When I was nineteen, I moved from Atlanta, GA, to Bellingham, WA. Before departing, I had a vivid dream of looking through a window that was suspended in the blue sky over the expansive ocean. The dream gave me a sense of hope and well-being before moving to the opposite corner of the country from everything I had known.

My plan had been to travel with a boyfriend from San Francisco to Olympia, WA, where I had some friends. Due to our breaking up soon after I arrived in California, I was suddenly on my own traveling up the west coast with characters that I met along the way, like a couple who lived on a bus and primarily ate sprouts. I had never seen so much food growing along our way and enjoyed devouring ripe figs and blackberries. I met a hearty local called Poncho who kindly offered to accompany me further north since he was also heading in that direction for college. It was 1980, and some of our transportation choices were risky. One option offered a beautiful view from a boxcar of mountains and valleys. We made it to Olympia safely, and from there, I caught a Greyhound to Bellingham, arriving at sunset. I felt like I had come home.

This is really just the beginning of the story. Looking back, I see that I was creating all this as a spirit, although I was not so aware of it. My world was opening up magically, like my dream of the window suspended over the ocean.

About a year later, a roommate told me about the CDM Spiritual Center. She said, “I think you may like this place.” I remember taking my first meditation class and hearing that “I am spirit and create my reality.” I was flooded with a sense of relief, and a light came on because I knew that if I created it, then I could change it. Up to that point, I had been related to like I was a body, instead of I have a body.

In my early teens, I began to explore natural healing. For example, I tended to get bronchitis if ill as a child, and my mother would give me antibiotics. At one point, I refused to take them and was able to recover using herbal remedies instead. It must have been hard for her to hear my deep cough, but I was devoted to my learning process. I continued to explore alternative ways of healing, and she was supportive. A few years later, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was hard for me to watch her suffer and thus increased my desire to learn about healing.

The meditation class gave me spiritual techniques for releasing concepts  and energy that were disturbing or did not work for me and to fill in with my own unique vibration. Remembering my spiritual abilities was the next step to working with my body as a healer. “I create my reality” could seem like the good news or the bad news, but either way, it acknowledges my free will to make choices that shape my life.

I continued to take all the classes at the CDM Spiritual Center, did the Clairvoyant Training Program, and practice meditation, reading, and healing to this day. Over the years I have learned that there is no “right” way to heal. Healing is change and unique to the individual learning experience. My teen self that refused to take antibiotics was owning my way of relating to my body. Finding myself independent and on the road as a young adult taught me that I was stronger and more resourceful than I realized. My mother’s illness, which eventually led to her death, showed me that she is so much more than her body, and her way of making a big change at that time was to move on from her earthly creations. I thank the immortal being that is my mother for giving me a body in this lifetime.

When I wonder how I will get to the other side of a difficulty, it helps to remember some of my healing stories. My dream of the window suspended in the sky symbolizes a view of life in which I am spirit, and part of the all that is represented by the ocean. What a gift it is to be spirit in a body on this earth.