Remember Maren? The lovable kooky psychic with the Snoopy blanket and the cat on the stove? The one who told me my brother needed to learn forgiveness? Well, my three-card Tarot spread from that session with her was a real doozy. The first was the Ace of Swords.  According to Maren, this is an offering for me to release something emotionally, and since the sword is in the shape of a cross, her intuitive message was that I need to release my religious trauma.  At the time I felt very, Nah I’m good. That is my badge of honor. Just before my brother died my religious trauma began resurfacing in very triggering ways in a way it hadn’t for a decade.  

My best friend who was always my little Buddhist-surfer-chick-philosophical-thinker had begun attending their local Christian church. Her Christmas card that year changed from Happy Holidays to Merry Christmas, and I felt as if this was a personal affront to me. 

My younger and beloved sister, my sissy, is my person. I tell her often that without a doubt our souls signed up to do this life together in support of one another. We both broke the cycle together despite all odds. She had begun attending a local Christian church and she was all in quickly. It terrified me. I felt almost immediately that our close relationship could never be the same if she continued down this path. She could feel my trepidation which boiled over into a heated and tearful phone conversation in which we realized we were both simply terrified of losing one other. We both sensed this wall I had built wouldn’t allow us to be our authentic selves with each other. The religious triggers just kept triggering. 

The second of the spread was the Tower card. This very ominous card depicts people leaping head-first from a tower on fire. It is a terrifying visual that represents sudden, disruptive change, upheaval, and revelation. A necessary breakdown of old structures that no longer serve you. Maren tells me everything I know will come crashing and burning to the ground for me to rise anew. Cool. Fun. Great. 

Finally, the beautiful and mystical Moon card which symbolizes what is hidden beneath the surface. Your subconscious inviting you to trust your intuition while navigating uncertainty and hidden truths. Maren tells me together my three-card-spread means I will have a rapid and intense spiritual awakening, and she encourages me to use my psychic intuition on the right time to sail off into cosmic connection with the universe. I nod my head in complete lack of understanding. I didn’t even know what these words meant. Sure, crazy lady. Whatever you say.

Little did I know that raw and unfiltered grief only months later would trigger this “rapid and intense” awakening that Maren so accurately predicted. When I started pulling at the threads, I had no choice but to begin releasing my religious trauma. There really is no other way.  You can’t explore the themes of life and death without brushing up against religious contexts. I had to be able to follow these threads without getting triggered every five fucking seconds. My Ace of Swords came to fruition. Everything I thought I knew about life and death and reality crashed and burned to the ground when my brother died. With each thread I pulled it felt like another mask fell, getting me ever closer each time to my true identity hiding under my good girl performance. My Tower card in action. It was now up to me to decide if I was going to fly off into cosmic connection with the universe. My Moon card. 

After my Tarot spread, Maren had me pull a single and final “Message from Heaven” card. It was a drawing of a child hugging a dog, with the text that said “I am here helping you.” Right as we are looking at the card, Maren notices a red cardinal fly down and land on top of her dog statue in her backyard. Red cardinals are a quintessential sign of a loved one’s spirit. All three of us were crashing out over this.

My friend’s reading was after mine. Our psychic was a bit flustered after my dad’s intense energy; she had to meditate, aka smoke a cigarette. My dad kept popping into my friend’s session, which Maren warned could happen. The highlight being Maren shouting, “Fancy bidet, high flush power!!”. Shit. That one is meant for me.  

That week, I had a fancy bidet-style toilet that broke, and I had a plumber out to fix it. His opinion was that I should get a new Toto toilet because it has the highest flush power on the market, and later add their separate bidet attachment.  What can I say?  Even a girl raised in a trailer house can sit her happy buns on a heated toilet seat and feel like the Queen of England.  

During Maren’s reading she mentioned some of what comes through may not make sense in the moment, but may in the coming days following. You see, time is different on the other side (more on that to come). A few of these were address numbers changing, Superman wearing a cape, and dancing, like when you kick your legs up into the air and click your heels. The next day, every damn one of them came. My vice is the Daily Mail Snapchat story first thing in the morning. I am clicking through the headlines as a full-screen Superman with a flowing cape fills my vision. Some silly story about the latest movie. 

I make a cup of coffee and peer outside my front window to a scene of a man hanging address numbers up on the flip house across the street. Now I am really laying out all my dirty laundry, but my evenings often end with beloved TikTok scrolling.  My algorithm, so perfectly curated for my entertainment, brought me much joy. Between the Daily Mail and the TikTok confessions, you’re probably questioning if this book is for you. I promise I have more depth to come. I am going through my nightly scroll when a video pops up from the cult classic Save the Last Dance. Julia Stiles performing her Juilliard-winning dance, complete with a wee hop and ankle click.

Maren shared many things in my reading that made absolutely no fucking sense to me then.  I am talking zero resonance. Thank god she told me to record our session, or these would have all left my fleeting memory. Let this be a sign to you to record and document your nudges from the universe.  Journal, record voice notes, and keep a phone note of the signs and synchronicities you receive.  Record that psychic session.

She tells me that full body chills and songs in my head upon waking are my soul team sending me an I love you from the other side. She reiterates that I need to stop over-rationalizing these messages I am receiving and to trust them. She informs me that my dad signed up to be my guardian and that he is sorry for the hurt he caused, but there is a bigger picture of lessons that happened for my highest and greatest good. 

She says I need to “vibrate higher” if I want to receive more of these magical signs and synchronicities, and that love is the highest vibration. There are five levels we vibrate on and the higher we vibrate, the more we are able to connect with the other side. Maren shares that a universal shift is causing more and more of humanity to “wake up” because it is having a ripple effect throughout the world, helping to raise the vibration of the earth.

She reveals I am a teacher of life and I am a messenger “who knows” and is meant to pass information along. When I learn something it's essential to go on and teach others. At the time, I laughed out loud. Me? Teach? Yeah right. I taught English for a year in Spain and they placed me with the equivalent of their Kindergarteners. The first day I was left alone with them was a scene straight out of a comedy movie. Children leaping off desks, paper fluttering through the air, shit flying at my head. I had to tearily go ask another teacher for help But here I am, writing this book. Turns out Maren knew something I didn't.

All would be revealed to me in the most tragically, beautiful way in the coming months. The mystical kept finding me whether I was looking or not. Mainly in the form of the beloved character “Snoopy”. My cold, dark, atheist heart began to wonder, what the bloody hell is going on here?  These aren’t just coincidences. There are just too many. I am not talking “my phone is listening to me and now showing me Snoopy” kind of stuff.  I am talking about traveling on a girls' trip, and the tour guide leads us to a little old local woman selling wares wrapped in a Snoopy blanket. I look over at the homeless man on the corner to see that he's wearing Snoopy sweatpants. I am sitting at a sushi bar and the man next to me is on a date with his phone lying face up next to me with a Snoopy background.  To me, walking into a coffee shop in Mexico, and there are Snoopy cookie jars on the counter.  I have countless stories like these. My dad and I began to develop a language across the ether. Our tattered relationship healing with every Snoopy received.  

The universe began piercing my armor. Shit, maybe I am not just going to die, decomposing into fertilizer, never to be thought of again after a generation?  Maybe something unexplainable is happening here—a thin veil between us and them. Even still, I would receive these unexplainable signs, fret over their awesomeness, and then move on to ruminating over whatever menial task I felt needed fretting.