Hello Beautiful Being,
What follows is a very real story of my life up until I found spirituality and mysticism. It details my experience growing up in a "religious" family and the struggles that followed as I tried to figure life out. Ultimately, I went through a Dark Night of the Soul and in the dawn that followed the night, I found the God within me. This story does not detail then subsequent integration of that first awakening or the many smaller awakenings that I have had since. I'll write about that someday soon and update this post with a link.
Love & Light,
Umi
The Path to My First Awakening
Childhood
My Italian mother and African American stepfather were married when I was two and a half. My biological father is Puerto Rican but he wasn’t in my life until I was 32 years old. So, when I refer to “my parent’s”, it’s my mother and stepfather that I mean. I grew up in a big family. I am the eldest of 12 children. I have one biological daughter and 4 bonus children by marriage to my wife, Kristy.
My parents were seekers. They converted to Islam when I was 2 or 3 years old. They studied under Imam Hesham Jabber in the 80s. Imam Hesham was the man that did Malcom X’s burial service. My stepfather was the kind of guy that read all the books and scriptures of different religions. He was very much an extremist. He loved the Black Panthers and really went hard into Islam after they converted. They both did. My mother definitely had some mystical experiences but I think that they scared her. She told me about how she left her body at my birth and watched herself have me. They liked to study the supernatural and mystical side of religion but ultimately they could not let go of a “Wrathful Angry God In the Sky." The fear of what “sins’ they had committed led them to stop seeking the God within.
My first little sister’s name is evidence of my parent’s early mystical leanings. She was born when I was about to turn 5. Her name is Sufiah, which means enlightened one. The Sufi’s being the mystical arm of Islam. My family would later bad mouth the Sufi’s as not real Muslims and being pagans. Interestingly, I recently rediscovered Sufism and I am in love with the teachings and how they refer to the God Spirit as Beloved.
When I was about 9 or 10 years old, a dog came charging at me. Unbeknownst to me, there was another kid behind me that was holding one of her puppies and she wanted it back. I froze as she latched on to my arm. It was as if the words had just flown out of me without thought or effort: “La ilaha illallah” and she let go. I didn’t have a scratch– only my sleeve had made it into her teeth. My siblings were too young to remember and I don’t know where my parents were or if they even knew what happened. It was apparent to me that there was power in proclaiming one’s faith in God in the face of danger and that has been something that stuck with my entire life, BUT, I always questioned if that incident ever happened because I had no one to share it with and no one else seemed to remember it or speak about it.
I questioned a lot of my memories. I lived in an environment of constant gaslighting and being told that I was not being abused and that nothing in our lives was abnormal. On the outside we were just a pious Muslim family but behind closed doors it was complete chaos and despair. We lived in extreme poverty. We were homeless multiple times. There were so many crazy situations, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Not to mention that I lived in some of the worst urban areas growing up: Newark, NJ, Camden, NJ and Baltimore, MD. So drugs and drive-bys were a regular part of living. And we were not sent to school. I was pulled out in 4th grade in the first month or so. After that I went to 5th grade from about January to June and I did the first part of 9th grade until my brother Ali was born in November. I stayed home taking care of him and was put out of the little Muslim school that my parents had us in for truancy. I think that really hurt my heart, because after that I got into smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking from my mother’s stash of Bacardi 151 that she thought she was hiding from us.
Hypocrisy became the norm for my religious upbringing. I was simultaneously taught to fear God because I’d be punished in the afterlife while watching my parents completely disregard the teachings themselves. My parents talked about all that we were supposed to do or more seriously, what we were NOT supposed to do lest we’d go to hell and be tortured. And they always had stories of what would happen to us in hell. When I started wearing hijab, I was repeatedly told that I would be dragged through the fires of hell by any hairs that were exposed. I was constantly aware of every strand that peaked out of the back of my scarf or at the temples. ALL THE PATRIARCHY was present. Women were not allowed to pray aloud. They were at the mercy of men for everything. But yet I was taught about Khadija - the prophet's wife who was a business owner and a strong woman. It never added up to me. In fact, Khadijah is my Muslim name.
When I was about 13 or 14, my step-father threatened to marry me off to a grown Syrian man who was supposed to take me to Syria. I ran away not too long after that. It occurred to me - Now that I have kids of my own - that children often misunderstand and mis-interpret adult words and actions very easily. I don’t remember him telling me directly that this was his plan either. I believe I just overheard him talking to my mother. Something he did often - spoke loudly from another room (or in front of my face) about me to my mother. But that coupled with a child’s understanding, even at 13 or 14, I realized that he may have just been joking in that cruel way he liked to scare me. The mind games that went on were insane.
So I run away - quite by accident - that’s a whole story in itself but I do believe God puts things in play to push us in the direction we need to go. Anyway, I accidentally ran away, and my Grandmother and my aunt picked me up off the street in Baltimore in like 1996. Not my biological family, my step-father’s family- another interesting twist. But I get to go to high school. I all but forgot about Islam and I know nothing good about Christianity. My grandmother’s religious practice was listening to gospel music while driving to Caldor and Kmart on Sundays and watching Oprah every day at 4pm. So I let go of religion and God and just threw myself into school and my after school job.
One experience in high school though was when my great aunt, Duba, my grandmother’s only sister, was at the end stages of Alzheimer's. My grandmother and I had grown pretty close in the 4 years I had lived with her. We spent time together daily so it was inevitable. I remember the day before my Senior prom. Duba wasn’t doing to well and my grandmother was visibly upset and she looked at me and asked “Steph, what am I going to do? She’s my only sister.” And just like when I was bit by the dog, the words come out of my mouth of their own volition: “She’s waiting for you to tell her it’s ok to go. She doesn’t want to leave you.” The look on my grandmother’s face was so painful and she just shook her head and said - “I can’t.” Later that night she did go to her bedside and tell her that it was ok to go and by 3 am - Duba was gone. When my aunt woke me up and I came downstairs my grandmother said “Why did you tell me to do that?!” - and I was ashamed. I felt like I had caused her pain and I stuffed that part of me that spoke by intuition far away. I shut it down.
Then in my 20’s after I was kicked out of the Navy for having PTSD, I got married. Then, I went back to my high school job as a preschool teacher assistant. I’m going to college for teaching, partying, binge drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, night clubs, strip clubs, gay clubs. I’m single and I’m just doing all the things a 20 something with no kids does in the early 2000s. And I'm still taking the medications for anxiety, depression, and insomnia. I’m a mess of Xanax, Risperdal, Marijuana, Alcohol and every chance I got I was dancing in some club. It was this false freedom but it was so damn lonely.
In the midst of all this, a mom of one of the kids that I taught sold Mary Kay. She invited me to her house for a consultation. I was interested in some skin cream or cleanser that she sold. As I sat at her dining room table, I saw her Butsudan and she started talking to me about it. She showed me her Gohonzon and talked to me about what it was and what the writings meant and all about chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and how it was life changing. This was maybe 8 years after What’s Love Got to Do With It. And I began to practice and got my own Butsudan and Gohonzon and I chanted and chanted and my life fell completely apart. I didn’t understand Buddhism’s idea of there being no God in the sky to mean that there was no higher power, no God Source. I didn’t understand Enlightenment or oneness with the universe. I couldn’t reconcile that with my own belief in the supernatural ability of God to make things spontaneously and miraculously happen - if you had enough faith.
So I stop practicing Buddhism. I was never very consistent to begin with, which was a theme of my childhood having parents that only prayed in public at the mosque and at other’s homes. My parents were only Muslim in public and when it meant that I was going to hell. They behaved as if hell didn’t apply to them personally. They never prayed 5 times a day except for maybe a few days in Ramadan. We fasted for Ramadan but I never made up the days when I couldn’t fast because I had my period. It was normal in my house not to have consistent practice. It’s been one of the biggest challenges for me in my spiritual journey after my initial awakening.
A few months after I started practicing Buddhism, I end up in the hospital after an admittedly half hearted suicide attempt. They shipped me from the ER to a long term residential program in the woods away from everything and everyone that I knew. I was in that place for 2 months and the only visitor that I had was a patient that had been released and came back to see me and several other patients and to bring us some cigarettes. Her name was Judy and she had bipolar disorder. Her meds had stopped working and that’s why she was in there. But it’s interesting because I have so much love for my fellow patients in the various psych wards that I’ve been in over the 20 years that I was allowing western medicine to completely screw up my mental and physical health. But the other patients and I were all struggling through a dark time in parallel and there was something special and sacred about that. Anyway, my grandmother and my friend from the Navy were the only people that called me while I was in and that was maybe 3 phone calls total. When I first arrived at the long term facility, I had a teddy bear and the intake doctor said that I could keep it. They normally take everything away but he examined it and was satisfied that it wouldn’t hurt me so he let me keep it.
Now this particular stuffed animal had gotten me in trouble before when I was in the Navy and I was starting to struggle with PTSD. I used to sneak it into the school house and put it in my locker. Mind you this was a high security clearance building - it being nuclear power school and all - so we weren’t allowed to bring anything in that was issued to us beyond food. I was directly, although discreetly, asked not to bring it back by one of the Chief Petty Officers that taught us. This was right before they summarily discarded me as broken.
A little later that day and I talked to the intake doctor, one of the unit staff saw me with the stuffed animal and after I refused to give it to them, they tackled me down and put me in four point restraints. FOUR POINT RESTRAINTS! Legs stretched open. The four men who came to put me in the bed standing over me. One female nurse was sitting next to me with Ativan in a cup and some water. She says you can take it willingly or they’ll just give you a shot if you refuse. I take it and I’m crying but I’m barely there. I didn’t know what dissociation really was back then but I am sure that I was not fully in my body at all times. I mean I’m in this hospital because I have PTSD but it seemed like no one was paying any attention to that. They only ever treated depression or anxiety, not the trauma. Between childhood and a very short stint in the military, I was traumatized. I’d survived a multiple incidents of sexual abuse and sexual assault, and the way the military had just discarded me because I needed medication, my husband left me, I felt worthless.
So as I lay there in restraints I’m trying like hell to close my legs and push away, not the thought, but, the very real and present feeling of someone on top of me. So the Nurse sits next to me and talks to me. She’s not there to comfort me exactly because I’m now in a 1:1 and can’t be left alone. But I can feel sincerity in her desire to help. Her name was Peggy Turpin. She was kind and Christian. I believe she truly was trying to help me and the other patients. She sat in that room while I was a captive audience and talked to me about Christianity and Jesus and what it meant to get “saved.” After that, she’d play Scrabble with me every evening that she worked. The days she didn’t work were hard for me. I think, subconsciously, that might be why I started going to the weekly church services. And eventually, I ended up “getting saved” as they say.
When I finally get a judge to let me out of that place, I start going to a local Baptist Church. I was 22 and smart and had nothing better to do than go to church. I wasn’t working. I was in an intensive outpatient program. They had me in every ministry, vacation bible school, Wednesday night bible study, everything. I never had much money to tithe but I gave heavily of my time. I even recorded the services for public access TV. And in the midst of this 2 things happen: I fall in love and move in with a woman and my grandmother dies. The church is no comfort. The pastor came to pray over her at the hospital but, I could never be my full self at church so I couldn’t let them know about my girlfriend. My grandmother on the other hand, insisted that i tell her who I was living with and when I told her it was a woman she had the nerve to say, “Oh well I always knew that.” She died about 3 or 4 months after that and with her died the only person who loved me fully as who I was without condition. And I really believe I felt that I had lost the only unconditional love I had ever had. I didn’t have that awareness or vocabulary then so this is me looking at that time with new eyes and perspective of hindsight.
The years after that were dark and it’s hard to remember but I spiraled into something that I disliked. I dropped out of college. I disappeared from NJ. Even in that dark time, I found a non-denominational church to attend. I still had to hide the truth about my same sex attraction but even in the darkest times I was seeking God. It’s crazy. I moved to CT– moving in any of my stories usually means that some form of homelessness was imminent and this was definitely one of those situations – I started going to UConn and eventually found another Baptist church to attend. I get baptized. I’m trying to be straight again.-- This is a very abbreviated version of this story. But I meet a guy that I think is ok with my same sex attraction, get pregnant and fall into this very heteronormative relationship/family dynamic and I fall deep into depression. I’m taking the meds. I’m doing the mom thing. I’m going to school. I’m working. Living the feminist dream. And trying to ignore my attraction to women. I tried to push it away. Honestly, my relationship to my sexuality was always like that song Crane’s in the Sky. I was trying to work it way, running in circles, trying to be the perfect parent. Getting engaged. Doing everything to not pass all my family bullshit onto my daughter. But really I’m unknowingly strangling and stifling my authentic self.
Part of me trying to be a good parent and searching for some peace myself meant finding another church. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up hating her mother. Because I know at some point she’s going to figure out that her mother likes girls. So this is like 2009-2010, the internet is a big thing now so you can google stuff like “churches that accept gay people” and bam you see First Congregational Church of Christ and open and affirming church. The pastor is this beautiful Black Lesbian woman and my women’s studies major feminist heart is just gleeful. Pastor Cari was a real inspiration to me. She started talking with me regularly - I learned about pastoral care and she introduced me to the concept of empaths and suspected that I was one. I am with all its challenges and gifts.
The congregation was mostly white but there was a fair bit of color and a gay couple with a little girl that were heavily involved in the church. On the wall in the hallway of the church across from the Pastor’s office 3 rows of portraits of white men are punctuated with a picture of Pastor Cari. The first black person, woman and definitely the first homosexual to pastor the church. Here, Kenisha got to see LGBT parents and pastors normalized. She was small but it mattered to me. And for me to see LGBT acceptance in a church meant that there was some hope for me in religion. I even considered going to seminary school. And then she was gone, in a couple weeks of tense church meetings and events, she stood up and resigned one Sunday. And that was it. I was devastated but I understood. I felt that same part of me die as I sat in a special church meeting and listened to one of my fellow church members call Pastor Cari’s fitness to be Pastor of our church into question because of what this woman dubbed the WHOA factor. Woman, Homosexual, Overweight, and African American. I was destroyed. Here I am bringing my Jamaican, Italian and Puerto Rican daughter to this church so she doesn’t learn to hate her mother or herself and this level of nastiness and hatred was right there in my Spiritual Home. She left. I left. I found another Congregational Church in Norwalk and they didn't have a regular pastor at the time. They aren’t open and affirming but there is a gay flag outside so it’s implied that they at least won’t tell me that I’m going to hell. Kenisha goes to Sunday school and we get involved again in the church goings on. She’s in the kids choir. Then there is a vote on whether or not the church will become “open and affirming” – It’s like a designation a particular congregational church can decide to take on. And I see, people that are involved in the religious education of my daughter, friends, people that I came to know and love – vote against becoming open and affirming. I can’t even remember if it passed or not. I was too blown away by those that had an issue with accepting LGBT members.
Not long after that. My daughter’s father asks me to leave. We had been living all that time in parallel and occupying the same space but honestly we were strangers apart from the material and superficial and he is Caribbean so the homophobia was always there. I just hadn’t seen it at first. And although I wasn’t thinking about leaving him, once it sank in that it was over, I didn’t even fight it. It was a sad relief of sorts. I was numb for sure. I just figured out how to get the money to find a place and I just left in about 2 weeks. Over. Done. My main concern was minimizing the impact on my daughter. It was easy to throw myself into single motherhood and forget about church altogether.
I went through a lot in the years that followed but the nutshell version of it is that my financial, mental and physical well being was shot. I was fighting to save that person that I created who was this hetero supermom entrepreneur and in the process I basically killed her. She crashed. That whole life just dissolved - I had a failing business. I got physically sick with various illnesses and ailments. I was anxious and depressed but more than that I was dissociative. I would lose time when I was sitting at my desk working. I’d realize that it was night time and have no recollection of how it got to be dark outside. I don’t know what would have happened if it wasn’t for my daughter calling most nights to see when I was coming to pick her up from her dad’s or to ask for homework help. No, I do know I’d stay at the office until 2 or 3 am working. I did it several times when she was at her dad’s for the weekend. I was reaching out for help left and right. Doctors, therapists, colleagues, friends, everyone just looks at me like, you are so smart and you are just doubting yourself. Well yeah I was doubting my whole existence. I was so upset with myself for having a daughter. It felt selfish and wrong to bring her into this. I vowed not to kill myself so she wouldn’t grow up the kid whose mom killed herself. She definitely kept me tethered to the earth because I hated it on this planet. I just knew that God wanted nothing to do with me and would not be happy to see me. I’m not trying to kill myself exactly but I’m doing wild shit. Getting lost, drinking, smoking marijuana, taking psych meds and other meds for my physical health. I’m jumping from date to date and putting myself in stupid situations. The bottom just fell out when I lost my place and I had to send my daughter to live with her father. That is when I snapped. I was dissociative, violent at times, emotionally unpredictable. I was a crying fit one second, and destroying things the next. I couldn’t sleep. I had nightmares. I had flashbacks - not visual but the physical body sensations. Panic attacks. I was being destroyed, there is no other way to describe it.
Waking Up After The Darkest Night
And while all that is going on, I watch this YouTube video that’s an old episode of Oprah from like 2007. Oprah, you’ll remember, was my grandmother’s main source of inspiration. She watched her daily. This episode is about the movie “The Secret” and Lisa Nichols, Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, Rhonda Byrne and other’s from the movie are talking about the movie with her. They are of course talking about the Law of Attraction. And it’s like that spark of seeking is lit again. I am hungry for more. In the midst of everything falling apart, I started nearly constantly listening to Abraham Hicks and Agape Services with Rev. Michael. I start playing different vibrations and frequencies and saying affirmations and putting them all over the house. I’m listening to Mooji and doing these guided meditations and calling in my Twin Flame and a house and success and I’m trying to work this law of attraction while simultaneously my entire life is going up in flames. So I'm simultaneously in the worst Dark night of the soul and falling head over heels in love with these new age ancient wisdom -metaphysical teachings and my life literally dissolves. That version of me and my life is completely eradicated with the exception of my daughter and still trying to be a good mom to her.
My business closed, I moved in with my now wife - it’s a miracle we made it with the level of toxic we both brought to the table. But we were both on this Spiritual quest and so we’re toxic but learning about spirituality through the whole pandemic. I definitely went into a deep hermit mode during the pandemic. It was like a mourning period for that alter ego. And I really start to understand the truth. That we are all one. That God is the source and substance of everything, including me. That I actually have the power to heal and change my situation. That I can heal my family and my daughter and myself and it’s not all despair and it was like I was broken open. My wife and I went on an Ayahuasca retreat for our honeymoon. I had heard a lot of good things about PTSD and ayahuasca and Mama Aya showed herself to us in a way that we knew this is what we had to do. So we went and it was really what cracked me the rest of the way. I really gained an understanding of what one with all means and who I am and who God really is and that there is no death - I spoke to my grandmother during that ceremony almost 20 years after her death. After that, there were still struggles as we integrated and it took about 2 years to fully integrate it and to find peace and calm the storm. No matter what the lesson was after that, I knew the Truth.
And it opened up the door for so many things to return and blossom in my life - astrology, numerology, meditation, chanting, better eating, herbal medicine, gardening. I was no longer going to hell because I am gay because none of that was even relevant to this new Truth I now know about God. I am that I AM and I am good - as is. Now I’m at a point of stabilizing this new paradigm in my life and sharing this healing with my family and friends and anyone that I feel called to share it with.