In 2020 I stepped into a challenging managerial role at the hospital. I’m a nurse anesthetist, and trying to walk through the pandemic was exhausting. It was overwhelming. It was really scary, lots of heavy feelings. I’m an empath, and I have never found an organized group or a capable enough person to help teach me sustainable ways to be a healthy empath.

And so I think 2020 was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I got COVID-19 and I just never could recover. I developed long COVID. I kept thinking, well, I’m serving. I’m doing everything I feel like I’m supposed to do. The only things that are important to me are helping others and my family. Why am I suffering so much? It didn’t make sense.

A path to healing

Finally my sister told me about Michal and Beacons of Change and Reiki. I thought, you know, I have time for that now, and I feel like I really need help. So I was willing to give it a shot. I took the Reiki 1 course, even though I felt so terrible at that time that I could barely sit up. It started to open doors and give me tools to heal on a much deeper level than just my physical body. Michal connected me with Dawn, one of her team members, for additional remote Reiki sessions, which were extremely helpful. We did the Reiki sessions on days when I had infusions for this experimental medication I was taking.

I knew that I needed to heal energetically, spiritually, and emotionally in order for my physical body to make any progress. And it was just a godsend that Beacons of Change came into my life in order for those things to happen for me.

I think one of the shortcomings of our conventional medical system is we just treat the physical symptoms, and there’s so much that we ignore. I don’t see many doctors prescribing treatments such as acupuncture and energy work. It really hit home for me during an online course when Michal explained that empaths usually take in other people’s energy through their sacral chakra. When she said that, a light bulb went off in my head. As an empath in a management job, for two years I was bombarded with people’s problems and frustrations and their energies. It doesn’t surprise me that I developed an autoimmune issue, which typically lies in the sacral energy space.

The light bulb went off, like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. I got tipped over the edge. My poor body couldn’t handle all of that. I didn’t have a healthy way to manage it at the time.

The power of grounding myself

Now, I am a lot more mindful than I used to be. I intentionally and deliberately ground myself throughout the day now. Because of the things I’m still going through and because of all the things going on in the world, I think maintaining a grounded energy is very important for me. It really reduces my anxiety. It helps improve my intuition. It helps me connect in the present with the people I love. So that’s an important thing that I learned.

I also learned that I need to care for myself. I need to pay attention to myself. I need to nurture myself, and Reiki 1 really gives you the permission to do that. It’s a recipe for health, really. I think a lot of empaths always feel guilt or shame. My entire life I’ve felt guilt when I did something for myself because I thought I should always be serving others. Learning how to stay grounded, prioritize self-care, and really believe that I matter were big steps for me. Huge.

Once I got to that point, I was able to open up and listen to my intuition more. I was able to distinguish what was mine and what belonged to others. If I slowed down and tapped into my intuition and grounded myself, it became easier to see and feel what was going on inside of myself and around me so I could determine how to manage it in a healthy way.

The next natural step was taking the Reiki 2 class. That’s when you learn to send the Reiki healing energy to others remotely.

How Reiki brought my creativity to life—and had a domino effect on my family

My most favorite was learning how to give remote Reiki because my children and my husband are my heart, and I want to be able to help them the way that Beacons of Change has helped me. It gave me peace of mind to be able to lie down in bed at night before I went to sleep and just line my family up in my mind and send them remote Reiki. Even though they’re all in my house, I still sent them extra love and Reiki. Being able to send remote Reiki confidently with the symbols was wonderful. It also opened up my creativity.

Being grounded and able to tap into my intuition more clearly, plus all the remote Reiki I was doing with Dawn to balance my chakras, also helped me open up to creativity. Being able to go into that dimension and just have fun sending Reiki to others is really fulfilling for me. And my family loved it, too. My children would come up to me and say, “Mommy, my elbow hurts. Will you give it Reiki?” And I would say, “Sure, of course,” and we would just have some intentional moments together. My son Brooks would walk away from me after I gave him Reiki and say, “Mommy, that was magical.” I thought, this is just wonderful. It feels so great. Both my sons and my husband are empaths, and they’re learning while I learn. The more I learn, the more it’s a gift to all of us.

My son Dean said to me the other day, “Mommy, I have a headache, my stomach hurts, and my throat feels weird.” He pointed right to his throat chakra. I said, “Is your throat hurting?” And he said, “No, it just feels weird.” So I said, “That’s energetic. You need to speak your truth. So let’s go sit down, and I want you to tell me what is on your mind.” We talked for an hour and a half until his stomach felt better, and his throat feeling went away. It was all just energetic. He was sensing physical manifestations of energy he needed to release. Previously, I would have been anxious and thought it was COVID. I would have panicked and rushed him to urgent care. Now I’m able to see things more clearly, so I can help my family and myself better.

Self-love like I’ve never known

Having Reiki in my life feels like I’m stepping into an old pair of shoes. This is where I belong. It feels so good. It fulfills my heart, and I’m so thankful that I found it.

The biggest gift that Reiki brought to my life was teaching me how to love myself. That piece had been missing since my childhood. I have issues with abandonment. I have issues with not being enough, not doing enough. A lot of negative self-talk. My parents divorced when I was two, and my father raised me. It was hard not having a nurturing mother. My dad did the best that he could, but he was very emotionally unavailable. As an empath child, I felt like something was wrong with me.

Thinking I did not matter enough to take care of myself led me down a path to the point of exhaustion and autoimmune dysfunction. In order for me to heal, learn, grow, and walk a better path with all of the people that I love here on this earth, I first have to love myself. It took me 41 years to figure that out.

I think the most important thing that I’ve learned to truly embody is that I matter, and I deserve love. We all are connected to love divinely, and we deserve it.

Gratitude

I’m so grateful that I found Michal and the Beacons of Change. I love Michal’s nurturing energy. I feel like I am 100% supported by her in my journey. I feel like she sees me for who I am and doesn’t judge me, and she is supportive no matter what I ask or how I feel. There’s no stupid question. There’s no dark place where she can’t help me. She always is open and loving and knows how to teach and make it better. She’s really amazing. I really appreciate her intuition. She’s got a very motherly aura about her and an uplifting, calm, supportive energy that I think a lot of people really are drawn to.

Michal’s energy carries over to her team, and draws women together in the Beacons of Change community. I think everybody feels it when we are on our Zoom calls on in our conferences together. These gatherings are uplifting and safe and fun. I think we feel like it’s okay to be ourselves and it’s okay to learn and ask questions. Michal always brings creativity in, and so I think we feel like we get to have fun in that sense, too. It’s like a sisterhood with the common thread being a sense of curiosity and wanting to learn about Reiki and the divine light. I think it’s something that people are seeking out more and more now because we are hungry for it in a world that is so unsettling.

I am continuing to seek help and support in my healing journey from long COVID and am thankful for the Beacons of Change community support.