See that girl on the left in that picture, the year 1999? That was a very unhealthy version of me back then. It was June 1999 around my birthday and just a few months prior to finding out I had cervical cancer for the first time. I look like I’m not even present in my body.
It amazes me that I had no awareness of what was happening within me. This was the direct response to the crisis I was in but blind to. I was going though my second divorce and it felt like my world was falling apart because I was not aware enough to see I was falling into place. This happened throughout a lifetime of self-defeating thoughts, driven by extreme emotional turmoil about who I was.
I had no self-esteem, I thought I did but I was fooling myself. I can very clearly see now what I was in denial about back then. I was married for the first time in 1986 and a few short years later went through a painful divorce in 1990 after finding out my husband was having an affair. I was only 30 and felt like a failure. I really didn’t have any support in my family dynamic growing. up and never learned how to love myself properly. I’ll go into this at some point in future blogs.
After that marriage ended, I did what many other people do and jumped back into the dating pool not giving myself proper time to heal. I needed to find another relationship in order to save my pride and declare my self-worth. Which is exactly what happened and after a few short months of dating In 1991 I moved in with him, which seemed to make sense since my parents and brother were leaving Long Island headed for North Carolina.
I didn’t want to leave my great paying corporate job or my boyfriend and right on que we got married in August of 1995. It was my second big wedding, his first. We lived in a two bedroom apartment and everything was fine until we were away on vacation with his family in Germany when his father passed suddenly. This was extremely traumatic for my husband since it happened just outside the entrance into the plane. A few years later our relationship started to decline and we filed for a separation, eventually leading to a divorce at the end of 1999.
In March of 2000 I moved into my own apartment, giving him the house we bought together. Of course I met someone just prior to moving out and was having issues with spotting in between my period. I went to the gynecologist but she didn’t seen concerned so I wasn’t concerned until it became heavier and more frequent. I was only in my new apartment three or four weeks when suddenly in the middle of a sound sleep when a very loud booming male voice yelled at me “YOU HAVE CANCER, GO TO THE DOCTOR!!!” This is where my story begins…
I’ve always been connected on a very deep level. I can remember laying in bed at night talking to angels and guides around the age of 4-years old, only at that age I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. Sometimes the feelings were overwhelming and I’d get scared. I looked for guidance, but my psychic ability wasn’t looked upon favorably by my mom, so it wasn’t until 2000 when I had my first challenge with cancer that I recognized things needed to shift in my life. And shift they did!
A New Path Begins
Having cancer really helped me bring my awareness back online. Major life altering events are always the catalyst for bringing us back in touch with our spiritual nature. I was always spiritual, the cancer catapulted me onto a whole new path looking for answers as to why cancer happened to me, what did I need to do to get rid of it and how could I make sure it never came back. There was no looking back.
After a minor procedure to removed the tips of my cervix my oncologist wasn’t sure he could give me an all clear which felt frustrating. I remember putting that in the back of my mind, I didn’t want to focus of not getting better. I returned to my gynecologist for a check up after a few weeks and asked her what I needed to do to make sure I stayed free of cancer and she responded with “I don’t really know”. I was dumbstruck at that response and decided I was going to do whatever it took to make sure I didn’t get cancer again.
I went on Weight Watchers, lost 96 pounds, started working out and felt really good about how healthy my body was becoming but that wasn’t enough. After the second run in with cancer in 2004 I started to look for answers why a healthy body, healthy diet and healthy lifestyle wasn’t enough. As I went through this second treatment of cryogenics, freezing the cells off, I met someone through a friend. We dated a while and at the end of 2025 I got married again…third time’s a charm, right?? Not really, maybe in theory but it did give me exactly what I needed as well as what he needed although I didn’t really see it at the time. This is where it got really interesting.
Cancer Becomes My Saving Grace
I maintained working out and healthy eating but had a minor injury to my left glute on a stair machine. I decided I needed to seek out a chiropractor to help with whatever what misaligned. During my search I found a Chiropractor who was on the cutting edge of healing through his forward thinking. He was into Functional Medicine, meditation, reiki and so much more. I saw him a few times and during our conversations he realized the amount of knowledge I had already gained through the process of discovery and suggested I enroll in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition to help give me a better understanding of nutrition and Mind/Body/Soul wellness. I
I enrolled in 2006, IIN provided a wealth of information on nutrition ranging from raw food diets to macrobiotic diets but they also brought in so many wonderful modalities such as Ayurveda, Meditation, Kundalini Yoga as well as many other healing modalities through some very amazing leading-edge speakers like Debbie Ford, John Douliard, Dr. Esselstyn, and many others every week in person to assist in our journey.
It was the best time of my life, I was in class with about 800 other like-minded people and we shared our insight, our stories and a meal in the first Whole Foods I’d ever visited which was right downstairs from our class located in Columbus Circle NYC. I was loving life and in doing so I activated my joy which activated my intuitive abilities…who knew it would be that simple?
I started seeing Auras again as my third eye was opening again! Life was getting more interesting, and the cancer was in remission. Woo-hoo! I continued working on me and took a Reiki 1 & 2 class while attending the IIN program. As the program was coming to an end the chiropractor asked me to become part of his center so he could offer nutrition and Reiki. I rented a tiny room in his office so I could see clients while still working at my very stressful corporate job. I pushed myself to stay focused on my wellness and soon word was going around at work that I had healed cancer and just like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon people were stopping by my office to ask me health related questions. I realized I was on to something! So many people were sick like I had been and needed help figuring their life out.
My Big Ah-Ha
As I listened to peoples stories I started to dig deeper and finally connect the dots…emotions and thoughts are the culprits, that’s what makes us sick. I can remember the feeling I had in that moment realizing I never needed to be sick again!
As my awareness built I was suddenly having a strong calling to be a healer as if a switch had been flipped within me. It sounded so far fetched, I wasn’t even sure what that meant at the time but it was enough to push me to leave my very well-paying corporate job May 2008 in the beginning of the recession to begin a new career in my own healing practice. Side note, my husband was not happy, and that was ok because I was for the first time ever! I had the calling and needed to follow it.
My mom was visiting the summer of 2008 and mentioned we should start looking for an office for me to work out of. I wanted to leave the chiropractor, it was too busy and the noise made it hard to do reiki. I wanted quiet, and a beautiful healing space presented five minutes from my home in the village of Bellport. I knew it was the space because the office number was 11. I had written a gratitude journal for months, each entry telling the Universe what I wanted in my new space…
1-Plenty of parking, 2- First floor entry for easy access, 3- My personal office and a large room for events 4- a kind landlord (he was) 5- a kitchenette so I could offer water, or tea. 6- a space for me to sell crystals and herbal medicine (I would soon start practicing herbal medicine in 2009 with Susun Weed, that was the beginning) 7- A beautiful waiting room (a client of mine loved it so much she donated a beautiful wooden church pew she had in her house as the bench in the seating ares… imagine that! I didn’t see it as a church item I saw it as an offering of the divine.)
All of my manifestations happened, without more than the effort of putting the pen to the paper.
In 2012 I had a real a-ha moment as I opened more, my intuitive ability was increasing. I continued to explore different avenues and philosophies, opening and engaging in my psychic ability all the way. My Reiki teacher had put a deck of Rider Waite Tarot cards in my hand and I found myself exploring those. The more I explored the faster I was opening and enjoying my life, even through some of the hardships like losing my mom during my divorce in June 2013. That’s a story for another time.
The pain was there but the work kept me grounded and strong, pushing me to continue to explore all that was in front of me. I’m grateful for all those experiences! I know my mom wanted me to keep going, to do what she didn’t allow herself to do because of fear. There’s always one very awakened soul in a family. My mom was the one in hers and I was the one in mine.
The last few years I’ve had many mentors from all over the US who helped me make sense of what I was connecting to and receiving from my guides. I always allowed my guides to point me in the direction of who the best person for me was in that moment. I now take all the information, modalities, and sacred tools and apply them to my sessions in both a healing capacity as well as through spiritual guidance although I don’t do reiki as a hands on modality anymore because my work now requires I tune in at a soul level for support and guidance. Everything, unless through special request, is done online through Zoom.
I’m still learning, growing and evolving. We should never stop because it’s a pathway, one step leads to a new awareness and the next step to another new awareness and so on. We are here for the purpose of our soul’s evolution; it’s an excavation through our human experience to come to fully embrace our authenticity. In standing fully in our authenticity, we find our truth which when harnessed and be embodied which then unlocks the magic that life has to offer and sets our soul on fire…there is no better feeling than knowing yourself at the deepest level.
Work with me, I will help you Return to Yourself…