Seeing eagles and s**t - part 1
Currently in another wave of spiritual awakening, I reflect on my first (and rather dramatic) initiation into the unseen realms. This is Part 1:How postpartum ripped me open to new levels of extra sensory perception and pushed me onto an intuitive path.
*Heads up* I briefly reference my c-section experience with somewhat graphic language
Little me always felt & saw the unseen, 1989
In hospital for necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease). One of my most memorable otherworldly visitations, 1991
Pregnant & fully trapped in my body, 2018
The initiation begins post c-section, 2018
In a haze of exhaustion, mounting chronic illness, fear of nighttime and anxiety over what I was now seeing & feeling, 2019
Chaos in the early days 🫠
Solace in the forest, 2020 🌳
Most of my fleeting free time was spent journaling to process everything, 2021
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This is Divine Interruption.
I'm Sarah Hildreth Rankin.
Okay, I am just tangled up in a mess of wires.
I swear, I just spent the past like 40 minutes just like crying just over life, just because it feels too much, because there's just so much within ourselves and outside of ourselves, and some days, I just feel so raw and open, and it's like everything around me is just assaulting my senses, and I don't really know how to manage that.
And I'm ready to talk about some things.
I saw a friend a few weeks ago, and she was like, why aren't you talking about how you opened up or your spiritual experiences?
And I guess I thought, I'm like, oh, I kind of am, but no, I always wanted to talk about what an awakening is like and how that plays out, I guess, in my experience.
And funny enough, it's like I'm going through another awakening right now, which is all of the things.
It's overwhelming, it's beautiful, it's exciting, but it's just a lot.
And so I even come in to sit and talk about stories.
Like, again, I have about eight open tabs of all these things.
And then most days, I'm just getting so overwhelmed with where I'm at that it's not happening.
But this is happening.
So why don't I just talk about it?
And instead of trying to plan it out and make it into something, maybe I can just roll with it.
And that's what I'm going to try to do here.
But I was so uncomfortable earlier, and I was so upset that I just didn't feel good, that I had to let it all out.
And then once I felt more empty, I kind of looked over, I'm like, oh, there's the laptop, and there's the microphone.
Okay, kind of like crawled my way over to it.
And now I've created this nest on the floor.
I have a desk, I have a chair, I have a nice little workstation now.
And yet, here I am, I'm on the floor against a baseboard heater that has already melted two of the blankets I'm sitting on.
I don't know, this is the way I feel.
I'm like, I need to be protected.
I need to be in a little cave or a little cocoon right now.
And so here we are, and might as well do that than not do it at all, right?
But that really is connected to what I want to talk about, which is all of the experience of being very sensitive and what that feels like, and then how it is to intake the world, and how all of that has happened.
So anyway, I might get up and have to untangle myself from all of these wires and this weird blanket nest, but we're just gonna see how far I make it today.
So yeah, I'm going through another form of awakening right now.
I had my first major one probably about eight years, seven years ago, right before I had my kids.
And then after I had them, it was almost like a ripping open even further.
And then I've been managing that over the past six years, and that has shown up in different ways.
And really, what is an awakening, I think it's just another layer that is shed where we have new perception and new understanding of who we actually are and how we navigate the world.
And also, like an opening of the senses, where we all have all of these senses, but in a way we're able to perceive even more of the things that we may not have been able to perceive before.
So we're taking on more information, we're feeling and seeing and hearing and sensing more.
That's what I would kind of deem as an awakening.
It's a bunch of things kind of interplaying at once, and maybe you go through one, and it's a slow evolution, and it's beautiful, and you just have interest in a certain area of understanding yourself, and it unfolds.
And as you do, you gain more clarity or awareness about the universe and how you feel like you fit into it, and then you start to perceive more.
Or maybe it's a really intense one-off experience.
Maybe you have a near-death experience.
There's so many of those that are documented where people see a light and they leave their body, and they have a moment where they decide to come back into their body, and then they're forever changed.
They have this new perception of what life is and what their soul is here to do, and they've made a choice.
And so there's so many different ways of coming at this, and I don't really believe that we control that in a very human sense.
It's kind of just the way it's meant to be.
So, when I was a kid, like, I do remember experiencing a lot of things with my senses, things that maybe people would deem, like, not there or non-existent.
I would often lie just on my back, on the floor, or on top of my bed, and I would just allow things to be with me.
Sometimes I would be able to leave my body.
I would float up to the top of my room, and I would look down, and I would be like, oh, there I am.
There's Sarah.
I can see her.
She's lying down, looking up at the ceiling, and here I am up here, and I can see her.
So, I had, like, other layers of perception, and I would love to just, I was just, like, quiet a lot of the time, doing nothing, because I was feeling and sensing and being in my imagination, and in other worlds, I would say, where I was doing and feeling and playing with things and talking to things.
So, there was a lot of that that I remember, and I would have all sorts of really intense dreams, and I was also quite afraid of the dark, which I think is very common.
And it was in spaces where I was alone, and it was dark, where I felt like I could feel even more, and because it was so quiet, and I was by myself, it was just really unnerving.
And I can't say there was anything specific that I remember.
I just remember it was a lot of sensation and feeling that felt associated with fear, like, well, I'm here by myself, and there's a lot of other things here with me, and I don't really know what that is.
I don't have language for this.
No one else is talking about this in my family or saying that they experienced this.
So, there was a lot of that.
And I grew up in a household where that just wasn't the way.
We didn't even really have language for feelings.
It wasn't around family members that expressed their feelings or really validated feelings or allowed space for them.
So, I was a very, very, very open and feeling and sensitive person, but that wasn't being reflected back to me as appropriate or no one was really guiding me with what that felt like.
And it was all about kind of just, no, we don't show that, and we don't show that to each other.
So, if you're gonna have feelings, if you're gonna be sad or upset or angry or whatever it is, first of all, let's tone that down, and then you can take that and go do it on your own time, in your own space.
So, I didn't really have a way of understanding the world I was in and processing all that I was feeling, because I felt a lot.
And when I say feel a lot, it's hard, because I've always been this way.
And so sometimes we only understand ourselves in layers as we connect with other people, and they reflect back to us what their reality is, and then we're like, oh, okay, this is how you see this.
This is how I see this.
Okay, that's different.
And so when you're young, maybe you don't have that reflection, so you just assume everyone is the way you are, right?
It's very interesting unfolding.
I would often feel what I thought at the time.
It's so interesting, I can look back and now understand more, but I was feeling a lot of things that weren't my own things.
And I still have a lot of sadness.
Like when I think about being young, for me, it's all colored, almost like a watercolor painting, where it's like everything I experience has this wash over it, that's kind of bluish gray.
Because to me, there's like this deep layer of sadness and grief there.
And yet, from the outside, that was not apparent in any way, shape or form.
Again, like I grew up in a way where I had everything that I needed, I was taken care of, I was safe, I was exposed to a lot of wonderful things and opportunities.
But there was a lot of emotions that were unprocessed, and I could feel all of that.
And my parents were going through a lot that they didn't share, that we did not talk about.
And that, like I felt that.
And yet, they were like, no, everything's fine.
No, we don't talk about that.
There was a lot of things that were secret and unsaid, and I was not allowed.
It was very much like, that is none of your business, kind of.
You're the kid, we're the adults, it's none of your business.
Don't ask.
And there were moments where I would try to ask questions or understand more, and I was very firmly told, like, don't you dare go there.
So I was feeling a lot all the time and a lot of sadness.
And yet, there were moments where I could go away, and I could be by myself, and I could do something, and those feelings would dissipate.
It was almost like in those moments, I could feel myself again.
And when I felt myself, I was like, oh, I actually feel quite clear and quite buoyant.
But when I'm in scenarios with other people, oh, I feel, I just used the word overwhelming.
I've used that word a lot in my lifetime.
Everything is very overwhelming, because I feel a lot.
Everything on the surface seems fine, but underneath, there's all these undercurrents, right?
They feel deep and dark and kind of scary.
It's scary when there are unsaid things that you feel, but no one is acknowledging them.
And that's a lot of what I remember.
Or even when I had like a lot of awesome times and fun and all of that, there's this underlying feeling when I go back there that's like uneasy, unsafe.
And yeah, a lot of grief, just so much grief that was being carried and carted around that wasn't discussed.
So yeah, I could feel everyone else around me, and I could also feel and sense other things or beings or energy that was around as well.
And I spent a lot of time alone.
And I remember there was a few very stark moments that were very otherworldly.
There was one time I was in the basement of our home, and I talked out loud.
And the basement was scary.
And I don't know if you grew up with a basement, and maybe every kid thinks the basement is scary.
And it was scary.
I didn't like going down there, but I remember seeing something out loud, finally almost like this acknowledgement of like, hey, I feel you, what are you?
And I said like, hi.
I think I said, hello, hi, out loud.
And something actually said, hello, back.
And I felt that as like a physical voice, like it felt outside of myself.
That was very scary.
And there was always things going on with lights turning off and on, like all the typical things, you'd be like, oh, that's a ghost.
Like that was the house.
And that's how I felt the house.
The house was alive.
There were things in the house that were doing things.
It didn't necessarily feel nefarious or bad, but it was not out in the open.
It was all hidden.
And there were sometimes moments where things, like I would put them down.
I have this, oh, this moment I remember so clearly in the middle of the day, having had lunch, sitting by myself and putting my dishes on the counter, going upstairs, getting something coming back down, and all of my dishes had been put away.
And the person who was taking care of me was upstairs the entire time, and there was no one else in the house.
And even as a kid, I remember being like, no, I really noticed this, there's something here.
So things like that, a lot of ghost type things.
And I haven't experienced a lot of that stuff even as an adult at all.
That's like very specific to almost being in that house.
I was like, oh, this house is inhabited by some thing, some one, some energy.
So I had these experiences of feeling a lot, seeing, but not always clear seeing more, just like I would see things in my head that would give me feelings, different colors, different visions of things.
And then this very physical experience of being in this home that I did not like.
I did not like it when Santa came at Christmas.
Like, I was very sensitive to all of that.
I was like, I do not want some old man coming into my room while I'm sleeping because I already felt like there were things in there with me.
And I used to play audio tapes, cassette tapes with stories, and I would play them on repeat because I felt like that gave me company, like, I had safety of a voice that was there with me that I could focus on, otherwise, I felt like I was just so much more aware of everything that was there with me, and I wasn't comfortable with that.
And so, yeah, the idea of, like, some old white man with a huge beard coming in, even if he was bringing gifts, like, that was not cool.
I remember saying, I'm like, I really wish Santa didn't come into my room and leave my stocking there.
And then he stopped doing that when I asked.
And again, like, my family didn't believe or talk about any of the things that I was experiencing, and they really did, like, shut that down, even in terms of just having emotions.
That was very shut down.
There was no one who could hold those for me or reflect them back or process them.
And I remember when my grandma died, I think I was 10 or 11 years old, and the conversation we had around that was, I don't know what I asked.
I asked something before bedtime, or my mom told me something.
It was essentially like, you know, we used to believe in God, you know, that there was a God.
But then when World War II happened, my mom's dad had died when she was just a baby.
So my grandma had lost her husband in the war right away, and she had had this baby.
Essentially, she said, we stopped believing.
Grandma stopped believing in all of that, and because why would that have happened?
It was so horrible.
You know, so there is no god.
There is no thing.
That felt so bleak, so bleak.
And yet I also latched on to that and understood that.
And so we didn't have any form of religion, which again, can swing either way.
It can be really positive for someone, and for another person, it can be really damaging.
So for me, there just wasn't anything to grasp onto or any sort of understanding.
And my family, it was very like nothing.
There is nothing, we do not do anything.
So a lot of like suppressed emotions and suppressed beliefs.
And so there wasn't any way for me to explore any of that.
And yeah, it felt bleak, because I was feeling and seeing a lot, and I believed that there was more to things because I had this experience, but that wasn't being reflected back to me.
So there was almost this cognitive dissonance as I was having these experiences.
And yet, yeah, no one else seemed to be having them or talking about them.
So I was like, is this real, am I real?
And over time, it's like you stop to trust yourself, or I did.
It's like I stopped trusting that, I stopped putting energy into it, because it wasn't safe, it wasn't accepted.
And I was told, you know, there isn't anything here.
That's all make believe, that's fake, you know?
And when I was six, I had flesh eating disease, and I was in the hospital for two weeks.
Pretty scary experience.
I didn't process any of this until probably about, I don't know, five years ago, when I really understood what had happened to me.
Apparently, it's quite rare in kids.
It's very deadly.
It's remarkable that I survived that experience.
A well-known astrologer, she read me a few years ago and said, Oh, that was one of the exit points in your life.
There's something around when you were six.
Did you have an experience where your soul decided, if things are really rough here, I've got an out point?
So, essentially like, oh, I could die.
That's a choice that the soul makes.
I've come to understand and believe that we do have these exit points where our soul can decide to leave if maybe we're not, I don't know, completing our mission here, or we haven't learned the things, or things are too tough, whatever it is.
And I was told that this was one of my exit points.
And I was like, wow, yeah, I had this horrible experience.
I was in the hospital.
And that was one of my, I guess, existential experiences that I didn't really even reflect on even telling anyone until a few years ago.
But I had been visited one night by, I don't know, these very specific leprechaun type creatures.
And believe what you will, I was there.
I remember it so clearly.
They gave me some medicine.
I drank this medicine.
They said this would help me, and it did.
And my infection and the disease cleared the next day.
I thought these were weird leprechaun doctors that came at night.
I wrote about this.
I have a blog post about this that goes into clearer detail that maybe makes more sense.
But I will link that in the show notes if it's of interest.
But I had this almost near-death experience.
I had this moment where I actually, again, saw physical, metaphysical beings.
But all that kind of faded.
It fell into the background as life went on.
And I was just like, there's nowhere to put my feelings.
There's nowhere to put any of this.
It's not real.
What even is this?
And so I started repressing a lot, because I was still feeling, still feeling all the time.
I was very open and absorbing all of this stuff that was around me, but just kind of pushing it down, not giving it any credence, and stop trusting myself.
And I think that kind of built up a level of noise, or a level of even what we would call now as anxiety, which at the time I had no idea.
But again, I was absorbing a lot and not processing it.
I wasn't feeling these emotions, or I wasn't doing anything with them.
They were just kind of building up in my system.
And I would get quite worried and anxious, because I would get very overwhelmed when I was around a lot of people, or we'd go to like the fair, or an event, or to the mall.
And I learned how to override that, but it doesn't mean that I wasn't feeling and experiencing it all.
Yeah, I just wish I could kind of go back and help myself navigate a lot of that, because now, you know, as a 40-year-old adult, I still have that.
I still experience that, because I feel very sensitive to everything that's around me.
And I pick up on a lot, and it doesn't mean I always know what's happening, but it means that my senses are really overloaded all the time.
So, you know, like loud noises, or strong smells, or certain types of lights, being around large groups of people, even just having a conversation with two people, but maybe I'm picking up on certain feelings, and they're not talking about those feelings, but I can feel them.
So it's really confusing for me sometimes, because I feel like I'm processing a lot.
So I'm like, oh, I can feel these two different people.
I kind of get a sense of maybe some other stuff that's going on, but they're saying that this is fine, or this person's getting mad about this thing, but I know they're really sad about this other thing.
And all of that has just has always been going on in the background for me.
So yeah, maybe that's why I'm like hunched over in this weird little nest, trying to talk about my life.
Because yeah, I get overwhelmed, right?
I don't know.
It's a lot.
That's just my own weirdness, but I know a lot of other people experience this too.
And there was no terminology for any of this when I was growing up.
I do remember there was these moments where I would like see something or hear something, and it just would stick.
I remember finding this book in the library, and it was like, ESP.
And I remember looking at it and just the light bulb going off.
I was like, oh man, I feel like I could do this.
But then I'm like, but this is pretend, this isn't real.
But it was like I had this sole recognition of some of these abilities or other worldly things that I was so deeply attracted to, but my very human conditioned self was like, but no, it's not real.
But then something, it's like I lit up in the inside.
I was like, but what if it was real?
I feel like I could do that.
A lot of those types of moments.
So as I grew up, again, I was always kind of going through all of this, but mainly it was emotional.
Like, and I was with friends and I would just feel like I was taking on a lot, really.
I wasn't necessarily always having these profound experiences with beings or anything.
It was more just, I don't know, I just like knew certain things.
I'd like deep knowings about certain people or experiences.
Like, oh, I know this is meant for me.
I know this person.
This thing isn't going to work out.
Or my imagination was really highly heightened.
So I could be in, like, math class, and I would have these moments where I would just, I don't know, I guess I would imagine other things, which I think is quite normal.
We do this all the time.
But I would go through stories with myself.
And I remember getting, like, being like, oh, I wish that this was, like, a dance theater or something.
And I would, like, bring Michael Jackson in.
And I remember having this whole experience while I was in class and just, like, laughing to myself because it was so fun and interesting.
And I was like, ha, ha, ha, because I was so bored.
But I was, like, experiencing this whole other world in a way, but it was kind of normal to me.
And I could kind of turn it on or off.
And I was, like, talking two things in my head.
That probably doesn't make sense.
But just think of how your imagination works.
I guess mine just felt, like, very heightened.
And I could access it possibly, like, in a really easy, quick way.
And I would do that quite often.
I would also test myself.
I still do this.
I would know.
I'm like, if I do this thing, if I make this decision to be mean to this person, something is going to happen to me that will make me regret that later.
And again, that seems quite simple and normal that, okay, what you put out, you get back.
But I believed it at this, like, really intense deep level where it was the littlest things that I'm like, if I look at my friend's journal that's sitting over here, if I even peek at it, I know that there's going to be some weird other thing that's going to happen to me because I'm meant to lead this, like, very true path with integrity.
And I would test myself energetically quite often without knowing I was doing it.
If I lie and I say this thing, something else will happen.
And it always did.
So I kind of knew how energy worked in terms of being in integrity with my truth or my authenticity or what felt right in my heart.
And whenever I would do things, like go along with groups of friends who are making, you know, fun of people, like, I did those things.
There's a lot of things I'm not proud of, you know, growing up, as you're, like, testing boundaries and learning.
But I always knew, and it was so frustrating to me because I knew how wrong everything I was doing was all the time.
And yet, I was like, I'm making a choice.
It was always a conscious choice.
I knew I was deciding to do the thing that would hurt the other person, and I would feel bad about later.
And I always did.
And I held those things, even now.
Like, I remember so many of them because every time I felt like I made a very conscious decision to say something to hurt someone, choose my ego over, choosing the kind or right thing to do.
So that stuff stuck with me a lot.
And it wasn't until I was 30, I had a psychic reading.
I went to go see a medium, and that really shifted things for me.
It opened up really a sense of validation of everything that I had experienced and believed deep, deep down was real and true about just there being so much more to life.
I always felt that way, and yet I couldn't quite grasp it.
And then I had this reading with this woman, and she was able to even bring through my dad at one point.
When you have that experience, it's real, and it's true unless you're seeing someone where it isn't real and true.
And people love to bring that up all the time.
They're like, oh, they just research you, and they fake it.
And yeah, you know what?
There's a lot of people out there who are duping others in this world, in terms of pretending to be psychic, but really just doing other things.
But guess what?
People are duping people in all areas of life.
We have people pretending to be doctors and veterans who are not any of those things and running scams in all areas of life.
So I don't think it's any different, but I get frustrated when I see that people just shut down any sort of intuitive work and say, yeah, well, let's just pretend, and they're faking it.
I was like, no.
Yeah, some people are taking advantage of others, but people are taking advantage of others in all other professions and areas of life as well.
So it doesn't discount the real experiences and the people who are out there doing this work with integrity and truth.
So I just need to say that, get my little piece in there.
But this experience, it was right away, I just knew, I was like, oh, wow, okay.
This is beyond real.
This is so validating.
So that first reading for me was just really a validation of everything I'd felt in my life, and that I had always known there was something more going on because I would feel it and see it.
And then as I went through my life in my 30s, like early 30s, it was almost like one after another.
When I would have a reading or an experience, people would tell me, oh, this world is for you.
Like, oh, you have this sense and these abilities.
Like, they feel very heightened, and this is something that you should follow.
Like, this is a part of your path.
So that kept coming up for me.
And it felt true, but it felt inaccessible.
I was just like, oh, cool, wow.
But then things started to enfold more.
And this is when I, you know, chronic illness had been building, and I got very, very sick, as I've talked about, and was kind of driven to be still.
I was called to be very quiet and still, something I'd been avoiding.
And it was almost in that space when I kind of finally allowed myself to just stop moving and distracting and doing other things so that I wouldn't have to feel all of this, all of this stuff that I'd been carrying and holding on to the way that I would absorb everything around me, and was very overwhelming.
As it kind of started to crack open a little, I also learned to hold space.
When I was able to get quiet, then I was like, oh my gosh.
Then I can hear the things that I've always heard, but there's not as much noise.
It's always been here.
I've known it's always been here, but I've been repressing it.
So that call to get still was very purposeful for so many reasons.
But then it also helped me kind of not even quiet the mind, just allow what was there to move through me and discern a little bit more of what's me, what's the noise, what's the anxiety, what's the truth, because we have so much going on in our head, right?
So that was where I was able to kind of connect with those feelings that, okay, there is more.
Okay, yeah, I hear this, but it's usually really buzzy and confusing because of everything else I'm listening to and doing and rushing around and all the anxious feelings I have.
And I started going to acupuncture at that time.
And that's a very funny, like when I looked back, I was like, wow, acupuncture was really pivotal for me.
I went because of all of my symptoms.
And at the time, you know, my skin, my allergies and all the sensitivities I had to every, essentially, every piece of fabric in every color and every food and everything.
But I would go into this room and she would turn off the lights, like she would put all the needles in, she would turn off the lights, and she would turn on some music.
And I was kind of just trapped in this dark room.
And at first, that's kind of what it felt like a little bit, like, oh, I can't move because I've got needles in me and it might hurt, and I can't do anything.
And depending on what the music was as well, my body would start to kind of react and emote.
Like, the music would cause emotions to start coming.
And I started to have really intense emotional and spiritual experiences in that room.
As I was lying there, it's like the needles would get my energy moving, and then the music would bring up emotions.
And when I put those two things together, I started to have visions.
I saw myself being born at one point.
I felt everything that I felt as I was in the womb as this little baby coming into the world.
And then I saw the world as I opened up.
And I cried a lot in this room, embarrassingly so.
It was a very small clinic, and I just remember, I was like, oh my gosh, can people hear me sobbing in here?
It's so awkward.
But I couldn't really control, but I was almost forced again to be still and to be quiet.
And I was in darkness, and everything that wanted to be shown and open up started to do so.
So I would go, I think it was like once a week, and this started to kind of move things for me.
It moved this energy out, and it started again to connect me to what I was already seeing and feeling, and what I had been carrying as well.
And I had this deep desire to be alone, which I hadn't felt in this way before.
All of a sudden, I wanted to sit with myself more.
The more that I was sitting in silence, and quiet, and darkness, I wanted to do that more and more.
And there was this part of this opening in me where I was finding myself in a new way, and I was like, oh my gosh, the world is so beautiful and magical, and I just want to feel it.
And to feel it, I just want to be quiet and still, and I don't want to talk to anyone, and I don't want to do anything.
And it brought me back to that space when I was so small, and I would just lie on the bed for hours at a time, just quietly.
And I would feel everything and see everything.
I was a part of this other world, and so that started to open up for me more.
And I just started reading a bunch of different books.
I remember taking a Qigong class, which felt very new and different.
I'm like, oh, we're working with energy in this certain type of practice.
And I just was all of a sudden drawn to so many more things I'd never been drawn to before.
And I started to feel, yeah, this connection growing within me, which again, was always there.
But now I was really aware that I'm like, no, this is real, this is mine.
Oh my gosh, it's been shut down for 30 years.
Oh my goodness.
So it starts to open up again.
And then I got pregnant, and that was a part of so many other things.
But when that happened, and I felt like this dulling, like everything that had felt shiny, and like I was opening, it felt like it was starting to close.
And it was like I had this layer of gauze wrapped around me, and my feeling and sensing was like dumbed down.
That was really frustrating.
It was so fascinating because it almost showed me how I had been before.
So once I started to open again and feel myself, I was like, wow, I like started to come alive.
And then the pregnancy, it covered me up again, which is what I had been doing for most of my life, was pushing and covering and distracting.
And now I was like in my body, and I was like, oh, I'm really in here.
And yes, I had these other two beings growing.
And it was, yeah, I just, I've said this before, but like felt so full of otherness that I couldn't feel myself the way I had before.
And I found myself because of that discomfort, needing to distract myself more in a very external way.
I'm like, I just need to eat bagels and watch like 90 Day Fiancé.
Things that I was like, this isn't very supportive of me as like a human.
This isn't making me feel good.
And I knew that before I was wanting to go alone to the forest and sit there for hours and just be in darkness.
And now I'm like, no, shove myself with like garbage, like empty food and watch empty TV.
And all of those things can actually be medicine in their own ways, when we're called to something for a reason, but not on like a long-term basis likely.
And so for me, I was finding that I was so uncomfortable.
I was using these things to kind of just get by.
I was like, oh my God, my connection feels like it's gone.
And now I'm trapped in my body, and it's really uncomfortable being in here because there's still so much to sift and sort through.
And I couldn't really escape that.
So it was a very interesting time.
These nine months of being kind of shut off again.
And then when I gave birth after nine months, and again, this was like VSC section, so a very specific type of experience, I'm sure there's so much to talk about here, and there is.
But for me, it was very medical, it was very clinical.
They had to fill me with so many different drugs, and I was strapped to a table, and sorry if this is too graphic.
Sometimes it's not helpful to bring these things up in this way because I know that they can bring up feelings in others.
So my apologies for bringing it up that way.
But it was an experience that was very divorced from this beautiful, connective feeling that I had been having before.
I was like, oh wow, even this birth experience is very, this doesn't really resonate with me, but that is what it was.
And in some ways, being cut open, all of it, it can be a metaphor for so much, but it very much felt kind of violent in a way.
Like I felt like these things were taken out of me, and as they were ripped out, I'm sorry, again, very graphic language here, I was cut open.
It felt like then that cut me open.
So once the medication wore off, that was really dumbing everything down that I am so grateful for, obviously, if you're going for surgery, you don't wanna be able to feel it, right?
So I'm grateful for all of that, but I had been so nauseous and so...
Oh, just everything felt so gross.
I could not feel myself.
It's like I was floating around in this dark muck, and as the medication wore off and then the hormones wore off, it takes you on this kind of spiral.
But it felt like then I was left with this new rawness that I had not had.
I had been so covered in this gauze, this feeling of like disconnection and being muffled, and then all of a sudden, it was this very violent ripping and cutting, and I was just, I felt like I was laid bare.
I was like, oh my gosh, I come home from the hospital.
I'm like, oh my gosh.
Now I feel like I've never felt before what even is this, and again, tied up in all of the things that are happening with your body and your mind and your life, and now you've got these babies, like all of it is very overwhelming.
But I also just felt like, yeah, it was like my skin was on the outside, and now I was really feeling things, like my sensory perception was so heightened.
I had no control over it, and because my life was so different, it's so crazy to go in to a hospital one day and leave two days later and your life is so different.
Even the daily life, the routine, everything was different.
So this new level of sensory perception was just crazy.
And I was like, is this a part of the motherhood thing?
Is this a part of post-surgery?
Is this the hormones?
Is this my body?
Like, what is this?
And I was very, very anxious because I was again, sensing and feeling so much.
And I was up all the time.
So obviously not sleeping for anyone, it's going to cause a lot of like mental disturbance.
You're going to not feel well, you're not going to be recovering on a daily basis.
So that feeds into all of this.
But underneath that, there was this level of starting to just feel more again, like a lot more, a lot more than I had even before I was pregnant, whenever things seemed bright and shiny.
And I was like, kind of being like, oh, I feel myself again.
Now it was like, oh my God, I'm feeling not myself, I'm feeling everything around me.
I'd be feeding these babies in the middle of the night, like every few hours.
And I would dread when I would have to come out into the living room.
And we had like a beautiful little apartment, like I made it as warm and comforting and nice as I could.
I felt like the energy was really clean in there, like I had beautiful plants.
I was very good at curating my spaces because of how sensitive I was.
I always know how to do that.
I can sense where the energy feels off, or things need to be cleaned or moved.
So it felt like the space should have been fine.
But when I was in the dark with them, in the middle of the night, I would feel and see things sitting in the chairs with me when I was in the living room.
And I would do that thing.
I was like, wow, this is what I used to do as a kid.
When I would turn around, I would be so scared.
I felt like something was always behind me no matter what.
And this is a two-bedroom apartment.
It's one level.
There's no creepy basement.
There's no stairs.
But I would feel it.
Ugh, I'd feel things with me, and I'd walk into the living room and see this dark shape in a chair.
And it wasn't always clear.
It's not like I was necessarily seeing a specific person's face or anything, but there were things there with me, and I was in the dark, and I'm like, no, I don't want this, and I remember this.
So I felt like a heightened level of anxiety.
And again, now there's these two people that I'm feeling their emotions.
They need a lot, right?
They're crying, and they're vulnerable, and I was feeling everything they were feeling at some level, absorbing that.
And then there's the parenting, you're figuring out how to work with your partner, and who's waking up, and he has to go back to work, and it's just, it's a lot, right?
And so I found myself very overwhelmed on all levels, and this new sensory perception opening up even more.
And then when I would go to sleep, this is like the early stages of after I had the girls, and then like over that year when I was at home with them, it evolved.
You know, there was times where I was then able to get a little bit more sleep here and there, but when I would go to bed, I felt like I wasn't sleeping because I was now having visitations almost.
I cannot be super clear about what I was seeing and feeling, but again, there was energies coming into the room at night.
And I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I would feel them like sitting by my bed.
I would see them in the corner.
I would feel things under the bed.
I wouldn't want to get up to go pee because if I put my feet down on the ground, I was like, something's gonna like grab me.
And so for me, it was always connected to fear.
I don't think I necessarily had anything to be afraid of, but I had really opened myself up all of a sudden to everything, and I didn't like that because I didn't know what it was I was feeling necessarily and what was with me.
And I think that's a lot of the fear is just not knowing.
It's unknown.
And you know, Nick's just like sleeping next to me, just having a dream, and he wakes up and everything's fine, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm like having a panic attack over here, and I can't get back to sleep, but I need to get back to sleep, so I don't have to feel this thing.
But then when I fall asleep, I'm also feeling and seeing things in my dreams.
And the safe time came when the sun would come up, and then I felt like at least I could be more immersed in like the daily, very physical things in life, and I could distract myself from what I was feeling.
It didn't feel so, I don't know, like unearthing, ungrounding.
It was scary for me.
And at one point, I remember waking up, and oh, this has always stuck with me.
There's like this eagle right by my bed.
I could reach out and touch it.
And I've never seen an eagle up close in real life.
Like I see them flying occasionally.
But I was just like, this is so huge.
There are eagles this big, and I could see its entire, like all the details on its face, and its wings, and its huge talons.
And it was right by my bed, and it was just like staring me in the face.
So now I'm like, oh my gosh, now this is really real.
These aren't just like orbs and colors and sensations.
This thing feels very real to me, and I am seeing it.
And it's like no joke, like eagles are like, don't mess around, right?
So I'm like, oh, okay, what's he doing here?
And I think the eagle was there, just as like a lovely guiding energy, but it was very intense to see it when I woke up.
And then things started happening, like I would, I started to journal a lot at that time because I was processing so much.
I'm like, this stuff is happening to me.
I hadn't told Nick at this point because I was still figuring out everything.
I was just trying to get through every single day, every single night, right?
It felt like there was no reprieve from life.
It was like, there's the two babies, there's the eating and the sleeping and the taking care of them.
There's the healing after the surgery, and the body is different, and there's the lack of energy and sleep, and everything's confusing.
And then it's also, you're like, where's my life?
I have no time to myself to really take a breath and accept all of this.
And so I wasn't even sure.
There were moments where I was like, okay, am I having a mental health crisis?
Is this something I need to go talk to a medical or psychological professional about?
What is and isn't real?
I've always been open, so I've had experiences like this before, but this felt so intense that I was concerned.
What if something's shifted in my brain, and this isn't actually real, and I'm projecting things, or I'm actually having weird hallucinations?
I'm not having visions, I'm having hallucinations, and I have an imbalance.
So there was a lot of questioning my experience, and I had no one to bounce it off of at that time, and I felt very vulnerable and embarrassed to bring this up, because I'd also been living a different way for so long.
I didn't have people in my life at that time that were necessarily, I don't know, I'd never really heard people talk about this.
So, yeah, it was a weird time, and I wanted to almost start to understand it better.
Like, I felt like before telling someone, I needed to understand more, so that I had a grip on what I was going through.
So, yeah, I was journaling a lot, and then I started to kind of have this inkling to, like, as I would journal, I would allow, like, energy to move through me.
And there were some times when I would start to journal, and it was almost like my entire body would fill up with energy.
It was almost like being filled with an electrical charge.
Some of my muscles would be spasming, and then my hand would start to shake, and then I would start scribbling.
Like, my hand, it felt like something was moving through me.
I could not control.
And then I was writing things that were not coming from me.
Like, having a conversation with someone who wasn't there.
And this thing was guiding itself to use my body and my hands.
So I had things like that happening.
So again, woof, like, intense.
All of a sudden, I wasn't expecting it.
Energy would be moving through me.
And then I was able to, like, move the energy around.
Like, I would feel it moving through my feet and up my legs.
And this was not like when I was in acupuncture, but now it was almost, like, spontaneous.
I'm like, what the S?
Energy's moving up my spine.
It's swirling around my head, and then it's shooting out of my arms.
And then I'm starting to write.
I was like, what is happening to me?
And then other times when I would journal, like, if I was, I don't know, really emotional about something, and I'd have this moment when the kids, I got them down to a nap, and I was like, oh my god, I need to go to the journal.
Like, the journal was like my saving thing.
And I would start to journal about, I'm feeling like this, and just keep going and going.
And then I'd be like, why is this happening?
Why is this happening?
And again, I've written about this, and I'll just put a link if anyone wants to read it, because I've, you know, written more in detail about this specific incident.
It was so crazy.
I asked, like, why is this happening to me?
Like, I don't understand about something.
And at that moment, it was like I was taken somewhere else, and I looked down, and my body wasn't my body, but I was in someone else's body.
I looked down, and I'm like, okay, and I'm not in the living room, but I still am in my living room.
But I'm seeing that I'm on the edge of this river, and I know I'm in another country, and I look, and I'm like, oh, my hair is like a reddish color.
This isn't my hair, my hands look different, my skin's a bit lighter, I've got more freckles, and my feet are like in this water.
And then all of a sudden, I'm so, like the deepest grief, I don't know, like even right now, I can't tap into that in this moment, but like grief that was all consuming, and I just felt it move through me, and I was just like, oh, my God.
And I knew that I had like lost something in this river, like something had happened in this river, and I had just realized it.
And I was having this multi-sensory experience because I'm this person, but I'm still Sarah, I'm still me.
I'm still, I'm now journaling about this as I'm feeling and seeing it.
I'm holding my heart as I am in this moment, but I'm grieving a different experience while still being me.
And I'm aware that it's connected to my question.
Whatever I'm feeling is this other person.
She's connected to me.
I actually am her, but I'm also me.
And I'm like, what the, what is this experience?
And then I realized that I had a baby.
I'm like, okay, where's my baby?
My baby.
And I'm like, oh my God, my baby, my baby was in the river.
Oh my God, I lost my baby in the river.
And then I'm grieving this.
And so like me as Sarah is like on the ground in the living room, and I am like sobbing, and my kids are in the other room, and they're sleeping.
They're safe.
But I'm grieving the loss of this other baby that I know is mine.
And I actually do feel unwell, like something has happened to me.
My mental health is off, and I know that I'm in a really bad place, and something happened, and this river took my baby.
I like went to the river.
I stepped into those waters with the intention of hurting myself because I am so in like so much pain and so much mental anguish, but I had my baby with me.
And now she's been taken by the river, and I can't get her back.
And it was like just so intense.
And then I'm like taken to another point as this person, and I can see that now I'm more consumed with grief than I ever have been.
And now I go back into the river, and I essentially just let go.
And I am like swept away.
And then I see myself, and I've like washed ashore somewhere on these rocks, and I'm not alive.
So I recognize that I've died.
I've drowned at some point.
And I don't remember if this was in the span of like 20 minutes, half an hour, maybe 40 minutes.
I had this whole experience.
And then I kind of came to, I remember like, I think the kid started to cry, and I was like, what?
Oh my God, okay.
I'm here, I'm me.
But I'm also this person.
I've existed as this other person, and had this completely different experience.
And these two things are linked up.
So whatever she experienced at life, I'm actually grieving for her.
And as a part of what I'm living right now, is actually connected to her experience.
So that was like the first past life that I saw, or like other lifetime that my soul has lived.
And when I started to see that, I was like, that was so real and so visceral.
And I was able to write it all out and come to a conclusion about why I'm feeling, like there's another layer to my existence in this moment with the grief I'm carrying and the confusion and my mental health and what's happening.
There's actually this entirely other life, this entire other life that I lived at some point that is connected to this one.
And that those feelings were so merged, I was like, wow, I understand her and I'm carrying part of that today.
That was very profound, that really changed things for me again.
It was like this other level of like, multi-sensory experience.
And I was like, oh, holy shit, okay.
Once I kind of did that, then when I would journal, I would kind of follow the thread more, and I would ask more questions.
And it was just me.
I don't know, just like that was where I went.
I went to the journal, that was my space where I let things come out of me and move through me.
And I would be shown and hear things and have experiences that helped me understand myself.
And that's when I was like, oh, this is a tool.
I can utilize these abilities, this extra sense to understand myself better and understand the world better.
And it gave me a place to channel it because when I say that, it's like when you are perceiving so much and it's turned up so high, it's a lot of energy.
It's very exhausting and it ran as anxious energy.
So I needed somewhere to ground it and put it and to move it and do something with it.
So the journaling was the place I started.
And at some point, I remember telling Nick, I think I was lying about it.
I was like, I need to tell you something.
And I was so, so nervous because again, this wasn't something that I had been able to share when I was a kid.
And so you carry that with you, right?
You're like, oh, when I was this open before, I felt like that was shut down.
And to be shut down again would be very devastating.
And also, now it's so much a part of me.
What would happen if he said it wasn't real?
Like, this is me, this is what I'm experiencing.
If someone tells me it's not real, like, how am I going to exist?
It's a very painful place to be when the world is like reflecting back to you that what you are and what you experience and how you are is not real because it is.
And that's why, again, we can never judge anyone because we do not know what is their experience of the world.
And to have compassion for where everyone comes from and the things that they carry and the things they've experienced, right?
Like, we don't do the things we do for no reason.
We do them because of where we come from and how we perceive and exist in the world.
And that's different for everyone.
I obviously have a lot to say about that.
And I remember the moment when I told Nick and I was finally ready.
I was like running it through my head, and I was eventually like, oh, hey, I just need to tell you something.
And then I just said, well, okay, I'm kind of seeing like eagles and shit now.
Like, I don't know what's going on with me.
And just kind of launched into the things that I'd been experiencing.
And, you know, he accepted that he was open to that.
It was definitely odd and maybe confusing, but he was like, okay.
And being able to say it out loud made it even more real.
And now I knew that I would somehow have to start talking about this more or start sharing it.
And that's a whole other journey of kind of coming into, this thing is here with me, this is who I am, this is how I've actually always been.
And how do I now shift my life and just allow this change to be what it is?
And so I think I'm just going to stop here because there's six more years until I am where I am today.
And just a whole journey with that.
But that's essentially the cracking open moment.
And so much more happens after that.
But yeah, my legs are cramped, and I think the groceries have arrived.
Yeah, let's just leave it there, and I will pick up in a part two.
Thank you for hanging out with me, and just letting me speak today.
My friend challenged me to just talk.
She's like, don't plan this, just talk about it.
Don't think about it too much.
And that's what I've done today.
And I think I really needed to just express this part of my journey without overthinking it and just leave it there.
So thank you for letting me do that.
Okay, talk soon.
Bye.
