My Origin Story
The Story of Me
Below is a lengthy version, the “story of me,” with long musings, so feel free to make yourself comfortable for the tale. Feel free to head straight to the facts—conveniently located in the paragraph titled “The Facts.”
About Me Musings
This question of “who are you?” to share with others about oneself is always interesting to me. The question of ‘Who are you?’ and how we go about sharing ourselves with others is always interesting to me. What is the story, the group of words that can best define who I am. I, as any human, am forever changing and am fluid in nature. Who I am now has changed significantly within the past few years. Who I am when you come across this may be significantly different from who I am currently writing this. From the exponential changes I’ve undergone these last years, the way I would have described myself then and now are worlds apart due to what feels like quantum level perspective shifts. As my awareness has grown and the more rooted in my being I have become, I’ve also become more flexible in my identity and personality, and less attached to how I define myself. It’s the being within that I feel like is what we’re really asking about here, but that’s more understood through a felt visceral experience and words don’t ever seem to do it justice. Along with that, there are many lenses one can look through to tell the story of the ‘me’. A certain set of words may be chosen if told through the perspective of an adventure story, while a different set would be chosen to depict a tragedy, and another through the lens of a hero’s journey, and so on.
Sitting in a New Mexico hot spring with new friends, I was asked this question – “Who are you?” I had just come out of an entheogen medicine training intensive that made my life feel completely new. I felt the most clear and free I had felt in my adult life. The story of my past felt obsolete, almost intangible. Labels felt severely limiting and irrelevant. At that moment, I was deep in presence, steeped in awe and gratitude for the moment. I felt that the moment and those connections were profoundly ripe and full, that that present moment was the only story that existed, and therefore already known by those physically present.
Sometimes, it feels like words and storylines take us further away from the moment, from the truth. The truth, as I see it, is pure consciousness, a pure stream of awareness. The nature of beingness feels fluid and ineffable. From there, we create through our words. Each word has the potential to create the lines that create the boxes of identity, identification, labels and attachments. The words can then turn into stories that wire the frames through which one sees life. The frames, stories, words, even when on the same subject, can all be remarkably different, depending on the person telling it, the lens and themes in which it is told, the time period in which it is told, etc – a seemingly endless list of contributing factors. So ultimately, what is the truth and how is truth defined? Unless we’re speaking of facts, truth is not fixed and highly subjective.
At the same time, we’re a part of this human game where storylines can be important, and can be seen as the fabric of this human experience – perhaps even fundamental to this shared experience, and an important part in connecting with one another. It’s taken some reconciling for me, in finding the middle ground in honoring that and honoring my own story as being relevant to share. (It’s interesting because even the notion of it being ‘important and needing honoring’ can be seen as a storyline too).
So, back in the hot springs, we reframed that question and instead shared what felt most relevant in the moment, most relevant to the energy currently present within us. I took myself out of the eagle eye stance to tune into the granular, to participate in this reality of connecting through story. I also used it to practice the creative skills of putting my seemingly ineffable experience into words. So to serve this context and connect with you, my internet brethren, I will do the same here. (These are the musings I have journeyed through to bring this set of words out into the external world, at this moment in time. I reserve the right to change my mind and I appreciate you making it this far with my musings!)
How did I get here? The facts, with some coloring:
I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to a relatively large family. My father had several wives before my mother, and with them a number of children who all lived in the same compound. My mother was his last wife, she birthed 3 older siblings to me. My mother passed away when I was 2, shortly after giving birth to my younger sister. Upon her death, my father had a stroke, leaving him unable to bring in the same income he had previously. We went from managing to surviving, which led to my 2nd oldest sister and I being put in an orphanage to have a chance at better care and a better future.
After several years living in different orphanages, my sister and I were adopted by two married women and moved to America. At the young ages of 5 and 7, we were excited and assimilated to our new lives rather quickly. Eventually, one of my moms got in contact with my father to let him know his daughters were safe and taken care of. He asked her if she’d be willing to adopt my 2 other siblings still at home and she agreed. After the paperwork was filed, we became a unit of 6 – my two mothers, my 13 year old brother, 11 year old sister, 9 year old sister, and me at 7.
My mothers were both relatively eclectic and traditional – they valued higher education, standard american values, and traditional ways of teaching, being, and parenting. Simultaneously, they were culturally sensitive and keen on introducing us to different things and cultures. We grew up in a melting pot within a melting pot. We were raised Jewish, frequented the Gay Pride Parade yearly, traveled abroad to visit their international relatives, attended a private majority-white school until college (one of my moms taught there), participated in an adopted children’s group, African American oriented groups, as well as different sports and hobby groups. One of my moms came from a Greek-American family of highly intellectual academics and the other from a big German-Jewish family that was spread across the world and quite family oriented. The more eclectic of the two learned the main Ethiopian language (Amharic) and how to braid hair, and she involved our family in the Chicago Ethiopian community for us to maintain ties to the culture. My moms also maintained a relationship with our family in Ethiopia and had us visit our father every few years. Unbeknownst to them, much of our time visiting would entail celebrating the orthodox christian faith by way of attending events like baby baptisms, visiting the church for holidays and celebrations, receiving prayer blessings. Socializing and visiting with Ethiopian families like the one I had, naturally involved casual, regular prayer and visits to the church.
Those were the facts, colored a bit, but more or less the foundational structures that unfolded this particular human experience. As I grew into adulthood, my diverse upbringing led me to explore various groups, identities, ways of being, experiences and essentially, led to giving myself a continued life of diversity.
The healing hero’s journey. (Everyone has one.)
I grew up trying to make sense of the various worlds I was a part of – the Ethiopian world from which I was born into, the majority-white world that now surrounded me, the african-american community my skin color associated me with, the Jewish world of my adopted family, the Orthodox-Christian of my Ethiopian family, the worlds of different sexual orientations, the worlds of different wealth statuses, social statuses, and so on. Moving countries, changing families, and being exposed to what felt like many different realities led me to become highly perceptive at a young age. I learned to unconsciously identify the customs and cultural norms of the different settings I would find myself in. I became skilled in observing group dynamics and the rules that applied there, the unspoken rules to live by in those spaces. Following my adoption, I learned to adapt quickly to my environments – assimilation becoming a natural gift, or tendency, of mine.
In tandem with this, my eyes from an early age began to understand and see the world through labels and differentiation, essentially, through pain and fear. With my octopus arms of senses, I would intuitively reach out into the field to gather information about the environment around me. Because of the unresolved pain and fear that resided in me, the insights from my intuition would be processed through the lens of separation and compartmentalization. I was constantly looking at what made people different from each other, what made groups different from each other, and where the differences lay within those groups. With this was a noticing of the differences between myself and others. There would be a pattern of internalizing what I would find and this would reinforce that something was innately different, and wrong, with me. The story perpetuated that I would always be different for the x,y,z reasons I could find due to my lens being programmed to see in that way.
There are a number of core limiting beliefs humans have been known to have. These are deeply unconscious beliefs that come up when we’re triggered. Among them are: “I am not worthy; I am not loveable, I am not enough; I am bad; I don’t belong.” I feel the general wound underlying all of these is the belief that “something is wrong with me, that something is generally wrong.” Essentially the energy of fear put into words. We all have our own circumstances and stories that make these beliefs feel so personal, true and real, when in fact, they’re universal, and not personal at all (they are present in the collective human psyche that we all are connected to). The healing hero’s journey is about doing the good work to transcend these seemingly real and personal beliefs.
For me personally, the patterns mentioned above that I began exhibiting at a young age worked together to create a personality of assimilation and living in boxes. They created limiting views of myself, of life, and the genuineness of human relationships and interconnectedness. My healing journey has involved clearing those skewed perceptions and feelings of separation. As well as learning who I am at my core, who I am without an outside environment dictating the rules I live and behave by. (And yet, assimilation to environments is a pattern that can still rear its head from time to time. When used with clarity and intention, it’s a gift. When done unconsciously, it’s a teaching moment.)
What has enabled me to do this clearing work for myself is quantum healing, what I term as Quantum Remembrance. “Remembrance,” is for the process of realizing that there is absolutely nothing wrong with us at our core, and that healing work is really ‘remembering work;’ the journey of remembering this truth. In this reframe, healing is the path of recognizing our wholeness by peeling back the layers of pain, trauma, fear, and confusion that prevents us from seeing that truth. From my personal experience, I feel that most problems we face are due to a lack of clarity – when our perspective shifts, those same problems are no longer perceived as problems, and there’s been a long epidemic of lacking clarity. “Quantum,” is for utilizing modalities that address the quantum nature of life. The fabric of reality, and hence the core of our physical existence, is made up of atoms vibrating at various frequencies. Modalities that focus on establishing clarity and harmony on this level, and those of which I vouch for, from personal experience, are in the alternative category and include: meditation, sound healing, mantra chanting, breathwork, energy harmonization, and plant and animal medicines.
This has been a lifelong journey for me, one that I’m still on and one that has led me to be of service to those who feel called to work with me. With the healing work that I have done – again, it’s more so the clearing and clarifying work that i’ve done – I have been able to utilize my diverse experiences to work from a multilayered kaleidoscope, seeing from varied layers, various corners of the world, lenses and perspectives. What I offer in guidance is this cumulation of learnings from my personal journey, as well as years of focused education from various certification programs, schools, training and workshops.
