Chapter Five: Wisdom from a Baby Elder, pt I

This chapter was originally published as REIKI on February 2, 2021, just before I entered a publishing paralysis due to the newfound knowledge of a publication ban still being active on my name. What having the publication ban meant is that if I said the wrong thing and upset the wrong people while this ban was still active, I could have landed myself up to two years in prison for telling my story, so it’s a blessing that I initially decided to modify the timeline of this chapter to protect myself, despite the fact that my Crown Attorney had promised me that it would be safe for me to tell my story when the trial was over.

My husband does reassure me, though, that if anything like that did happen, i.e. I wound up with a criminal conviction for trying to help move the needle, he would have waited for me. He also says he would have enjoyed our conjugal visits. Prison fantasy and timeline modifications aside, it was important for me to revisit REIKI and republish it under a different name for two reasons.

The first is because I wanted to finally tell this story with the correct timeline. Allowing this story to be told with the correct dates allows me to home in on something very important that I wasn’t legally able to do back in February of 2021.

The second reason is that even though this is only my first toe dip into my public criticism of the New Age, what makes me most proud of this piece is the humour I was able to infuse into it. So aside from it being an important exposé on the healing industry, it’s really funny, when and where it can be. So this chapter – though it scratches the surface of a very heavy subject matter, is actually written with so much lightness.

And I don’t want that light to get lost in the dense fog that comes from the healing world.

*

This is peaches; a series of essays dedicated to the things I learned while dedicating my life to never being raped again. My name is Maarika Freund, and this is: 

Chapter Five: Wisdom from a Baby Elder, pt. I 

Trigger warning: rape, sexual abuse, spiritual manipulation
*

I want to talk about this spiritual phenomenon called reiki.

But even though this post comes with a healthy dose of skepticism, I’m not here to pooh-pooh reiki. Rather, I’m about to zero in on where the foul odour comes from. And it’s not the patchouli.

I don’t care what you say, and despite how satisfying it can be to make fun of it – patchouli does smell nice. It’s just that it’s often used to cover up something else that smells, you know, less nice.

Because when patchouli is the mask, and you ask: “oh – uh – what’s that smell?” and the answer is “patchouli, maaaaaaan,” it’s hard not to have a relationship with it that’s, you know, skeptical.

If you’re like me, when you finally smelled patchouli on its own for the first time, without another human’s natural body odours in the way, you may have been almost surprised that it actually smells good. And, if I’m being completely honest, I was embarrassed to say that when I smelled it free of any interferences, I actually enjoyed its aroma. But I was so embarrassed about it that I had a hard time admitting this admiration of patchouli to myself.

Because: what did this mean about me!? Who was I if I liked the scent of patchouli?! Was I now destined for some hippie lifestyle, only dating dudes who slept on a futon in their friend’s kitchen while they were waiting for their “band” to “make it”?

No. All it means is that I like the way patchouli smells.

But it’s really hard to enjoy anything that’s nice when the majority of people using said nice thing are only using it to try and hide something that’s less nice.

So, it’s not the patchouli’s fault. The patchouli never hurt anybody. It’s the dink who’s wanking to the sound of their own voice at 4:20 (even though, you know, time is a construct), that’s soiling it for everybody, man.

People, when they let their ego, fear, and greed lead the way, can soil some pretty wonderful things. So, what I’m about to dive into isn’t reiki’s fault. And, what I’m about to talk about also used to embarrass me just as much as liking the smell of patchouli used to.

But I eventually learned that I can like something and not like the way it’s being manipulated. I also learned that I’m not the one who should be embarrassed. But before I talk about why I’m not embarrassed, I think we need to dive into what the heck reiki actually is.

Of all the places on the World Wide Web, Wikipedia is the home to my favourite definition. And, just because it’s a public domain and people can edit it freely, I’ll also clarify that I pulled this definition directly from the website on December 19th, 2022:

Reiki (霊気, /ˈreɪkiː/) is a Japanese form of energy healing, a type of alternative medicine. Reiki practitioners use a technique called palm healing or hands-on healing through which a "universal energy" is said to be transferred through the palms of the practitioner to the patient in order to encourage emotional or physical healing.

And it’s my favourite definition because it comes with a very important warning label:

“There is no proof of the effectiveness of reiki therapy compared to placebo. Studies reporting positive effects have had methodological flaws.”[1]

Do you hear that?! Methodological flaws.

You know how methodological flaws are created? They are created by people!

Now, on the streets, and especially to the non-believers of a spiritual world, reiki is usually described as - and I’m paraphrasing - a New-Age scam in which emotionally broken people get charged a lot of money to have a narcissist who preaches “free love” on social media wave their hands over top of them.

Unfortunately, and especially in North America, both the sincere and street definitions are completely accurate.

And, I’m saying this with only the utmost kindness in my heart - that really pisses me off.

It makes me angry that there are people actively manipulating things intended for good for selfish gains. It really breaks my heart.

But you know what, that’s the current reality of planet Earth.

I have learned through some very serious trial and error that you can never go in expecting people who engage in wicked behaviour to change. Or, even more specifically, we have to always assume that bad, traumatic things are always going to occur on this planet. What can be changed, however, is our collective willingness to put up with it.

What I mean by this is that change happens when you stop tolerating bad behaviour. When this kind of behaviour is tolerated or accepted as something that “just happens,” we actually create a breeding ground for even more of it to occur because we’re actively giving it space to exist.

I want to elaborate on the warning label Wikipedia gave to reiki:

For the love of all things sacred (i.e., YOU), please do not turn to New Age healing techniques as your primary source of healing. Reiki is not a practice that’s backed by modern science, so there is no way to regulate or track who is practicing what. You may be working with a practitioner who does truly care about you, and you may also be experiencing some awesome results. But while you’re healing you have to always put yourself and your best interests first. No matter what your practitioner says or how exhausted you are from the way life has treated you. 

Why I ran to reiki in the first place may resonate.

This may be something that I have to admit to solely on my own for the next couple of decades, as it’s not a glamorous thing to admit to. To admit to being so vulnerable that I was easily manipulated. But there is only so much gaslighting, rape, sexual abuse, and emotional manipulation that someone can endure from childhood to adult life before they completely break.

The desire to pick yourself back up and put the pieces back together should not be something that is seen as a weakness, ever. And a big part of putting the pieces back together means being honest and real about everything. Even the stuff that’s embarrassing to look at. For me, it was that I was a hot mess and that I didn’t have an ounce of self-confidence left. It was not an attractive period within my life, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted to date that person either. The reason I was a hot mess and had no self-confidence, however, is because I couldn’t handle the way it was acceptable to treat someone who was raped, or how it was acceptable to treat someone who didn’t come from the perfect family. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation that I’ll to dive into in a later chapter, but while I don’t think it was my fault for being emotionally disturbed after being forced into countless disturbing situations, I do have look at my choices and the way that I reacted because of what happened to me. I have to do that because it’s a huge part of healing, moving forward, and learning how not to repeat mistakes. And, while I definitely feel like I made a lot of the wrong choices, for example, the one that I’m going to speak about within this chapter, let me just say that the trial and error process in an attempt to choose light while you’re surrounded by darkness takes the strength of one thousand warriors. So just know that if you do find that strength inside of yourself, that strength to do whatever it takes to turn your life around and make it different, know that you’re working with a force that is truly magnificent.

In choosing to tell this story, and actively choosing to risk a lot by doing so, because I both don’t want you to have to make my mistakes, and I want things within the healing industry to change. It’s my opinion that need a new generation of elders, and while I am way too young to even begin to think of referring to myself as one, I’d like to attempt to set a new standard when it comes to the wisdom of healing. So I guess that is all just wisdom from a baby elder. For me, anyway, it’s that I either try to help change things on this planet, or start meditating with a tinfoil hat hoping another intergalactic species takes me home with them.

One thing I allude to in CHAPTER THREE: LION’S HEART is that even before June 21st, 2014, the night that catapulted me into the seven-year hell-rodeo, I desperately needed to transform my life. I had already endured multiple encounters of sexual abuse before the age of 18, and the people who were supposed to be my best friends slut shamed me for it. Sometimes this shaming happened publicly, and sometimes this shaming even happened at work. That deep wound, paired with growing up in a highly abusive household, meant that nearly every decision I made was a trauma response. So my life did really need to be drastically different. Once again, it was that or driving to Area 51 to be beamed up and off of this planet (which also would have been drastically different from the life I had previously known). But while being this committed to forging a new path for myself, I also had no baseline as to what real kindness or empowerment looked or felt like. So, when faced with what I’m about to retell, it made a lot of sense that I gravitated to the New Age with such vigour.

**

One day, back in the early 2010’s, when the world treated things like rape and emotional abuse much differently than they do today, at the end of my shift at what was, at that point in time, one of Toronto’s only vegan restaurants, a colleague told me about this healer who was offering life changing channelled reiki sessions, and that it was only $30 a session for the month of November.

Watching reruns of the X-Files wasn’t giving me the religious experience I was hoping for, so I asked for this healer’s phone number.

Channelled reiki is reiki paired with clairvoyant insight into your life. There is no need to consult Wikipedia on this one; methodologically speaking, there is a lot of room for flaws in channelled reiki. And even though I do sincerely believe that clairvoyant abilities are magnificent gifts that some people truly possess, I think that coming at it with a skeptical lens is absolutely necessary.

Here are some specific questions I think you should always keep in mind:

1.    Is the person you’re working with actually clairvoyant?

2.    If they are clairvoyant, what kind of spirits are they talking to? If someone is a jerk while they’re alive, then they’re probably a jerk in the spirit realm, too, and we don’t really need advice from jerks now, do we?

3.    What kind of mood was the healer in today? Was your session neutral and chill AF? Or did your healer freak out, get defensive or put you down when you asked them questions?

4.    Is the person you’re working with actually good at what they do? Do they have a strong spiritual connection, or do they have a connection like a wifi signal that cuts in and out? And if they have them, who are the people giving them positive reviews?

5.    Is the person you’re working with working with pure intentions? Or are they twisting the messages coming through?

6.    Is the person you’re working with actually clairvoyant?

When I finally got to meet this $30/session for the month of November healer, they told me things that I had never heard before. They were also gentle and kind with me. With the utmost sincerity, I’d never experienced that before. The affection was so wonderful and tasted like some foreign, delicious, alien fruit. To me, it was like something that didn’t belong to this world. And I couldn’t get enough of it.

However, because this new kind of attention was so unfamiliar to me, it didn’t matter that I was paying someone to receive it. All that mattered was that I was finally hearing from someone, anyone, that I wasn’t a total loser for being raped, and that I wasn’t raped because I was a loser. Finally, I was someone special, I mattered, and I didn’t have to constantly prove myself. Finally, my life had some meaning. Finally, my pain served a greater purpose. For the first time I felt seen, and I was receiving the validation I needed from a New Age professional and the spirits that have been watching over me throughout my whole life, too (at least, that’s what the healer told me). I liked this new version of my truth. And I also liked that I didn’t have to take a lawn chair to Nevada to access it.

But because I liked the way it felt so much, it became an addiction, and it took me too long to realize was that I was now in a co-dependent relationship that relied upon my being broken in order to sustain itself.

Before I dive into just how warped everything became, I want to acknowledge that for a time, this relationship was actually a very good thing. So, there was a period of time that I spent with this healer that provided something very positive and important within my life. However, it’s very important to be able to let go of a human being when a chapter has ended. Unfortunately, on this planet, especially when there’s money involved, it’s not something that people are willing to do gracefully.

Another important thing I want to drop in here, is that in the New Age universe, there is an unhealthy obsession with abundance and wealth. While I believe that I am fully deserving of an abundantly wealthy, luxurious life, it’s quite literally nobody’s business – and I mean this literally and figuratively – to capitalize on others while they’re in a vulnerable place. Unfortunately, the New Age has embraced capitalism just as capitalism has embraced the New Age, and our peacefulness has been branded by thousands of agencies as a luxury commodity that we have to work to earn. And that is why I believe that the New Age is really hurting feminism. Because in this dynamic, women aren’t actually helping each other because we’re not allowing each other to heal. Because if we’re actually healed, we’re bad for business.

While I do concur with the fact that healers have every right to run their own businesses and earn wonderful livings sharing their gifts with the world, healers who neglect their core responsibility, which is to care for Souls, aren’t just contributing to the problem – they’re making it worse. And this is where we run into conundrums or, as Wikipedia so perfectly describes them: “methodological flaws.” So even though I desperately needed to hear beautiful things about myself, if I was confident and healed, that would mean I would stop being a regular client, which would mean they would be losing a certain amount of dependable income every month, as November was long over, by this point.

Ever-so-subtly, there was a shift in the type of validation I started receiving from the healer. What went from being overly loving and nurturing turned into something a bit closer to what I was used to receiving. The shift was so gradual that I didn’t even really notice it. And then, this healer did something very clever within our sessions. Knowing how important it was for me to bring meaning to how much I had suffered, this healer started to tell me: “You are destined to be a great healer, like me, sweet one.”

Now, what I actually believe it means to be a “great healer” I will expand on further on in a little bit – and because of what I believe a “great healer” is, I don’t, in present time, have any issues with that piece of their prophecy. The problematic pith of their sales pitch was that it was about me becoming a healer in their image, not in a way that honoured my own truth. Or my own voice. Or the way that I wanted to show up in the world. Instead, I became focused on becoming a “new and improved me,” which reinforced the problem I came in with: that there was something wrong with me.

Now, I know that I have spoken about playing a caricature of myself in Chapters One and Two already, but please remember that I have a Specialist’s Degree in Theatre from the University of Toronto, which means that I am a professional chameleon. So, when the seven-year hell-rodeo began after that fateful night in June of 2014, becoming an entirely new version of myself wasn’t a brand new concept for me, but rather, a necessary survival tactic (that I was very good at) that I learned very early on.

I do have to admit, too, that there were signs that I was fully aware of that this healer didn’t fully have their shit together. Their home always looked a bit like a tornado had just come through it when I arrived for my appointments. But, if I was destined to be a great healer, too, I shouldn’t be judging, right? Because true healers don’t judge. Besides, the chanting monks coming out of their iPod, and the smell of the sage was ultimately comforting.

Lucky for us, I am working with the magical gift of hindsight (it’s like being clairvoyant except it works backwards), so I can tell you that I was very wrong. In this situation, I was using my judgment and not being judgmental. And, there is a very big difference between those two concepts. But sometimes we don’t learn the difference between them, or how to trust our gut, until we experience an obvious deception in real time.

The biggest red flag I decided to ignore, however, happened whenever I asked the question “when” with regards to my becoming a great healer, because the only reply I ever received was: “when it’s time.” So I kept paying for sessions, and the dangling carrot never got any closer.

But then, one day, a couple of weeks after that fateful night in June of 2014, I finally received the message I was waiting for.

Already having this toxic co-dependent relationship in full swing, and desperately trying to piece parts of that horrible evening together, when I received an email for the healer’s Reiki Level 1 training course, it felt like everything was finally falling into place. Especially because, at this point, I was in a relationship with someone who made me feel like I had fabricated the rape story in order to justify cheating on him. But when I got that email, I remember thinking that that rape may have been what needed to happen in order for me to be finally ready to become a great healer. Maybe this is what the healer was referring to every time they said “when it’s time”.

Before I go any further, I want to stop and clarify: I absolutely do not believe this now. I did not come to this planet to get raped a bunch of times, and it wasn’t in some sort of Soul contract that I was supposed to go through this. And, like I mention in CHAPTER THREE, it’s this mentality – that the rape was an experience I should be thankful for – that made me come forward in the first place. I firmly believe that the spiritual rationalization of negative events is one of the most dangerous things happening on planet Earth. Sometimes, bad things just happen, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to it. But in defense of the version of myself who read that email from the healer after she was raped for the very last time, I want to reiterate that the world treated rape, and people who got raped, very differently back then. So, my desperation to rationalize being the victim of an irrational, socially acceptable criminal act was not abnormal. In fact, I know it’s something that a lot of women are still struggling with today, because the pain that comes from the social rejection after being raped is so big and so confusing and all-consuming that it is such a normal thing to want to rationalize your way to an answer that makes logical sense. So, my thirst for this Reiki Level 1 training course makes a lot of sense to me. But just because it makes sense doesn’t mean that this next part of the story doesn’t still break my heart.

Apparently, the healer’s mentor, who was never explicitly named, had given their permission for the healer to begin training people to become healers, too. The world was in a lot of pain, and more people needed to start embodying what it meant to be a light being. If I was receiving this email, it was my calling to step up to the plate.

After a few shifts waiting on tables, I e-transferred my enrollment to the healer, and then immediately bought a new, cool outfit from Winners for the occasion. My costume was a “good vibes only” muscle t-shirt (the kind with its sleeves cut off deep below the armpit), and a pair of leggings with the galaxy was depicted on them. I was so ready to be transformed, or more appropriately, like any professional actor, ready for the kind of role that only shows up once in a lifetime.

When the day finally came, I was sitting in a circle at a yoga studio with twenty-seven other people, prepared for the afternoon that was about to change my life forever.

We were all encouraged to bring an offering for the spirits. These were to be put in the middle of the circle we were sitting in, where they would be blessed by the healer. I brought a hawk feather that I had hand-sewn a handle on to. I really loved this feather a lot, and it held very deep meaning for me. I proudly placed it with the rest of the twenty-seven other talismans and got ready to embrace the next chapter in my life.

When the afternoon began, we were asked to introduce ourselves and state our reasoning behind wanting to become reiki healers. When it was my turn, I both confidently and earnestly said: “because I feel like I have gifts like [the healer], and I want to be able to help people in the same way.”

Without skipping a beat, the healer made a point of putting me down in front of the whole group, making sure that they all knew that they were the master, and I was but a student.

At this point in the story, we absolutely cannot forget that my baseline for selflove and kindness was well below sea level. Actually, it was so far under water that it had drowned and in need of some kind of biblical resurrection. So this comment from the healer hit me really hard. So hard, in fact, that it had the real me burst out of the proverbial basement I had her trapped in. Public humiliation was the slap in the face I needed to finally begin questioning what was actually going on. But I decided to keep my mouth shut and hoped that the feeling would pass.

After our introductions, the healer passed around our sacred booklets, which were photocopied pages held together by a single slanted staple on the top left-hand corner of the paper.

Divine.

We then all took turns reading a single sentence on the history of reiki.

Blest.

Then we learned all of the hand positions and how to not let energy leak all over the place.

…potentially useful.

But – I had a hard time actually taking anything in because of how I was just punished for being confident a couple of hours earlier. I made it through the group training, and finally it was time for us to be initiated into healer-hood.

This is what I had been waiting for.

We were about to be activated in pairs, meaning the lifeforce energy of a healer was going to be awoken within all of us by this healer, and I was chosen to be one of the first to be initiated. To say I was confused by the sequence of events is an understatement. But! I was finally going to become a channel for the lifeforce energy of the universe, which felt pretty dope.

Let’s call the person I went in with Adam. That’s not their actual name, but since we were the first two humans to be initiated ever by this self-proclaimed guru, and since I was in need of a resurrection of biblical magnitude, and because of how the story pans out, I’d like to make the retelling of this inauguration as historically epic as possible.

Adam and I were led to a different corner of the yoga studio where there were two black folding chairs, some rose petals, and a bunch of tealights. It was how I always imagined going to Area 51 would be but this time: with sage.

We were instructed by the healer to sit in a chair and close our eyes. While our eyes were closed, the healer would be invoking spirits with specific sounds and sacred hand gestures. Then, we would feel the healer tap each of our shoulders. When we felt the shoulder taps is when we would be transformed from regular human beings to healers.

The healer also let us know that everyone would experience the transformation differently. Some of us may feel lighter, some of us may feel more grounded, some of us may feel a tingling sensation in our bodies. The healer was looking forward to hearing what kind of bodily sensation we were going to feel, as their first two disciples.

Adam and I closed our eyes.

The healer started making blowing and whistling sounds with their mouth. After about a minute of that, they tapped us on our shoulders and declared, in a deeper version of their own voice: 

“Now you are healers.”

Adam and I opened our eyes and were met with a gaze filled with love and pride from the healer. I couldn’t decipher whether or not they were proud of us or themselves in this moment. But their emotion was palpable.

Adam and I then started to make our way back to the room where the remaining twenty-six people were waiting, and we were send the next set of healers-to-be towards Area-Reiki-1.

On the walk back, Adam, with the utmost sincerity, started talking about the deep energetic transition he felt. Apparently, he now felt like a more grounded, enlightened individual. That something had settled for him in his body and now he felt like he could heal the whole world!

He then asked me what kind of brilliant transformation I had undergone in those less than two minutes.

To that I replied: “Uh, yeah, me too.”

With the utmost sincerity I promise you: nothing happened, man.

A New Age entrepreneur and/or enthusiast could easily argue that because I was already feeling skeptical going into the initiation that I was closed off to the magic of the initiation. If that’s your argument, then I don’t think you fully understand how much I really wanted something to happen. How much I needed something to happen in that moment. How disappointed I was that absolutely nothing happened.

But Adam, who was sitting beside me during the whole thing, really decided that he was a completely changed human being, ready to start healing other people.

I, on the other hand, felt that using the investment on a one-way bus ticket to Nevada, travelling with mason jars filled with my own urine, might have allowed me to experience more of an energetic shift within myself.

But instead of going with my gut, because I had no reason at this point in my life to trust it, even though the real me had escaped from the proverbial basement and was screaming that this event was a total sham… after hearing Adam talk about his experience… and after being raped again so recently… I sunk into the learned belief that there was something really wrong with me. And as I sat there in the yoga studio, watching people leave and come back with oddly serene expressions once they returned from their own initiations, I wondered: was I the only one questioning the validity of the event? And did that mean that I wasn’t ready to be a healer or to help others?

I didn’t say anything about what I was thinking because what was happening seemed to really mean so much to everyone who showed up.

Once everyone was initiated, the healer came in with pre-printed certificates for everyone. Like lonely single people at a wedding during the bouquet toss, everyone raced to the middle of the circle like ravenous wolves to get their spiritual diploma. Needing to get out of there, I quietly took mine and left the building, leaving my feather behind.

After the event, I was well aware that I was in no place to be healing people, and that the spiritual diploma was worthless. But being so broken after the rape, I needed another hit of hearing that I was a good, kind person who didn’t get raped because she was a loser. I was losing friendships, and too emotionally disturbed to take on acting roles. So I booked another session with this healer, not realizing that when I went in that it would be the last.

Because in the session, they were using the feather I left behind at the Reiki Level 1 workshop like it was theirs.

I was so broken that and wasn’t sure how to confront them about my feather. The last time I used my voice in front them I was scolded, and I just needed to receive love and kindness. So, I kept my mouth shut about the feather, even though the real me burst out of the basement again and was screaming: “what the actual fuck?!”

This session, the healer was incredibly kind. But I couldn’t receive this kindness while watching them take my talisman off of their altar to administer a healing for me.

It finally became clear to me, that this healer was stealing from me. And it took them actually taking a physical object from me, an object that held no monetary value, for me to see it.

**

A “great healer”, in my opinion, is anyone who is brave enough to be themselves and commit fully to what it is they truly want to do.

When you work – or better yet – create – from this place, you’re creating from a place of joy and love. When you create from a place of joy and love, the energy that you share with other people is healing. Not just because you’re happy and peaceful, but because you’re a living example that it is possible to keep working towards your dreams, especially since dreams are usually pretty challenging to bring into existence. So there is nothing more magical than encountering someone who is brave enough to find joy in being themself.

The irony about this belief is that it was originally introduced to me by the spiritual life coach I worked with immediately after the channelled reiki healer, and, I’m sure what will be to nobody’s surprise, my relationship journey with her followed more or less the same trajectory. The spiritual life coach just did a much better job, and frighteningly so, when it came to playing the long game, as she was able to get much more out of me. But that’s a story for another chapter. In this case, though, I will say that there are silver linings in everything. It doesn’t mean you need to be grateful for the entire experience, however.

What I find becomes a bit of the regular trajectory for people who start to discover the magic that comes from healing and learning how to love yourself, is that there is a natural desire to keep embracing it, and to dive in more deeply because of how safe and good it can feel to explore one’s own inner world. This is what happened to me over the course of my relationship with the reiki healer. Not only was I eager to stay where it felt safe and good, but scared to move forward because my sense of self-worth was so low, and I was so broken from how people were allowed to treat me after I was raped. This meant that I believed the life of my dreams was now completely out of my reach. I believed what I was forced to live through made me too ruined for what I actually saw for myself. And I fully believed that becoming a healer was my last chance to build out a life in which I was revered for being myself. My last chance to be seen as a smart, vibrant, forward-thinking individual regardless of the rape or other abuse I had lived through. My last chance to live a life in which I was treated like a human being worthy of love.

Regardless of these beliefs, I didn’t start my healing journey so that I could become a healer. I embarked on my healing journey so that I could live the life that I always dreamed of. I wanted to feel safe being myself. While dreams and goals do evolve over time, my desire to be an actor who writes and produces her own work has never left me. I was just so desperate to make sense of my pain and trauma, and so desperately needed to make sense of why terrible things kept happening to me, and I believe this need to understand is a very human condition. So, when I was told the next steps for my own healing journey were for me to become a healer, too, I bought into the multilevel marketing scheme that is, more often than not, New Age healing. I was addicted to the hits of love and kindness that I was getting in session, and I didn’t trust that it could ever be something I wouldn’t have to pay for, or that it could be out there waiting for me in my desired field.

If that healer was doing their job, they would have encouraged me to follow my dreams, not follow in their footsteps. Now might also be the perfect time to reveal that the channelled reiki healer was also a professionally trained actor who didn’t commit to the craft long enough to experience their own big break. So there was another layer to my not being healed that served their benefit, too. Because, if I succeeded when it came to my own dreams and they helped me to do that, then what did it say about their dreams?

Generally speaking, people who are driven to be seen as a guru or “the master” need people to want to follow in their footsteps, both for their egos and their bank accounts. And, if anyone rationalizes giving up on dreams to you, it’s usually because they’re too afraid to go after their own. If I did commit to becoming a “healer” in that “healer’s” image, I would have been very actively lying to myself about what it is that I wanted to do with my life while allowing the rest of it to be determined by my past negative experiences. I so much want for people to heal and find peace within their own lives, but I also want to write, act in, and produce my own work for theatre, film, and television. Who knows, maybe one day I will be working with people one-on-one in some form or another – but what I can tell you with 100% confidence and certainty, is that right now I am not supposed to be waving or placing my hands over top of anyone laying on a table.

I also really don’t want to do it.

If I do something I really don’t want to do, I’m also likely to expect more from my client than the payment that would come from me doing my job, which would be toxic and horrible. And it’s my belief that a lot of practicing healers need to check in with themselves about this.

The world needs more healing presences, not people looking to build a business off of their traumas or traumas of others. And this, to me, is the ultimate methodological flaw.

There are a lot of questionably certified people out there running healing businesses. For instance, potentially any one of the twenty-seven other people who were in that Level 1 training course with me (that is, if they didn’t go and do other training somewhere else later). So not only do I not want to practice reiki, I also recognize that I’m not certified to do it.

I spoke with a friend’s mother who is a certified reiki practitioner a few weeks after I did that training course. To put it very politely, her mother was the opposite of Zen when I told her the whole course lasted an entire afternoon. She was livid with how the practice was being diluted. Apparently, at a minimum, a Level One training needs to be a four-day commitment. Personally, I think is the right reaction when a person’s wellbeing and mental health is on the line. I felt like a real goon during her moment of rage (I definitely prayed for the aliens then, too), but she was right to be pissed off about it. I was just in a place where I was having to heal from my healer, and it was a lot to take in at that particular moment.

There is, unfortunately, no real legal regulations or organizations to hold spiritual practitioners accountable for how they practice, and while I do believe that things need to evolve in order to survive, when things that are supposed to be sacred (you know, like the emotional and mental wellbeing of people), you can’t neglect the responsibility that comes with it. Unfortunately, in Western Culture specifically, this kind of intelligence system isn’t revered, even though we’re becoming painfully aware of how much it’s needed. So that’s why we see so many people deciding to become healers overnight. And whether or not the person is in it for the right or wrong reasons, with the amount of bogus spiritual diplomas floating around, we end up with a lot of unqualified people taking advantage of a dire situation. And because of that, it’s not just the practitioner people stop trusting, it’s the entire practice and the network around it.

And when that happens, people stop wanting to heal. And that’s a very bad thing.

What I do love about reiki (when it’s practiced with pure intentions), is that it’s a wonderful opportunity to receive love from another human being when you might need it the most. While I have a lot of my own pain around having needed to pay to receive love and kindness from another person, on the flip side of it, because I wasn’t used to receiving it, it was something that I needed to practice opening myself up to. In this current world, opening yourself up to love and kindness is not as easy as you’d think. It was, from my experience, incredibly physically uncomfortable because of how unfamiliar it was. But when you’re able to open yourself up to love, regardless of how much you’re hurting, you’re giving yourself more reasons to keep choosing life. You want to be abducted by aliens less. Maybe even not at all, anymore. We need humans on this planet who can usher people back to loving themselves and to trusting that they will be met with love. The health and wellbeing of our emotional centres is crucial to the health and wellbeing of our entire physical body. When we feel good we make better choices for ourselves, and when we make better choices for ourselves we can begin make choices that have a beautiful ripple effect.

Maybe your trauma did actually propel you into becoming a professional healer because it’s truly your calling. If so, that’s wonderful. I’m sure that this planet is so lucky to have you and your gifts. And I mean that sincerely. I just do hope that you’re dedicated to your craft because it’s your calling, and not because you’re looking for validation.

And I know, I talk about my own desire for validation a lot in this podcast – but here’s why I’m not a hypocrite: I’m straight up about it. I’m not running away from it, pretending that it’s not there, or trying to heal people while in denial of how much I just want and need to be loved for who I am. And yes, I do believe that I have a PhD level of experience when it comes to working to eradicate rape culture because I dedicated seven+ years of my life to silently fighting for safety within a very broken system. But like I have said multiple times before, I’m an artist dedicated to making this subject matter more accessible. And maybe this social experiment of running towards the most embarrassing feelings that come from the whole experience will make this subject matter more accessible. Because maybe, just maybe, if I tell my story and do it in a way that doesn’t pretend the ugly, desperate parts of it don’t exist, it’ll help with the healing. Maybe it’ll make people less afraid to heal if I’m this honest about how desperately I want to feel love.

Opening up about what I’ve been through, though, does open up a risk factor for me that I want to address right now.

Being subjected to New Age manipulation is not generally something that gets met with a lot of empathy. I have heard things like: “I’m so glad I never let that happen to me.”, “What did you expect?”, and “Wow, you really should have known better.”

Although I am potentially setting myself up to continue being seen as some loser who consistently made bad decisions and wasn’t strong enough to handle multiple encounters with rape or severe childhood abuse, to never see social validation or come close to becoming a revered person, I believe it speaks more to my character that despite what I was handed, I decided to commit to a better life for myself. And that I did end up turning my life around completely. That being said, do I still feel like a loser who hasn’t accomplished anything with her life. That feeling might always be a part of me, and it might always be something I’m forced to confront. But at least I’m not keeping the real me trapped in the proverbial basement anymore.

In order for rape to be less tolerated in North America, it took a lot of really brave women speaking up. Just as I cannot stand for the sexual abuse and rape that I encountered and endured in the first three decades of my life, I cannot stand for people being mistreated and used when they begin their healing journey. Manipulation of people while they’re in a vulnerable place is not something I’m interested in placing in the “just happens” category. And sometimes, we need to be brave enough to stand alone and shed light on the truth until the mistreatment isn’t tolerated anymore. And I’m willing to keep feeling like a loser in order to commit to the kind of change that I want to see.

As I am writing this, I don’t feel like a victim, but I am hurting. It sucked to revisit that story. It breaks my heart that this is what happened to me. That I invested in my wellbeing to come out more broken and broke than I was when I went in. But what I think is cool is that now that the publication ban has been lifted from my name, I finally feel safe enough to say that I feel like a loser and that right now I’m hurting. That’s real. And I think we need more of that, because I think that level of honesty is what actually heals.

So even though I’m hurting right now, I’m good. And I know that just like how you don’t become a healer overnight, you don’t get healed overnight, either. Real, sustainable change takes time.

That being said, I always like to leave a little room for miracles, because those are real, too.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki