I’m going to talk about supernatural stuff here. If you’re uncomfortable with that sort of thing, you have been warned. Content note: spiritual crisis and mental‑health struggle. I’ve thought long and hard about whether I should do the Right Thing ™ and explain what has happened over the past several months. So I guess I’ll speak up. What the hell. I’ve already lost my mind, my family, and my heritage. Nothing else can hurt as badly. I hope. This is my account of spiritual crisis and recovery; I’m not asking for diagnoses or debate.
Yes, it’s been many, many moons and nothing has been fixed on the website. Akashik and The Heavenly Bride both ground to a complete halt right after a big flurry of inspiration. The flurry is normal for me—I get super hyper about creating until I burn out. If I play my cards well, the burn‑out isn’t very noticed because I create and post things ahead of time to give me room to rest. But nothing—nothing at all—prepared me for what was going to be born of the most recent burst of fantasy.
Akashik’s world is braided with real‑life supernatural threads. I grew up in a wyrd family. Before Christianity and the influence of mainstream people around us finally had their sway, I had a very magical childhood. Everything had life. There were bonfires that set the backdrop for my father’s stories. I spent my days in the woods hoping to get with the fey folk, to be rescued by Gandalf, for just some kind of magic—I didn’t care what.
What I didn’t understand is that the magic was already there. There were also night terrors, horseshoes nailed over the front‑door, holly trees planted in the yard to protect us from bad juju, and my big worshipful eyes watching my Daddy when he told me family things that no one seems to remember but me.
If I could go back in time I’d punch young me in the face.
I was warned it was going to happen. I’m a member of a left‑hand‑path forum. A moderator there took me aside (virtually) and tried to get me to look at what was coming, to learn about things, to be ready and prepared. On retrospect, no amount of reading in the world would have helped—it was too large, too bright, and I was too caught up in a literal fairy dance. And I lost my ever‑loving mind. Or rather, loving made me lose my mind.
It started with a fairy—because of my stories. It pushed me into what’s known as the shamanic death cycle. I’d learned about it in college. I never expected to be in the midst of it, despite being warned. Despite my father’s passing, which passed the mantle to me of all people. Old death‑and‑rebirth, but in stereo.
I literally couldn’t stop dancing in a fairy ring of torture, and when I got out of that I was attacked from all sides by supernatural things you wish you’d never heard of. There were days I lay in my bed and couldn’t move. I sat outside once in water for ten hours fighting voices that urged me to do self‑harm. I didn’t want to die, but at one point I screamed, driving down the road, that the goblins—old‑country goblins with teeth and rules—could take it all if they’d just leave me the hell alone.
I sent email after email after email to “experts” for help. I got one response from someone who, it turned out, wasn’t as supernatural as his book led me to believe he was. For someone raised around the supernatural as I was—with a little brother who didn’t make the crossing—I knew I wasn’t insane. I knew what was going on. It helped that I had witnesses—people also being touched by these beings and dealing with things as they happened. That’s a little perk of my life.
There were two that stood with me, but they couldn’t do much. One taught me how to shield. My husband listened, for all he couldn’t follow the scope of things—poor mundane fellah. An old friend didn’t quite get how serious it was the two times I approached him. When I called him at work crying my eyes out, he finally heard me. Then, and only then, did I get the help I needed to be freed.
That was a couple of months ago. But it wasn’t over. The bargaining had to begin. You see, The Heavenly Bride was used as the leverage to get to me—a classic fey trick. Just look into the lore. Just thinking about my stories hurt. I tried to start again and failed again and again. I’d been called to my purpose, and that purpose threatened to overwrite everything. Every time I reached for the comic, the hook yanked.
A balancing act so that I could do whatever it is I must do but keep something of myself seemed impossible. I had stood in a cave grotto and stared gods in the face. I told them that my cultural heritage meant I walked a fine line to come to them. They were silent, and I knew at the time that silence was a red flag. The flag caught on fire and burned my house down. Standing in the ashes, I finally had to draw some lines. “You can’t take this,” I declared, clutching my comics and future story plans close to my chest. “You’ve taken every damn thing else. Not this.”
But I still had to heal in order to write again.
So. I must take up the family mantle and become a shaman, a worker of the wyrd, a singer of seiðr. Training for that can be time‑consuming—and expensive, and sometimes lonely. I will have to cut some things out of my world in order to keep Akashik and my stories, or I’ll die miserable. My entire life has been spent trying to tell these stories. It’s literally what my soul wants to do. It’s just not the only thing I was born for.
If I succeed, I will be the first shaman in the family since… okay, not long. My great‑great grandmother was a Medicine woman and midwife. Her grandfather was a famous medicine man. His father before him. That’s just one line up. This isn’t anything new for my family. It skipped a beat and came back around.
But I will be the last, I’m afraid. Unless my children wizen up.
I want you to know this. I got depressed and disappeared, and I told you that had happened. This most recent event? I literally almost died. I literally had forces trying to kill me while being surrounded by apathy, narcissism, and dogmatic gatekeeping. Not every shaman makes it through that fire. I now know it’s not because the fire is that bad. It’s because the old framework of helping awakening shamans has been broken. I only know of it because Dad taught me about it. If he’d been here, I would have had the support I needed. At least I like to think so. He’d gone Wannabe Tribe Christian after all. So I’m rebuilding the framework I didn’t get, plank by plank.
Some of you stuck with me. Thank you. And those that didn’t? I get it.
Let me conclude with this: this little Akashik panel you see on this page?
That’s my past year in a nutshell. It wasn’t as pretty as it looks.
Pain enhances art. Let’s see what I can do with this.
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