Let's Get Reacquainted

It's about time we got reacquainted! While Haven't Done Anything Yet faded from my everyday reality, I embarked on a physical and spiritual journey. But let's take a step way back, shall we?

I have always considered myself spiritual although from a young age I shied away from organized religion. As a young teen I read all the books I could find on metaphysical subjects, but had a habit of accidentally calling in some experiences that frightened me at the time. I solved this by shutting that aspect of myself down. It helped me feel more "normal" in the physical world I was living in.

While processing my Grandmother's passing in my early twenties, I leaned on spiritual books. What I found reassured me in a way that you can only explain by a sense of knowing. When you read or hear words that resonate throughout your whole body, I take this as a sign that it's a deep knowing you are remembering to be true. My Grandma visited me in a dream. She was much younger than when she passed, with dark hair. She didn't say anything, but I remember saying to her "What took you so long?" We embraced and I woke up crying with a deep sense of peace and understanding that helped me move forward in the real world.

After my Grandfather's passing, I purchased their home and distinctly remember having PBS on in the kitchen and hearing the voice of Wayne Dyer from where I was in another room. It was like his message called me to the TV and I stood in front of it with that old familiar feeling resonating through me. He was speaking the truth. Things I knew, but didn't know anybody in real life to discuss them with. 

Now I didn't know my Grandfather to be particularly fond of toast when he was alive, but while living in his house I came to an understanding that the strong smell of toast was an indicator that he was there with me. Most of the time I would notice it in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. I would open the bedroom door (his bedroom door) and be greeted with a strong aroma of toast too intense to ignore. By the time I went through my morning routine and returned, the scent would be gone. 

Although toast was the first smell I linked to someone on the other side, it wouldn't be my last experience with this strange sense. In the wake of the housing collapse of 2008, I lost the house, picked up and moved to Illinois for a job, and found a cute little house to rent quickly. Shortly after moving in, I was shaken awake in the night with an old lady standing over me. I'm pretty sure she just wanted me to acknowledge her presence, although we did have a little battle with the thermostat a few times. And every now and then I would smell a strong rose smell in the bedroom closet. 

By 2015 I had moved back to Wisconsin and was working for a hotel that was For Sale. The uncertainty surrounding this sale was stressful. For a long period of time. I reached out to a friend of a friend who was doing intuitive readings and reawakened my spiritual self to a degree. She came over to my little house and gave intuitive readings for about six of my friends.

Always, a considerate host, I saved my own turn for last. My intuitive friend was visibly tired from the night's events and my walls were particularly high that night. The reading itself wasn't very memorable, but before we ended she asked if I had something I wanted to ask. I said "no" because I had no idea what was coming. She told me that I hadn't let anybody down. This was something I carried with me like a dark cloud over my head. I didn't really give it conscious head space, but it clouded my whole being. I had felt like a failure and disappointment for having lost the house my Grandfather built. In that moment I felt a lightness lift me. I'm sure that moment was a catalyst for the healing to come. That night after all my friends had gone home and I crawled into bed contemplating the events of the evening, I got a strong scent of banana bread. It would be the only incident in that house associated with a phantom smell. 

One of the best tools I received on that intuitive night was writing letters to the universe. I started writing out what it is that I wanted from my next job, what I wanted the place I lived to look like, and how I wanted to feel about it. I dreamt of a future me who loved going to work because she worked with a great group of people. I wanted to be compensated well with enough freedom to be able to travel. And I wanted to live near water. I wrote it out over and over again, trying to hone in on the essence of what I was looking for. 

In 2016 the hotel was finally sold and I was let go by the new management. I got a job to get me by all the while still dreaming of the next opportunity, and in 2017 I finally got the call. The hotel company I had been working for before the sale reached out to talk to me about one of their properties in Chicagoland. On paper it was everything I dreamed I had wanted. Although my salary at first was just covering my bills without the wiggle room for extravagant travel, within six months I was asked to travel to another property. I was beginning to see evidence every day that I was crafting my own adventure in this world.

I hope this abbreviated history serves as a foundation of understanding for the story to come.

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