We all know what it’s like to be asleep. We dream, we toss and turn, wake up and use the bathroom and go back to sleep. But the kind of asleep I am talking about is like being asleep in your own world while your actually awake and you don’t know whether you’re sleeping, dreaming or awake. It all morphs into one dream or nightmare. It’s like sleepwalking I guess. The inability to discern between reality and the twilight zone - a scary place to be.
Since the age of 14 I felt like I was either from another planet or something was really wrong with me. Certain colors and sounds were intense. Some people’s energy (not knowing it then) was heavy and draining or unhealthily over-stimulating. I felt like I was constantly spinning or out of my own body.
Every time I’d try and talk about it I just sounded crazy. It was crazy. At that age I didn’t have the right words to use (I forgive myself I was 14 for God's sake ! ).
I didn’t really know who God was or what spirituality meant even though I’d grown up in a big Greek community attending a huge Greek Orthodox Church. Back then at such a young age it was very cult-like to me and I never grasped what was being said or preached. Only a tiny portion was in English and at that age I didn’t really stop and focus on the message. Sunday school was more a fun time to be pulled away from sitting in boring church with all the adults. Kinda felt more like day care I guess, which is strange because I never went to day care. My saint of a grandmother raised me.
We didn’t talk about God or pray as a family at home. My family never talked about what was needed to have spirituality or how to have a relationship with God. I had no idea I could have a real relationship with God. When my grandma ( yiayia) would talk about it I would just laugh. I never looked further into it but she sure believed lol! I guess her own beliefs helped me have the thoughts of God but I never fully surrendered. My older sister was a praying warrior! Back when I was growing up she swore she was going to be a wife to God and become a nun ( she didn’t ). She prayed so hard every night in bed. I could hear her try and whisper her prayers under the covers for everyone in the world. I never understood. I asked but she always just said “I’ll pray for you." A large part of me believes now that those same prayers have been carrying me, keeping me alive. Something did? All I’ve ever experienced in my life was trauma and pain. I never fully knew what happiness was or fulfillment, balance.
My poor little body had been running in fight or flight mode since I was 2. I’ve been living with an impaired limbic system my whole life which then opened more pathways for me to attract more trauma. This was my way of life. My belief system was sold on being a victim of trauma. How could it not?
I’ve lived through many forms of abuse; sexual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse, molestation, bullying and rape. I’ve done everything a human can possibly do to find ways to run away, to somehow find escape from the torment. I was an expert at running away from my own thoughts and muting my emotions with anything this planet had to offer. Suicidal thoughts have been a normal way of thinking since I was 16. It always seemed to be the end game or solution for when all else failed.
In one of my blogs I talked about my addictions. When I lost my best friend (two weeks before my daughter was born) due to an overdose in 2006 all hell broke loose. More pathways opened for more illness..trauma can act as a tripwire to chronic illness.
By the time I was 30 being ravaged by mold and spirochetes for 16 years, my immune system was shot. The antibiotics, vaccines, poor diet and all the meds I had been put on for my “ mental illness” caused my immune and nervous systems to go haywire. The addictions followed in short order. Anything I could take to numb the pain of loss of my best friend, the reality of having two kids, being a wife, living in a new geography and playing housewife was all just too much for me. Rehab was the only thing that calmed the storm. I needed to be removed from myself and my environment because I was my worst enemy and worst fan. I was heading for death and I didn’t care. I wanted out. AGAIN..
How in the world does a mother with 2 beautiful kids and an amazing husband with a great way of life want out? I seemed to have everything almost all girls dream of? How can a grown woman that has it all be so lost and unhappy? More trauma was created by the outsiders looking in. I was so selfish, so ungrateful and spoiled... an addict ... that’s what was perceived on the outside even though it was far from the truth. NO ONE knew the hell and nightmare of my reality. No one was experiencing the stories and events that took place in my life. This is what its like living with a broken limbic system. Its similar to PTSD, it’s real as hell. Add a layer of chronic infection to that PTSD..add a bacteria and fungus trying to make your body and brain it’s host..and NOT knowing it.. and not having anyone believe you or not tell you anything about it for 25 years..now that’s being awake in your own nightmare. It’s like being awake during a surgery when the anesthesia should have you out cold. You can see it all
happening and you feel all the pain... but can’t do shit about it. It’s like being a prisoner or hostage in your own body, your own world, a hell on earth. I. Wanted. Out. Again. Please someone just WAKE ME THE HELL UP!
There have only been a few times I’ve turned to God. Oh how I wish I had known then what I know now about the power of Gods will. I realize the first time I surrendered to God's will, I removed myself from my relationship with my best friend ( the one that died years later from an overdose). He was my best friend for so many years before he became my lover. Our relationship was so good it was toxic. My soul then knew it too and it scared me. I loved him so much but I wasn’t able to grow or achieve the goals I had laid out for myself. Drugs were our cup of tea. I wanted out. So I decided to give God a call lol! I sat down one day during a break in between hair clients and I asked God what was the purpose of this relationship? What did God need me to do? I asked God if there was really anyone out there that was meant to fulfill my needs and wants, not just the wants. I asked God if I was worthy of a more fulfilling romantic relationship. I asked God (if he even existed) to prove himself to me...
The very next day I experienced my first God/angel/spiritual Encounter moment. Something much bigger then me was trying to make its presence known. Let’s just say that day was the day I became a real believer lol! I had been living on my own for almost a year and something that day was guiding me to have lunch at my parents house, the house I grew up in. I hated going there. I’d done everything I could to stay away. Something that day pushed me to go. The house was empty which was a blessing! I made a ham sandwich and walked around trying to find a meaning why I was there. I wandered into my brothers old room and I felt a kick in my gut which seemed like a nudge to go sit on my moms bed, which i did.
It was a grey and drizzly typical Seattle day. I sat there eating my sandwich and all of a sudden a bright beam of light came through my moms curtains over her window and down onto a picture that was sitting on her side of the beds nightstand. It was a picture of her and her siblings with her mom, my grandmother, the woman I was named after and resembled. She passed away when my mom was 18 so I never got to meet her. My moms last time being with my grandmother was when she was 10, just prior to this young frightened girl departing Greece for the United States. She was adopted by her aunt to be raised in America. She had 9 siblings left behind. Her whole world was left behind. Anyways... she’s had her own trauma that’s heartbreaking to try and think about.
In that moment I had visions of a little girl having her hair combed by an older woman on a door step. I didn’t know who it was or where it was but a wave of sadness and grief came over me. I cried so hard and they weren’t even my memories or my own emotions. It was weird and very powerful. I knew then God and angels were real. As I was driving back to work I said ok angels... I’ll let you guide me and I’ll listen to my intuition. As I was driving I got this feeling that was telling me to change lanes. Idk why but I said ok I’ll change lanes... Seconds later there was a multi-car accident. If I had stayed in that lane I would have been in that wreck. I BELIEVE!
A week later the salon hired a new hairdresser that set me up on a blind date with the man who shared vows with me. Fast forward almost 20 years!! And it’s better now then it ever has been!
The second time I surrendered was after being told I’d never get pregnant because I had so called endometriosis which was actually the bacteria eating away at the lining of my uterus. I’d had numerous surgeries and procedures to try and get pregnant. Nothing was working. So I remembered the last time I gave my worries over to God and thought... why not try again? So I asked God what his will was for me? What was the purpose behind this trial? What would he need me to do to be on the path to have a baby? Was I supposed to even be a mother? Was that the path he had for me? Did I need to give up on trying? So I surrendered it all over to him.
Somehow some way I found an amazing holistic OB/GYN who also specialized in fertility. She changed my diet and told me to stop trying. To give it to God and that babies are made out of love not trying. Two months later I was pregnant. I had surrendered my will of what I thought my life was supposed to be like for the life God wanted me to have. Same thing happened with my daughter 3 years later. We tried for two years and couldn’t get pregnant. So I surrendered it. Gave up trying. Got pregnant two months later again. WOW!
The fourth time I surrendered was when my best friend died and I was masking my pain and became addicted to stimulants, pharmaceuticals and pain killers. Once I surrendered, a week later I was in rehab getting sober and being awakened.
When I surrender I picture myself writing down my fears and worries on little note paper. I visualize myself sticking them into a beautiful glowing box and I stick them in the box. Lock it with a key. I toss the key and I throw my box of worries up into the air and give it to God. I stayed sober for 5 years until the bacteria began taking over. But didn’t know it..
My latest encounter with surrender was darker and more difficult. I realized it was time to get out of the darkness that I had been living under with Lyme. For 6 years I didn’t even know what Lyme was while my health fell apart. I’d fallen apart so many times in so many ways yet this was so different. My pain wasn’t just in my head anymore. It became physical. Like electrical currents of pain running all over my body. I was on many meds for fibromyalgia and mental illness, not realizing one cause was behind the curtain. All I knew was there was no way out. This was my new reality. My new dark reality. A reality that only led me deeper into my dark thoughts, dark events, dark mistakes I’d made, things I regretted, trauma... I stayed in a loop of mental madness and pain. I was dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Never once turning to the God I knew could save me. I believe all the meds were blocking me from even thinking about him. Like he was blocked from that part of my thinking brain.
I was doomed, it was dark, I was scared and very painful. I looked death in the face everyday asking it why won’t you just take me already? Why do you keep me here? Never once thinking I was talking to the devil and letting him hear what he wanted to hear. Never once thinking he was enjoying me asking for death. He was laughing back by saying no... I want you to believe you’re in so much pain that you do it yourself. I will torture you with your own thinking and the beliefs I keep playing in your mind...
Now I didn’t know at the time I was having conversations with the devil but now I can call it out for what it was. I was just feeding him with my fears.
One day I had had enough. Something in me knew I was being tricked. I dropped to my knees and began praying. I said I surrender whatever this illness is thats trying to kill me. God please... what is your will for me with this illness. Is it death? Am I dying? Am I missing something? What am I not doing? I’ve tried everything and it’s not working. If I’m supposed to die then so be it, then I need to spend more time with my kids. If there’s a purpose and I’m not seeing it... show me. I surrender and allow you to show me. Let me hear the words I need to hear. Let my eyes read what I need to read. Let the right doctors you need me to see if I’m supposed to heal come into my path. . Lord please heal me so I can do your will for the higher good of mankind. SAVE ME in whatever way it needs to be done. Let your will be done. Amen.
That night I had visions of me being raised from the dead. I saw myself come up from the ground. I saw a light pulling me up that covered me with warrior armor. I didn’t even know Lyme warriors existed lol! I knew right then and there that my pain, every traumatic event I’d lived through and the illness that was trying to take me out had turned into a sword. My weapon. I saw myself leading others like an army in a war. I saw myself healed and strong like warrior. I knew I wanted that. I knew that was Gods will for me. I knew he was going to show me my way to my healing so that I could help others heal. Help show others a way... I saw myself holding a torch leading hundreds down a very dark road.. it was so raw and real.. this was my communication with God.
The next day a holistic health believing friend recommended a book for me to read. She had repeatedly recommended alternative cure methods during my prior dark times...I refused them all never believing alternative methods could help. I hated hearing it was in my head or that I needed to change my thinking patterns..ugh.. want me to punch you in the face?? I was living in a reality that told me I was in pain. No one was going to take that from me because to me it was real. That book opened a new path for me. I could not deny the words I read. I knew then God needed me to learn the crucial lesson about our biology, our cells and their purpose, the power behind the molecules and chemicals that come from our own thoughts! This blew my mind! I then realized God was teaching me a a piece to my healing puzzle. He opened my eyes to rewire my thinking, to reprogram the patterns, negative behaviors, negative toxic beliefs that I’d been running off of since a child. All the beliefs from others too. None of them
belonged to me! The lesson of an impaired limbic system. Things I’d never even heard of! WOW!
So I thanked the Lord for this new wisdom and knowledge and began my journey to heal my inner wounded child, release my limited beliefs, let go of all judgement and release my trapped emotions that were blocking my body's ability to heal!
Next, the universe reunited me with an old friend. Her purpose in my life was to tell me about Lyme disease and visit her naturopath. I was diagnosed at my first appointment. I’d even paid the money (she recommended against) to receive unreliable test results back. She began treating me anyways. Within 6 months that same friend guided me to a new doctor that specializes in Lyme in Mexico! This is how I knew God had laid out a path for me to take because I allowed it. I was open to it and took it all as a sign from God. I felt it was my duty to follow no matter how scared I was. I had to trust the path. He wanted me to heal and heal fast because he knew I had a community waiting for me to guide them.
After Mexico all these classes and spiritual coaching courses kept popping up on all my feeds. I took it as a sign so I followed. After that I started a blog to channel my experience and a place to document my journey. I started a holistic healing fb page so I had a platform to express my authentic journey since so many in the Lyme community were all on many paths. It was overwhelming and I needed a safe space. I had no idea within months I’d have a following. Or be with a community of like minded people that I could inspire. It’s been a magical holistic transformation for me. It’s been so empowering to help others find their light! To keep others climbing their mountain. To help them ignite their own fighting spirit. To help others learn to surrender. To do God’s will.
Today I am awake. I am healing and winning the war against Lyme holistically. In the end with all I’ve done to heal it truly was healing my inner wounded child, changing my beliefs and embracing my trauma that freed me from the chains Lyme had around my body. I am spiritually free, my energy is flowing like a water fall with no blocks and my body is healing so much faster because of it. Free your wounded child and clear your trapped emotions. The body needs you to... how do I know? Because my body told me through physical pain that it had had enough of what my emotions were doing to me. God whispered... have you had enough suffering yet? The devil said... I have death and pain waiting for you, stay with me.
Surrender. Tell the devil to go screw himself. Bring your light back. Don’t let him keep you in your own darkness.
