"the effect or influence of one person, thing, or action, on another"...
Activation Warning: mentions of suicide
She couldn’t feel it.
Like trying to feel water while you’re floating in it
…it’s impossible. ...
My sister’s impact was undeniable. Her love and light radiated through the world and countless people’s lives were changed by her presence…
…and she couldn’t feel it.
Because this love bypassed her own heart. Her ongoing acknowledgement of everyone else’s brilliance didn’t include herself. As she dove deeper into her intuitive gifts the last few years of her life and worked on cutting cords and releasing trauma…she hit an edge where she recognized all the ways she had been hiding and was having trouble taking up space within her own body.
...
What happens when we feel our own impact we’ve had in our self denial?
Our own rejection?
What happens when we “come into forcible contact” with ourselves?
After her suicide, the theme of impact has become more and more clear to me. Every time I have questioned if I’m making a difference, helping the planet, fulfilling my purpose…questioning if I should share as openly as I do, write that essay, post that movement video, even if I should bother sending these emails or offering group courses that I have struggled to get off the ground…
…I think about the children’s book she wanted to write but kept saying how she didn’t know if anyone would read it. I think about the website she never launched for her Reiki practice (“Kiki Reiki”) because other people had been doing it longer than her. I think about all of her poems and writings and artwork and insights and INCREDIBLY accurate shamanic channelings that she didn’t want to share because she didn’t want people to think she was “weird”…that it wouldn’t matter…that other people “knew more” than she did.
I would then do what she did for me. I would cheer her on. I would tell her how incredible she was. I would encourage her to be brave. I would share my musings and insights and art and channeling and magic and all of my fears and doubts and edges.
…but she couldn’t take it in.
She couldn’t receive it.
She couldn’t re-member.
Her power was so clear to me. Just like mine was to her. We were both being blinded by our own light, begging each other to claim ourselves while we fought to receive the love we gave each other.
The lie was that she needed to change. The lie was that she had to disappear so others could be seen. The lie was that SHE didn’t matter. The lie was that her magic wasn’t needed or necessary. The lie was that she was alone in this struggle. The lie was that everyone else was allowed to take up space, be themselves and shine their brilliance on the planet.
The lie was that she was here to only support others on their journey towards being their truest selves. That it was not possible for her to FULLY exist.
And do you want to know why I know these are all lies? Because after she died, the overwhelming message was just how much she was valued, loved, appreciated, needed…how powerful she was, how amazing she was, how much of an impact she made.
She had a hard time embodying her magic because she didn’t want to be othered or exiled or misunderstood or not accepted or not loved. She was saving up to buy land in Portugal (where she was living at the time of her death) in the mountains to open up a center for women. A place for healing with massage, reiki, shamanic / intuitive offerings and doula services (all of which she did) and she was struggling with trusting that she could make an impact when she was struggling through her own healing journey. We would talk about how we aren’t going to be fully “healed” before taking our next steps, as it’s a moving target, and that she needed a community of support for her own healing journey as well as the one she wanted to create for others. That our imposter syndrome comes from that gap between what we externally do and say and believe not matching what we internally feel and experience and believe. This is the process of embodying a new practice / resource that helps to reveal our deepest, most authentic selves. This is the process of integration. This is the re-membering. ...
She wanted so desperately for people, especially women, to know just how powerful they were. How incredibly magical they were. How important they were. How needed they were.
To trust in themselves.
I share this because her and I have shared this practice of self rejection, self denial, self abuse…the hiding of our magic. It’s a familiar one. It’s an ancestral, patriarchal fear-based one. It’s the embodied knowledge that women for centuries have been killed for their magic. Hiding our gifts, our intuitive nature, our connection to the “unseen” has kept us alive…this was a way of protecting ourselves and each other.
It has served its purpose.
We are meant to reclaim our magic.
Now.
We are meant to pay attention to the nuances, the pings, the messages, the sensations, the signs. The impact my sister’s suicide has had on me can’t be put into words because it has been a cellular change. An unfolding. A re-writing. A re-membering.
…and I can no longer hide my magic.
It is too painful.
It literally hurts my body.
The act of killing one’s own spirit.
My sister, Katie, is a doula, massage therapist, reiki master, shamanic intuitive healer. What has been referred to over the years as a witch, a medicine woman, a healer, a warrior of light.
…and so am I.
I am a Clairsentient Intuitive who uses movement to reveal the body’s somatic voice, the unspoken dialogue, to reconnect to intuition, to re-member why we’re here and to restore trust in the self.
...
Every time I doubt myself, every time I question if it’s safe to step into my own truth…because healers struggle with that too, even when they're helping others to do the same…I read my sister’s words…
By releasing your preconceived notions of what it means to be an adult seeking comfort, you allow for time to heal.
Surrender.
Take time just for you.
Have compassion for yourself.
Give love back to self.
There is grace in the quiet spaces.
There is life within your body that has failed to live abundantly and joyously because we have been told to Shine a little less, Be a little quieter, Live a little less free.
Take a moment for self.
You can only benefit from the silence.
…her opening page to the website she never launched, the work she was scared to fully step into, the work she was sent here to do, the inner wisdom she struggled to trust because she couldn’t feel her impact.
...
We used to talk about me coming to do workshops at her center in Portugal. How she would be my doula if/when I had babies. How it was important to provide community for the process of re-membering ourselves. And how difficult, lonely, scary, sad, incredible, wonderful, exciting it was to recognize our power. ...
Kaia Evolutions is my love letter to my sister.
The fulfillment of my contract. The reclamation of magic. The continuation of what we agreed to do together. That we still do together, inches away from each other.
…the grace in the quiet spaces.
Let’s re-member.
Together.
Interested in working together? But not ready to jump in?
1on1 Intuitive Movement Coaching
Registration is OPEN - Course Starts May 11th
Early Bird until 4/30
Clairsentient
"translates to “clear feeling” — and it's defined as the ability to pick up on extrasensory knowledge via non-tangible feelings...the ability to perceive emotional or psychic energy that is imperceptible to the five standard senses."