Just Breathe: One Woman’s Journey Through Unimaginable Loss – Continued

Tell me more about the clairvoyant meditation training?

In the clairvoyant training the goal was get to where you could read other peoples energy. Through the readings you would be able to answer questions just by reading other peoples energy. So, I was practicing it but I was really new at it and still not feeling competent in it. I thought this is crazy, I feel like I’m making stuff up but I’m just going to go with it since my teachers kept encouraging me to. They would say this is coming from somewhere you need to trust yourself.

So, I was doing one my very first readings and it was actually on one of my cousins and I was just like, “I’m warning you, I’m not good at this, I’m not qualified but I’m just going to go with it and we’re just going to do this for fun.” And she asked me a question about my dad and brothers, she wanted to know does your dad, Ben or Andy have a message for me and like crystal clear I could see them, I could hear them, I could feel them – to this day that image is really etched in my mind – and yet I felt no emotional charge while I was in the reading. It was truly like I was the medium and it was her message. It wasn’t until after we closed the meditation that I was like wait, “If I were to have seen them and smelt them and felt them I should have been like freaking out. I should have been asking my own questions, or at least jumping for joy but I didn’t. It was just so real and pure and authentic the way the messages came through that that was all I needed. It was just so real for me and it was just so real for her and in that moment, that was all I needed. I still meditated of course and I still use those tools but not to the same degree because I felt like I got what I was looking for for so long.

Is meditation something you suggest to all your clients?

It is still a suggestion for people who I believe would really benefit from it. I think the reason it was such a success for me was because it was a huge commitment. It was for one weekend a month for 2 years and it was an 8-hour day and it was with a group of 6 people so we became really close and really tight. We shared our deepest and darkest secrets in these groups and we were focused on healing our deepest and darkest wounds. So, it became this really supportive community. It was a lot more than just meditating. I think that was really the draw card for me because just going and meditating for 8 hours a day wasn’t going to happen in my world. The other thing was the classes were really specific. We were learning different tools and techniques the whole time, we learned how to clear energy, how to balance chakras and so I felt like it was really diverse and dynamic rather than just sitting and fighting the mind and meditating. I have a binder from that time that is 3 inches deep with notes from all the different types of meditations we did and the classes were derived from the Berkley Psychic Institute so it was pretty good and meaty stuff that I felt like was pretty educational and so it kept me engaged as well.

What has been your biggest crossroads?

I met my husband in Botswana. He was a helicopter pilot. I was there visiting a friend who was there on scholarship doing lion research with Duke University and she invited me over to Botswanan to just let me get away from my life and take a break for a bit so I did that. It was 8 months after the plane crash. So, for two weeks we literally tracked lions with tracking devises on land cursers and then the third week she said, let’s go on a safari. So, we went on a 6-day safari and Gregg, my husband now, literally appeared out of thin air. He landed the helicopter in front of us and was there to take us to our next camp. It was a very short 10-minute flight and the whole time I’m very nervous to be flying for obvious reasons but it was also a bit reassuring that it was a helicopter and not an airplane. I was relieved and had a different association with it.

He ended up staying in the camp that night and so we were on a mission to find this “chopper boy.” Chopper boy was super cute with this really great South African accent and so let’s go find “chopper boy.” Well we didn’t find him but later that night we were sitting around the fire and I see him up at the bar. So, I went over to talk to him and apparently, I don’t remember it going down like this but he says I said, “Why don’t you stay for a drink?” So he did and that evening turned into the most magical night of my life.

We ended up talking until 2 in the morning into a rain storm and just having this moment where I felt like I could trust him. I could tell him what happened when I hadn’t told anyone else on the trip, because I just didn’t want to say it out load and articulate the words. With Gregg though it was just different. It was this really incredible evening and then I saw him the next day then that following night and then I flew back to Idaho. So, we had less than 24 hours together.

Fast forward, we ended up getting married. We were living in South Africa and I could not work legally and this was 2008 so it was 3 years after the airplane crash and I was just stuck. I couldn’t work, he was flying and I was sitting at home for extended periods of time. I couldn’t even go outside because it wasn’t super safe where we lived to just go out and about. So I was really paralyzed and I was really stuck. And that was my crossroads.

I could keep on that path. I was doing a lot of art, I had a side yoga business and I was meditating but those weren’t enough for me. I was ready to have a job, have a career and be somebody. And I came to a point where I was really frustrated with myself. I had a degree in psychology from the University of Idaho but that was in social work which was something I knew I didn’t want to go into. So, I got online and started researching programs and out of nowhere – this is where my team of angels comes in – I googled nutrition schools and here pops up this school in San Diego that had a correspondence program and in-house program and I wanted to research that more. So, I decided that I was going to get my books and go back to South Africa and start studying and then here come my team of angels again. Turned out that Gregg and I were going home to a very special event where the Blue Angels were performing in Idaho Falls and my brothers best friend, who was one of the pilots, had arranged it and it was going to be a tribute show to Ben Becker. It was just insanely awesome. One of the most special weeks of my life.

That weekend my husband got a random contact on Facebook and he followed up with it and they said come to Las Vegas tomorrow (which was a 10-hour drive for us), I have some guys you can meet in the industry to potentially get a job. Because of immigration and visa stuff we were looking at heading back to the United States within 12 months but we had no idea how we were going to do it or where to start. So, we go to Vegas on a whim and we meet the company and it turned out to be more of a job interview with the chief pilot of this company. That day, then and there, they hired Gregg on the spot and he got a job flying out of Yuma Arizona.

We looked at living in Yuma but when we learned it is on average 114 degrees we decided to look at the surrounding areas and San Diego was a hop-skip and a jump away. Gregg would commute and I was going to start my life there. The it downed on me, this school that I just signed up for was in Encinitas and so I’m going to go to this school and be in the classroom and so that was a huge crossroads for me. Within a month we were back in the states living in San Diego and I was in school.