I've always had a keen sense of self-awareness and, being a sensitive person by nature, I learned early on to trust my intuition to lead me through this life. That yearning for self-discovery began in the pages of my earliest diary and would translate to my personal blog years later, where I would spend over a decade attempting to figure out who I am and why I’m here and why the world is the way it is (and how to change it for the better).

But that journey of discovery didn’t have a place in Sunday services, where I was encouraged to find all my answers in one book – without instead of within. I felt disconnected. Where I once spoke to angels as a young child, now I felt more confused by my faith than calmed by it. And so, when I was around 12 years old, I renounced my Catholic upbringing. As soon as I was confirmed, and therefore considered old enough to make that decision, I stepped away from the church for good. Catholicism laid the foundation for my beliefs, but I always felt that there was something more, something that religion itself couldn’t provide me.  

 

It was like we were a part of an infinite puzzle, its pieces scattered throughout the universe, and religion held only one piece of it. I wanted the rest of the puzzle. I wanted the big picture. I wanted to know more.
 

Something was waking up inside of me even at that young age – a spark of truth igniting my beliefs – though I didn’t have a name for it. I wanted a name for it. I wanted to find myself, to figure out where I belonged. And so, I began to research other faiths, hoping that one of them would speak to me, that I would have that “a-ha!” moment and the rest of the puzzle would fall into place.

 

The problem was that all of them spoke to me.

 

And instead of belonging somewhere, I felt like I belonged everywhere.
 

The more I studied, the more I realized that my beliefs weren’t founded in religion. At least, not in any one religion, and certainly not one I could name. The fundamentals of what I believed, however  – what felt true beyond my cognitive understanding – crossed those boundaries: life comes from a source. Some call it God. Some call it the Universe. Others call it the Supreme Being. Whatever its name, its source is love. Love. Love and learning, I began to believe, was life’s purpose, and so it became my purpose.

 

When I was in the 9th grade (give or take a year), I read a quote from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man in which it was summed up: “my country is the world and my religion is to do good.” Those words resonated with me like nothing else. We’re not divided, I finally understood. We’re all the same. Just be good – to yourself and to each other.

 

Simple. Honest. Maybe it didn’t have to be so complicated, I thought to myself. Maybe it really was as simple as knowing that we’re all on this planet together. Maybe it’s as easy as being a good person. It made more sense than anything else I’d read or studied. Religion was too confining for me, too structured. There were too many unanswered questions, and I couldn’t accept that faith meant being led blindly when we have the capability of seeing for ourselves.

 

Why can’t we have the answers to our questions? I began to wonder. Who’s to say that what’s written in a book is the be-all, end-all, when so much can be lost to translation, interpretation, and time itself? Why can’t we fill in the missing pieces for ourselves?

 

Faith, I began to see, was about trusting your own truth.
 

On this spiritual journey--after decades of awakenings, studies, and being launched on the ascension journey upon reuniting with a soul connection, I’ve discovered mine.

 

They say that when you’re in the beginning or middle of a spiritual awakening, you feel like you’re lost and alone in a desert. They say you can’t see the light until you’ve been among the darkness. 

 

I climbed and crawled my way through the darkness...

 

And now it's my soul purpose to help light the path and empower others through theirs.