For years I walked around with an energetic sign over my head that said “Don’t ask me what I do.” Because I was not ready to tell people outside of the Spiritual world who I was. My fears constructed that sign to keep me safe.
It was amazing watching the power of that sign. I’d be in an everyday situation, meeting some new people and there would be the casual polite chit chat “So what do you do for work?” and always, something would happen, either we’d get so caught up talking about someone else’s story that we’d run out of time to talk about me, or they’d simply get interrupted and taken off down another topic and it would never circle around back to me. It was amazing, and I always felt a sense of relief, for I dreaded those casual small talk situations with non-spiritual people for years.
I’ve spent 19 years in the Spiritual closet, that’s a long time. I spiritually woke up from my sleeping slumber deep inside that closet. I know a thing or two about closets, and why we are too scared to come out of them. You might think, but you’ve been running a Spiritual business for how long? How old are you? The truth is, coming out has been a process of baby steps, as many as my nervous system could handle.
I’d watch my spiritual friends plaster spiritual posts all over their social media, not caring who read them, or how people would react. It didn’t bother them that their parents had different beliefs, or that perhaps their friends might have a different view, they were being who they were, and weren’t afraid to be. At times I’d envy their ability to be themselves without fear, yet my own system was so locked up, I didn’t necessarily want to be them either, because the fear was real, and the fear was overwhelming, and yet I had no reason to fear.
I nearly had an anxiety attack when I first connected my Facebook page to my personal profile, and clicked launch on my website with my photo on it. “What are you so afraid of?” People would ask me. It was hard for me to narrow it down and say exactly, but it came down to, I was afraid of people’s reaction.
I suppose I had a reason to be afraid, but I had worked through most of those fears. I grew up with an auntie who was really unwell. She was diagnosed with Schizophrenia before I was born. She heard voices. Some were kind to her, and would say they loved her, and that she was beautiful, but others said terrible things to her, and she’d get so upset because she couldn’t make the voices in her head shut up and leave her alone. Some of the treatments she received for it were awful. There was a fear in my family of “what if that happens to another one of us, what if it happens to you Yolanda?” And having my Clairaudience open up in a way where I too was hearing voices (albeit loving kind ones that uplifted me, and treated me with respect), wasn’t something I was about to announce when I was back home for Christmas dinner, with my aunt sitting there at the table. I do believe my aunt was Clairaudient like me. I also know she wasn’t well, and that psychology these days knows the difference. I also had a father who was very Pentacostle and well, what I do makes me prone to the devil, because all psychics and intuitives were the work of the devil. Yup, I came from that kind of a family belief system. But again, what was I afraid of? Of him accusing me of playing with fire? Being destined for a place called hell I didn’t believe in? Being banished from his life? I had already walked away from our relationship when I left Canada simply because I couldn’t be a good Christian girl who followed the cultural rules from where he grew up that he attempted to raise me with. Why was I so afraid?
In time as I grew my Spiritual work, I was able to do more, start a Youtube channel (which i’ve had zero time for since Covid), go on Podcasts, work at a local Mind Body Spirit festival where any local Melbournian could potentially recognize me, and yet the fear was always there, hiding within the depth of the shadows in my closet, and the sign for the general non-spiritual population was screwed on tight.
A few years ago I learned about North and South Nodes in my astrology chart. My south node is in Pisces and a common theme for people with their South node in Pisces is healing past spiritual wounds so as to come out of the Spiritual closet. I had there in front of me in chart form a major theme to my Spiritual journey, and the realization that it has an expiry date. June 2022. We work through our South Node themes for the first 42 or so years of our life, and then we switch to working through the themes of our North Node.
Last year the sign came down. It was scary the first time a neighbour asked me what I do for work, and I panicked a little inside having never had to answer this question properly before. I stumbled through my explanation of what I do, but it got easier with time. Other than a few funny looks, nothing drastic or dramatic happened, much to my relief, but a subtle fear was still present, and a dread sat at the pit of my stomach, mixed in with the homesickness I’ve felt, and the excitement about a trip I have planned back to Canada in June, because most of my family still don’t know what I do.
Earlier this year, I booked in for a healing session with a mentor of mine, and whilst my intention wasn’t to work on my fear of telling people what I do, it was the thing that came up to be worked on. I’m a big believer in not making people re-live their pain in order to heal it, and this practitioner was no different. She didn’t take me back to what happened, I took myself back, and I saw it clear as day in my mind.
It was a story we hear about in history, a story that was in the news just the other week. Nicola Sturgeon the leader of Scotland apologized publicly for the government’s role in the killing of many people in Scotland, mostly women, accusing them of witchcraft.
In my story, I had like minded friends, friends I could be open and share with, friends I could trust. But somehow my family got wind of what I was sharing, and before even giving me a chance to explain myself, I was confronted by my own family, and taken away by them straight to the centre of town where they tied me up. All the local townspeople came out to watch, and threw rubbish and curses at me while I burned. I barely had a chance to begin to process it all before I was dead. The pain and shock of that incident locked into my soul, embedded into my DNA. No wonder the only people I felt truly safe with was trusted spiritual friends.
With the releasing of that story came a freedom, a freedom to write, a freedom to share what I do, a freedom to go onto Podcasts and Youtube and openly share who I am, what I do, go back to Canada and be me, without fear. I truly feel what others feel when they do things without fear, simply because they are guided or inspired to, simply because they can be the fullest expression of themselves. Fear has been replaced with excitement, joy, and peace.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Spiritual people afraid to share who they truly are publicly. I’ve seen the toll in takes on us mentally and emotionally, I know the inner conflict well, I myself was living it. We are being pulled to do more, called out to be who we are, and yet, how will the world react given this planet has a history of not reacting well?
The truth is, there are practitioners who would suggest throwing ourselves off the deep end. Make a big announcement, be brave and do it anyway. I’ve had practitioners and well meaning people push me to go out there and do things I wasn’t ready to do. Step out, take a leap of faith. That does nothing but give us more anxiety and send our nervous system into Fight/Flight/Freeze.
My nervous system needed time, and the healing happened when I was ready. Healing my history, my stories (for what I shared in this blog was the main event, there have been many other smaller ones I’ve worked through along the way) first made it easier for me to take each baby step until I was out of that closet fully and completely. For the truth is, really stepping up and bringing out the best of who we are is a journey, and the closet was a big part of mine that required a lot of healing. I’d also like to share, I didn’t miss the boat, and neither have you, because there is a divine timing to our healing journeys. This theme was written in my charts to come to a completion in 2022. I couldn’t have changed that had I tried (and believe me, I did try), it happened naturally and when I was ready, at the pace I could handle, and support was there to help.
If you are wanting to grow, expand your work, and more outwardly be who you truly are, and simply can’t for reasons you can’t identify simply because it’s locked away in your DNA as things happened long before you arrived here on this planet as you, and could use some support, I’d love to support you with this. I myself had nothing I could rationally fear, witnessing others being completely openly themselves without any negative repercussions, showed me that, and yet, I was stuck for reasons I had no conscious memory of. I have so much compassion for people who are stuck by some unseen barrier, a belief, an unconscious memory, a vow or a contract made that is simply no longer relevant because times, places, laws, and cultures have changed, because I myself have been there.
My niece asked me what I do for work the other day, she found a polite way to ask when I mentioned how busy work has been lately, and she admitted that for some reason she never thought to ask back when I first started my business in 2016, which is so unlike her, and then so much time passed she was too embarrassed to admit she had no idea and come forth and ask. (Gosh that sign really worked some serious magic!) I shared with her what I do. “Ahh that’s cool, I’ve got some friends doing something similar.” Nothing changed between us, and yet everything had changed because I was finally feeling safe when telling people what I do, and could do so with ease.
