At 12 years old I began my yoga practice under the wing of a woman who would become my longtime friend and mentor. She is now passed away, but I still admire her. Hey, if it weren’t for her, I would not have learned of the author Louise Hay, a profound holistic pioneer in the healing arts. Having such a genuinely authentic, kind, compassionate, honest mentor who was so keenly interested in guiding me was truly a gift that still inspires me in ways I could never explain in words. I was very close with her and often called her my bosom buddy. My parents – my mom and step-dad- also attempted to utilize her therapeutic practice during hardships in their marriage. They were an adorable couple, they threw the best parties, started businesses together as a power couple, made amazing food and dyed each others hair. They were love birds. It was crazy but I could see that a lot of their own childhood trauma was surfacing, yet even with my amazing mentor, they were blind to it. Maybe it was under their nose, or not. Maybe it absolutely impacted me so, so greatly and it ended up being all on me unfairly. I am a true empath, and I am hyper aware of other people’s emotional states. To be honest, even though they were willing to shift in marriage, something prevented them from grasping how their behaviors and choices were affecting me adversely. Something like money, or their own pain, who knows. Not only did I feel unseen and unheard, but I also felt like my emotional intelligence was overlooked when they refused to listen. It crushed me when they failed to support me with the chemical imbalance in my brain that was rooted in my nervous system from family trauma lines.
I was being severely bullied at school within the first 3 weeks of grade 8, yes severely; it shattered me and destroyed my vision of success for myself that I had worked on since I can remember. Basically, I lost my education and autonomy. No one that had the power was helping in my high school, and at the time I was even an open book willingly walking into the principal’s office to discuss my absence and drop in grades. I openly shared, not because I wanted attention, or for others to know that I was being bullied – but because I was extremely tiny and fragile and didn’t want to get bulldozed by the entire classes of grade 11 and 12. That’s the extent that I was being threatened every day both on and off school grounds, in a neighborhood where there were many ways and places for these assaults to go under the radar. Hundreds of these high school enemies, thieves of my confidence and self-esteem, using every tactic to bring me down. Like sending one my own size was not an option for some reason. I guess it takes a rocket scientist sometimes.
My first life regression therapy session was booked with my mentor was very soon after the bullying began, I wasn’t quite practicing yoga with her yet, but the session was in her healing/yoga studio. After school one day, my mom dropped me off like a dog that would have a better life on a farm, that’s how I felt. This day was as difficult as any day had been in high school so far, where I was the youngest and the smallest being targeted by psychopaths 3 grades higher than me. I guess my mom didn’t think psychotherapy would be useful during my crisis, I’m assuming she assumed I was causing my own problems. That hurt me. Plus it was senseless. It was avoidance. Back to the regression therapy, I was lying on the floor mat with blankets under me for support, I found my breath and the soft voice of my healer washed away the tensions of the day. In my stillness I became aware of the insecurities that were developing from feeling so small at school, from being followed around the parking lots of stores surrounding the school, right in midday. I hadn’t been to the grocery store on my lunch break pretty much at all since I had started high school, and that was because they followed me with the intention of ruining my lunch. Immature? Yes. Such a waste of energy, life, these are not good memories to make. But these memories were coming up as I was sinking into the floor. My conscience came restless as thoughts of how indignant authorities in my school were when I tried to tell them that my grades were slipping because I was being harassed every day. My parents ignored the issue, my so-called friends tried to minimize it, and I had no advocacy. These were now intrusive thoughts, which I recognized, so I released a little more from my jaw, let my forehead loosen over my eyes and eyebrows, and breathed deeper into my belly.
A call came in for me one day the previous week, it was just after school, it was from my biological father, who I will call my donor from now on. He called to lecture me on my life choices. This was a man who was basically the guardian of my mother who was a ward of the court like he was. He was older than her and knew exactly how vulnerable she was. He tried to avoid paying child support for 11 years and wasted everyone’s time making excuses and missing court dates and visits, until finally he lost and had to pay back all the years of support he tried to exempt himself from. A true master of manipulation, lies and gas lighting. There’s no excuse for his avoidance (of all responsibility for me – other than what court order required him to pay) whatsoever. In conversation with my mother and his own sister, he always deflected away from the topic of his neglectful and abusive behaviors. I tried to hold him accountable. I would say, “but you’re not my dad.” In person and on the rare phone calls, he would find a way to bypass all of it. My step-dad tried to adopt me many times, but my donor didn’t want anyone else to have that power. In truth, all that mattered to me was that the little girl that fell in love with dreams. I still wanted a life was amazing, and I kept that vision alive and remained hopeful. The adult world was confusing and the adults in my life were a threat to what was important to me: my mental health. I had to navigate away from that toxicity and try to maintain positive thoughts and visions for the future.
On my back, my heart slowed down and I melted into a daydream of my future; one where there was support all around me, circles with herbal tea being shared, maybe even low doses of psylocibin and little journals we would read from out loud. I saw sunshine in my own eyes and my hands held a talking stick, me wrapped in blanket and gentle drumming filling the space in my mind. I took the blanket off, laid myself down in the daydream on a bed of autumn leaves (it was Autumn, first few weeks of school, remember? So pretty!) and comforted myself the way my mentor comforted me. I forgave my parents and freed them from their pasts, seeing them as children in my imagination. I cut chords with anyone who hurt me and betrayed us. I loved my childhood and I just wanted to be there where it was safe. The regression therapy was extremely painful; it brought up so much conflict and internal family system complications. I had a strong, aching, a longing in the depth of my heart to go home – home like where it was safe from the dangers of the world and poison of the system. My world was so riddled in toxic behaviors and personalities, I was sick, mentally ill, hollow, hopeless and depressed. My parents had friends that were inappropriate with me, something I had been taught to put up with. This came up strong during this session.
I concluded that the pattern of negative thoughts was leaking into my energy field because I was tired. Tired from finally finding safety on her floor mat, in her arms, with her support. My consciousness drifted so far away, rolling out like waves from the thick blanket on top of me. My head and heart were heavy like sand, grounded like rocks, empty like a cave. In and out of the “real world” I let go of everything piece by piece, not in any particular order. I fell asleep there and subconsciously broke it all down like worms work the dirt, until I stopped festering.
The next couple years were interwoven with layers of unhealed trauma. Healing was important to me, meanwhile the system was failing everyone I knew that tried to get help. Doctors were unsupportive of my mother’s diagnosis of me, and I was still feeling like I was carrying the hard stuff. When I tried to bring up my innate ability to heal through the metaphysical realm with my parents, I didn’t feel they were ready to acknowledge me as the natural mystic I am. I was often met with limited support, eventually ultimatums and they usually disregarded my input completely. I hardly ever slept – never mind dreaming.
At the extremely frustrating age of 15, I was going through what I would say was a complete mental breakdown which was traumatic and paralyzing. One of the most crucial losses of this era, for me, was succumbing to my inability to remember my dreams. I could blame it on hormones, or family conflict, bullying, boys, marijuana, bad influences that called themselves my friends, I could especially point the finger at my parents. The thing is, I just didn’t want to let go of my dreams, literally. I didn’t care who was at fault. No one was at fault in my mind. I was just different. I was always going against the grain, challenging everyone around me with my radical self-expression. My parents did not have the tools to protect me from predators at the time – due to being failed themselves by the system that basically owned them. At the end of the day, I ultimately faced my life challenges alone, and I think I grew up too fast like they did.
It isn’t about blame. I had a breakdown. That’s that. A big breakdown about my dreams falling apart and disappearing. Dreams have always been my medicine, my therapy and my purpose in life – losing my memory retention was definitely a symptom of the PTSD from childhood family trauma, as well as the (worst part of) bullying in grade 8 at 12 years old. Bullying was not new to me; it was something that built up at every school a little more each year. It would start with girls wanting to be my friend at the new school – because we moved a lot I was always starting over. Eventually that becomes really awkward and actually quite exhausting to the nervous system. And eventually boys would become interested and then they would all – I mean like all the girls and the boys – look down on me. And of course, my reaction to that was out of this world, I usually skipped school and went home…and I was seen as the one who had problems.
At 16, I was still going through all of the above horrible things, and all I wanted was to rest and be safe in my body. But because my parents wanted me to “survive” and “thrive”, they required that I go to school where I could potentially die in my opinion. OR the other option was to get a job. Like out there where the mass population of people who wanted to kill me work. Neither were safe options for me. I needed sleep. End of story. I don’t know what the actual catalyst was that drove my parents to kick me out, but at that point all I had were my dreams.
I ended up couch surfing until I was 17, or I would flat out sleep on the street. To avoid slipping through the cracks too far down, I would turn to adults thinking they would see the injustice around me – in actual reality those adults were in fact the most abusive. Unable to sleep properly or regulate my emotions, dissociating from my self, withdrawn from family and friends, I tried to justify it all by saying I was “in my own world” which was delusional. I still barely touched substances, yet I was addicted to the small hits of dopamine I would get from the much older boyfriends, or random strangers that were on drugs. When I thought I was connecting and healing I wasn’t. Period. I was so lost. It was hard to find a safe space to hold myself in, my memory was fragile, my brain wasn’t even nearly finished developing. I was a kid compromising myself, my self-esteem, my self-love. I don’t think I could ever feel drawn to drugs or alcohol, my drugs was were dreaming, pleasure and eventually sleeping in the forest on a nearby island. Instead of battling addiction, I ended up in cycles of codependency, patterns with people I thought would take care of me if I took care of them.
During those times I became an avid tarot reader, as well as shared with travelers from around the world knowledge that I carried about metaphysics, affirmations and self-healing. I managed to break free from some severely unhealthy “relationships” but kept those contacts “just in case”. One friend that truly helped me selflessly was a dreamer that had a didgeridoo when we met at a coffee shop. He taught me about astral travel, and I had astral travelled as a child in my dreams and even when my parents had parties, and also while watching movies – but had never done it in this plain of reality. Just days after he gave me some exercises, I was astral travelling to my parents house in my dreams and found such comfort in that. That’s when I really began to rise and see myself as someone who really, truly, used their conscience. Yoga, the philosophy of being one with Self took shape in my life more than ever. I rebirthed and reincarnated right within my own life. The more I looked at my own life the more I saw my mothers, then my shadow, then my father wound, then hers, then my step-dad, then his mom, then her shadow…I was reflecting and regressing in meditation, yoga and breathing. I was walking myself through the process one day at a time.
At 17 I got pregnant, I had been mostly abstaining from sex, I mean obviously I had to have sex to get pregnant. I’m not Mother Mary. Different story, different trauma. I was 18 when he was born. With my fresh, new baby boy in my arms in the bathtub, my partner dumped an entire lunch bag of lavender into the bath that I had been keeping for this day. I was almost delirious from the laughing that came straight from my heart, I was so happy, filled with oxytocin yes but also free from pain. I nursed my little human in bliss, literally. Within days I was crawling out of my depression, and my dreams started to come back to me. I was sort of home, not quite “home” but at home enough that I was able to reach dream state and trust that I could sleep again. That’s what I did. I slept. I hit the jackpot. I won the lottery. My baby and I slept 20 hours a day, only woke up to have short brisk walks, tea and cereal. My partner cooked, cleaned and often went out for food trips. My life was balancing out, and though I was hypervigilant and my partner was physically sick due his complex post-traumatic stress disorder that can from sever childhood abuse. I was still optimistic and grateful for our little cloud nine. Since then, I have been healing these deep wounds through dreams, maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy or calling, trying to bring light into the world as a mom.
My memory was becoming restored night by night in the dream realm; I had phenomenal dreams and loved analyzing them during different waking experiences, relating what I saw and how it pertained in the moment I was living in. I dipped into a few books but mostly drew directly from the dreams themselves. They talked to me.
When my son was 3 his father passed away due to multiple medical health issues, but before he passed away, I had a dream that he came to take our son with him on his journey. Not away from me, but as his guide, because my son was carrying a lot of traumas from both of us. The dream was not a nightmare; it was a clear warning that I was going to lose my best friend and partner. I woke up so sad and had already done a lot of anticipatory grief work up until that point, but nothing could prepare me. He was the only person who truly respected me and cared about me when I was on the street. But he too was dealing with many life challenges, and problems much harder to face than mine. When my parents came to my apartment to tell me he was gone, I was not surprised, in shock yes, but the day had been coming. I just didn’t think it would happen that young.
Over the next 2 decades I grew my little tribe and had 3 daughters, with each pregnancy and birth I built intricate dreams that are so wild and otherworldly it was hard to tell if I was spending more time in the real world or the dream world. I would wake up from my dreams feeling whole, like my colorful, playful self, light-hearted and happy again. I had been through some not so lovely experiences with men, and in my dreams, my body would heal, my brain would find its balance, I would move on. I was creating a family. When my relationship with that part of myself was healthy, I was healthy, honoring myself and my children and their vision. I started journalling and even writing a book about my dreams and made the decision to start a blog while I was writing as a way to keep track of my new dreams. 2025 was the year I felt the most powerful shifts in my life, the way the moon cycles changed, how my own decisions for my girls improved our lives, and how our creativity held us together. Making safety and wellbeing a priority over relationships with others outside of our family shaped us and our relationships with each other in a way that strengthened my dreams. My dreams were reflecting these decisions back to me and as the end of 2025 approached my writing skills started to take form, I got a proper prescription for glasses that enabled me to remove some of the barriers I had for years to creative writing and memory. I saved up and started some courses. I was isolating again but in a good way. I started a vlog with small shorts about politics and social issues and healing, called @cutelittlecrow, in honor of my background in yoga (crow pose, facing feats, unknown), my love of the emotional intelligence and survival skills of crows and my own crow like journey that I had been on since living up North above the arctic circle . I always resonate with crow, especially driving down to the island with my parents as a young child with the gift of dreaming, my dreams were my friends. Seriously, things were pretty darn good for me as a kid. I had sisters, my parents own restaurants. What happened. I’m still figuring it out. Whatever it was it was rude.
Just after 2026 began, I woke up in a dream that I was in a modern architect’s house, there was a large ceiling to floor window stretched across an entire wall. It was pitch dark outside and the stars and moon struggled behind stormy clouds. A desk sat in front of the window, and I kept going in and out of consciousness. For a while it would be quiet and I could see well enough to make out the desk just in front of me, but low and behold I would be violently ripped from my focus and couldn’t even try to ground myself on the chair if I had the power to. This continued like a literal cycle over and over, the house soon had books lining the walls on old wood shelves, my character began to develop like an old crow. I sure do love those crows. And in the darkness as I travelled rapidly in and out of this “house”, my body rather, I started to see enemies from my past, people who hurt me, their faces and eyes. I wondered why I kept having these flashes of them in my dream, then I realized I was trying to protect my dream space from my old enemies. They were a threat to me, my pure thought and creativity. Instead of getting angry at them, I took my power back. I claimed the land around me in my dream and said “no” out loud to all of them. It felt good. I didn’t do it loudly, just out loud, it was the voice of my deepest imagination, the voice of my truest self, and honestly, I think that crows have a similar voice inside themselves. I felt supported in my dream fight (not flight, or flee or fawn) and even though it was like a war, there was a certain calmness within me that couldn’t be shaken. I think these intruders were even almost laughing because I was struggling, and yet they didn’t understand that I was not struggling with them. I was struggling with my expression as a writer. At any rate, I was having a hard time just being still, and I made a conscious choice in that dream, telling myself “I’m going to work on this.” The emotions in that dream were such a force, I had a lot of anger to express, but I was done with the invasive characters of that dream long ago. Past “relationships” that don’t serve me? No thanks. I’m not sure when I’ll be back thereto that writers retreat on the dark hill of my dream, but it’s my little spot. I’ve got this. I woke up feeling like I had overcome many years of sadness and despair, feelings I never wanted to give much attention to. But of course when you push your feelings down they will eventually bubble up and explode. The best place for an explosion like that is in your dreams. Dreams are such a safe place for anger. So that was dream 1 of the year. I’ve got so many on my phone audio files to listen to and put into words to tell you. I’m going to blog when I have dreams like that or about dream stories that I remember and feel are meant to be told – right here from now on.
a girl and her dreams
a girl and her dreams 