Chasing Grace

June 2023 | Sarasota, Fl

I’m sure that if I went to the gym every day I would have incredible abs or solid quads. But I can’t admit to that. But what I can do every day is meditate. And practice. I have a practice. And I practice. And before I knew I was meditating, as a child I was always praying.

Growing up in a Catholic house meant growing up in the language of that experience of the divine. Maybe if I grew up in a different country or different culture, I would have a different language that introduced me into the divine — that helped me step through the liminal experience into the sacred and the world of mystery and the intangible.

As it was, I grew up in a very Catholic Irish Italian house. And I would pray. Pray pray pray. Sometimes it would be the only moment of peace in a house of crazy trauma and insanity.

Over the years I’ve learned that many healers are born into rather intense environments. It is one way we chose to learn at an early age some strong psychic skills.

But in the spaces where I was, I was just trying to find a moment of peace, something to pull me out of the terror. And I would pray. And during that prayer, there would be moments of grace. Pure grace. And I vowed that I would do whatever it took, whatever it took to feel that more in my life.

I called it Chasing Grace, at least to myself. I found myself having to invent logical reasons for the decisions I made and choices I took. During those moments, I could not simply say, “Oh well I just knew to do this. Or I just had a hunch to go here.”

No. Unfortunately, back in my early 20s, that was not an acceptable answer to others’ questions. And I wasn’t quite brave or strong enough to be able to tell people otherwise. I was so afraid of their rejection, I would find myself making up logical reasons for doing something. Why are you moving over here? Why are you studying that? Why did you decide to do this?

Usually there was absolutely no explanation. It was just something I knew in my bones. In my being. I would make a choice and I knew that that choice created an energy in me that felt very close to the energy of grace I experienced as a child.

My extra-senses were strong as a child. Like most of us, we are all born with two or three that are super strong and they either fade or develop, depending on our environment.

Mine continued to get stronger as a means for survival. I was reaching out my senses into the house to determine: is mom OK? Are my sisters safe? Do I need to go downstairs and preempt some thing because my father is about to go crazy? They were survival skills. Many of you know precisely what I’m talking about.

For me, I knew I would probably just find a way to leave the planet if I wasn’t true to it. 20 years ago I was married to a beautiful man, a former Franciscan monk. We met in grad school while I was studying theology. Him too. We were probably reincarnated versions of Saint Francis of Assisi and Claire. I would hang out at their Friery all the time. Invited for dinners or special prayer ceremonies. The only woman allowed or welcomed. After me no others were allowed or welcomed. I fell in love with one of those fryers. And after a few years of being married I realized I heard myself saying that I’d rather die than hurt him. I’d rather die then break his heart. And I knew that if I kept on this path that’s precisely what I would do. To have to tell this beautiful man who left his order and who I loved more than life that being married was not for me. I felt horrible. But I knew it in my bones.

And I am sharing this with you because following our instincts, listening to what we know in our bones and in our belly… It can be incredibly uncomfortable. And listening and making that choice doesn’t always create the outcome that we think. That is part of the practice. Just like exercising in the gym, we exercise our hunch. We exercise our intuition. Practice practice practice.

Barbara Brennan used to teach us that we had to wait for three clear signs, three clear affirmations before we shared any information with a client. Before I followed my intuition and shared some thing. Those three high sensory perceptions took practice. I would wait for them. It was cumbersome. But after practicing and practicing what it became for me was the energy of a clear bell in my being. Very similar energy to that experience of Grace as a child. A clear knowing. And generally without any emotion. I described it as a clear bell in my being. What are your strong senses?

Without thinking right now, without it having to make any sense — consider right now two of your strongest senses. Just give yourself over to it for a moment.

Now how else does that energy and information want to contribute to you?