Bonus Book Content - Epilogue
In August of 2020, one month after completing the first full draft and a single round of edits for my manuscript, while reading Dr. Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters and working a BMW event in New Jersey, I returned a missed call from my mom and her partner, Bryce.
“I’ve got news upon news today, babe,” she said.
“Okaaaay,” I said, dipping a plantain chip into hummus.
“Well, Bryce and I tested positive for Covid. He’s got a fever, but I don’t. Just feels like a cold but I exposed most of our family at my sister’s funeral.”
“Y’all are active and healthy… I know y’all will recover swiftly,” I said, “. And mama, you can’t accept the guilt or responsibility for everyone. They had a choice of whether to go to the funeral or not and people need to take responsibility for their own choices.”
“Thanks babe,” she said, “I also received a message on Facebook...
I leaned onto the countertop of the hotel kitchenette.
….. and Lonnie died today.”
A deep, visceral sob released from the stored pit of pain in my body, the area he’d once traced his fingertips, as if my body were purging the last bit of the memory and taking any ounce of resentment with his transition. Behind the sob, I felt an unexpected wave of overwhelming love. It was as if when he transitioned, all resistance was released to grant me access to pure love, as if his energy were directed solely on me… a rush of energy and emotion from the person who taught me that everything is energy.
It’d been six years since we’d spoken and upon hearing the news, I’d thought I’d done all of the forgiveness work for Lonnie. At that moment, I understood a part of me had buried a hope for him to try harder at reconciliation. With his physical death, not only were all of our unsaid words released, but so was any remaining possibility of hope or harm towards one another.
He’d never read my words, and I ached for the lost validation. In a way, I’d longed to make him proud in a knowing of his impact on my life in the ugly and beautiful, the honorable and the misguided – the balanced paths. I wanted him to read my words and feel my rage and sorrow, yet also, my love and gratitude.
In an effort to unravel the truth from the anecdote, I spread across the bed to journal intuitive insights. Gratitude poured out of my being, in awe of the divine timing, gifted with the time to write my story with the perspective of Lonnie still alive, to experience profound insights upon his passing, and to be able to share those insights. I understood then that he had provided part of the framework for my story to become a lighthouse.
With his return to the unconditional love state at the kismet time I was reading about past lives and soul agreements, inner wisdom spoke that he sacrificed a lot of human happiness in an agreement with mine for the highest healing and expression for the collective.
I believe our souls chose to live paths that could mold my human journey in such pivotal ways, inciting trauma and transformation, as an agreement for him to play a balanced role in shaping my spiritual growth, to alter my journey in such a way, catalyzing greater lessons and healing. An agreement for the experiences to be shared through the expression of me and the resulting pain to be transformed into a greater purpose through the vessel of me.
With both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ experiences, life wielded me to become the truest expression of myself – bestowed with an empowered empathy, with a story that healed, and if for nobody else, myself. And by doing the work ourselves, we change the collective tapestry and humanity’s trajectory.
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In a way, buying the ticket to Paris was a subconscious attempt on my part to tie a pretty lie bow on my story. The world had other plans, and I had more lessons to learn. When all flights were canceled in 2020, I grieved the loss and expectations I held for Paris, of not wrapping up manuscript edits in a café, but detaching from the outcome led to an experience more beautiful than I could have even imagined.
While I understood that a commitment to what serves best might mean letting go of some people in my life, the understanding didn’t make the release easy. Two months after Javier and I broke up, at the beginning of 2021, my spirit stirred. On a whim, I researched flights to Costa Rica, and found one a few dollars shy of the exact amount of the Paris flight credit... Okay, this is a sign.
I scoped out a hotel, briefly pondered staying there for a night or two, and opted to rent an Airbnb for a month. In the ten days leading up to Costa Rica, the silence before sleep screamed, as if my body sensed impending change and revelations. Even though I felt the split would enable an embodiment of my highest expression, I still missed Javier. I missed our dog. I missed our shared friends. I missed the life I thought we’d live. I missed my friend. I craved liberation. I craved expansion and adventure. I craved healing and solitude.
Four days into the trip, I woke with bug bites all over my body. It seemed as if they were a physical manifestation of the remaining bugs I was trying to clear from my head. I looked under the mattress, and then I began to feel them crawling all over my skin. I kept repeating, even if I can’t see it now, all things work for good. Even if I can’t see it now, all things work for good.
Airbnb paid the difference to transfer to the same oceanfront hotel I had skimmed prior to travel. On the first morning of rising with the sun there, I chatted with a guy traveling with his girlfriend, Ryan, who’d grown up Mormon, and relayed the story of how Lonnie had shown me the map of religion. Ryan invited me on a hiking adventure with them and another friend, and on the walk back to my room to pack a backpack, a white feather laid across the green grass.
Later that afternoon while hiking, blue monarch butterflies crisscrossed my path in the Cabo Blanco preserve as howler monkeys bellowed from the heart of the jungle. A red bird stood on a tree branch. A brown bird landed near the red one, steadily squawking.
“Look… a red macaw… and an ugly brown bird,” Ryan’s friend said.
“Yea,” I said, “But would you rather be the colorful macaw, the one everyone admires, or the brown bird who sings?”
He stared at me like I was crazy and didn’t reply.
Later that evening underneath a full moon, a light circled off the coastal point of the peninsula, directly across from the hotel. Wait a second. No fucking way.
“Do you see that light across the water, the one blinking rhythmically?” I asked Ryan. “Is that a lighthouse?”
The light shined amidst the dark shadows. Stunned, the symbolism pointed to the balance of endings and beginnings. To see one, I needed to have the other. Without the pain, I’d have no joy to sing. Without the darkness, I’d have no light to shine others to harbor.
Spiritual thought leader Marianne Williamson said, “We don’t reach the light through endless analysis of the dark. We reach the light by choosing the light. Light means understanding. Through understanding, we are healed.”
I see the light. I choose it.
And now, I sing.