January 28 is the anniversary of a day that would forever change the course of my life.

The events of this day impacted how and why I practice energy medicine today. Through these events so very long ago, I learned that each one of us holds a powerful wisdom that can be harnessed to heal from within. Because of this incident, I have dedicated my energy to becoming a guide and now hold space for seekers on their own healing journey.

The year was 1967, I was thirteen years old. This photograph was taken shortly after my extended stay in the hospital. More about that later.

My newly divorced mother, Doris, my younger brother, Mark, and I had just moved to the west coast. I had left my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, kicking, screaming, and crying to arrive in this very strange town called Sacramento, California.

I was the new kid on the block with a southern drawl and polite ways. I said, ‘yes mam’ and ‘no sir.’ The teachers loved me. To my classmates I was a novelty. They asked me if I ever went to school or even wore shoes where I had come from way down south in Tennessee.

This amused me, as I felt superior to them all. Of course, I wore shoes. I wore ballet slippers and floated above the rest of them. I was a graceful, dainty ballet dancer. At the age of five, I enrolled in a ballet class at the Jessie Whaley school of dance, where I felt truly myself. As a child I knew that dance was my way to soar and to find pure joy. My dream was always to be a dancer.

After moving to California, I quickly found a dance studio in our new hometown and biked to classes daily. Life is beautiful at the ballet. Dance class served as refuge from my chaotic home life as a child and now as a young girl of thirteen.

On that fateful day, January 28, 1967, I was five months into my freshmen year at Mira Loma High School. I remember it was a half day at school and we were released at lunchtime. I made an impulsive decision to go for a ride with my friend and her boyfriend in his car. We ended up at a house where kids were hanging out and smoking pot.

I knew I needed to leave immediately, since my dictator mom would kill me if she ever found out that I attended this gathering and did not walk straight home from school. Indeed, there would be hell to pay if I did not get home asap.

Curt Silvia, an eighteen-year-old boy who had completed early graduation from our high school that very day, was kind enough to offer to take me home. We barely knew each other, simply in hallway passing, and only because we both attended the same high school.

His mode of transportation was a small motorcycle. This was my first time ever on a motorcycle and I was a little nervous. We were only fifteen minutes from my home, and he was driving down familiar neighborhood streets well under the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit.

The next thing I recall is that we were lying on the pavement. I remember the school nurse beside me, an ambulance with its lights flashing, and confusion all around us. On the ambulance ride to the hospital, I kept trying to talk to Curt, but he did not answer me.

I later found out that a drunk driver had not seen us coming, and being impaired, turned right in front of us. Curt had crashed into her windshield. The impact tossed me into the air, and I then landed on the pavement, headfirst. No, we were not wearing helmets.

I lay wide awake in the intensive care unit for a number of nights, in a bit of fog yet completely calm in that surreal hospital room setting. There was relentless pain to endure. But through it all, I was able to tap into a deep internal knowledge that somehow, I would survive this horrible accident.

There was a parade of ‘dark cloud’ doctors reporting that I would lose my right eye, suffer permanent brain damage, and there would be probable kidney failure. I was told that I would never dance again.

This was when I stopped listening to all the negative predictions of disastrous health outcomes. In my mind, my life was only just beginning. I knew that I would dance again. I knew that I would heal completely.

The doctors’ negative prognoses were not going to stop me from pursuing my dreams.

Our ability to heal is a miracle. I knew at this youthful age. We can heal ourselves.
Yes, at times intervention is needed, but ultimately, we heal ourselves.

Weeks after the accident, I learned that Curt never regained consciousness. I was in disbelief that he was gone before we arrived at the emergency room. In that mere fraction of a second, a young man was gone. The guilt was devastating. Later, his parents wrote me a lovely letter telling me that I must be a special human since I was the last to talk and be with their son. I have released the guilt but not his memory.

It is a miracle that I am alive. That I survived such a devastating accident. My body has healed completely. I moved to NYC in the early 1980s, and against all odds became a professional dancer. I believed in miracles as a young girl.

Today, as a wise older woman, I still believe in miracles. Practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine has been my way to tap into the powerful healing energy that we all process within. Through this medicine, patients can be guided to return to their own innate ability to heal themselves.

My message to each of my patients: You are the expert of your own body, mind, and spirit. You know the way. Take care not to fall prey to doctors, practioners, friends and family that want to control your personal healing journey. We are all on a healing continuum that evolves and changes with each day we are alive. Honor the miracle of life and the innate ability for the body to heal. Life is a precious miracle.

I am so grateful that my body, mind, and spirit knew the way back to radiant health. I now pay it forward in my work and my life.