Every time I travel I learn new things about myself or something I was wishy washy about cements itself.

I am not a city girl. I always think I am because I live in the burbs and am not around anything cool I can walk or bike to. No cute little downtown coffee shops or small businesses to support….basically, no Sunday morning destinations. It frustrates me. I just need a town closer to a city which has those things. Like my sister has living in Arlington or like we had growing up in Natick. City living itself would certainly give me walkable things to do every day but I don’t believe I find my inspiration in the city. I find my inspiration in variety and in being able to stimulate my mind at a moment’s notice.

Where I am rooted is in the sea and land. I always knew it with the ocean but felt like it was an either/or situation. And, because I have never been terribly environmentally responsible, I felt like that couldn’t mean I resonate with the “earth” so to speak. But I was wrong. I get energy from both. This explains why I get drawn to ocean and desert, I think. I find spirituality and peace with both. Something in me is ignited when I am in the right areas. I experienced both in Australia which is how I understand it now. I also know I will be pulled to go back and visit other areas and different landscapes. I wish I could give a great description of what it is I experience on my insides but I can’t. I only recognize it in the moment it’s happening and I usually realize I have a goofy smile going by myself which others might find strange. It just means I am experiencing awe and happiness….a very genuine moment.

Going into this trip, I was also thinking about how to better commit to my spirituality and the healing arts. I have realized that no matter what “job” I do, I am always going to drink the cool-aid and chase the next big thing, thing after thing after thing. I am self competitive which means even if I am on the wrong path, I am incapable of not running full force for whatever the “prize” is. Whether I am ever in the right or wrong jobs, I am always going to pursue the money, the promotions, the accolades for myself because something in me needs to always be busy moving ahead and never stagnant with myself. This makes it incredibly hard to extricate myself from situations my body knows are wrong for me, but my bank account desperately needs. It’s the same pull I have had my whole life ….to be me vs. what is expected of me. I somehow try to live both things at the same time and in so doing, hate 80% of every day. I very much don’t want to make it to the life finish line never having changed this for the better but I do not know where to begin.

That said, I knew exactly where to find my Tarot cards today despite not using them in 20 years. I moved into my current home 10 years ago. I brought my suitcase in today and then went straight to the basement where I suspected they might be. It’s time to dust them off and get back into it.

I believe in astrology, tarot, psychics. I think these things help us clarify what we already know but are having trouble sorting through. I do believe I have psychic ability. Not just because when I visit one, I am told my aura is incredibly strong or that I am vibrating at a higher level than those around me. It doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else. It’s just my level of awareness. Call me crazy because I’ve been seeing shrinks since I was 6 years old, or call me blessed for spending my life analyzing my thoughts, feelings and actions at a depth which allows me to see myself more wholly than other people see themselves. This actually allows me to be at a greater peace with mental challenges. I accept them. I don’t fight them. There are tempests I must battle through with depression in order to stay alive from time to time but I know with every shore, there are just storms. You have to learn to ride them out rather than try to deny their existence. Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t make them any less real or potent. Better to have a plan.

Enneagrams, crystals, ASMR, yoga, meditation….all things I connect to as well. I am actually going to study some of these things in greater depth. I already know I’m an empath. I’d like to have better control of it….better vision into what others carry into my life.

You think I’m nuts. I don’t care. Do you know why I fear flying as much as I do? Because I have recurring nightmares that I am going to die in a plane crash. You say that’s just a dream and you should be right. That’s what I hope too when I still get on planes in order to travel. But I also know about the dreams I have had of people dying before they do. Not sick people who would die regardless…people I don’t even know. Neighbors, relatives of other people….people you can’t add up. This has been happening since I was a kid. It’s rather frequent I dream about things before they happen. My deja Vu is different from yours. So, when I’m dreaming about my death in a plane crash, it’s more than just anxiety to me. I feel like I am tempting fate every time I do it. Dying that way is also, in my mind, the worst way to die….fully aware there is no hope until my last breath. For all the times I am called a pessimist….couldn’t be further from the truth. Even in the face of death, I expect to have hope in the process.

Manifestation is something I am hearing more about which I am going to look into. I think I have actually been able to do it in the past without realizing it. You know those moments when you just keep thinking about a person and you randomly bump into them or they message you out of the blue? I’ve done that more than once. And yes, street lights often do go out in my presence. Not kidding.

I don’t know how I feel about the business of past lives or that the dead can communicate with us….actually, I do believe the dead send signals so maybe I buy into that more than I realize. When I saw someone for this last fall, it was quite convincing who was speaking to me. The message then was that I needed to make space for my psychic capabilities because signs and symbols are everywhere around me except I let interference block my ability to see what’s right in front of me. That couldn’t be more true. I constantly fight my intuitions, dreams and foresight because society tells me those things can’t be true. Why not, though? Is religion true? Or is it just something drummed up in order for people to make order out of chaos because they don’t know how to live with the unknown? When it comes to death, the unknown scares me less than what the Catholics believe about heaven and hell. I am surely slated for hell and death frightens me daily because of that.

Maybe these things I want to pursue are silly. But they are no sillier than being Catholic. Don’t take offense. Just read the Bible. Some of it is absolutely ridiculous and fantastic in ways beyond reason. But it brings comfort to the masses. For me, the world I buy into brings comfort and insight to me. It’s where I feel more comfortable.

Ideally, I’d love to make a career out of a combination of these practices…a place of wellness and alternative healing which can still be combined with traditional medicine. After all, I firmly believe in my anti-depressants and the fact I should probably never go off of them. Yet all these mystics and metaphysics and psychic work cannot hurt in any way. They can only help and create additional coping mechanisms. I have always firmly believed we should try anything which cannot hurt us. If we are willing to take medications (which can hurt us even in their effort to help) we can be open to meditation, acupuncture, yoga, tarot, seers and the like.

My goal right now is to incorporate some part of these practices into my every day. I already count 3 things a day I am grateful for. I’ve been doing that for a long time (still have depression so it’s not a cure according to people who don’t have depression…you can’t “will” your way out of it. You can make it more palatable.) I think it would be so cool, if at some point, I cleared the way enough where I can read someone else or receive messages much more easily than I do now. It’s all in me…always has been. I think it’s what old boyfriends picked up as “crazy” but really isn’t. It’s just a different way of seeing the world. They just didn’t like that I knew the bad things they were doing without any proof. Freaked them out. Shamed me into stifling myself. No one likes it when you know them better than they know themselves. I’m guessing because No one has been able to know me better than I know myself. But I’ve got 40 years of therapy on most people so there’s that.

Anyhow, still pulling out what I have learned on this most recent trip and think it will come out in drips over the next week or so. Right now, I’m pretty excited to know where I fit into the earth and how I plug in. That was a neat discovery this year.