On the teachers I didn’t choose

Some of my greatest teachers have not been people. They’ve been states. Disruptions. Interruptions to life and how I was living it.

A few of those teachers -

Depression.
Concussion.
And, most recently, anaesthesia.

Not exactly the mentors you probably thought they’d be, but honestly, all of them have one thing in common here: a deepening of my clairsentience (and other clairs) and ways of working with my heightened sensitivity in this world rather than be afraid of it.

Depression and anxiety have never been permanent residents in my life, but they are familiar enough that I recognise their knock. They tend to arrive during hormonal thresholds: puberty, postpartum, and now again as I move through perimenopause. Times that already ask a woman to transform - nbd.

Until sleep frays too far off, it’s usually a slow dimming. A heaviness, overcast forecast. And yet, what has surprised me, every. single. time… is that underneath it all you’re not just adjusting, but transforming.

The best language I’ve found for it is this: it’s not a software update. It’s a completely new operating system trying to come online. (Look at me using a tech analogy, who is she?!)

Like with all growth, that process is disorienting. Because the old ways of coping, performing, pushing through - they don’t work anymore. The identity that carried you here can’t and won’t carry you forward. This has never been SO powerful as during perimenopause.

As much as I feel NOT me, I feel Her more clearly now than I ever have. There’s a version of me emerging who is more anchored in truth. She is bolder. She stands differently - like she understands she can’t shrink anymore.

***
The big event that propelled me to start studying and practicing Reiki. A show-stopping concussion.

And then another, unexpectedly, in 2023.

Concussions are life altering. And so completely isolating. People see you. You look fine. But inside, you’re upside down. It was the first time I sustained something where I stopped everything and heeded the advice. My mantra, “we don’t f@^k with the brain.” To this day, I can’t rely on my brain in the same way I once did. It’s still sharp, still capable, still one of my greatest assets… but it’s also more fallible now. Less absolute. More human.

And that created space for other forms of intelligence to start to rise. Intuition. Sensation. A deeper kind of listening.

I don’t always have the words for what I know now - but I trust it more than I trust logic.

***

And, most recently, entered by newest teacher: general anaesthesia (wish I was kidding).

My previous experience with it had left a mark - one my body remembered vividly and scared me more than the surgery itself.

Before the procedure, my intuitive told me to keep my journal nearby. “There might be downloads,” she said. I smiled, half skeptical. But I also knew she wasn’t wrong. I’ve been feeling more and more in tune these past 10 years but the hours of meditation leading up to my surgery were revealing in ways I knew would be profound.

It’s still so new and fresh that the fragments, images, sentences that I was able to jot down don’t fully make sense yet but I know they’re important. As I still unravel their meaning, I know that it created a deeper shift of healing in my body to move through this fear of mine and experience something new instead.

If there is a common thread between these teachers, it’s this:
None of them arrived in a way I would have chosen.
Each of them stripped something away that I had mistaken for stability, identity, or control.

And what’s there now is truer, more connected to something deeper. Experiences that could have broken me, returned me to me.