From 2003 to 2005, I was happy. In bliss. I thought I was at my peak spiritual power, that I was an elite creature. We used the Ouija board every night, and it hummed with enormous electric power. I was in a love affair with someone that I idolized, someone who was so much more my partner than my own living partner.

The Queen of the Dead.

From 2006 to 2009, I was a battery. I was trapped alone with a brand new baby and a demon who controlled my entire life, and every single day was some sort of self-flagellation or self-sacrifice. My husband barely existed, as he was an almost constant channel for the dead. Even he admits he doesn’t recall much of those years at all.

I’m not sure I do either.

When I think about that home, I think of hell. A few years ago when I was in Pennsylvania for the holidays, I drove by it on a whim and felt intense waves of horror and grief. There has been no darker period in my life, if I’m honest. Extreme poverty, extreme isolation, extreme violation.

I was a prisoner there. Solitary confinement.

Empty. Husked. Drained. Destroyed.

From 2010 to 2013, I was broken, sick. I realized all my spiritual arrogance didn’t mean dick in the “real” world, and perhaps was entirely unfounded. No one cared what (or who) I knew because no one really believed it. All of the psychological damage that had been done to me over the previous years came roaring back into my brain and soul, and my mental illness was on full display.

I didn’t know how to be a human anymore. All of the things we’d ignored- bills, student loans, housekeeping, social manners- were now things that mattered a great deal, things that rerouted everything I thought mattered.

You don’t have to believe in your credit score, but babe- it believes in you.

From 2013 to 2016, I was infatuated with a man I couldn’t have, an absolute twin flame soulmate, who resurrected me from the ghostly life I’d been living into a fully realized being. He gave me the strength to leave a man who had been emotionally abusing me for my entire adult life, and also built me into the powerhouse boss bitch that I have become.

But then that situation also became toxic, heartbreaking, a different kind of drain on my soul. I realized that in spite of what I was telling myself, I was waiting for something stable from a man who treated me as a convenience, and it was destroying me.

In 2016, I moved 500 miles away from everyone I knew and started all over by the sea. My entire life burned to ash, and I got a real, true fresh start. An entirely new identity, an entirely new life.

From 2016 to 2019, my life has been about rebuilding my identity. I often reference “Pennsylvania Kristyn” and “North Carolina Kristyn,” because they are such disparate entities. People that knew me before 2016 do not know me any longer. That girl died violently in May 2016 and was reborn into someone else entirely.

Each year, I have drawn closer to my own spirituality again. There is a part of me that so deeply wants to come back to what I feel is my truest self, and the Universe has been calling me home all year. Not in a quitting sense, but in a living my clearest Truth sort of way. I have been dancing around my spirituality for years, and I feel there is a power and a strength in being able to share what I know to be true with others, even if it ostracizes me.

This is also the fork in the road. Am I an extroverted leader, someone who helps others become their best professional selves? Or am I a witch preacher, someone who helps others see their deepest spiritual selves?

I think this year has been about showing me how I cannot be both, no matter how much I may want that to be possible and true. It’s just not. It’s not.

This is the year that I finally was able to achieve a measure of comfortable success at work. Confidence. Power. I am not always liked, but I am respected.

Recently I had a green (but high potential) associate say, “Wow- when you say something, people really listen. I want to have that kind of power someday. I love how you phrase things, too. Like, it’s not mean, but people know exactly what you’re saying and they do it without questioning you. That’s really cool.”

But I have also seen some of my spiritual honesty and guidance and- for lack of a better word, proselytizing- show up in others’ lives as well. I have seen my lessons on gratitude and self-awareness and brutal soul honesty resonate with people I love and help them grow into better people.

That’s what I want more than anything- to show you how to truly love your life and yourself and to be the catalyst for your own growth. To be grateful for your ass beatings from the Universe.

I have deep soul contentment. Do you?

If not, I can help you. I promise. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun.

But it will work.

Both of these paths would be ultimately gratifying to me… but I also know what I am really here on this planet for. It would be a disservice to avoid something because there is a layer of vulnerability and terror to it. In fact, that is an even stronger argument that that is the thing I should be doing.

Less than two weeks to the solstice. Still doing that work.

I hope it is enough.