Reiki Knocked Me Up
sort of. but also the full moon, karma, and a man in denim-on-denim
This photo was the day after my Reiki 1 attunement. It was 2016. I had recently moved to Cusco, Peru with about $2000 and a quest in my heart to embody my purpose and figure out what the f*ck was wrong with me.
Rewind to 2015. I had a master’s degree in social work, and I was doing meaningful work—facilitating healing circles, piloting refugee-led programs, and bringing restorative justice into public schools. Yet, it felt like I was slamming my body against the walls of institutions that were never designed to hold true healing. Even though it was shifting hearts and minds, even though I was being recognized for it, I was at critical mass on the inside. The alarm bells were sounding. My inner world didn’t match the task at hand, and it was about to blow up. I needed to be emptied. I knew it.
I moved back home with my tail between my legs, in the midst of a brutal five-year initiation. I “woke up” in 2012 and over those years was flooded with traumatic memories, the shock of witnessing my own toxic inherited behaviors, the truth of abuse in my childhood, my dysfunctional family, my inherited narcissistic traits, my dishonesty, and so much more.
My parents pinned me in the middle of their divorce.
My father chased me around the house in a rage, and when I finally spoke my truth, he drove away with a knife and a threat to kill himself.
It was a catastrophic level of awakening to the tyranny of my childhood. How unmoored I’d been my whole life, and the consequences it carried. A life where I wrote in my journal
I’ve been praying and praying out of desperation and the only message I get is to kill myself. on repeat. or try to get murdered
And that’s just the surface.
Somehow, in the midst of this, I also began honing my intuitive gifts. I studied tarot and became adept at readings. I learned to listen to my knowing and integrated it into my social work. I began studying herbalism and folk medicine. As my identity and life disintegrated, it made space for me to integrate truer truths about myself.
But my world still crumbled. Like the Tower in the tarot. I could fall with it or jump to my death. And I did jump as it burned. A Leap of Faith. No need to hang on to the outdated model as it fell to the ground. The collapse of those systems left me ready to shoot up into a new paradigm, a new body, a new relationship with life. That’s when I moved to Peru.
I’d never even considered Peru before. I’d traveled Central America extensively, but Peru wasn’t on my radar. And then, like the vortex it is, it drew me in. I found Healing House, an intentional community of healers devoted to the awakening of a new era, and I knew it was destiny. I later learned Cusco is one of the major energy centers of the Earth—a place where wisdom has been held and protected. Many people are drawn there to remember. And in me, something awakened too.
Cusco smelled like a mix of dog poop and mountain air, black mint and pungent rue that adorned the shops and stalls for spiritual protection. It smelled like roasted meats, palo santo, and urine. The color was bright—technicolor. Each morning began with fireworks at dawn for no reason other than to herald daybreak. The air was bracing, close to the sun
Peru isn’t a gentle place. It’s intense. The altitude, the sun, the smells, the vivid fabrics and traditional clothing, the energy. People from all over come to work with ayahuasca, San Pedro, and other visionary ego-dismantling plants. It’s not for the faint of heart. But I craved that intensity (I’m on a different path now, lol, but that’s what I needed then).
Cusco started cleaning me out from the moment I arrived. Emptying me the way I knew I needed. Making space for me to absorb its magic, the wisdom it kept, and much more. My first weeks there were the beginning of the emptying. So much so that at one point found myself at a hospital in Cusco at 3am, holding a Tupperware container of my own shit. Evidence, I guess, that the clearing had already begun.
In Peru, like many, I was drawn to the sacred sites. Many nights I sat at Sacsayhuamán, the massive stone fortress temple that sits above Cusco like a crown. I sat there under the moon, listening to the stone, feeling the hum of history. One night, I got lost there under a full moon. Alone, confronting my own fears in the dark amongst the shadows of spirits and ancestors. I discovered much about myself. A few times a dog would find me and walk me home safely through packs of menacing street dogs that roamed the city at night. Lore is that the dogs are the ancestors of the city.
I chewed coca leaves with mamitas in the markets and listened more than I spoke. The land itself opened me. My gifts began to wake up. My body remembered how to listen. That trip was a communion. A turning point. But it wasn’t my initiation into Incan healing—that came later. What found me in Peru was Reiki.
I attended my first Reiki training desperate for healing. I wanted peace, understanding, signs, answers—something to help me stop repeating the same decisions, choosing the same people, and staying stuck in the mire of suffering. I also wanted to feel legitimate. Like I was allowed to do this work. I was seeking things that made me feel like I had the right to be here, and Reiki was part of that. I wanted to be free. I wanted more power—not over anything, but within myself. I wanted to liberate something inside me.
The attunement came in waves—images, elements, visions. I was stepping into the mother. The woman. Seeing clearly, like a prophecy, all the karmas I’d come to contend with in this next chapter.
That night, after my initiation, I threw up the whole night. I emptied the contents of my stomach, and still more came out. But it wasn’t like being sick. The purge had a knowing. It was a gathering of energy, percolating, building, gathering force. A sense of—oh, this is what’s meant to happen. It’s good. Almost exhilarating. I felt amazing the next day.
I remember collapsing on the cold tile floor in the Sacred Valley where I’d traveled for the training, purging what felt ancient—stuff that wasn’t of me or for me. And in the morning, my eyes were clear. Bright. My skin had a glow. I was not the same. I was pulsating. My aura was radiating light. A beacon. And I couldn’t hide it anymore (although I did let others dim it).
This is me, the next day. Light. Bright. Clearer than ever.
Later that day, I ran into the man who would become my baby’s father. We’d already been dating. I stepped off the bus far from where either of us lived, and there he was. Totally random. We were both wearing denim on denim. We saw each other across the street, like two magnets locking into place. It was a ripple from the wave I felt during the attunement moving through time and space—pulling the next piece into place. My mirror.
We didn’t know it then, but a week later we’d conceive a child. At my apartment in Cusco. A place called Magia de Imasmari—a Quechua word that loosely translates to “the magic of the riddle”. How fitting.
Was it the Reiki that aligned my path? Or the massive carved stone cocks scattered around Cusco? Who’s to say. But Reiki has a way of activating what’s already aligned at the soul level, not the logical one. He was the mirror I needed to look into to see what was next for my growth. And that path, as karmic as it would be, moved me straight into the deepest growth I asked for.
In the months that followed, everything started to shift. My life aligned. Dreams came true—like becoming a professional singer and singing “Santa Baby” in front of an audience at a famous church. (Yes, that was always a dream of mine.) Things began to manifest instantly. Including motherhood. Which turned out to be the exact initiation I didn’t know I’d been calling in. Nothing else could have fast-tracked me like that baby.
Reiki didn’t just help me heal, it cleared the path forward.
It made me more magnetic than I’d ever been.
It drew the right people, places, and lessons to me (woof, the lessons).
It anchored me to the exact healing I came here for.
Since then, I’ve raised an almost-eight-year-old on my own. I’ve grown an integrative healing arts practice from the ground up—one rooted in truth, in devotion, in the long game of transformation. I’ve done more than just provide for myself and my daughter; I’ve built a life that’s in service to something real.
The rest of my Reiki story will have to wait for another essay (or three), but I’ll leave you with this: life is still life. It can be brutal. Beautiful. Boring. Full of ache and awe. But no matter what the day brings, I can lay my hands on myself and return.
To presence.
To peace.
To power.
I walk with a deep, rooted knowing—a tether to myself, to the unseen, to something vast and benevolent that holds me.
Reiki was part of what brought me here. Not the whole path, but a vital piece.
It showed me how to become a channel instead of a sponge.
It gave me a structure that honored my sensitivity and my strength.
It unlocked more of my power, and as a result, more freedom and ability to lead.
And because of what it opened in me, I want to share it. With anyone who’s ready. That’s part of the purpose I found. Part of the alignment. And I’d be honored to offer it to you.
…and a chance to train together is coming up ~
Riveting and so freaking beautiful omg. I love how you tell the stories of your life and that you’re willing to share them ♥️🙌🏻