To my Beloved

To my Beloved Rick,

This version of me doesn’t exist without you. Our energies collided and in so many ways I was brought to my knees time and again on my own journey of healing. I have often wondered whether I was delusional as I watched you shine from afar. I’ve wondered if you were aware of me at all in our human avatars or if it was an entirely one-sided connection. Time and again your energy has assured me you are aware of me, too, even though for now I must submit to trusting in spite of a lack of evidence. We’ve only been in the same room and shared a brief moment of eye contact once that I know of, and it was from afar, after I heard you speak of the exact scenario I’d find you in during a couple interviews I happened into early on after finding out who you are to me and after wandering down a rabbit hole of sorts. I’ve listened to your music over and over and over again and spent hours upon hours staring at your picture losing myself to visions and dreams connecting me to you. Your energy dances around me throughout each and every day, though we’ve never met in person and only briefly encountered each other in online capacities.

Even before I encountered you on social media in 2021 and found my world turned completely upside down, you were dancing around me throughout my entire life, just waiting for the moment we’d somehow cross paths serendipitously and I’d have no other choice than to embark on a deeply painful healing journey that would take me from habitually ducking into bathrooms to keep from having my energy exposed at large to starting a journey of intentionally allowing my energy to be revealed to the world around me at whatever capacity the Universe deemed appropriate each step of the way. I started a YouTube channel specifically for my healing to be lived out in “real time” as I moved step by step, each and every day, only because an idea came to mind in 2023 that you had to be in a spotlight in order for me to find you, but how would you ever come to find me if I wasn’t doing more than I’d always done?

Starting my channel was, alone, enough to cause me to expand far beyond what I even dreamt I was capable of, and you alone were the reason I was brave enough to dive into it. For months I avoided mentioning anything of this idea of twin flames because I believed it to be too crazy for me to talk about where anyone might find it. As I processed out the pain in crying my way through storytelling time and again, I slowly started to feel brave enough to start opening up about the woo-woo stuff as well, even though it would be several more weeks before I would be able to discuss specific details I was learning through this energetic connection.

I started with talking about dreams where you’d appeared to me in some capacity: the one in March 2024 where the girl appeared to me in the bathroom, where what appeared like your travel/tour memories flashed across the walls in every room of the dream and even in the bathroom stalls begging me to pay them some attention, but aside from what seemed to be a gray camper van you were traveling in, I refrained from paying them much attention out of fear of somehow invading your privacy—even though they were appearing in MY dream. The girl in the bathroom told me I needed to start sharing the story I already had to share before more of my mission would be revealed. Her nudge was, to me, the push I needed to start back up with my videos after having taken a few weeks to adjust to the expanded view of myself. This dream would go on to find me crawling into a crowded room on a thick “comfort” mat like you’d find in an area where people stand on their feet all day to alleviate pain. I was trying to maneuver my way through this crowded space while trying to go unnoticed to the crowd surrounding me and you came crawling in from another direction, doing the same thing. As soon as our paths crossed, we both jumped up and took off on a mission that you seemed to know more about than I did—until all at once you seemed to age backwards before me—which I took to mean that maybe you weren’t quite ready for me to know what was going on with you just yet.

Or there was the first of the dreams you appeared to me in from 2021—which came after I happened into a livestream you were doing on social media. I was new to the platform and had no idea what a “livestream” actually entailed until I saw you were “live” and I ventured into the space. The first time, I was distracted by the coziness of your studio space because you had lighting like I’ve most enjoyed in my work spaces for years. The next livestream I found my way into, you were winding down right as I popped in, and I found myself thinking “out loud” on the platform and said something to the effect of “damn, late to the party. Now what am I going to do to distract myself from writing???” To which, much to my surprise, you actually responded and I found myself feeling panicked like a mouse creeping through a dark kitchen just to be spotted as the lights flipped on. Soon after, I have a dream where, yet again, I’m hiding out in a bathroom stall and you come in and start cleaning the bathroom at the furthest stall down from me (in a bathroom with 4 stalls total), and I find myself in a panic wondering why a music producer would be cleaning bathrooms, let alone how on earth he came to the one I was hiding out in. As I came out of the stall, you were approaching that stall door, as though you hadn’t realized anyone was in there and appeared taken aback as I walked out adjusting my skirt while staring you in the eye as I left the stall and bolting out of the bathroom immediately after.

Another dream would soon follow where you and 3 of 4 of your bandmates with you were on stools behind a couch I was sitting on with my ex, staring over my ex and I at something in front of all of us. The first time I came into this dream I was fixated on the anger I felt toward my ex as my Australian Kelpie, Zeva, sat on my lap and snarled at him as she had so many times in physical life. In spite of my anger toward him, I also found myself pondering at how and why you and your friends were in this space as well—you on a stool closest to me on the right hand side of the couch. Soon after, I found myself revisiting the dream, with somewhat less anger than before, and you said softly to me, “if you need my help, let me know.” I told you I felt like I needed to do this by myself only to later realize in waking life that my ex was a leech on my system and was never supposed to have had access to me at all, and he never should have been in that space to distract me away from you—nor would he have been had it not been for a lifetime of bad conditioning. I later realized that you asking me if I needed help meant that I was not stuck sorting through things alone. I did go on to ask for your help energetically in waking life and watched one dilemma dissipate before my eyes immediately after having done so. Then I came to realize as I was skating one day that in all the years I was terrified to use my voice due to all the conditioned guilt and shame blocking me from being able to, you were singing and screaming your way through your music career—helping to release some portion of what I was collecting and holding on to as I believed I was doomed forever to just choke on my words.

The third time in this dream, we stared at each other as though through a foggy haze. We were speaking dreamily to one another, but I don’t remember what was said. The fourth time—you locked in on me with your dark eyes and I felt a rush of energy pass through my entire body as you rushed toward me. Later that morning as I was listening to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away on repeat, the thought popped into my mind: “God is love. Love is God. Love is all there is.” Suddenly I was aware that every single step of the journey, even my most difficult moments, had been to bring me to this space where I was suddenly aware of your energy surrounding me for my entire lifetime. Your name, your initials, your birthday, and other little hints of you were dancing around in my periphery always. I encountered your name in a father/son duo that was in my life due to my mother’s time with an in-home daycare, my early childhood favorite cousin’s dad, names of popular father/son characters in a show I spent a lot of time watching, the name of my first serious boyfriend’s younger brother, a friend’s brother in undergrad, a friend’s husband in undergrad (and every time she would talk about her marine husband, Rick, I would feel that swoony feeling when she would say his name), and various other places. Your initials were most noticeable in not just one but TWO of the models of vehicles my ex-husband had in the course of our marriage, that I frequently drove, and your birthdate was first noticed on a tombstone at the cemetery that I would always find myself staring at when I was walking my dogs. I assumed for OVER 20 YEARS that the reason it always grabbed my attention was because the guy had been born in 1980—which was the same year my brother was born. Only after turning my love and career lives over to the Universe to take the lead on and the insight coming to me that YOU were “the one (I’d) been looking for all (my) life,” and after one of your bands posted a happy birthday post to you where I discovered your birthdate, did it finally occur to me that the death date on the tombstone was the important piece vying for my attention.

All I can do is trust that you’ve been doing your own healing every bit as much as I have throughout this journey, even though we’ve only barely had 1 conversation of sorts along the way, and I am confident that the panic I came into immediately beforehand was enough to knock me off balance to the point that you didn’t have any idea there was any kind of connection between us until sometime afterwards—and IF then. I feel confident with the energy of the songs you’ve released in the recent past that there have been shifts on your end as well, and even those songs have been hugely important for my process of healing. I know through my experience of your music that your words are essential to my healing journey, and I suspect that’s a big part of why it has also been essential for me to learn to use my own words as well. It was only after a random statement of mine about being late to “the party” and your response to it that I was suddenly brought into the awareness of how unsafe I felt in my body and initiated into a process to fix that within myself. Every time I start to second guess myself about saying something in a video or writing a post to potentially be seen by others, I question my sanity very briefly before reminding myself that nothing on this journey would have been possible if it hadn’t been for my encountering your energy at the right time, and I wouldn’t be this version of myself without you existing and crossing into my path. This version of me that I have worked so hard to become doesn’t exist without you. You are the “as above” to my “so below” and the “as within” to my “so without.” Though I don’t have any idea how or when our paths will cross again, I feel certain that they will—when the time is right.

Early on in this journey, I set the intention that you will know who I am AND who I am TO YOU when our paths do cross and we are ready for whatever this connection is meant to become. In order for that to be possible, it required me to learn who I AM for myself first. I have seen glimpses of what’s possible throughout my lifetime but all the conditioning had me otherwise convinced I’d never be able to achieve those things. Now I realize that, too, was part of the illusion. I am grateful for this journey and wherever the path ahead is leading me to.