ve witnessed was not just dreams fabricated by my subconscious trying to make sense of the world, but rather spiritual happenings occurring in the liminal space that sits between “here and there.” With that statement, I also understand that may not be everyone’s experience or reality, and I believe both of those things can be true at the same time.
For me, though, the dream world is a place I’ve only ever known as the astral, and from my experience, it’s filled with more beings and spirits than we can fathom. There are different realms or places within the astral that seemingly are governed by different energies. Within each place, there are different things you can do, see, experience, or learn. There are some realms that you ought not to wander into and others that are more welcoming to outsiders.
One of my favorite realms is a portal of sorts. It resembles the cosmic colors of our Milky Way if you were to stand in the center of it and have swirling points of light dance around you against the dark space background. The center of the portal is my favorite place to sit—it is void of light, lacks stars, and is absent of color. It sucks you in like a black hole in stark contrast to the vibrant galactic expanse surrounding it.
No one was ever in this portal but me—until one particular night. I sat in the center of this astral realm thinking, creating, and expanding when I was abruptly interrupted by a female spirit who appeared in the empty space beside me. Confused and startled, I stared at her. How did she find me here? How did she travel here? Most importantly, what did she need?
The female spirit smiled at me and began floating above me, her “body” elongating as though it was being pulled upward. I stretched out my hand to her, gently attempting to keep her in the portal with me until I could make sense of what she wanted. She reached out connecting herself to me and I paused looking longingly at her fragile, wrinkled hands. They were delicate and small, but powerful.
I looked up into her eyes and noticed glistening tears welling up in them, something you would think impossible in a place like this—and I recognized her. She was my sweet great-grandmother, Dru, and she had a message for me.
Tomorrow, when I woke up from my astral travels, she would be exiting our earthly existence. My human heart of this earthly incarnation was saddened. She was a light, a goofball, and a sassy fireball of a woman—and everyone loved her. Literally everyone.
I, too, had tears pooling in my eyes now at the thought of her no longer being with me physically in this lifetime, but she assured me it would be okay. She was at peace, she was gracefully transitioning to her next energetic form and existence, and I was glad for her.
The energy of her body continued stretching and drifting upward and our hands released from one another with a final goodbye as she faded from sight in the portal and exhaled her last earthly breath.
The next day, as foretold, my sweet great-grandmother passed away. Our family grieved, all in their own way, but I smiled at the night sky because energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.
“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.”
―Isabel Allende
For as long as I can remember in my adult years and as a married woman, having a child was my lowest priority. Modern economic burdens, my own career aspirations, and traveling the world with my husband were always more pressing to me. In fact, it was actually hard for me to imagine bringing a life into this world with so much uncertainty—but all of that changed one day.
It is no secret that I have had more than your typical share of physical health issues. Two rare chronic diseases have contributed to many years of nerve and muscular pain, joint dislocations, soft tissue injuries, infections, and more. The sheer quantity of daily symptoms makes it difficult to navigate when new or acute health issues arise, which was one of many reasons I found myself on death's door with sepsis in 2018.
This time, my symptoms were, yet again, lower back pain, nausea, fatigue, frequent urination, and more joint pain than common for me. Many of which I experienced on a regular basis, and most of which sent me spiraling back to the blood infection nightmare of the year prior. This time, though, there was one additional symptom that made me wonder if there was something else much more typical at play here—breast tenderness.
As someone with cups that runneth over, I was no stranger to my chest and back often hurting, but this was different. It hurt to walk, it hurt to stand, and it especially hurt to do jumping jacks (yes, I was doing jumping jacks regularly for some wild reason). This symptom was ultimately what made me realize it wasn't another freak health scare I was experiencing—I was pregnant. Days turned into weeks and that glorious time of the month never arrived, and I knew. I was scared. I wasn't mentally prepared for a child. This wasn't in our current plan, or budget for that matter.
As many mothers-to-be do, though, my mind began imagining the possibilities. While not all people in my situation would've or could've changed their mind about having a child, for a brief season I did. I decided I liked the idea of bringing another soul into the world and striving to give them the best of me. I believed my husband would too, and I began planning on how I would tell him the news.
I sat in bed one night, with my eyes shut tight and my mind racing. As I sat there in silence, I felt a small hand brush across mine startling me because no one was visibly there. Seeing, hearing, and feeling spirits was nothing new to me. After all, I'd had "mediumship abilities" since my youth that I had long wished away for "fear of being evil". I didn't think too much of it and ended up calling it a night shortly after and going to sleep. My dreams were vivid, our bedroom danced with buzzing energies that I was consciously aware of as my spirit watched my human self sleep.
Startled awake, my husband and I looked around our dark room to see nothing out of the ordinary, and we soon returned back to our dreams. A young female spirit smiled and waved at me in my dream world, we spent some time together chatting about various things that were important to us in the astral realm, and then I watched as she gently drifted out of my sight.
I was miscarrying and she was exiting this earth before she had ever truly arrived.
The next day, I lived through the horrors of what no hopeful mother-to-be ever believes they'll experience. Laid up in the bathroom, in physical and emotional pain like I hadn't experienced before my body spontaneously aborted the sweet girl I had just met the night before.
I choked through words I never thought I'd have to say to my husband. We were pregnant. His confusion stabbed my already aching heart and I watched as he began to grieve with me. How in a moment's time he was forced to process what I had been grappling with for weeks—and I don't know if that was better or worse.
That night we lay in bed, me sobbing, and my husband silent—when suddenly he gasped, the noise slicing through the suffocating air of our room. He motioned to the other side of the bed to our television. It was off, the screen black—but drawn onto the surface was a name: Ahn. The name of our daughter. We grieved but also felt comfort. It was a brief encounter with her, that though short, meant the world to me—and gave us hope to one day try again.
Many people’s spiritual stories start with a near-death experience. A taste of the “beyond” that can’t be explained by anything other than the acknowledgment that the spiritual realm is unlike anything we thought it was and is undeniably real. For me, my near-death experience was not the beginning, but rather one of many milestones on my spiritual journey.
Physical health issues have long been something I’ve battled, and though that’s not something I identify with or claim, it is the reality I’ve experienced for the majority of my years on earth this lifetime. In 2018, I was on vacation celebrating the holidays at the end of the year and preparing to take a flight from Chicago to New York City.
I’d long dreamed of NYC at Christmastime and couldn’t wait to see the magic and wonder of the buzzing city, but my health took an unimaginable turn the night before we were supposed to embark on part two of our trip. I kept telling myself and my husband that I was fine—maybe some cold medicine from the drugstore would do the trick. Or maybe a margarita with dinner, cause a little alcohol was sometimes useful in kicking sickness right as it was beginning.
It was when the pain set in, deep-seated in my lower back, that I decided to call my doctor. Maybe I had a rib out of place and could do some yoga or stretching to adjust things. To no avail, I found myself feeling sicker and sicker. I was nauseated, cold, and in severe pain. Maybe a nap would help. In the middle of the night, I was so unbearably cold I decided to stand in the shower to warm myself up.
Hours passed as I stood in the scalding hot waters, unable to alleviate the shivers that shook through my spine. My husband stepped into the shower to tell me that morning had arrived and we were going to miss our flight if I didn’t hurry and get ready—I knew at this moment I couldn’t fake being fine any longer. I couldn’t pretend to feel great and continue on with our vacation. It was time to take an emergency flight home—and against my will, check into a hospital.
Upon arriving back in our home city in Dallas, I still tried to make myself “be okay” but simply couldn’t. That night, I checked into the ER, and everything that followed was a whirlwind. Shuffled from an ER bed to a hospital bed to a CT machine and back to my hospital room it became clear—I was not doing good.
An infectious disease doctor was put on my case, and nurses seemed glum and focused on making me comfortable—and what I wasn’t told throughout this process but was relayed in private to my husband was that I had Sepsis. I had an infectious disease that had spread from my bladder to my uterus to both kidneys, and from there, straight to my bloodstream.
My body was pumped with antibiotics, I discovered I was resistant to Morphine and given Dilaudid (aka medical heroin), my veins rejected the PICC lines multiple nurses tried to place, my body was so swollen I had stretch marks on my sides, and things kept getting worse and worse. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I wasn’t directly told that I had sepsis or how severe the infection truly was. All I knew was that I wanted to go home more than anything—because I absolutely hated hospitals and feared doctors and needles.
My husband sat on the edge of my bed one morning and took me by the hand to tell me even more bad news. My grandmother had just passed away—and if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, I wouldn’t even be able to attend her funeral since I was dying myself and not expected to pull through. Family members were torn between leaving town to honor my grandmother’s memory and staying in the area because I was in such bad shape, and my husband assured them that somehow, some way I would have to get better with the words, “She’s going to make it. She has a lot left to accomplish.”
My entire stay in the hospital was riddled with terror. I feared closing my eyes, and I especially was scared to fall asleep or rest. Without a doubt, I knew the moment I did, it was likely I wouldn’t wake back up. I insisted on sitting upright in my hospital bed, which was incredibly painful with the double kidney infection, and begged the nurses for caffeine to help me keep the headaches at bay and my eyes open.
Halfway into my hospital stay, I began paying attention to the various spiritual beings coming and going from my room. Entities I was familiar with seeing since childhood. From gods to ghosts, the invisible realm was rarely hidden from me, but the spiritual activity on this particular floor of the hospital was extreme and horrifying. Technology in my hospital room glitched frequently. My call button didn’t work, my TV flickered off and on with static, and suffering people in surrounding rooms screamed in pain and horror as they themselves were dying.
A new spiritual being showed itself to me, though, and it was the most terrifying spiritual encounter I’d had up until that point. A tall shapeshifting entity made its way toward me, actively changing before my eyes until it was so close to my face, that I pulled back trying to get away from it. Its movement reminded me of a scene in a horror film as an unknown creature would get closer and closer to the main character as the lights flickered on and off making it difficult to track its movements. The most distinct form I remember the being shapeshifting into was a powerful feminine energy with the frightening head of a crow skull that resembled a plague doctor mask from history class.
She was surrounded by other beings that gave a strong death energy and I felt as though they were all somehow connected to my dear grandmother who had just passed on from the material realm to the beyond. This goddess of death with her crow skull head stretched her arms out to me with a large package that looked like both an envelope and a box at the same time. In fear, I continued to pull away from the goddess. What was the package? What would I be accepting? What was the cost? I wasn’t ready to die, I had so much left to do…
As I hesitated to accept the package, I watched as my sleeping husband, who had been in a chair by my side since the moment we checked into the hospital, got up and began carrying his pillow and blanket to a shelf in the hospital room. He woke up confused, indicating he’d been sleepwalking, something that I’d never witnessed him do before. I asked what he was doing and he began describing an entity that came to him handing him an oversized envelope of sorts and that he accepted it on my behalf.
I was shook.
From that moment forward, my hospital stay improved. I got healthier each day, practicing walking around the hospital, trying to keep food down and prove that I was going to survive this, and I was ultimately cleared for discharge a week after having checked in. In those final moments, as my husband was helping me pack up my belongings and prepare to leave, two nurses came into the room exchanging the following conversation.
Nurse 1: This young lady is going home today.
Nurse 2: I have all her paperwork ready to go.
Nurse 1: I was here the night she came in through the ER. None of us on shift that night believed she was going to make it.
Nurse 2: Is that so?
Nurse 1: She was going to die this week. The fact she’s going home today is a miracle.
Everything started to sink in for me at this moment. I hadn’t grasped how close to death I was—even though I knew I couldn’t close my eyes or go to sleep for my entire 6-day stay at the hospital. I didn’t process that I was septic and literally on death’s door—despite having an infectious disease doctor on my case who checked my blood work daily and had stated on multiple occasions that the infectious bacteria count in my blood was astronomically high. I didn’t understand the nurses’ job was to treat me as though I was on hospice—but that’s what the Morphine and Dilaudid were for—to make me comfortable in my “final moments.”
At one point during my hospital stay, people we knew had come to visit and check in on me, and their teenage son had stated that he felt a spirit of death on the whole floor of the hospital—and it wasn’t until I grasped exactly who The Morrigan was that I recognized the true nature of what was happening.
The Celtic Goddess of Death herself, The Morrigan, had paid me a visit, and had handed my husband and me a healing offer that shouldn’t have been “possible,” and yet, here I am today, a sepsis survivor (which claims the life of more than 50% of its victims), and the severity of my case was almost a guaranteed fatality.
The fear I felt accepting The Morrigan’s offer, but my husband knowing spiritually that what she had for me was not only life itself but a redirection toward my true purpose in life—someone who works with death and life energy to heal (something those who know me is connected to my beloved mustard seed), to break ancestral trauma, and so much more.
I owe my life today to The Morrigan, and the Great Goddess, Lady Wisdom herself, who I am eternally devoted to, as she (to me) is the beloved Holy Spirit herself. And I am also forever grateful to my husband for seeing the potential in myself that I was too scared to see with my own eyes due to religious fear and trauma. My deepest and most sincerest gratitude goes to them both.
Recently, I’ve had a few different spiritual experiences and encounters of mine come up in conversation, and thought it was about time to share these stories with those who are interested in the liminal space happenings that are so interwoven into my daily life. This collection of writings I’ve titled, Unjaded Wisdom.
Everything pertaining to my life and beliefs comes back to my devotion to esoteric wisdom and ancient mysteries. My spiritual path has been centered around healing and helping others on their journeys, whether it be through a spiritual or mundane lens. And my heart is to bring compassion, balance, healing, and creativity to the world.
Since childhood, I remember being very connected to the spiritual realm. But right before college, in 2011, I was introduced to sacred wisdom that I’d never experienced before, and I discovered I could weave the ancient knowledge of the universe into my life through artwork and writing. This became incredibly sacred to me because I discovered that storytelling could harness the energies of creativity and divinity in ways that could bring healing and hope to the world.
In adulthood, I further pursued studies in esoteric wisdom and committed the rest of my life to the pursuit of universal truth, healing myself, and helping others to do the same. At the time, I had no way of grasping that over a decade later I would step into a role as a wisdom mystic and esoteric educator and have such a love for liminal space, but every single step on my journey led me to this very point in my story. Now, I have the opportunity to share everything I’ve learned thus far with those who are also eager to embark on their own spiritual journey.
Today, I hold dearly the paths of mysticism, esotericism, paganism, and spiritualism. While some of these words may get muddied up with a religious idea of "evil," that is not at all connected to any portion of my spiritual journey, as my only goal is to pursue ancient wisdom, honor the divine, and help individuals who want to heal, find joy, and become the best versions of themselves through self-discovery and connecting with the world around them.
Everything on this site is the world as experienced by me but if you read anything that seems too far-fetched or wild to believe, then you can just accept it as another fairytale. Blessed be!
