My Medicine Was Never Just for Me

I debated whether to share my story. It’s personal, and we all know how the internet can be. People can be brutal at times, and a woman daring to speak her truth… well, it’s honored in some circles, while in others, it’s dismissed or even mocked. That made this hard for me, but I felt it was necessary.

The work I’m inviting you into takes trust. It’s not a small decision, not just because of the financial cost, but because of the emotional and spiritual cost. A lot of us have already been betrayed or lost something, so to hand your spirit to someone else, to trust someone else to hold it with care, is no small thing—and I honor that. I write as much as I do, and the way that I do, because I have a story too. And every time I tell it, at least one person feels a little less alone—and to me, that’s enough to keep going. I always emphasize that I don’t write from a conceptual place; I write from lived experience. Yes, I’ve had training, and that plays a part in what I know. But more importantly, I’ve done the work—the ugly, honest, uncomfortable inner work—so I know what this journey requires.

First and foremost, it takes radical acceptance of yourself. Every single part of yourself. The parts you’re proud of, and the parts you’d rather hide. And I know how hard that can be—because I’ve lived it. So, while you’re here, I’ll guide you through what the last several years have looked like for me: my healing journey. What I later came to understand was also a spiritual awakening.

In 2017-2018, I began experiencing small but subtle changes. I became incredibly curious about faith. I was in my first two years of college, and perhaps that environment played a part. But I remember feeling this insatiable hunger to know more. I wanted to learn about different religions and practices, which felt strange for me at the time because I was raised in Christian beliefs, and we were taught not to explore anything else. I began reading various books on religion and studying the Bible—but not to memorize verses, as I’d been taught. I wanted to analyze, understand, and question it—and I did. I regularly attended church on Sundays and Wednesdays, anxiously awaiting the times when we held youth group discussions at my family’s home. The guy I was dating at the time fueled my desire. He took me to church, and we sat with the elders and asked questions. I look at him now as a symbol in my awakening, possibly the reason the match was lit. My curiosity and digging only deepened from there.

In 2018, I was standing at the front of a church when a prophet came and spoke over me. She told me I would write several books—but not in the usual way, not just pen and paper. She said I would speak the words I’m meant to write into my phone (wildly accurate) and that I would lead other women into healing through my writing. She even called me an oracle. I remember standing there, surprised, confused, not knowing what she was talking about. No one had ever said anything like that to me before, so I brushed it off and forgot about it.

Years later, after I had written my first book, The Awakened Woman: A Sacred Guide to Self-Mastery, and was already working on The Gospel, my father found the video recording of that service. I watched myself in that moment and was in shock, because it felt like I had lived my way into her words. What struck me was this: growing up in church, I’d been told many times God was going to do something, and nothing ever seemed to come of it. So back then, I dismissed her words as just another prophecy that would never come true. But watching it again with my father, I realized: the prophecy doesn’t always come to tell you where you’re going—sometimes it comes to confirm you’ve already arrived.

By 2019, though, things came to a head. I felt like I was unraveling. The guy I was dating and I had separated, and it was hard, but I’d had breakups before, so it wasn’t just that. If I’m honest, I was already beginning to spiral beforehand. I knew this was something else—something I couldn’t quite name at the time. I voluntarily placed myself under the Florida Baker Act—not because I didn’t want to live, but because I didn’t know how. While admitted, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (BPD), Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), manic depression, and anxiety. They put me on Lexapro and Lithium, and neither helped. It felt like I was coming out of my skin—like I didn’t even have skin, and my nerves were completely exposed. Around that same time, I was working at the sheriff’s office, had moved out on my own, and was dealing with family issues—so my nervous system was just… wrecked. Nobody was talking about mental health in my family except me, and it left me feeling more alone than ever, because I thought I was just the black sheep, weak, or simply acting out.

Long before I decided to major in psychology, I was already aware that something was humming beneath the surface, waiting to be acknowledged. I was seeing and feeling everything, and they couldn’t medicate me enough to numb it. What Western medicine called “mental health disorders” was just me… coming online—I was awakening. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know diagnoses are real. I know chemical imbalances are real. What I’m saying is: there’s another lens we can use to explain what’s happening to us. Perhaps you’re not losing your mind; maybe something is awakening within you.

Back in 2020, my awakening deepened. I began lighting candles with intention, saging my home, whispering affirmations to myself, and attempting to meditate, despite struggling to quiet my mind. Strange, I can vividly recall the smell of citrus (lemons specifically) permeating the air of my apartment. Looking back, it feels like more than just a scent. Lemons have become part of how I carry myself, how people remember me. Even now, it feels like a little piece of my energy—clean, sharp, alive.. At times, I found myself questioning why I was doing these things at all, because despite incorporating these new practices, I still felt like I was unraveling. What I didn’t realize then is that the body often knows what the mind hasn’t yet caught up to. That year, I also began noticing subtle but undeniable shifts around me—like the way the air seemed to change when I walked into a room, as if the temperature or energy shifted just slightly. At the time, I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t even realize that what I was feeling was the energy of others. Now I know, I was reading energy long before I had the words for it.

People often try to rationalize experiences like this by saying you must have invited something in, or that something outside of you attached itself to you. That’s what we’ve been taught—to explain away what we can’t understand with the logical mind. But I know what happened to me. I started paying attention. I was curious enough to ask the deeper questions. So no, it didn’t come from outside of me. These things were already here, waiting for me to notice them.

In 2021, I was pregnant with my daughter, and it was difficult—the pregnancy, the relationship, and the whole year felt like I was stuck in survival mode. I wasn’t practicing anything, and I had stopped attending church. I was hanging on by a thread, and it felt like all it would take was one more inconvenience for me to snap. And I figured: what’s the point? Nothing I’m doing is working anyway. I didn’t want to hear anything about belief, because I was faithful. I was praying, reading, cleansing, isolating—and still couldn’t feel peace in my body.

Now, I smile at the thought of my daughter’s birth, not just because of the transition into motherhood, but I also know that something else was born that day. I tell people all the time: I changed after I had her. Even before I had language for spiritual awakening, I knew it felt spiritual. And that is why I love telling my birth story. I labored for 21 hours and refused pain medication. I didn’t do that to prove anything, but because something inside me knew this was bigger than pain. Around the 20th hour, though, I finally broke. I told my mother I wanted the epidural, not knowing that was actually a sign I was close—that my body was ready. The final hour was a blur. I had lost track of time, and at one point, it felt like my body was there, but my mind was not. Somehow, I felt it all, yet I was also experiencing it from outside of myself at the same time.

I remember a nurse holding my arms down, trying to keep me still so they could put the needle in my back, but the contractions kept coming, seconds apart. It felt like they were forcing me, and my body wouldn’t let me comply. When I think back on it now, I get chills because it felt like something else was in the room with me that day. Something intervening, refusing to let them numb me. By the time they finally got the epidural in, my baby was already crowning. Most people would reduce this moment to a simple mistake—negligence, bad timing, but I don’t see it that way. I was experiencing this beyond the physical realm as well. That’s the thing about awakenings: you stop seeing things the way everyone else does. You stop seeing just the surface, and you start feeling the truth beneath it. That’s what happened to me that day. And now that I know what lives in my spine, where they tried to numb me, I can’t unsee it.

2022 was the year I set myself on fire. I started integrating my shadow self. Some people call it their villain era. I had finally stopped shrinking, and I didn’t care what people thought of me anymore. After all those years of suppressing myself, dimming my light, playing small—I was done. This was the year I walked into rooms in a bright red wig and dared people to look away. I talked how I wanted, showed up where I wanted, and did what I wanted to do. And I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but if someone couldn’t handle the heat, that wasn’t my problem. It was reclamation. I can see now that it wasn’t just spirit leading me then—it was still my ego clinging to the wheel, too. That’s the thing nobody tells you about awakening: it’s possible to feel your spirit rising and still have your ego fighting to stay alive. That’s why so many people get stuck in this stage; they don’t realize they can go beyond it.

And then, in 2023, it all fell apart again. I reconnected with my child’s father, completely ignoring all the warning signs my nervous system was screaming at me, and it got dark. It felt like all the light I had found in 2022 was gone, as if someone had flipped a switch and left me in the dark. People talk about ego deaths, and that’s exactly what it felt like—a complete shedding of who I thought I was. 2023 broke me down like no other year. It was brutal trying to navigate my way out of it, especially with a child in tow. My child’s father and I separated shortly after while we were living in Tampa, and because of that, I had to drive two and a half hours back to my hometown on weekends so my family could watch her while I worked, because by then, I had no contact with her father. I remember lying awake at night in that apartment, unable to sleep because of the grief that sat in my chest. I’d ask myself: What’s the point? Why do I keep making these decisions? Why am I praying, and nothing is happening?

And then I allowed it to get quiet.

I stopped reaching out to people, even God, and isolated myself. And that isolation… was necessary. That’s when I started talking to myself. Sounds crazy, I know—but I felt I had exhausted all other options. One day, when my anxiety had me in a chokehold and I was just so tired of it, I began dialoguing with my emotions and saying things like: What do you want from me? Can you give me a moment? I need to breathe. And when I did that—almost instantly—it loosened its grip. The tightness in my chest disappeared, my shoulders relaxed, and I felt at ease. And I sat in my car, puzzled that day, not knowing that my medicine, my voice, was already working.

Eventually, I moved back home because, at that point, I no longer recognized myself. I knew I needed to create a sense of safety for myself immediately. So I packed up my things and moved back home from Tampa on Christmas Eve. I often say that when you get fed up, you don’t wait for the perfect time—you surrender, and that’s what I did. Most of 2024 was a roller coaster, but something shifted. It felt like that scene in a movie where the superhero finally arrives and the music starts playing. I chose myself, unapologetically, for the first time. I let myself cry and rage and didn’t apologize for it. I let go of that relationship, and a couple of weeks later, I went to the Bahamas by myself and had a blast, as if it hadn't even happened. I knew that if I gave myself permission to feel all those other emotions, then I could also feel joy. I made a point to pour into myself every day after that—that was the moment I put the cape back on.

At the end of 2024, I began individual counseling, and that led me back to journaling. Journaling led me back to my voice, my voice notes became book notes, and my book notes became The Awakened Woman and then The Gospel. So, to sum it up… my curiosity lit the match, that old prophecy video was the confirmation, and here I am, tending to the flame. I love that my sensitivity—the racing heart, the vibrating body, the burning belly—what once felt like anxiety, I now understand as my body speaking to me. Spirit speaking through me. Because I offered myself a reframe, I was able to see it for what it really was. What once looked like a mental health disorder, I now see as my awakening. And why would I want to see it any other way? Would it be easier to live under the assumption that my life was meant to be insufferable? That I somehow had to earn my joy and my peace. I don't think so, because I have already lived that reality, and now I feel like I have skin in the game.

And here’s the thing—you don’t have to be on some spiritual journey for this work to matter. You don’t even have to call it awakening at all. What I learned is this: when your nervous system is dysregulated, everything feels like an attack, everything feels impossible. But when you learn how to bring your system back to safety, you can finally hear yourself clearly. You can finally show up for your family, your work, your life, and yourself in a way that feels grounded.

So maybe you’re at a point where you feel like you’ve hit this wall over and over. You feel like you’re running in circles, trying to figure it all out. Why isn’t it getting better? Why do you keep going back to the same habits, the same relationships, the same survival that’s been breaking you down? Why can’t you medicate enough, drink enough, or pray enough, and feel okay? Maybe it’s not that you’re broken—maybe your nervous system has just been carrying a decade of unprocessed guilt, shame, fear, or burnout.

That’s why I’m offering you a hand—the hand I wish I had on this journey.

I offer pieces of myself through my books and these programs. My medicine was never just for me; it’s for you, too. And you don’t have to call it an awakening; you simply have to decide you’re done living like this and you’re ready to feel whole again.