The Year I Came Home

In more ways that one...

So I have a secret that I don’t usually share with folks, but I’ll share it with you…

2020 was one of the best years of my life.

I feel uncomfy saying that. Because I know that 2020 was a year of grief, loss, fear, and upheaval for so many. And yet, for me, it was a year of rebirth.

I quit a toxic job on the last day of February 2020 after five years of being absolutely miserable, and in a strange twist of timing, the world shut down two weeks later.

Instead of panic, I felt relief. Thankfully I had roughly a year worth of severance and as someone who craves solitude, the lockdown gave me what I had always longed for: space. No FOMO. No endless excuses to stay home. Just me, my backyard, new recipes, baking experiments, long TV binges, and the quiet exhale of releasing eleven years of accumulated workplace trauma.

But it wasn’t just rest. It was the beginning of my spiritual journey.

Months earlier, I had booked a reading with Imani Cohen — The Hood Healer — and the timing aligned so that my first step into the unknown happened the very day I quit. As I turned on FaceTime Imani looked at me and blinked. “You had an ending today. You quit your job?” Yup, this is how the convo began and damn did everything she say turn out to be 100% the truth. Soon after, I began searching for someone to help me unlock my own personal intuition and inner knowing. Because I wanted to have this type of insight into my own life.

The truth is, finding the right guide isn’t easy. Not every practitioner will be your person.

I worked with a few who helped me learn, but we didn’t connect on the soul level I was craving. And that’s ok - like anything, you have to find your people. And if you ask, you truly will receive. Acknowledging you want to go on this quest is the real first step, and Spirit will rise up and provide you with the who and what you need. It’s true co-creation with the Universe. Truth that God will answer the call.

That search eventually led me to Courtney. Wow. I felt like I had hit the spiritual jackpot. My first session with her was an Akashic Records reading, and it was the beginning of so much for me.

The Records are often described as a library of all events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future - not just for humans, but for all entities and life forms.

But I don’t want to get too wrapped up in that. If you’re curious, I encourage you to look into it. What I can tell you is this: that first reading shook me with a love so complete it undid me.

Tears streamed, not from grief, but from being seen. Fully and deeply for the first time.

That session opened a channel with Spirit, Masters, Teachers, Loved Ones. My Ancestors. A channel that has only grown stronger. Out of that came the creation of my ancestor altar, where I honor my family, known and unknown. The guidance I’ve received since -visitations, healing, love - feels more vivid, more alive, than any magic I’ve ever read in books or seen on TV.

Since then, Courtney has become not just my teacher and guide but an essential person in my life. With my parents gone, she’s the one who knows the most intimate aspects of me - the stories, the dreams, the shadows, the visions. We’ve dream-walked together. She’s seen me without masks. After losing my mother, I realized what that truly meant: when the record keeper of your life is gone, the absence is indescribable. But in the Records, with Courtney, I discovered that love, guidance, and witness never leave. That revelation has carried me through.

And Courtney wasn’t the only woman who shaped my journey that year. In 2020, I met Alex — an intuitive guide and manifestation strategist. Over time, our connection deepened into friendship. She invited me onto her podcast to talk about weaving spirituality into my career (you can listen here). That same year I also began energy healing with Kiyama Monique, whose reiki opened another layer of my healing.

Over the last five years, my spiritual practice has deepened and widened. I’ve woven in acupressure, cupping, and moxibustion. I’ve grown into tools of my own — tarot, pendulum, candle magic — practices that ground me and help me listen inward.

But here’s the thing: this work isn’t soft-focus light beams and crystals. It is not for the weak of heart. Spiritual work is not about floating above your life.

It’s about diving headfirst into it - into yourself. Into your heart. Going in, then deeper, and deeper still. Past fear, past resistance, past the stories you were taught to believe were true. Peeling back family patterns, karmic entanglements, disillusionments until you’re raw, undone, and staring at the core of yourself.

There’s also no destination. No finish line. It’s an unending ride. And sometimes it’s horrible. At the retreat in Sweden this past summer, during days of constellation work, I felt undone. I sat in silence for hours, crying nonstop as despair washed over me. It felt like being dismantled piece by piece.

But sometimes falling apart is the work. That retreat became the fire, and Let It Smoke is what rose from it.

So when I hear people online talking about the rapture, I think of this. Not an apocalypse, but an awakening. Not vanishing into the sky, but shedding illusions - jobs, relationships, identities, whole lives - when your soul has outgrown them. The collapse looks like chaos if you resist. But if you surrender, if you let the unseen step in, it’s not rapture. It’s rebirth.