Psychic Opening as a Teenager

I remember when my clairsentience and psychic gifts first opened, and it was scary. I was 15. The first time I channeled soul language, it had been opened through collapsing into a puddled surrender… A fear around sensing spirits had transitioned to a puffed-up inner ego fight to an exhausted yet deeply faithful ask for assistance. I sat on my knees, hair in face, in the middle of a tree-encircled cul-de-sac in the New England hot summer night, in the pitch black.

For months, I had been hearing noises at night. A rustling in the trees that followed me when I walked and stopped when I stopped. I could feel the energy of a being following me around, trying to get my attention, and it was working. After brushing it off the first few times, ducking into my mom's house quickly, the next few times, going out with floodlights and pitchforks with my middle school friend, to find nothing. It only came when I was alone. Hearing something no one else around me could hear. Sensing things unnoticed by others.

One night, walking back from the stream and woods down the road where I played and found peace, burrowed into forest pockets... that rustling noise... was back... I was confused, scared, and a bit angry - and I got impatient with it... I stopped to turn directly towards its direction, filling myself with energy, challenging and questioning it. Feeling itself recognized, it rushed at me. Full speed. I panicked. My heart jumped into my throat; I had never run that fast in my life. Down the road, across the yard, through the door, and into my room. It was a month that I didn’t go outside at night alone. The first couple of times I did, I felt fine, maybe it was okay. And then one night there it was again - a rustling, taunting me - making noise within the bushes but no footprints on the ground, no snapped twigs or leaves. Just... hovering, while making noise. I lost it. I spun into anger and defense. My 15-year-old self started yelling into the bushes around my childhood home, “GO AWAY!” “You have no power over me!” “I am not afraid of you!” “GO!” I yelled and ran, and tears streamed down my face. I needed to not be afraid; the amount of energy moving through me was overwhelming. A fire burned in my solar plexus, and my eyes felt hot. I stormed my way all the way back to the cul-de-sac where the energy had rushed at me, facing the place I had fled.

My anger at feeling overwhelmed by sensing this spirit collapsed inward into a fallen heap of despair, confusion, and plea. I opened my mouth to cry, and out came a long, powerful stream of a language I had never heard before. I had no thoughts, just pure emotion, as my energy pillared up to the sky and down into the earth. My desperation bled out into relief through an emotional wave I had never felt before. The sounds, the "words," were still flowing through as my tears hit the black pavement beneath me.

I cracked my eyes open, remembering where I was, seeing almost nothing in the pitch black other than the black-blue circle of trees above me. The energy being was gone. My eyes were dry. I slowly, shakily, hobbled back to my house. The being, the rustling in the bushes, didn’t come back. Well, at least not until 14 years later, when I was 27 years old in the forest at night with a one-year-old son… but that is a story for another time. (Spoiler alert: the key to transforming darkness, internal or external, is quite simple. It’s love.)

I was shell-shocked for a few days, my boyfriend confused. I tried to explain what had happened and only received blank, concerned stares back. I didn’t tell anyone else after the first two. No one was there to provide any sort of explanation or guidance. No village elder or medicine person who could feel spirits. The closest thing I found was my friend's evangelical church, where I could sense they also felt and channeled energy, conducted healings, and spoke words that were not words. Though everything moving through them contributed to “God,” anything else sensed outside of us was labeled from “the devil.” This didn't feel like complete truth to my core. And while I witnessed and felt the healing energy moving through the group at times, there was a sense of disembodiment and disempowerment, and a fallback on something “else.” I could directly sense as a teenager that this power was coming not only through spirit but emanating FROM these people. I tried to start open-ended conversations or ask challenging questions and only received more blank stares.

I didn’t find anyone else who could feel what I could feel until over a decade later. I was left without any mentorship, guidance, or even compassion for this aspect of my life at this time. New Age Spirituality was not a thing yet, and I had no cultural elders in my community. I stopped asking people questions about energy and spirits and dove into nature, science, math, quantum physics, and books instead. I secluded myself in nature where the birds understood me, the waters cleansed me, and the ancient texts breathed something similar to understanding.

After I jumped through all the scientific hoops of grad school to try to save the biosphere and my “big girl profession” through science (which was awesome, and I am glad I did that. I love research and nature nerding out), I had a kundalini awakening at 25 and sought to unify my scientific and spiritual self. I was blessed to receive over a decade of deeply meaningful mentorship in Hawaiian Lifeways, Ritual, Ceremony, Land Reciprocity, and Communion with the Unseen World from my mentors Kekuhi, Khadija, Keoni, and Robin. Now, after that decade of training, perspectives, feedback, direct confirmational experiences, and soul kin who have similar sensitivities, I understand what was happening and why. What the lessons were. What the timing was for. The divine joke, gift, and time-bending healing in it all. I get it now. But I didn’t then. When I was a teenager, I had no one, and nobody had any clue what I was talking about. And I wish there had been community members to guide me at that transformative juncture in my life.

I still remember the image of the circle of black-blue trees in the night sky above me. And it's an image that comes to my mind when I am facing an internal fear, yet know that I am not alone, and that the ancestors, my soul kin, Akua, and my internal guidance system have

everything it needs to navigate any darkness or blinding light.