So Childish.

December 29th 2023

I was six or seven at the time, it was late September, and I was walking the rows of booths with my family at a carnival in Pennsylvania. I spotted a tent with a ring toss game. The entire back wall was lined with prized dolls.

My eyes lit up when I spotted one that looked identical to Felicity Merriman. I had dog-eared her page in the American Girl magazine every time it arrived in our mailbox.

Painfully shy, I tugged at my dad’s jacket, “Dad can I play this game?”

“Naaaaw” he said, “they’re all rigged! You don’t wanna give your money away.”

Ohhhhh but I do sir. You don’t understand how badly I need that doll.

I persisted, “Please! Can I just try?”

My mom and aunt pleaded my case, “Oh Daniel, come on just let her play.”

The look on my dad’s face when that ring went around the bottleneck and I raised onto my tippy toes and leaned over the counter, pointing for the barrel-chested carnival man to kindly fetch my prize.

Yessir right there. Mmhm… yes please, the one with the curly hair and colonial-style dress.

But what I remember most from that moment, was my sister quietly saying to me as I hugged my doll, “Rebecca, I dreamt last night that you won a doll.”

I’ve never forgotten that.

The look on her face of shock and delight.

“How cool!” I’d said.

I loved those moments with her. When we could both revel in magic! Those moments she really felt like my sissy, and I felt like I didn’t have to be ashamed of my assuredness in everyday miracles.

Turning this picture over, I saw that this was actually taken when a hurricane was approaching off the coast. I love the looks on our faces.

Both her and my mom have always been just as connected and sensitive as I am, but they would only confide in me privately about those kinds of things, then suffer bouts of amnesia soon after.

Whenever I showed any sense of wonder or optimism when we were around others, their eyes would roll and they’d shake their heads in unison, pitying my crippling lunacy so as not to risk looking foolish themselves.

I get it, I’ve done it to others too. It comes up like acid reflux in my own moments of disempowerment and self-doubt.

It’s like internalized homophobia.

It’s painful when we believe that a part of what makes us…us …will inevitably be what ostracizes us and makes us impossible to believe and hard to love.

It makes sense that we sometimes lean into it, only to renounce and rebuke it later.

I mean the number of times I’ve thrown away all my metaphysical shit only to go repurchase it a month later… aye yi yi…it’s a thing.

Afraid to look foolish.

Afraid to be grouped in with all the charlatans and manipulative dingdongs out there.

Afraid I really am delusional and just too ignorant to recognize it.

But I’m gonna let ya in on a little secret that you probably already know.

The nay sayers and “realists” always end up eatin’ crow.

Always.

And I mean what a time to be alive y’all.

Just a few weeks ago, my uncle who I love dearly, took a sip from his Trump For President coffee mug and said, “I wanna see a UFO! They said they’re real! I’m kinda upset I haven’t seen one yet.”

I think I just sat and smiled at him for about 30 seconds because it was just…delightful. I don’t remember the last time I saw him smile like that or heard that sound of excitement in his voice.

And ya know why this happens y’all?

Because on average, people fear public speaking more than DEATH.

Most of us would rather DIE than face the threat of public humiliation and abandonment.

But once science backs it?

Once it’s on CNN?

Goes viral on TikTok or an adored celebrity promotes it?

OVERNIGHT what was called lunacy, is addressed as general consensus.

Not because it’s suddenly become true.

No noooo.

It’s because the threat of public humiliation and abandonment has been removed.

Look how fast selfie sticks and crocs went from being absolutely shameful and hideous (they still are), to fashionable and necessary accessories.

So let’s be real.

Our fear of appearing foolish dumbs us down y’all. It doesn’t just shut us off from our power… it stunts us intellectually.

It says, “The questions stop here because you’re approaching the danger zone. People will laugh at you. People will leave you.”

And our world becomes smaller. Our light dims exponentially. And it becomes harder and harder to witness God moving through everyone and everything around us, because we’re not open to not having all the answers, to being surprised or in awe of something.

But when we dare to be foolish? To appear childlike in our wonder and never-ending belief in possibilities? The universe is able to move through us and play with us, and the seemingly impossible is allowed to become possible!

So fuck it.

What I wanna do this month is share a few of my favorite synchronicity stories and magical manifestation moments that have shown up in my life more recently.

Joy and wonder are just as contagious as fear. So more than anything I want to help you go into 2024 thinkin’, “Yes! These kinda things happen all the time! Bring it on, let’s gooooo!”

Early November this year, I had a dream that I was chitchattin’ with Cheri Oteri from SNL and confiding in her about how I wanna lean into my metaphysical side more and more but I am so uncomfortable receiving attention in day to day life and it’s just frustrating sometimes cause I feel like I have to wear a fuckin’ badge and I’m not at all drawn to the usual avenues of readings or specific mediumship work.

Blegh.

I just wanna have fun and share stories. It’s not that serious to me. I was just feeling, unseen and a little lost. That Cheri y’all…she was so compassionate and supportive, and then she says, “Oh! I got you something!” and hands me this gigantic book on crystals and I started SOBBING happy tears, assuring her I wasn’t sad I was just incredibly grateful for the validation.

I’m constantly looking for maternal figures and sisters, so I often dream about women I admire and look up to to give me the support I need to trust in myself. I woke up from that dream feeling seen, supported, and loved BY CHERI OTERI. I mean come on.

Later that day, I’m folding laundry and texting back and forth with a buddy about plans for Thanksgiving …and Britney Spears. The usual.

He says my Christmas present came in, and he wasn’t sure when the right time was to give it to me, and even though it wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet, he just felt like today was the right time.

I immediately pictured my dream from the previous night about Cheri Oteri (who he and I both grew up emulating) and shared it with him. What perfect timing for another present!

He replied, “What’s your fucking email.”

I began to pace my bedroom and sweat profusely when he sent me the link to my present.

I started to sweat some more.

I sent him a voice text saying, “I swear to God, if this has anything to do with Cheri Oteri…I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.”

I hadn’t even opened the link yet, and we were on the phone with each other hyperventilating. Me crying, him going, “I don’t know how you do this! I can’t even surprise you with a Christmas present for fuck sake!”

We finally hung up so I could actually watch the Cameo video, and there she was. Exactly as I’d talked to her in my dream the night before. Speaking to me exactly as she had the night before, and God love her she wrapped up the video saying, “You are loved. You are loved. You are loved.” And I was like, “I am Cheri I am!!!”

The best part, is that in July of this year? I was on Cameo pricing a Cheri Oteri video to send HIM for Christmas. I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. So when we were on the phone again after I’d finished watching it and both of us were still hyperventilating with excitement, I was yelling, “I know exactly what you paid for that because I was gonna get you a video from her. Now what the fuck am I supposed to get you for Christmas!?”

I love these wild babes and our wild hair.

Getting to share that wonder and awe with my friend and hearing the excitement in his voice when he recognized his own loud and clear intuition all along the way was just…priceless. I’ve been friends with this fool for over thirty years. And when he said, “I just knew I had to send it to you today…” I was like, “You did bud you did! You just…don’t even understand. This is the best gift you could possibly give me and at the best time.”

It just makes these moments that much better when you can see the path and people that the magic travels through. It reminds me every time that when we trust ourselves? When we allow that universal intelligence to work and move through us freely? Our lives intersect in these really fun ways.

Another moment like this was a couple years ago now? I think? Time is flyin.

My husband and I had been talking about how much we enjoy being out camping in the woods, and how much we’d love to have a place to go that was more secluded. A little piece of nature to nurture and call our own.

So he started looking up mountain properties, just for shits and giggles, and I placed a framed picture of a mountain creek next to our mantel to literally keep our eye on the prize.

A few weeks later, we were driving out to Brevard North Carolina to check out some property a fella had for sale. It was secluded alright. Outta town on a gravel road that winded up the mountain into no man’s land. But he was selling 3 lots for the price of one… I was thinking, “Mmhm…what’s wrong with em.”

When we parked the truck at the bottom of the first lot, it was obvious why. That property was straight up and down.

“Holy shit.” we sighed.

We hiked to the top to see if there was anywhere you could even pitch a tent, but lemme tell ya right now. The pitch of that property? I would have been scared to pee in the middle of the night without rolling down the side. We were both a little deflated but not without hope.

When I say this property was steep… I slid on my butt the whole way back down. No shame.

I thought to myself, “If we could just run into some people around town that know of some better properties around here…”

And as we made our way back down to the truck, a couple came walking down the gravel road. It was Joe the president of the POA and his wife Jenn. They invited us back to the house for some fresh honey from their beehives.

We chitchatted, getting to know one another and this fella rolls out a property map of the entire mountain, showing us where to look and what may be available.

To make a long story short, we found the land meant for us and have since fallen in love with our new neighbors.

We found our spot! Joe woke up a couple mornings after we’d looked around and said, “That’s the one. We gotta go back.” :)

Morning hike to check out the waterfall behind our spot.

Checkin’ out another neighbor’s backyard waterfall

We were just out to visit them again weekend before last and Jenn looked at me and said, “I still can’t believe how that worked out. We never go for walks like that. And for some reason that day we did, and there you were.”

Walkin’ the property earlier this month.

The view from upstairs at Jenn and Joe’s AirBnB… not too shabby. You can check out availability and book here.

Another time was last December. I was brushing my teeth getting ready to leave the house to go do a couple massages. I had the Jack Jones’ Christmas album playing on Spotify, the album my mom used to play every year when I was kid. It always makes me remember the things I love about her and loved about my childhood. I thought to myself, “I have got to try and find this on vinyl again. Somebody’s got to have it.”

As I pulled out of our driveway, I passed the postman unloading his truck and saw a flat white package amongst his mountain of boxes and thought, “That one’s for me!”

A little presumptuous yes I know, but I knew it was mine.

And when I got home later that afternoon? There it sat, leaning against our front door.

I got inside, already excited that I was right about the box, and I began to tear it open.

It was the Jack Jones Christmas album.

No return address. No nothin’.

I immediately burst into tears.

How the. What the. What!?

I dropped the needle on our record player and that magical sound of sleighbells and music filled our living room.

Bab’s Christmas album up next, naturally.

I checked my email for any possible notification of shipment, but there was nothing.

I asked my husband if he’d by chance surprised me, but knew it wasn’t him when he replied, “Jack Johnson has a Christmas album?”

A couple nights later, I got a call from my aunt Rudi.

“Did you get the present I sent you? The Jack Jones album?” she said.

I lost it. Telling her what I’d been thinking about that Friday morning, and how the package arrived on our welcome mat that same afternoon with no return address.

She was flabbergasted and started laughing saying, “Wow. I don’t even know why but I was sitting on the couch last week and thought I’m gonna go on eBay and see if I can’t find that Jack Jones album for Rebecca. Wow. Well, Merry Christmas honey. There ya go.”

This is why I’m always thinkin’, “Is it manifestation? Is it psychic prediction? Or is it just how things work out when we’re lined up?

When so many moving parts are involved and so many people are also trusting their own intuitive nudges… it seems far less personal. It seems more and more just like the natural order of things.

No man is an island. It takes a village, ya know what I mean?

Take earlier this Spring for instance. I was thinking about how I wanted to go on a trip with friends. That me and Joe always had a blast, but it’s always so much more fun to share it with others too. Maybe somewhere like Croatia! Somewhere Mediterranean, that’d be fun!

A month later, my husband and I were on our way to a wedding in Wilmington and on the drive out I thought, “I’d love to be surprised by something extra fun this weekend. Something I don’t see coming that takes us in a new direction.”

And that night at the rehearsal dinner, a mutual friend in the wedding party invited us to he and his fiancees upcoming wedding in Italy that October.

Wait. No. I mean that’s so freakin’ nice of you but…really? Seriously!?

I didn’t even put two and two together until it was October and Joe and I had been in Italy for a week already. We were driving up the Adriatic coast to pick our friends up from the airport to attend the wedding that weekend and I thought, “Oh my God… I got my wish!”

Better than I could have imagined.

The entire two weeks we were there, Joe and I both were just in complete awe of how things had worked out and how lucky we were to share it with such wonderful people.

I gotta share one last story cause it’s just so silly and one of my favorites. This one happened about eight or nine years back when we were living in Wilmington.

I was getting my hair cut from a friend who is just as excitable as I am, and we were talking about signs and synchronicities. We wanted to see if we could get a good one cooked up for us to receive in the next 24 hours and decided on an owl.

Now, at the time, owls were havin’ a moment. I mean they’re always havin’ a moment. But at this point in time specifically, you could find owls on EVERYTHING. Purses, t-shirts, air fresheners you name it.

So, even though I was excited to see how an owl would show up for us, I also left the hair salon thinking, “Maaaan we probably should’ve picked something a little more… rare. It’s gonna be a little underwhelming to see an owl on a T-shirt at Target and be like, ‘Oh look… there it is…Who’da thought…”

Cut to later that night, Joe and I had met up with some friends at a bar in town. It was sometime after 2am, and we were all crowded outside on the sidewalk finishing our beers while the bartenders cleaned up and counted out their drawers.

A man pulls into the parking lot, and parks his LandRover directly in front of me and quickly hops out to run up to the doors and see if he missed last call.

Perched on the passenger seat of that LandRover, on their own cloth wrapped and mounted hoolhahoop…was a fucking owl. Just blinkin’ his lil eyes at me through the window.

I snapped a photo, sent it to my friend and said, “Uhhhh… will this do?”

Looka this owl! Bein’ chauffeured about town… What a bird. What a world.

That man never got the beer he was looking for, but God bless him and his search for alcohol. Because he just happened to DoorDash that owl to that parking lot at just the right time for me to be outside, get a good look, and lose my shit.

So here’s to a new year of bein’ absolutely childish in our sense of hope and wonder!

Because it’s real.

It’s happening all the time.

And the world really is your playground.

Be Young. Be Foolish. Be Happy.

I promise you won’t be alone.

I’ll be right there with you. Profusely sweatin’ and hyperventilatin’.

I Hope I’m Not Traumatizing My Therapist

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