2. The 80's...a spiritual start in childhood

In the beginning...

There was a babe, born on her due date - a "divine number" comprised of 0's and multiple 1's and 3's (and more) - but in distress:: she had the life-giving umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and was losing oxygen. As soon as she incepted, a soft blue bundle of life, she was rushed away for testing. A small hole in her heart was discovered (a VSD: Ventricular Septal Defect), so small it was no larger than a pin's-head, but a looming terror for her parents nonetheless. Many months and follow-ups later (shout-out to Children's Hospital), it was determined that the hole had closed and she would live happily ever after - with a whole bunch of stuff in between, the end!

No, obvi, you're here for exactly that::: the stuff in between!

So, we earnestly start in the mid 80's, roundabout my late toddler-hood, when my maternal grandmother was {first} a strong force in my life. What you should know before we proceed is that my maternal grandmother crossed through the veil 2+ years before I was born. My earliest memories are actually of her -- being with her, holding hands with her, going for a walk with her, experiencing life with her.

--But CC, how do you know you weren't just dreaming of her?--

I don't know that I wasn't for a certainty...but also . . . yeah, I do. I just do. Anyone who has ever consistently finished their friend's sentences or had a gut feeling about something that ended up saving their life (literally or figuratively), anyone who has sensed their child was in danger and ran out of the room to find them about to topple out of their crib or has "first impressions" of people that are consistently accurate over time -- anyone (read:ALL OF US) who have had these kinds of these intuitive "coincidences" is experiencing knowing. We just fricking know. It's called intuition, and it's a gift from your higher self/soul/Divine source knowledge/God/whatever you want to insert here. It's a gift from beyond, and YOU HAVE IT. So did and do I, and that's why I know it wasn't a dream, as I knew my whole life--even through my great forgetting/rebellion against anything outside of materialism! Yes, even then, I knew that I knew my grandmother despite that materialist impossibility, and despite all other beliefs that absolutely nothing paranormal/spiritual/otherwordly could ever happen. I've always loved a mind-bending paradox. So yeah, I know I was with my grandmother -- and even if someone insists it was a dream...well, we know those dream-states are the playground of higher consciousness and a revolving door of loved ones who've crossed over, so :D

But these "knowings" went beyond just my experience: I've been told ghost stories about my maternal grandmother going as far back as I can remember. In fact I was told ghost stories about HER ghost stories! Apparently she had a "ghost," an otherworldly friend that she called George, and he was fun-loving and playful and would be responsible for all kinds of innocent hijinks like leaving doors flapping open, but also for protecting her, including saving her life from a fatal car accident. Oh, George.

And so I was set up unknowingly but grandly for this spiritual start in childhood. Aside from my vivid, ethereal walks with my grandmother, I do not have my own direct memories of her other ghostly visits with me (or, more aptly put, I have not awakened to these memories) but my mother does.

The first time my mother was tipped off that something paranormal might be going on around me was after her uncle - my grandmother's brother - crossed over, when I was just about four years old. My parents were driving me to my beloved babysitter's house (another beautiful soul who has since crossed over) when I told them that I knew that they were going to Uncle [Dave's] funeral (apologies, anonymity protections for my family) and went on with further details about the location and situation. Stunned, they asked, "who told you that?!" Because it certainly was not from either of them, to which I replied, [Grandma] (again...anonymity protections - that's not what we call her). Baffled and more than a bit creeped out, my parents tried to find the source of my knowledge--outside of my grandmother--but could not. From the way my mother tells it, she was in shock but...life keeps moving on, so that's what my parents did - they tried to push past and move on.

But I continued with reports of seeing and being with my grandmother. Some time after the funeral incident, I was in our backyard playing and then came inside. I left the back door open. My mother called to me to close the door but I told her that I could not. Upon pressing me further to close the door, I told her:

"I'm leaving it open for [Grandma] because she wants to come in."

A fanciful creation of the toddler mind? Surely possible. An actual request from my grandmother from beyond the veil? ALSO surely possible.

I was not the only family member my grandmother visited, not at all. Stories abound of her visiting other family members - most in childhood but, notably, some not, including my aunt's visitation during her own NDE (Near Death Experience) around 20 years ago. My aunt unexpectedly suffered a double cerebral aneurysm rupture when she was 42 years old. A medical miracle, she did not succumb to the dual onslaught in her brain. Instead, my aunt survived brain surgery and was comatose for 5 days, during which time she reported that my grandmother visited her. But not only that - my grandmother came with a request: she gave my aunt an invitation to "join her." (Meanwhile on the other side, we were all reckoning with the distressing suggestion by doctors to "pull the plug" which, clearly and thankfully, we did not.) This request very much terrified my aunt, who did not want to die and whose experience of her deceased mother did not leave her heartened or full of Love and life; rather, my aunt was terrified and frightened by the invitation to leave her body and her life for whatever it is that comes next. She told my grandmother that she did not want to see her again - not yet, not like this; she wanted life. As my aunt tells it, after insisting to her ghostly mother that she was scaring her and she does not want to die, my grandmother ceased her efforts and did not make herself known to my aunt again.

The final "ghost story" that my mother remembers about me came after the backyard door incident. My mother, trying to root out what exactly was going on with her child and her departed mother, asked me about Grandma: "Why does Grandma come to you? Why does she want to come in the house - what does she want?" The response I gave shook my mother to her core, quite understandably, as I matter-of-factly answered:

"She wants you to come live with her."

Well. What on earth was my mother supposed to do with that information?? The only thing she was capable of doing at the time was making it clear, as my aunt would two decades later, that she did not want to go live with her mother--not yet!--and she did not want these visitations to continue. Insofar as I can tell this is where my direct "ghost stories" of [Grandma] end, even as they continued on for others in our family.

The legacy left (started?) by my grandmother was one of life and Love: proof that "life" - consciousness, anyway - exists beyond the veil and that Love persists through all space and time. I grew up KNOWING my grandmother. In my heart I felt her presence, her warmth and her Love - and I loved her infinitely right back. I never stopped loving her, but I did stop sensing her...and not because she wasn't there, but because I started to drift back to sleep and eventually, like so so many of us . . . I simply forgot. I forgot where she came from, where I came from, where we all come from: our Light bodies. I forgot that we enter into this "meat suit" in this 3D, earthbound density in order to experience the delights of the material world and learn vital lessons of the soul, but that our home is in our Loving, Light bodies that never die.

For me, this forgetting--from about 4 through 41--was exceptionally confusing and painful, especially having directly experienced the other side through my grandmother. Once that hard stop came and her visits ceased, all I had was my sensing and intuition, but as an aging child I learned, as most of us do, to forget to retain and access these abilities. For a number of years I continued to remember and actively felt the presence of my grandmother, but more and more the remembering became confused. I questioned my own memory -- and in NO other regard other than this one. I questioned no other memories or experiences of my life, but was taught to side-eye this kind of "impossible" experience until I made it no longer exist. Oof. That hindsight wants to hurt...really badly, but it doesn't have to...not if I transmute it into all of the Loving, Light-filled work that I am doing now -- and the contact (albeit small in comparison) that I have been able to recently make <3

Now, with the retrospect of a hawk's eye, the intensity of my adolescent-through-adulthood anger comes into clear view: this fire and rage was a symptom of my forgetting. Of course I was angry -- I was confused!! And distraught -- the beauty and Love that I knew, the pure Light that came with my grandmother, it vanished from under me. How? Why?? What was I supposed to do with those memories, those experiences, those knowings if they weren't supposed to be true?? And if they were true (which they are), I couldn't figure out HOW TO GET THEM BACK. That's the real pain, there...knowing it once was, but having no ability to get there again. Try as I might, I could not make contact with my grandmother (nor anyone else who had crossed over) after those first few years of my life.

...Not until I started to awaken and remember again. Even now, I do not have the kinds of experiences that I did when I was a child, but I had and have retained immediate connection. From the moment I opened to it, it was right there waiting -- through dreams in sleep, through signs in *waking* life, through visions+sensations+knowings in meditations and AVE sessions, my grandmother is as close as my heartbeat.

Yes, I am still striving to grow a stronger, "denser" connection that my 3D mind-body can experience, but I know now that my higher self is already there; my higher self is on the other side, with my grandmother and all of my loved ones -- with YOU! -- and that calms the monkey mind while I work tirelessly to develop my multi-dimensional sensibilities <3

And do not fret...I will write more, much more, about my signs/meditations/AVE sessions in future posts to come soon!

In what ways have YOU experienced Spirit, or in what ways are you hoping to awaken to Spirit? I'd love to hear from you <3