Over the course of our lives, we develop personas. As a child we learn about who we are by playing, I was particularly fond of superheroes and Barbie. I look back now and I can see the parts of me that are reflected in those characters. I also liked to pretend I was a famous actress, singer, and dancer. It brought me incredible joy. It seems to me that these are parts of me I've been neglecting while playing my other, more responsible roles.

When we start to mature physically, we start to explore the more adult types of roles that we will play. I took on the role of employee for the first time shortly after turning 16. I learned what it meant to have a job and the responsibilities that came along with it.

​I was still also playing the role of student, daughter, sister, and friend. I had other roles I was playing as well. I've always been a caretaker feeling incredible responsibility for the well-being of my friends and family, including the family pets. My mother instilled a sense of social responsibility in me early on in my life, volunteering at the fire department, police department, and nursing homes. 

Somewhere along our journey we become fragmented, playing many different roles. People are often surprised to learn that I'm highly intuitive, took ninjitsu, lived in Japan, or grew up on a farm. The role that they've assigned to me in their story suddenly takes a plot twist. 

I've adapted my "story" in the past to make others feel more comfortable. I've separated parts of me into digestible portions so others don't choke, but my authentic self wants to be a complete expression. 

I think this personal fragmentation is a reflection of what happens when we incarnate here. We perpetuate the illusion of separation individually as well as the whole.. Many of us are starting to feel this incredible shift that is happening, where we are coming back together within so we can all feel more whole. 

Don't be afraid to be all of you. That's what we're all meant to do. It's a process. Lean into it. Open your hearts and minds to all that you are. You are a perfect expression of all that is.

​Photo credit: Joy Reactor

She came to my crib when I was just a baby, the ghost of a woman who's identity I will never know. I think she tried to tell me, but I was too scared and too young to know what to do. She wasn't like the others who visited me. She was angry, distraught, and frantic. I knew the difference between her and the spirits who loved me. She was a threat. 

The first thing she tried to do was get me to touch her, and I must have been protected because she couldn't apparently without my permission. She showed me all these beautiful rings and asked me if I wanted one. All I had to do was reach out and take one, she had said. I knew better and cried immediately. After my brother was born in 1974, I started sleepwalking. I was only three. I would stand in front of his crib with my fists up, trying to protect him from the woman who seemed to enjoy harassing children.

Sometime when I was about four years old, I saw Snow White. I remember thinking that the woman who was visiting me must have been an evil witch, who wanted nothing more than to take me out. It became even more frightening for me. I started telling my parents that there was a witch in my room who wouldn't leave me alone. Eventually she started calling me names that I had not heard anywhere else, and clawed at the side of my bed. 

When my older brother passed away in April of 1976, we moved away from the old Maryland farmhouse where we had been staying and I thought that I had gotten rid of her, but I hadn't. She followed me and continued to taunt me and ask me to just take a ring already. I refused.

We moved again in May of 1979 to a small house off highway 45 in Metropolis, Illinois. I remember thinking that maybe she wouldn't move with us this time. After all, we had moved half-way across the country. Two or three days into our new home and I was hopeful, but she returned and continued to express her anger. 

I didn't realize at the time that I was psychic; I didn't know what that even meant. A little over a year after our initial move to Illinois we moved into the farmhouse where my father had spent most of his life. Finally, I thought she won't come here. This is my family's farm, but she did. 

She creeped around our home like she always did, and I could never fully see her. What I saw was blurry air and sometimes the arm that she showed me trying to get me to touch her. I slept a lot. I went to bed early a lot. She kept me up for years at night and I continued to try to protect my younger brother from her menace. 

When I turned 14, I started to mourn the tragic loss of my brother in 1976. It hit me out of the blue. I carried around my brother's picture, crying for weeks. We didn't have central air, in fact, the old farmhouse still uses window units to cool parts of the house. At the time, we only used window units in the kitchen/living room, and my parents bedroom. My younger brother and I would get to sleep on the sofa bed during the hottest of nights and on this one night sometime in July of 1985, I woke up to the most wonderful feeling. At the foot of the sofa bed I saw my brother again, solid as if he'd never been gone. "Tigger, stop crying. I'm okay." And he waved to me as he faded slowly and disappeared, but I could feel his love all over my body. I had never been happier. This connection changed me. I knew that there was something about me that was different and I started reading all things metaphysical I could get my hands on. It was this encounter with my brother that gave me the courage to finally stand up to that nasty woman who had wanted something from me.

A few months later she woke me up again. I couldn't see her but I could hear her calling me names. She said she was tired of waiting and that I needed to take one of these rings, now. I felt the anger rise in my body. I felt the frustration and the exhaustion from years of being tormented and I finally got the courage to stand up to her. "Leave me alone. I never want to see you again. Leave now and never come back!" I was worried that I would wake up my family and I did my best not to scream. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt the air clear and the energy shift. She was gone.