From Nothing to Something: My Story in Becoming a Mystic Cosmologist, From Trauma to Healing
When I was a kid, I was very interested in cosmology, in how the Universe was made. I loved astronomy and learning all things about space. In elementary school, my favorite class was science because we got to study the planets and the stars.
As a little girl, my favorite past time was watching Star Trek with my mother, who I worshipped and adored. Back then, she was working 5 days a week-12 hour shifts and would sometimes stay up late at night to watch Star Trek the Next Generation. It was one of the few moments I had to spend with her, being one of 6 kids and her time being so limited and precious. I would watch with her in total bliss, absorbed in the present moment while exploring the Universe through the eyes of the USS Enterprise and its crew.
I had a crush on Ensign Wesley Crusher and was mystified by his entire story. I wanted to know what he knew and walk a journey like his into the unknown, mystical Universe as a star bean that could transcend the realm of possibility.
Wesley Crusher interacts with a being called "The Traveler" who guides him away from his career in Starfleet to travel space and time outside of all limits.
Puberty hit; I began to bleed at the age of 12. I was so ashamed and fearful, having never been properly coached through it and, at the time, didn't trust either of my parents as a safe space, so I hid it. It was a very difficult initiation into puberty. I developed PCOS and had facial hair growing on my neck that I would pull out with my bare fingers. I used toilet paper instead of pads and couldn't stand the idea of growing breasts, which started developing when I was only 9. There was a terrible and humiliating moment for me when my mother discovered hair growing on my back above my hips and she yelled and screamed in our front yard, in front of neighbors, and threw me in front of my dad, demanding he do something about it. I was deemed by both of them fat and unworthy and in need of fixing, yet I weirdly received no support for the very real hormonal medical issues I was struggling with. I had excess weight and struggled to feel good about myself in a family where the kids were neglected and left to fend for themselves with no parental supervision. We ate out of cans and plastic packages and lived in total squalor with too many animals—cats, dogs, and rabbits—and a flea infested home.
As if The Great Mother stepped in to fill the missing maternal void via a cartoon character, just a few months after I started menstruating, I discovered Sailor Moon and fell instantly in love. She represented a Moon Goddess, and eventually, as her story unfolded even more, I discovered The Cosmic Goddess and Source. She was the champion of justice and was the protector of the Solar System. She was also human; flawed and struggling to fill the role of planet protector. She went through many evolutions and iterations before she realized her full potential. Unbeknown to me then, she also represented many feminine, mythical archetypes that I had no knowledge of as a girl raised in white, patriarchal Utah that would continue to influence me over my life and passages into womanhood.
Sailor Moon and her many evolutions.
She also started me on the path to developing my art and storytelling. When I decided I wanted to draw her, I practiced day and night to draw her face and get her eyes just right. My final product had been erased and redrawn so many times that the paper around the eyes was shredded, but there she was, perfectly captured by my 12-year-old self—at least she was perfect to me. Sailor Moon gave me seeds of hope that, contrary to how the world treated them, women were special, magical even, and they had the potential to make great change in the world, become warriors and protect those they loved, transform, and still be embodied in magic and feminine beauty.
Sailor Moon Manga by Naoko Takeuchi
Sailor Moon was considered to be a feminist icon in 1990s Japan.
After Sailor Moon came every space/alternate world/Goddess/priestess/magical girl themed anime, manga, story, and video game I could digest. Lunar A Silver Star Story, Star Ocean, Chrono Cross, Zelda, Fushigi Yugi, Ceres Celestial Legend, Inu Yasha, Escaflowne, Princess Mononoke, the list went on and on.
I drew characters and wrote stories of priestesses and Goddesses and magical girls every spare chance I had and far before it was ever cool. I was labeled a nerd when the term was not good. I was weird, unliked by many, too strange carrying around my binder stuffed full of drawings of priestesses and magical women and print outs of manga characters, going on about romance, death, science, and magic while inventing fantastic stories with any narrative I could pull from what was happening to me in the moment: A bird flies by and carries me and my friends into the sky, only to drop us on an airplane, where we fly off, away from school, and drop to the ground, landing on a train that takes us around the world. And that's why we were late to math class (a narrative I often told to my geometry teacher in a myriad of forms).
My honors English teacher gifted me The Creative Genius award for a story I wrote and submitted in a contest. I dreamed of flying and would imagine myself soaring through the air like a bird. I visited Saturn and talked to a genie that granted me wishes. I imagined that as an old woman, I'd have a glass eye while dressed in a dark cloak and sitting at a park bench with a crow on my shoulder while I fed seeds to birds; maybe kids would be afraid of me, but some might be intrigued enough to see past my appearance and seek my words of wisdom.
I would often tell stories out loud to my family members and create detailed character profiles for the vast array of characters I'd invent in my mind. My eldest sister remarked that I was the most imaginative person she had ever known. So easy was I to envision that any time she would tease me with scary stories, I'd wind up in tears, terrified, because I could easily see the horrors, real, in my mind's eye. The flipside to my imagination was the dark tales of evil and decay that kept me up at night, afraid of every little noise that to me was surely a monster coming for me.
Paradoxically, I was a staunch atheist and God to me was a silly concept. As a little girl, I loved God so and would write loving journal entries to Him. But over time, I became jaded by domestic abuse and the sting of a difficult and hurtful adolescence that left me chronically anxious, disembodied, depressed, and soul fractured. Despite all of the beauty I was exploring in story and art, I was expressing in shadow and was miserable, arrogant, and dysfunctional. I struggled to make friends outside of our family and felt like an outsider in every circle. I walked around with the distinct feeling that I didn't even exist.
I did believe that everything stemmed from the Big Bang and the beautiful and mysterious Universe, which was more mystical and Goddess-like to me than a judgmental, misogynistic guy in the clouds (That is how I imagined God to be, having been raised Mormon in an oppressively masculine oriented society that dishonored The Mother in every way, including and especially my own mother and my grandmothers on both sides). And so, it was the Universe that continued to inspire everything in my life. I loved cosmology so very much that in High School I had serious plans to become a cosmologist. I aced earth science and figured I could handle physics. It turned out I struggled with math. I couldn't wrap my brain around equations and mathematical concepts. So I did poorly in physics simply because my predominantly creative/visionary/philosophical/story-telling brain didn't jive well with numbers and couldn't retain how to do equations (and weirdly struggled to tell left from right!).
I dropped out of high school my senior year, shortly after my parents divorced and my family fell apart. My elder siblings left the house and went their separate ways. My younger siblings also dropped out of school and forged their own path. The sibling unity I clung to as a safety net amidst tremendous darkness and challenge with critical, dissociative, and neglectful parents was no more.
I ended up in a very unstable situation living with my mom, who at the time was often bed ridden, had undiagnosed bipolar, and was a pain pill addict and a closet alcoholic with a crippling back disability, and my already fragile mental health spiraled. I refused to live with my dad, who had beat my mom down through a series of physical and emotional abuses. My mom felt safer to me, though I felt an unhealthy sense of obligation and attachment to her. That attachment evolved and took an even darker turn as a reverse-role dynamic that followed me too far into my adulthood, well into my 30s. One of my sisters spiraled into a dangerous meth addiction that I struggled with for years as I was gaslit and manipulated while trying to stay close to her and help her.
I was suffering from a classic case of empath syndrome where I over-identified with dysfunctional family members and wanted desperately to save them and form good, strong bonds. I tried my best to hold connection with my family, reach out, ask for love and help. But I was consistently met with dysfunction and harmful relating dynamics that I was too young and unknowledgeable to realize was harming me. I was carrying the weight of healing; wanting to face the situation and heal, but I didn't know how to and I felt locked in harmful patterns and addictions. When all you know is dysfunction, it is your normal and you must slowly acclimate to a functional reality in order to come out of it and understand it is not normal. The recognition of this was not reciprocated. Addictions continued, others chose to ignore the situation, and no responsibility was taken. In my 30s, when my health had taken such a bad turn from all of the stress and lingering trauma, I eventually made the painful decision to cut ties with my family in order to heal myself.
As a young adult in my early 20s, I revisited the concept of God after I moved out on my own, got married, and gave birth to my one and only child. Something about falling deeply and truly in love and then birthing a whole human activated that in me. At the time, I knew I was missing something in my life. I was depressed and poorly navigating excruciating PTSD connected to prolonged childhood trauma, and I was starving for soul. Then I found my first metaphysical teacher, who initiated me on the path of bhakti yoga and taught me about the two-in-Oneness of God as Mother and Father. Perhaps it was my exposure to Sailor Moon and the countless stories I immersed myself in about cosmic love and romance, but my soul was an instant yes. No doubt crept across my mind after kissing the lips of my soul mate and then passing another soul through my womb. I knew God was real and that God was Love, and my pre-Christian-conditioned mind simultaneously loved and feared dancing with the possibility that God was part Mother. A Goddess. Every story I read and created as a teenager suddenly made sense. This was my why.
I went back to college at age 22 as a new mother. I took a challenging astronomy class and aced it. I loved it. Although at the time I was set on a creative path as a fashion designer, cosmology still spoke to me. Only this time, instead of being lured by the science, I was lured by philosophy and mythos...wisdom hidden in stories and woven in archetypes, primarily feminine. I loved to study Vedic cosmology and read beautiful stories about mythical characters from many different cultures. It fascinated me. Gripped me. Held me. As an aspiring designer, it inspired my creations. The moon became my muse with the cosmos as her backdrop. Although I was studying in school 60 hours a week while juggling motherhood and wifing, I made the time to imagine, read, draw, and write. I even wrote a sci-fi/fantasy novel that I finished by the time I graduated, though I did nothing with it. It was important for me just to dream and write.
Fashion Design project titled "Cosmology: From Nothing to Something", inspired by The Red Shift and cosmological theory and mythology
Years passed while I made my way through art school and graduated with high honors. My study of theology and feminine philosophy supported my art and design and my teachers were always impressed with my work, which wove themes of spirituality, magic, cosmology, and moon and earth into my fashion design work.
By the time I left school, I was feeling absolutely listless. Fashion design wasn't doing it for me. Working for God full time was calling me. Painting was calling me. Story was calling me. So I left the fashion field and turned towards developing my esoteric spirituality, writing, and art. Despite never really painting with acrylics (I studied illustration and design, which focused more on drawing vs painting on canvas) I picked up a paint brush, acrylics, and canvases and started painting. Goddesses and mothers and cosmos and earth poured from my paint brush.
My First Acrylic Paintings
I dived deeper into my esoteric studies of The Mother Goddess via Sanatana Dharma by my love for RadhaKrishna and Divine Union. I studied under a kundalini yoga teacher, and then a feminine alchemy teacher. I spontaneously developed the ability to write as a channel, with the Universe dropping wisdom in my mind, guiding me on the path to embodiment and grounding spirit in the physical, teaching me how to heal my nervous system and connect back to Mother Earth. I learned techniques taught in psychology and trauma recovery I had never read about, though I developed a continued interest in; they came straight to me in my mind while meditating and writing, and later I studied the concepts more deeply to assist my trauma recovery. Revelation and teaching on mysteries was revealed to me in states of heightened consciousness while in deep prayer and contemplation. I built a small publishing company and art studio and illustrated several coloring books and journals. I received certification in feminine spiritual well woman ministry.
I eventually flew out the spiritual nest, away from the teachers I allowed to nurture me, realizing how much the Universe was always calling back to me as I called to it. She was calling me back to the beginning; to Her story. After my husband completed his shamanic apprenticeship, I spontaneously had my shamanic sight open and began doing shamanic journey with The Mother. I was initiated as a priestess and got legally ordained as a minister.
As a teenager I wanted to be a cosmologist. And I became one, but not in the way I thought. Rather than studying the science, I've been invited to sit with God in the very beginning...with The Mother and The Dark Womb that birthed everything. I have come full circle from a traumatized little girl who worshipped her mother while watching Star Trek in fascination, to a whole woman devoted to The One Divine Mother who reveals The Cosmos and Mother Nature to me, leaving me in deep moments of awe and wonder. She taught me about moon wisdom, guided me back to cycle rhythm, and helped me get my relationships right with my husband and daughter.
She has pulled me through the Cosmic Doorway and revealed her secrets of life to me. Showed me the birth of her first creations. Invited me to ponder the birth, death, and rebirth of Gods, Goddesses, and creation. Invited me to see her stories, myths, and legends illustrated in particles, atoms, galaxies, stars, planets, rhythms, and cycles. She has revealed to me her mysteries in celestial relationships and quantum mechanics. She has guided me home to Earth, soil, blood, body, and womb. She has taught me how to heal myself and embody her wisdom.
She has shown me the mystery of The Cosmic Rhythm by inviting me to play with a giant snake that gifted me The Helm of Knowledge after I guessed his name right. She has thrown me deep in the primordial waters to play with mermaids and sent me on mission to clean up a cosmic spider nest in an island cave, where She dwells as Lalita Devi. All of this taught me some things about space and time that I've seen echoed in scientific explanations, though I could barely wrap my brain around those complex scientific things. I had already been attuned to the language of soul; of mythos and archetype, and the materialist version of science became boring and stagnant along the way. I craved wisdom in myth and story: in representation. It made sense; mystical philosophy and natural truth hidden in story. Particles and Force consciously engaging with me, sharing with me their story via personification. The Universe was alive, conscious and always communicating with me through Cosmic rays and starlight and through the void and darkness in between, becoming deeply personal and taking familiar forms in nature, the earth around me, and archetypal interaction. Visions unfolded in my mind’s eye, telling me through feeling and inner knowing everything I needed to know. And that seemed more nourishing and life giving than dry explanations divorced from Spirit of how the universe operated.
In my studies of the Universe operating in a very fringe method of study, I have discovered many things for myself that have given me tremendous satisfaction and opened the door to artistic expression I could only ever dream of as a girl. And, wow, do I have so much more to discover. To learn, to feel, to heal, and to know. To be inspired, awakened, activated by. I'm working in a realm undiscovered by most scientists but known to many mystics, Rabbis, shamans, artists, story tellers, musicians, medicine people, and yogis. And I'm so happy to be able to realize my childhood dream of becoming a cosmologist in the most soul satisfying way that has fed me as an artist and a storyteller; as a mystic through the portal of dreamtime, communing with The Womb of The Universe.