By Denise Barnes
Life is be so busy and well, complicated today. There’s a lot to handle – family, work, home and hearth, healthy eating, exercise – wow! No wonder there’s all the racing around, edginess and overwhelm in the day to day dance.
You keep moving, you keep doing, trying to keep up with it all. There might be vague rumblings or questions in the background. But it doesn’t seem like there’s time to stop and take stock of things. Then boom, you get a wakeup call, and all the careful chaos you’ve been juggling falls to the ground.
That was true for Psychic Horizon teacher Jen White. Before her wakeup call arrived in the form of health issues, she had a busy career in the dot com industry. A hard worker, she put work first; plus she had a home and family to manage. Always doing, doing, doing, she put others’ needs first. She didn’t want to rock the boat by challenging those maxims about women, such as “Women should be seen and not heard” “sugar and spice and everything nice”.
She didn’t feel conscious or present, even though she was doing all the right things – well at least the things that society said you should do, to be successful and happy. She followed those rules, except happy wasn’t happening. She found herself worrying a lot, even about small stuff, like what was for dinner. She stuffed her fears and pain – kind of like the Michelin man, or the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Lots of padding covering over the real stuff! The world didn’t give you permission to think too deeply.
Life felt hollow and empty, before the universe conspired to help change things.
Jen had had some inkling of her psychic and intuitive abilities as a child, when she was able to see and talk to fairies. Of course, that wasn’t OK – that would be the shortcut to the funny farm, she was told. She’d been exposed to alternative thinking, activism, and law of attraction ideas. But raised in a family of atheists, there wasn’t much spiritual thought.
Her wakeup call meant surgery, and a hospital visit, all of which was an abnormal break from routine. It gave her pause. Before that, Jen didn’t even know what was possible, or how to even dream of something different. There was no permission to think outside the box, no hope of living in a different way. After her wakeup call though, she knew there had to be more, and she started to look for it.
When she heard there was a school like Psychic Horizons, she made a beeline for it. This made sense somehow, even though she wouldn’t have been able to say exactly why. She was getting the message that the way she’d been over-caring for others, and stuffing the pain from life, was not going to be sustainable.
Jen realized, in the back of her mind, from someplace she could never admit, that she “absolutely did want to be magical”. She wanted to know more about this hidden world she could sense.
When Jen walked into Psychic Horizons, it was “just a new world“. Everyone was so pleasant, so easy. She was accepted as the “hot mess” she was at that time. She went from being surrounded by judgment in her life, to beginning to be able to trust herself and other people more.
When she started school, she felt pretty out of it. She’d stuffed pain for decades, and she’d been trying to heal everybody else in her life. She subsumed huge parts of who she was – to things like work, and to what was expected of her. Being around staff at PH was a huge gift, because no matter how you were, it was OK. Those expectations that if you stepped out of line, there would be a backlash – all of sudden, that didn’t exist. She didn’t know her motivations or where this would lead, but the healing environment was already a big breath of fresh air.
That was just the beginning. Jen’s journey at Psychic Horizons has continued over the last fifteen years. When she started, she worked in a career that wasn’t fulfilling. Though she had all the trappings of what society said was necessary, she wasn’t feeling very alive or happy. There was no spiritual life, no time to stop, no clarity. The stuffing of feelings, the speedy pace of life – some of it led to a health crisis and a hospital visit. Finally she had time to think and face the questions that had been lurking.
At Psychic Horizons, Jen learned things that helped her know herself more, know what she valued. Rather than doing what everyone else thought she should do, she started to follow her own sense of what mattered. She went from being worried all the time, and clueless about herself and others, to being calmer, and to knowing what to trust. Her work and relationships improved, and became more truthful and authentic. Now she’s a different person – more true to herself, clearer about her motivation and goals, and more able to navigate any challenges that arise. Plus, she’s having a lot more fun!
Prompt for comments: Have you ever felt that you were getting a wakeup call? How has life differed from what you expected, before and after that experience?
