LETTING GO.
In the early hours of January 1, 2019 I woke with a raging reaction to what I had eaten on NYE. As if there was an indefinite mission to dispel every single bit of anything inside of my digestional tract, all I could do was surrender.
My son and I had spent the evening with my parents and as I crawled through the hallways of the centuries-old farmhouse I grew up in, I wondered “Are they okay?” Surely my mom, my son and step dad were just as sick as me, we all ate the same dinner.
Morning came and I was discovered in the fetal position, severely dehydrated with a tremendous headache. And, the only one in the house in such condition. Everyone else was fine.
A moment of inner knowing said to me: “This isn’t yours.” I didn’t know what that meant.
48 hours later, I was still weak and in bed, we received a call from my stepmom in Georgia, “Your dad is declining, fast. If you want to see him, now is the time.”
Ahhh, this was it. This is the letting go. It’s time for him to release.
My mom, my dear angel, journeyed with me two states south to say goodbye to my Dad. I won’t forget as we pulled out of the driveway of their home in North Carolina, headed down to Georgia, the song “Somewhere over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole synchronistically came on the XM radio. We both cried.
My relationship with my Dad was complex, as is it for a lot of us. After years of doing my own inner child healing, reprogramming and reparenting, I’ve grown into magnetizing love and acceptance.
As a parent myself, I see it full circle in a complete frame.
We are all simply doing our best, and doing what we know.
Which has been a huge motivating factor for me in my personal growth and spiritual development journey – to keep unlearning and continue the return to love and inherent divine source. Always question the status quo, settlement and imposed limitations. Be brave enough to courageously encounter personal transformation as not an option, but a necessity to not only liberate myself from my own conditioned chains but to ensure my son and descendants grow up in the highest frequency of freedom available to them.
We made it to the hospital, my Dad was in Athens, GA in an in-hospice care unit. The last dose of chemotherapy treatment given to him was essentially shutting him down, with Stage 4 bladder cancer, his body was not strong enough to fight anymore. He had to let go. And as “ready” as he was, he actually wasn’t.
THIS IS MORE THAN JUST A MOMENT.
I was in the room with Dad, just me and him. I perched on the side of his bed, holding both his hands. There was a calming presence cloaked over us in the moment, assuring me it was safe to relax. I kept hearing and feeling, “Bring the peace Emily. Bring peace. Bring light.” so I dropped completely in. He was in and out of conscious awakeness, he hadn’t been given any pain medicine yet, in effort to keep him coherent with his family in the last fleeting seconds.
Dad was dropped back in the hydraulic hospital bed, sunken into his body. When his eyes closed, I naturally closed mine. I started to focus my energy and intention on peace, light, love.
Then, the earth shifted.
It felt like a force was crashing into the hospital room, the vibrations were so intense I felt my eyes shaking in their sockets. It felt like the floor was giving out beneath me and I could hear the whistle of a train in my ears. “What the—” I thought internally just as a greater knowing washed over me with:
“Stay. Keep your eyes closed. Stay with him.”
For what seemed like very long minutes I stayed in the moment, completely out of my mind and into the somatic experience of what was happening.
Then all of a sudden Dad gasped and jolted upright, “Ahhhhh- ahh! Ahh. She said, I have to go. Oh my god, I have to go with her. She said it’s time to go. That I have to go with her. She’s a friend.”
I saw light surround my Dad and had an immediate visual of a golden-haired angelic source wrapped in a white robe with gold woven tassels adorning.
“Yes, you get to go with her. It’s safe for you to go. And we’ll all be right here. We want you to go. We love you so much.” I answered.
This wasn’t the first time I have been connected to a soul passing at the end of life. Sometimes it’s been quite pleasant, peaceful, playful even. This experience with my Dad woke me up to realizing there was something greater for me to tap into and into the inquiry of could I serve others with it? How do I channel this with intention and care?
I decided to close/sell my brick and mortar businesses and go all in my online coaching business. I didn’t want to be tied down by physical locations, overhead and a schedule that no longer felt aligned. I wanted to simplify. I wanted to align my gifts completely with what I was doing, get out of the stress of debt, release large monthly overhead and the brick and mortar, public facing, service-based business drama. I spent all of 2019 mapping out my next moves and with the help of a couple of coaches, mentors and my own spirit guides whom I got fully connected to, I was able to make some brave moves to change the path of my life.
Through my Dad’s death, I awakened to the power of my mediumship. I knew what I experienced was not “typical” and as I described it to my close circle, my mom was actually the first one to normalize it – relating with her own experiences. Of course, that makes sense, we both have the gift.
It wasn’t until last summer 2021, when I had a specifically traumatic and triggering vision of a violent death of someone I seemingly didn’t know, that I knew something deeper was here to be explored. I needed boundaries and a greater understanding to why I was receiving intuitive hits and pings just as or right before something happens (which has become most activated in the current era of gun violence and systemic racism and racially-motivated violent acts against and murders of BIPOC)
I recently met with a spiritual psychic medium who reflected to me that I am a keeper of the light and perhaps part of my mediumship is to help souls transition from this lived experience in life into the next phase of their soul’s journey.
Which brought me right back to my Dad. His death made me realize what I was doing in my business and life wasn’t completely aligned. Witnessing his transition helped me courageously stop doing what I had naturally outgrown and fully say yes to my deepest callings, claim my greatest gift and give it back to the world in service.
Thanks Dad.
Two and a half years later I have the astounding realization that it was in that moment, the shell-shocking hospital room moment, the last moment with my Dad, that he opened the gate to the brave path that I am meant to walk on.
Funny how life works that way.
