Many energy doctors and shamans share the belief that we are influenced by the ones who preceded us. Just like relationships in life, some of these ancestral connections are stronger than others. They sometimes have a particular interest in a genealogy continuing, although this is not always the case. It is not uncommon for a member of a family to pass away close to the time of a new member being born. Often, these two energies meet in the entry/exit to Earth. This encounter creates an eternal relationship, forming a karmic circle that, similar to a prayer circle, connects and supports that child energetically.
In Chapter 2, we explored ways to identify the impacts of transgenerational trauma on your fertility. Perhaps in that time of reflection, you also discovered the positive influences from your past. Identifying the ancestors with whom you resonate is a powerful foundational step in finding your energetic guides.
Guides are both real and symbolic, and provide energetic counsel and leadership. They are the avatars and expression of the most important aspects of you: your spirit and your life purpose. Certain friends also share a kinship and energetic resonance with us. They, too, serve as guides when we are in crisis or need. Events, especially intense events, bind us together. Much of what we value in our friends and family is their loyalty and partnership in navigating difficult times, as they are occurring and looking back later. Guides provide the same type of loyalty and partnership.
These karmic connections can be carried down through generations, particularly in more traditional cultures, where marriage was often orchestrated to strengthen the bonds of community. Entire religions, like Hinduism and Confucianism, were built around cataloguing and revering karmic connections.
You can also use karmic circles to more deeply understand the major themes of your most resonant connections. Dear friends from childhood with whom you have remained in contact might have entirely different lives and paths, and yet the same things that connected and bound you as children will often be present and apparent in your later years.
Here are some suggestions for creating a map that will help you to identify the karmic connections in your life:
The first and often most difficult step in identifying your divine guidance is trusting your intuition enough to let go of the need to rationally understand messages you might be receiving from the universe and from your guides.
When my client Amy called me for a scheduled consultation, her first words were, “Something led me to you and I just feel we were meant to work together.” She went on to explain that although she had set up this consult months ago, just the week prior her father had handed her a business card. He had recently met an old friend from his company in Vietnam, someone he had not seen in over 40 years. When Amy’s father shared with his old friend his daughter’s difficulties with infertility, the man responded that his daughter was a fertility doctor, and pulled a business card out of his wallet, suggesting the two connect.
These two men had survived a vicious war. They fought together and protected each other. Fifty years later, hundreds of miles away from each other, the card that Amy’s father placed in her hand was mine—given to him by my father.
“We were meant to work together,” she said again. Our fathers had confirmed what she had already been guided toward. When Amy walked into my office for our meeting, I was somewhat taken aback. Her eyes and smile somehow were similar to mine. We looked as if we could be cousins. I felt the importance of acknowledging our connection while also beginning to investigate why Amy was not conceiving.
We began our session with a small prayer of gratitude to our fathers and the ancestral spirits that had kept them both safe. It was a deeply touching moment for both of us, which Amy would later reflect back on as being very important on her path to conception. Reconnecting to prayer was an essential step in her healing.
I have repeatedly witnessed the powerful healing that can take place when you ask for support from your ancestral line, particularly in reproduction. Of course, guides can be found in many forms in addition to those of your ancestors. I learned as a child that God dwelled in all things. I made sense of the concept of the Holy Spirit, one of the three branches of the divinity in Christianity, by imagining that the Holy Spirit worked through humans, animals, and nature to express the messages that God was sending us. In this way, I perceived the energy of the cosmos all around me, especially infusing animals and nature. At times, it felt like I could hear the messages that they each expressed—and I would often turn to the trees, flowers, birds, and sky for comfort, particularly when I was lonely, in pain, and confused.
When I later studied Shintoism and Eastern religions, I discovered that other cultures throughout time also believed that even the smallest of organic and inorganic life on our planet contained the essence of the Divine. In Shintoism, a boulder molded and caressed by time, wind, and water could contain a wise and patient ancient spirit. A similar philosophy has long been at work in North America through the belief and spiritual stewardship of indigenous people. Respect for Mother Earth and Father Sky, as well as all the cycles of life and death on Earth, is crucial to a spiritual practice that believes a binding and eternal energy is at the center of all things.
These days, people seldom look to the guides of Earth and sky for support. We have forgotten that sometimes the best way to answer a question is to ask a tree, a river, a mountain, or a star. Human beings are secretly ashamed, sad, and guilty for the harm that has befallen Earth, and in response we avoid contact with Earth and her messengers. But when all around you is infused with God, then all around you can serve as a guide.
Sometimes we literally need someone to give us permission: permission to act radically, to change our path, to trust in a vision or idea, or to take the time and nourishment needed for healing. Often, the less we trust ourselves, the more we look to others to determine our path. While people in our lives can help in this way, it is truly hard for them to do so without interpreting our needs through their own needs and fears. It has become harder than ever to find people who can simply listen without this filter. A guide is meant to help you along the path, to show you a way, but it is ultimately you who must decide to take it. And, of course, it is you who must also do the walking.
Alice contacted me after five years of trying to conceive. She mapped out a history of unexplained infertility, which was diagnosed at age 34 after three failed IUI cycles and two failed IVF rounds. Now aged 37, she wanted to come to peace with not being a mother. She and I worked to identify the possible blocks that might be getting in the way of pregnancy, but every step of the way, I found that Alice was free of the more likely causes of infertility.
She had not experienced insurmountable trauma in this lifetime, and her relationship to the universe, her family, and her partner were all healthy and supportive. She herself was a well-known holistic healer and herbalist who had a powerful spiritual practice that she developed and supported in the painful times of infertility. Her day-today work helped make a difference in the lives of others, and she was passionate and content in her life’s purpose.
“You need an energetic advisory board,” were the first words I said to Alice.
“What’s that?” she responded.
“It’s your hand-selected energy advisers, so to speak, made up of ancestors, your guides here on Earth, and the energetic forces of the universe that have an interest in your destiny.”
Alice was at a critical moment on her path. She was feeling pressured either to use a donor egg or to adopt, but she was overwhelmed and confused as to whether either was right for her. “I used to be certain that I didn’t want to conceive using another woman’s egg—it just never felt right for me—but am I making a mistake?”
Alice had begun to second-guess herself, a common pattern in the fertility journey. Self-doubt can feel like an evil virus in your body, sabotaging everything positive and forward-moving in your life. However, self-doubt has one or two positive qualities. To begin with, feeling doubt means that you are free. The movement and awareness of different emotional and intellectual states—and the free will to sit in one longer than the other, even if it is critical and negative—defines a mind that is expansive and intelligent.
It can be difficult to come to peace with the decision to stop trying to conceive. The current narrative encourages people to continue to try no matter what, to never give up hope, and to persist through infertility like a warrior. Alice wanted to stop the fight but needed support and confirmation that it was okay to do so. As her friends, family, and medical team continued to encourage her to keep trying to conceive or to adopt, the reality was she wanted to stop but felt that she couldn’t say so. In times like these, when you need to turn doubt into assurance and action but have little to no support from your community, you can look to your guides for assistance. Alice needed support from her higher self, not the world.
We set out to connect with and establish her energetic council. I first led Alice through a ritual that I call Council of Emotions, a meditation that clarifies the dominant emotions influencing the situation at hand. Many cultures have a practice of a council of elders who could be consulted for wisdom when the tribe was at a crossroads. In my expansion of this ritual, I suggested Alice envision the people who might embody her council of emotions. I had her name, draw, and describe in detail what each council member looked and felt like. She drafted a team of six, two of whom she described as being her head ancestral guides, who had been with her throughout her life. She began to honor each of their memories with simple rituals of acknowledgment, like an offering of fruit or incense. And each time Alice felt overwhelmed and confused as to how she should proceed with her fertility, she would talk to her council for advice.
I asked Alice to start the practice of automatic writing as she talked to her guides. Automatic writing involves stream-of-consciousness writing that uses free association rather than rational thought; it’s a common magical practice and a way to commune with and receive guidance from our higher self and guides, while bypassing the part of the mind that might wish to control our narrative. Automatic writing can also be used to express your unconscious thoughts and emotions, serving as a conduit by which vital messages can be delivered to you.
One morning, Alice’s scheduled call was delayed by a bad storm that knocked out power in her hometown. We rescheduled for the following day. The next morning, Alice called with a very calm and centered energy. I felt that something had dramatically shifted in her being. She went on to explain that she had received “a clear message from Grandmother energy.”
Grandmother and Grandfather energy are terms that describe deeply loving and supportive ancestral energy; some tribal practices acquaint these forces with the eternal masculine and feminine energies of the cosmos.
“I was sitting in my bedroom early yesterday morning, listening to the rain and doing the automatic writing process that you suggested,” she explained. “I just lit a candle when I felt moved to ask my great-great-grandmother to show me a sign as to what I should do. I told her that whatever she said was how I would proceed, and that I would put my full faith and trust in her council.”
Alice’s great-great-grandmother was one of the two major guides she had previously identified. “I began to write over and over again the sentence, ‘Let it go and it will happen by the light of the waning crescent moon. Let it go and it will happen by the light of the waning crescent moon.’ And at that exact moment, the power went out from the storm. But I had already lit the candle, so even though all else around me was dark, I could still see the words.”
I worked with Alice for another two sessions until her trust, belief, and boundaries were fully established and secure. She was no longer subject to other people’s opinions about her fertility. I concluded our work by writing in an e-mail, “When you have the protection of the cosmic grandmothers on your team, you have personal access to the wisdom and security of the universe. It’s like being able to use the backdoor of the universal temple, the door that leads directly to the kitchen table where your grandmother sits, while many others have to wait for someone to answer the doorbell.”
The message, Let it go and it will happen by the light of the waning crescent moon, comforted Alice and gave her permission to let go of extensive fertility treatments. It might not have made sense to anyone else—but for Alice, it was radical. My work with her was always specifically about getting out of the way of her access and belief in her own intuition and desire. While there were several times when she looked to me for confirmation that there was a baby spirit connected to her, from the beginning I decided not to share the energetic information I perceived about her future children. It would not have helped her healing process. The injury that occurred to Alice through failed fertility treatments was an injury to her relationship to self and to the universe. Had I filled the role of guide, Alice would never have been given the opportunity to remember that she herself had this divine access, and that she had only forgotten how to trust in it and in her higher self.
Alice wrote a powerful letter to her friends and family explaining she no longer wanted anyone’s advice on her fertility. She acknowledged she had needed their support and advice before, and that she was grateful for all the time, love, and financial support they had provided—but that the issue of her fertility was no longer to be discussed. There was some pushback, but for Alice the sovereign act of pulling back all of the energetic cords that she had woven as a result of self-doubt and fear was the final step in healing.
Years passed and I sometimes meditated on Alice, as I do with all the gorgeous souls I have worked with over the years. I remembered the automatic writing quote that she had found so much comfort in and wondered what her grandmother guide had meant by it. I often experience through the energetic fabric of the universe the synchronicity of thinking about a client and then being contacted by them, even after many years have passed. So I was pleasantly not surprised to receive an e-mail from Alice the next week.
“Seven years have passed,” she wrote, “and I can’t tell you how much our work together changed everything for me. I had not realized, back then, how much of my power I had given away. I stopped trying, didn’t adopt, focused on life and love . . . but I wanted to tell you that I finally understand the message. I’m eight months pregnant.”
I began to sob as I understood the beauty and wisdom of what her guides had told her. The end of the menstrual cycle can be as erratic as when it began in adolescence—and often, the two reflect each other. Cycles that start off irregular, heavy, and long will oftentimes end the same way. I look to menarche, or the onset of the menstrual cycle, when I work with perimenopause. Specifically, the hormones LH and FSH fluctuate in relation to estrogen; sometimes, this fluctuation will strongly stimulate ovulation, even as the systems are beginning to shut down. Alice had entered these waning years of her moon cycle at age 45, and her body—which had not responded to reproductive medicine—surprised her with the perfect storm of hormonal catalyst and the opportunity to conceive.
Of course, Alice had to trust in her intuition and guides, and there was no guarantee that simply letting go would result in future fertility, but the healing and return to self that happened along the way was worth the sacrifice of certainty. A few months later, I received a baby announcement from Alice. Her daughter was a redheaded beauty, who, as Alice explained in the card, was named after her great-great-grandmother.
Many cultures have a practice of consulting with a council of elders for wisdom when the tribe is at a crossroads. To help you connect with your ancestors and energetic guides, I suggest that you imagine gathering your emotions around a symbolic fire. Let each emotion have a place of equality. Speak first from the emotion that feels most comfortable, while taking note of how much time you allot for this emotion to express itself, as well as how your body feels and looks as you visualize.
Now, make your way around the council of emotions, providing equal space and time for each aspect to express itself. Pay particular attention to the emotions that you would prefer to skip or the ones that get interrupted by your more dominant and comfortable “attendees.” You can expand the exercise to envision the people who might embody this council of emotions. Create avatars for each emotion. Be specific by giving them names, and draw and describe in detail what each council member looks and feels like.
As children, we are all magical manifestors capable of spinning imagination into reality through games, art, and play. I often feel that we discredit the wisdom and intelligence of children, most likely in an effort to protect them from our fears and traumas. Children are very open channels, and they are capable of accessing their spirit guides very easily.
Imaginary friends are often spirit guides that fill the energetic roles of protectors and playmates during important periods of spiritual and mental development. The most powerful and soul-connected of your guides are the imaginary friends who are with you in this lifetime and beyond. They never leave your side, and even if you haven’t spoken in ages, they will always, always pick up the phone when you reach out.
After the birth of my daughter, I experienced what I now describe as a spiritual civil war. Raising a small child in New York City is physically and emotionally demanding, and because my work also includes the psychic and physical care of my patients, I was left with little in my own personal reserves, despite my best self-care efforts. What I had done before to care for myself, including how I had exercised and nourished myself with food and the psychological and spiritual tools I had cultivated, no longer worked. The transition to becoming a mother had forced me, as it does all new parents, into an identity crisis. All of the armor that I had built during my earlier life to defend my sensitive soul was no longer of any use. I was flooded by waves and waves of psychic and energetic information, and there were times when I could not differentiate between what was mine and what was someone else’s. I felt ungrounded and unsure of myself.
One of the first questions I learned to ask as a practicing intuitive was if what I was feeling was mine, or if it was someone else’s. During this time, I could not tell the two apart. Few people speak of how the first few years of a child’s life are some of the most difficult for an empathic parent. As an empath, you are often extremely aware of the needs of the other—and a child is the greatest representation of the other. To this day, I bow down to my daughter for teaching me, finally, what it means to construct the boundaries of self. The beauty is that in this vulnerable period, you can realign with your soul purpose, as well as the radiant truth of what it is to be alive. But you can just as easily be frayed and exhausted by the face-to-face conversations that occur: namely, between you, God, and the meaning of being alive.
It was during this period of personal reconstruction, after my spiritual civil war, that I returned to a practice of connecting with and trusting my guides. I had forgotten to ask for support. But I learned that I could return to the guides I had found in childhood—the angels and healing forces of light—as well as those I met during my travels and studies with shamans in the American Southwest. I had ignored an entire team of guidance.
As a young child, I attended a church camp in the mountains of New Mexico. During a family outing to Santa Fe, I wandered into a store that sold magical figures from world religions, as well as the spiritual tools of local tribe members. I was in awe of the magical devices and powerful symbols, and although I had been taught to distrust and not participate in this type of “occult” material, I felt completely at home and alive. I picked out a small silver pendant of a bear with what looked like a bolt of lightning carved into it. The clerk explained to me that this was a medicine bear made by a local Navajo jeweler, and that it granted healing powers to whomever wore it. He said bears were great healers and symbols of strength because they continue to fight even after they have been hurt. My sister Jenny helped me pay for it, and we left the store to find my family. My older brother Jim had also purchased something at the store, a statue of a Hindu god. My parents were so angry at him for buying an idol of an unknown deity, which they would later make him throw away into the forest, that they didn’t notice the bear medicine around my neck. Later, when they asked me where it came from, I lied and said it was from the church gift shop.
Years later I asked my brother about this event, and he told me that he had secretly pocketed the small statue and only pretended to throw it away. I laughed, thinking about how he and I were certainly from the same “clan.” To this day, I wear bear medicine protection and honor the spirit and signs of its energy. I have also had several run-ins with bears over the years, but none as powerful as my first.
Just as we look to ancestral guides to show us the way, we can also look to the animal and plant spirits of Earth to be our guides. I have had many encounters with animals that I consider to be important events in my own healing. On the drive years ago, when I first recognized and connected to the spirit of my daughter in the West Texas desert, I also discovered one of my personal animal spirits: the raven. On a long hike alone through Big Bend National Park, I sat down to rest next to a tinaja, a type of watering hole in the desert. Tinajas tend to be very sacred sites because they provide the substance of life, water, in an otherwise harsh environment. They are often also burial grounds for animals that fall in and, unable to climb out, die. It was at this tinaja that I first noticed the call of the raven.
“You are a beautiful soul,” I said out loud as I snapped a photograph. Something in that moment helped me to feel supported and loved by the universe and the earth. In indigenous spirituality, the raven represents the power of magic, mysticism, and healing. It seemed that it had purposely signed on to watch my back that day. I am almost always in proximity to ravens, so much so that I have grown to take it for granted that wherever I am, ravens will also be there. I have always kept the photo of my first contact with Raven on my altar and still call on this guide to help me in my healing work.
You don’t have to be in direct contact with animals to have them on your team, but often, once you do, they will manifest in your life, whether literally or symbolically. Guides play an important role in keeping you on your spiritual path. Imagine the old cartoon depiction of an angel and a devil sitting on opposite shoulders, debating what to do next. Guides serve such a purpose in our lives, directing us to the path that our higher self must take. They have the power to step in and push you back on track. Such was true for me.
In my early 20s, I was second-guessing my path as a healer. I already knew that I wanted to become a holistic doctor, but I was terrified and besieged by self-doubt. I had the map in my hand but was afraid to take the first steps: moving away from socially accepted Western medicine to the more obscure path of alternative medicine. I had learned from a shaman at age 17 that when overcome with self-doubt, a journey alone to the wilderness will set the stage for you to find clarity and confidence. So I packed up my camping gear and drove west. About halfway through the six-hour drive, I began to feel feverish. By the time I got to the national park and set up camp, I was fully in the throes of a violent and intense flu.
The best I could do was boil water for tea and wrap myself tightly in extra clothing to warm my shaking body. It was nighttime by then, and I decided to sleep there because the nearest town was more than an hour away and the park store was closed. “I wish I knew a medicine that could be used to heal in situations like these,” I said to myself. “There must be something else to do or take besides prescriptions from the grocery store.”
Of course, I had already found the answer to this question in the brilliance of acupuncture and holistic medicine, but for the first time, I understood its true necessity. The fever grew and grew, and the cold desert floor seeped into my tent and sleeping bag. In my delirium, I brought my tea and a bottle of honey, my only medicine to soothe my symptoms, into my tent, a dangerous thing to do when camping in the wild. After tossing and turning for hours, I fell asleep, only to awaken in the dead of night to the sound of a large animal rooting around my campsite. I knew instantly that it was a bear.
Realizing my mistake in bringing the honey inside, I froze in fear as I heard the muffled sound of the bear’s breath at my tent door. I could have sat up, turned on the lights, and made noise to scare it away—but I was weak and exhausted from fever . . . so I prayed instead. I told the bear how much I appreciated the visit and how thankful I was that he was watching over me. I asked him to let me rest and to leave my site so I could heal. “If you can do this, I’ll never question my path as a healer again.”
After several more minutes, the bear disappeared, and while I remained terrified, I heard its message and committed to my path. Once dawn broke, I zipped open my tent to find the site totally wrecked. My camp stove was on the ground and my kitchen utensils were spread around everywhere. A ranger came by to say that a bear had been reported last night.
“I know,” I said. Although still very unwell, I stayed another day to sleep and recover. I drove back to Austin, Texas, that Sunday and without hesitation woke up on Monday morning, drove to the AOMA at Austin’s Graduate School of Integrative Medicine, filled out an application, and paid the deposit.
Bear medicine is strong medicine—it does not mess around.
Our fears can keep us from taking the next steps along our path, but as my brilliant husband says, “You can’t outrun your destiny.”
Your guides are powerful ambassadors of your citizenship as a spiritual being. It is miraculous to consider all of the events of the past that contributed to each of us being born. A grand orchestration of people, places, and timing all had to fall into place for you to be conceived. Each ancestor, and their struggle to live out their destiny, is embodied in you. Each element that it takes to make up life on Earth can be found in your body.
I have yet to work with a person who did not have any guides, but many people are afraid to connect and speak to theirs. Zoe set up a session to get more clarity on whether she should have a child. She felt that many factors were keeping her from finding love and starting a family, but she longed for both. Something had injured Zoe’s original connection to the universe. I could sense her distrust and skepticism, even through her sincere desire to heal and have a child.
Zoe recalled a memory of being conceived with a twin that died in utero. She told me that she felt a part of her melancholy came from never having healed from the loss of this original sibling. “Perhaps that is who you are longing for now,” I said. “Maybe that is the spirit that is knocking on your door. I want you to close your eyes and ask this spirit a question. Any question will do, like how is the weather, even.”
Zoe’s energy shifted, and she began to cry hysterically. While she felt 100 percent comfortable with my contacting and communicating with the spirit of her child, she herself felt blocked and unable to do the same. After several minutes of gut-wrenching sobs, she began to gather herself and speak. “I have so much belief in spirit and God, but I don’t feel worthy or capable of direct communication.”
Zoe’s grandmother, who had raised her, had recently passed away, so I asked Zoe to start a journal of letters to her grandmother, as well as to the spirit of her child/children. The exercise would safely open the lines of communication and allow Zoe to connect and ask questions independently. I also mentioned that her grandmother would now help her spirit baby to find his way to Earth.
When you hear the whisper of a child’s spirit and are struck by the desire to become a parent, it is easy to forget the influence that your child’s energy is already having on your life. Each child brings a new karma to a family, and the effects of this karma begin before conception. I have seen mountains moved to get two people into the same room to meet and fall in love, in order for a child to be born. When you recognize and communicate with your guides, you display your trust and faith in your child’s spirit and intent to be born. You also open up direct lines of communication for calling your baby home.
Sometimes, one of the easiest ways to connect to your upstairs team and to your future children is to simply write them a letter. I suggest creating a template within a journal or writing e-mails to these spirits. Some of my patients have even created e-mail addresses for their future children and started to write them messages long before they were even conceived. It is a powerful practice of faith, and more often than not brings many emotions to the surface because of its direct nature.
“But what am I supposed to say?” is a question I often hear. Here is a list of topics that have proven to be both powerful and healing:
This exercise is one of the most difficult in this book because it brings you face-to-face with any unconscious blocks or fears that might be keeping you from believing you will conceive and have a child. There is an ancient Chinese medicine saying: “The song that cannot be sung out from the heart must be a very sad song, indeed.”
Essentially, the hardest thoughts and emotions to express are the ones we keep closest and most guarded. Beginning the practice of corresponding with the energy of a lost ancestor or a future child will present you with a literal path of expression to those who are most capable of holding space and loving you unconditionally. Remember, there is no shame in asking for help. Begin to set the model that you want your child to live by, even long before your newborn arrives in your arms.
In this chapter, we started to incorporate the work of the prior chapters into a practical system for you to use. The goal of spiritual fertility is to empower you to connect with your intuition and to become its advocate, as well as the advocate of your child’s spirit. Listening and practicing from your intuition can be challenging, and there will be times when you doubt your ability to interpret messages from the universe. There will also be times when you are simply too afraid of a potential answer that you fear even asking the question.
We also spoke about how to set aside the opinions of others—in particular, the ones who are closest and most influential—in exchange for your own wisdom and knowledge. The universe and cosmic timing are on your side, and they show their support to you daily through symbols and synchronicities. When you fall into doubt about your fertility, you need not look far for support. It will be there for you to discover, infused into the day-to-day magic of your life.