Frequently people ask me how I came to be practicing energy medicine and doing readings for a living. I am always a little puzzled as to where to start. How did it begin? Having shut down my childhood psychic abilities because they frightened the adults, I focused on the culturally accepted ideas of the "normal" world for many, many years. I focused and worked hard at success.
It took working at several part time jobs to put myself through college, being the first person in my family to graduate. I did this without any financial assistance, except a couple of small loans. I taught school for two years, married and continued working at various jobs to put my husband through the last year and a half of undergraduate and then law school in Austin. Simultaneously, I attended graduate school long distance, with a special arrangement from the art department of the University of North Texas, where I had completed my BA degree. I eventually completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting/drawing. My husband and I both studied Transcendental Meditation for stress management. I continued doing it. In the last year of both our graduate degrees, we had a baby. When our son was three months old, we moved to Galveston where hubby began practicing law, and I "stayed home with the baby." While staying home, I restored the old house we were living in. I was also painting, and doing printmaking, exhibiting nationally and internationally. I did volunteer work. We had another baby boy. I became a member of the Junior League of Galveston and was eventually on their board and on the board of Galveston Arts, a nonprofit. Additionally, I bought and restored two historical buildings including a building on the Strand, opened an art gallery upstairs, and organized the first "Art Walk" in Galveston, which continues to this day.
At the age of thirty-seven I looked around. I had the above-mentioned successes, plus two beautiful, fine sons whom I adored, a prosperous husband, a big Victorian house, everything I had thought I could ever possibly want. Yet, my art and the children were my only real fulfillment. I had this deep, inner longing. Something huge was missing.
The day my youngest son began kindergarten, I wandered for the first time into a funny little shop off the Strand, run by an old Spiritualist Minister named Martha Garrett. There was a sign on the door that said, "Tarot Readings Tuesdays." It was Tuesday, so I went inside and got a reading. The reader said it was time for me to do my spiritual work. She said I had been doing it by reading books, but now it was time to take action. I did not know what that meant, and she cryptically told me that she did not think it meant to go to church next Sunday. She said to watch for a sign. The next Sunday there was a four page spread in the Houston Post about metaphysical schools. I picked one and attended. I also went to some weekend seminars out-of-state.
This new path was anathema to my husband. He took it as a personal affront. Meanwhile, I was soaring. I was growing and blossoming and finally getting off anti-depressants. Yes, I was having out-of-body experiences, walking through our plaster walls and our solid mahogany doors. I was waking from dreams telling him the bullet that he just took in the chest in his dream went through him and hit me in the back, waking me up. (He actually had just dreamed that, he admitted. It woke him up, too.) I could go on and on.
My husband and I grew further apart. After eighteen years of marriage, we split. I had hung on for too long, and as a result I had developed colon ulcers. I knew that to survive and to get well, I had to start over. I moved back to Austin and took the boys with me. I enrolled in massage school partly because the phone book kept falling open to that page, which I knew to be a "sign", and partly because I could work at home and be there when the boys got home from school. I began healing myself and getting grounded by giving massages and getting psychotherapy. Eventually the boys needed to be with their father, each for his own reason. I stayed in Austin for a while longer, then moved to Houston to be near the youngest who lost me earliest in age; the older son had already gone off to college.
While in Austin, I had continued to meditate, study and grow, working out of my home. Being quiet and alone for long periods of time helped my spiritual growth immensely. I see this now, but at the time, I was confused. Why did the Universe want me giving massages? Many others could do that, I thought. I see now it was a kind of monastic life compared to the rest of the world I had known. After six years in this monastery, when finally I came to Houston, I came centered and strong enough to assist others in their spiritual growth/healing. Soon I was guided to a shop where I could do readings, the Ruby Rabbit. Owner Melissa Lockwood and I are still good friends. This eventually led me to the place where I am now, doing healing and readings in my own center.
And that is how I got to where I am in my career at this point. As one can see, it was not without risk or loss. I believe it to be my correct path and do not feel I could have survived otherwise. Had I stayed in the earlier situation, I am fairly certain I would have become seriously ill and died. I believe I came to earth for a purpose, and it was not solely to accumulate goods or success as measured by cultural norms.
