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The Glimmering is a story told over six episodes. If you haven't listened to the first four episodes, you might want to go back and start from the beginning or this episode might not make any sense to you.
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Also a trigger warning. This episode contains references to sexual trauma, the loss of a sibling and the loss of a friend. Please listen at your own discretion. There's a part of the coli story I haven't told you about yet. That morning before we found Mikayla is first Ripon. I had one of the scariest experiences of my life. Let me back up and explain that. Before arriving on kawaii we had spent a week on Oahu where my family still lives. It was the first time we'd been back since the start of the pandemic two years earlier. It was also the first time I'd been back since Jack passed. But I'd spent a lot of time wandering around Honolulu in my mind, because I'd begun writing a book sat there in 2002. Maybe that's why I got pulled back into all the insecurities and darkness that had lived inside me during that period of my life. I felt anxious and irritable and ugly and unworthy like I had when I was 19. Those feelings followed me to kawaii, where on the first afternoon I stood on the beach and cursed myself and Jack for all the ways we had met each other up over the years starting 20 years earlier. That night, I dreamed I was in Honolulu. It was nighttime. All the streets were empty. I looked into a shop window but I couldn't make out the details of my face and the reflection. A grey smoke came rolling down the street and I started choking gasping so hard that I woke myself up. But even when my eyes open to the hotel room, I realized I couldn't breathe if someone was sitting on my chest holding me down, their hands wrapped around my throat. I tried to call out to James but I could only choke out something like a hoarse whisper.
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He stirred and made a sound and as soon as he did the thing on top of me disappeared, as if it had been sucked backward into a vacuum. James said that when he'd woken up to the sounds I was making, he thought there was no way they could be coming from me. Neither of us could replicate the Gollum like rasp and my voice. The only way I could have made those sounds was if someone had been pressing on my vocal cords strangling me. I was shaken. But when James finally felt like it was okay to leave me alone long enough to take a shower. I sat up in bed and realize that I felt lighter than I had since landing in Hawaii. It was as if I'd been carrying around a sack of bricks for a week without even noticing it. Until that moment when I was suddenly free of them. I immediately texted the only person I knew would understand.
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My friend Rosie, Joan. I told her about my dream with the smoke and about waking up to find something heavy and faceless sitting on my chest choking me. Three dots dance on the screen as she typed back. I sat there waiting for her response. It finally appeared in a gray bubble on my screen. What if it wasn't someone else? She asked? What if it was you? This is the glimmering a podcast about living in a state of magical realism. I enjoyed when the reason I knew Rosie was the one to text about my night terror was because she told me that she'd had similar experiences.
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There has been a series of dreams that have had especially in 2021. And I can't believe that we're even talking about this right now. Because I just had a dream this morning about shadow Rosie coming up.
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And in these dreams, I often find that my shadow self is sitting on top of me. It is this dark figure that I can't quite see. But I know that like that is me a part of me. And what's interesting is that I often see shadow Rosie, like in my bed like it's it really just feels as if I'm not even sleeping at all. It's like I'm having this experience away. And often. I want to say like in all the dreams one of the things that has been recurring is that she tends to want to like choke me.
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And what's interesting about the choking aspect of it is you know, we're talking about an area of the body that's associated with our throats.
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When we think about our throats.
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It's the the thing that we're using to help us speak up and to use our voice. And when I think about like, well why does my shadow self want to choke me or want me to like, not use my voice? And ultimately it goes back to the fact that our shadow selves are there in a sense to like protect us, and to maintain a certain identity of ourselves, like a past version of ourselves. So though, so I realized that part of this choking is really just a way to stop me from speaking up and stopped me from like being more authentic with myself.
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Over the previous two years, Rosie and I had both been living through the shedding of one phase of our lives. And we're currently in the confusing, messy middle part of stepping into a new chapter. We had connected years earlier as online acquaintances through a mutual friend in the spring of 2020, just before Jack died, the three of us had formed a Small Business Mastermind. Back then Rosie was a marketing consultant. But all that's changed now. More on that later.
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One day I told Rosie I was reading a book called you were born for this by an astrologer named Channing Nicholas. To my great surprise, Rosie wanted to know more. It wasn't long before Rosie and I relieving each other daily voice messages. Hi, Rosie, I am out running errands. i Hey, Joy.
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I just got back from Manmad I feel like I haven't talked to you in like a week or something or it feels like forever since Okay,
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so I'm having a real Mercury Retrograde moment.
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So I had like three dreams, all of which were interesting. They're not okay,
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here's the magical thing that I forgot to tell you about. So like me, Rosie had grown up in a spiritual environment that cost her to trust in the unseen. Her parents were both born in Cambodia, but were forced to flee during the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1970s.
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They didn't meet until they were both on the other side of the planet in the American South, in the 80s. While they hadn't brought many personal belongings to America, they did bring elements of their culture with them, including their spirituality.
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So, Buddhism is deeply embedded into the Chi culture. And so for us, that really, what I witnessed and what I experienced was, you know, we had like, the altars and the food offerings at home, but then, you know, there was also like the visiting of the monks, the visiting of the temple. And that in of itself was like this huge grand experience, you know, there was like this particular order of the things that we needed to do once we got to the temple that really stuck with me as a child.
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So you know, that included like the the food offerings, the food preparations, doing the the, the prayers, with the incense and everything, and also like consulting with the monks, like it was like a huge process, not only at the temple, but then, you know, we also did some of those things when we were at home as well, if we were having like those ceremonies, which is known as one in my language.
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Separately, when I was a child, the first home that I remember living in, was on Lindsey Street, we call it like the Lindsay house. And so we literally just shared like a brick wall. That was like separating us from the public librarian. And I read so many books growing up, in particular, the genre that I was very interested in was like about spirituality and magic. So I just remember that like, I would check out books that were about like, telekinesis, witchcraft, trying to just understand like different dimensions or realms or different like, beings, existences of beings outside of like humans. And so, like to this day, I just can't. I have no idea how like nobody, like not even the librarians or my family ever questioned the books that I was reading as a kid, because I was like seven, eight years old, reading these books.
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But as Rosie got older, spirituality and magic slowly trickled out of her life.
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Her focus went toward all the usual things like academics and boys and her siblings. There were seven of them, including Rosie she was also coping with multiple traumatic experiences that she kept secret for her entire childhood
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I've had to heal from what and I think, you know, it's subject to anybody's judgment on like the timeline, but it definitely feels like a lifetime of healing. I have experienced a lot of sexual trauma and My life and in different like parts of my life in very different situation. All of them very unique. And I, that in of itself, I think is just kind of strange. But I just remember that whatever it happened in my childhood, regarding like sexual trauma with family members, it wasn't too long after that, that I went to a doctor with my mother and the doctor had told my mother, my body has like this issue with yeast infections. And it's going to be an illness or an issue that I that I'm going to struggle with for the rest of my life. And I just remember that message being imprinted in me. I remember that, that happened after the sexual trauma experience with my my cousins.
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And I remember thinking, Well, is it because of like, what's happening with my cousins. And that was not something that I had ever vocalized or shared with anybody until I was in my late teen years. So there have been other things that I've been through like assault on a couple of different occasions with a person that I was that I was dating with a complete stranger at a train station, and more recently with a father figure.
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So that is some, just like some of the experiences I've had.
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I've also had to work through witnessing a woman who died by suicide, and that was obviously unexpected, I was just driving in a parking lot, and she decided to jump from the top of the parking structure.
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By the time she graduated from college, Rosie knew the only person she could rely on was herself. So she immediately began looking for a job.
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I applied to all these different types of jobs.
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And literally, the only one that I heard from was this nonprofit job at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. And so when I finally did my second interview, which is with this woman that named Jess, I knew that the minute that I met Jess, that we were just supposed to have each other like in our lives, and I knew that she would play a very significant role in my life.
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My relationship with Jess was incredibly special, because we intimately got to know each other with the work that we were doing together. And she was also like, a another mother to me.
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She was like a friend to me. She was She has all these things like a mentor, a teacher, a sister, a mother, like she was everything like that, to me, we definitely extended our relationship beyond what it was just at work. And they felt like on her end, I must have been like that little sister or like that daughter to
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her. Rosie had for so long had to fight for herself, for her safety and her survival.
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But with Jess in her corner, Rosie had an advocate, someone who believed in her and wanted her to thrive.
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Eventually, we parted ways organically from like a career perspective. And she was able to step into like this really great executive role at a different organization. And at that point, that was my, I felt like that was my time to say, Okay, it's time for me to move on. And finally moved to Los Angeles, which is what I really wanted to do. I did that gig in Los Angeles. And then I decided, well, I really wanted to try out being self employed.
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Like I wasn't sure what that meant. I just knew that that's what I wanted to do. And not long before that. I had found out that Jess had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
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At the time, Jess was only in her early 30s. She was active, successful, happily married. She and her husband spent their weekends outside hiking, biking, and hanging out with friends. It was a shock to everyone that Jess was sick, including Rosie.
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And so Jess is is was so young, when she had gotten that diagnosis and I just remember that when I learned about the news. I just remember like asking the universe, if for any any way any reason. There's an Any way that I could work with her again, I would be so happy in not knowing what the future would really hold for us.
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So in 2019, that's when that prayer was answered, just reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I definitely need some help with what I'm doing. Would you be interested in like, having a relationship 2.0? And that way, then like, Yes, I absolutely would.
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For a few blissful months, Rosie and Jess were back in the groove of working together again, because she was dealing with her cancer, just needed extra support to stay on top of things, and Rosie helped to fill in those gaps. And December just went away with her husband to her favorite place in the world. Kawaii. She and Rosie were scheduled to meet the day after she returned.
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The meeting was at 7am, we were working on East Coast time. And I'm over here in California. I was at a cafe I am waiting for the meeting to happen. It was only supposed to be like 1530 minutes, we're just trying to catch up on the projects that we had lined up for the week. And I remember like this, this cafe that I was at, it was super cute coffee shop. Super bright and vibrant.
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And you know, like I'm sitting here waiting to have like this conversation with someone. And I felt like the scenery and the environment was in that I was in at that time was completely opposite to the news that I came across later in the day and what I really felt in my heart.
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Eventually Rosie wound up leaving the coffee shop. Later, she got a call from one of their former colleagues who told her that Jess had died that morning.
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I was in so much shock I I could not believe it.
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Just to me has always, not just to me, but to everybody has always been this warrior. And we believed that she would make it through this. And she had, over the course of several years been battling cancer and really made it through each time and not this time. So I just I remember after that call, I went back into the office where I was meeting with my other client in Pasadena and I told them like, look, I gotta wrap this up, I have to go. I just heard some really bad news. And I need to be by myself. I laughed, I was driving around, and I found myself randomly in this neighborhood. And I just remember how present I was in that moment. Because in that moment, I could recognize all of the falling leaves on the tree.
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They were gold, yellow and orange. And it just was so beautiful. It was such a beautiful moment. And they felt like this was what was going to allow me to like understand what had just happened with Jazz.
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Jess wasn't the first contemporary that Rosie had lost. In 2017. Her brother Kang died in a motorcycle accident.
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And like after her brother's death, Rosie simply pushed on after Jess passed.
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I did not give time to myself to like really process grieving over to us I felt like I was probably burying myself in the work.
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By the time she moved into a new apartment and 2021 all of her repressed grief came to a head.
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That's when my spiritual awakening like really kicked my butt it kicked off.
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And all these things started happening primarily through these incredibly vivid and wild dreams that I was having. But then also I just felt like in my day to day I was losing love and motivation and energy for everything that I was working on everything that I was working towards. I just did not care anymore. And from a physical standpoint, I started to become very sensitive to a lot of things. It was just like, I was a ticking time bomb. And every day I could not predict whether I would have energy, whether I'd be having headaches or feeling nauseous or just like having these weird physical symptoms that I could not explain. But they were affecting the way that I was operating.
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At that point, I had begun working with an energy healer, since my own grief had thrown me into adrenal fatigue.
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And I suggested that Rosie might want to meet with her too.
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I decided okay, like you know that that won't hurt like that is a very normal thing to do. Like I'm not But I'm not opposed to that, because in my childhood, we definitely consulted people for similar, similar topics. So I did the Akashic Records reading and the esoteric healing session. And in from there, the message, one of the messages that came through was that I am meant to heal and empower people in this lifetime, which was very hard for me to accept. And then a few months after that, I decided, Okay, I'll do a mediumship reading and see what that brings up. And, again, during that mediumship, reading, a similar message came through, which is that I should definitely become a healer from a professional capacity. And I was like, Okay, I mean, if that's it twice, time twice is enough of a message for me, I guess I'm gonna do this. So, I think by that point, I had enough time to process this idea that healing was something I'm really meant to do in this life.
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And since then, I feel like I have been shown all these different ways in which I am capable of being that a healer not just like from a personal standpoint, but like professionally and to help people in this capacity where, where they can be on their healing journeys in the same way that I have been healing basically, my whole life.
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During one of those readings just also came through to let Rosie know that they were still working together. Even though Jess was on the other side. Now, in some ways, she said she could help Rosie even more from there, Rosie enrolled in esoteric healing program, and began exploring other energy healing modalities. At the same time, she was also beginning to remember the ways that she had felt connected to nature as a child. And now nature began showing up for her in ways she couldn't miss.
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The night of September 9, I was trying to go to sleep, but then all of a sudden, somehow I was caught in the middle of a thunderstorm. We never get that kind of like weather in, in where I live, like I'm in Southern California, we don't really get thunderstorms anyway. So it was just so peculiar that literally all around me, there was nothing but like lightning strikes and thunder. And I felt like that was somehow significant to my journey as a healer, it and this message that I'm supposed to receive as to like, what am I capable of, and I remember the ways in which, like, my body would respond here to to the lightning strikes or to to the sound of the thunder. And since that night, my hands have never been the same. They omit a spiritual heat. And I, I always think of that night as my activation night, you know, or initiation night, where it helps me understand that like, Yes, I am so much more connected to everything, and that this was part of the path. And since then, there have been like this recurring theme about like lightning and energy throughout my path, as I'm going along and learning the ways in which I am stepping into my path as a healer.
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As you move toward this new path as a healer, Rosie received more and more signs about death and rebirth, she began finding dead hummingbirds in the same public place again and again. And even though they were out in the open, she seemed to be the only one who noticed that. Even when she called the custodian to take care of them, no one ever came. She then realized that the births were there for her to address. So each time she found one, she wrapped it up in leaves, and buried it in a nearby park, where it could be reintegrated into the earth. And her dreams had a similar theme.
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I saw a woman who was hurt, her skin was covered by some sort of disease. She was clearly very sick. And then I saw another woman laying next to her, like just sitting next to her holding her arm. And she looked exactly like the woman who was sick. And there were all these people around her. And I remember the woman who wasn't sick, she was telling her friends, like I need to let go, I need to say goodbye. I need to say goodbye. And what has been interesting about that dream.
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What I felt was what I saw was that the sick woman was also the other woman who said that she needed to say goodbye. And I felt like what she was seeing was like this old version of herself. And you know, while like this woman was sick, it was more of like not necessarily having a physical disease but more of like, disease in In this analogy of having this old identity, this old identity that was was causing her to like not step into her full potential
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Rosie was releasing her old identity and stepping into a new one. It was scary, but she knew she was being guided not just by her guides, and by chest, but also by her grandmother.
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My grandmother, when she came through during this reading has, has come through many times during my other mediumship readings. And that is because not only is she a loved one, she's also a guide, I learned that in my second mediumship reading. So one of the reasons why it's important that to know that she is one of my guides is because I've been on this path to becoming a healer. In what I learned about my grandmother was that my lineage of healing does come from her. And for her, it was more about it was something about like the kitchen. And so when I think about the kitchen, you know, thinking not only just about cooking, but we're talking about herbalism. And so what's been very interesting about having that information unfold is how I started with embracing and practicing energy healing and vibrational medicine vibrational healing, and that is now evolving into integrating more practices and interest with herbalism specifically, flower essences. So I was able to land on that because there was a push from my guides, especially my grandmother, to explore my ancestral lineage and explore ancestral and cultural healing practices,
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she has since begun to weave parts of her childhood experiences with spirituality into her practice.
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Though those aspects of visiting the temple, and making offerings to our guides, and our ancestors, working with like incense and holy water, and consulting with a spiritual advisor to like get, get some answers and clarity and guidance that had made such a profound impact on me. And when I thought about like, Well, how do I really incorporate more of my culture, my heritage, my lineage into my practice to make this more unique, and it speaks to me on so many levels, I realized that looking back into my childhood, helped me dig into that a little bit deeper. And ultimately, I feel like my sessions, they're evolving into more of like a ceremonial style kind of session where I want people to like play with all these different types of materials, live and dried plants, essential oils, and essences and stuff like that.
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And just being able to like make these offerings to the altar or the guides and really like connecting to ourselves.
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As a healer, Rosie also has to prioritize practicing on herself. And when she does, she finds that she can connect with just calm her grandmother, and her guides.
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Every day, I am always in conversation with all of my spirit team, especially my loved ones, like my grandmother, my brother, and jazz, you know, my life is full of magic. And I see that magic everywhere I go, the songs that play while I'm listening to Spotify. It's the things that I come across when I'm doing research online when I'm curious. And you know, when I'm out and about, it's the numbers that I'm seeing. It's just so wild. And one of my favorite ways in which I know that Jess is communicating to me is a very specific color combination, which is blue and yellow. Often I see it with vehicles, I'll see if I see a yellow vehicle and a blue one.
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We'll follow up right after that. It's beautiful to see the way in which like these things unfold before me and just knowing that these are the forms of communications from all of them, letting me know that I am loved and supported and that they're always with me
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What Rosie and I have come to understand is that healing work is about our evolutionist souls. And that work continues even after we leave our bodies. In that way, it's a circle, our out of body loved ones are helping us to heal here on Earth. And within that process, we're helping them to heal in the place where we all come from.
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The experience with my shadow in Kawhi was strange. It was just one in a string of many unexplainable things that had unfolded in my life over the previous year and a half. Before Maggie, and Carrie and Rosie came back into my life, I'd gone through a phase of trying to talk about these things to anyone would finally stop me wasn't the way these people looked at me as though I'd grown to heads, though I should have taken that as the hint. It was that so many of them kept asking me the same question. A question I hated. They'd not appear to be processing what I just said to them. And then they'd say, What does your husband think about all this? Which I took to mean?
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What does your husband think about the fact that you've gone a little crazy? I resented this question, because I knew it had been circling through their minds the whole time, I was trying to share the wonder I discovered with them. I resented that I listened to their stories without judgment. And now I was being judged. And most of all, I resented the fact that I didn't think anyone would ask a man, what does your wife think about this change in you? But as a woman, people seem to feel like James's experience was the only way to validate mine. After that morning with my shadow, they go a part of me that bristled at that question began to fade. And I realized that, okay, maybe some people were asking if James had thought I'd gone crazy. But some of them, most of them, in fact, were asking because they couldn't see how their own relationships could withstand the kind of change I'd gone through. If our relationships were all trees, it was as if they were asking me how mine bent in the storm without breaking so that they could determine if there's could withstand the same wind. But it was the wrong question. It wasn't about what James thought of my spiritual awakening that mattered. It was how James thought about everything that mattered. Next time on the glimmering.
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And I just remember thinking, who is me, you know, and I was the kind of kid who always was super curious about just everything in general, but certainly about things that are related to the mind, and spirit.
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To learn more about Rosie Joan visit, Rosie joan.com. That's our osiechuong.com. There you can learn about her local and distance energy healing sessions, and about her guidance for those who are experiencing their own spiritual awakenings.
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The glimmering is written and produced by me joy Uyeno. The show is mixed by lead and Williams. If you liked the show, please subscribe and leave us a review to help other people find out about us. You can also follow us on Instagram at the glimmering pod. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time for the final episode of season one of the glimmering
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The Glimmering is a story told over six episodes. If you haven't listened to the first four episodes, you might want to go back and start from the beginning or this episode might not make any sense to you.
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Also a trigger warning. This episode contains references to sexual trauma, the loss of a sibling and the loss of a friend. Please listen at your own discretion. There's a part of the coli story I haven't told you about yet. That morning before we found Mikayla is first Ripon. I had one of the scariest experiences of my life. Let me back up and explain that. Before arriving on kawaii we had spent a week on Oahu where my family still lives. It was the first time we'd been back since the start of the pandemic two years earlier. It was also the first time I'd been back since Jack passed. But I'd spent a lot of time wandering around Honolulu in my mind, because I'd begun writing a book sat there in 2002. Maybe that's why I got pulled back into all the insecurities and darkness that had lived inside me during that period of my life. I felt anxious and irritable and ugly and unworthy like I had when I was 19. Those feelings followed me to kawaii, where on the first afternoon I stood on the beach and cursed myself and Jack for all the ways we had met each other up over the years starting 20 years earlier. That night, I dreamed I was in Honolulu. It was nighttime. All the streets were empty. I looked into a shop window but I couldn't make out the details of my face and the reflection. A grey smoke came rolling down the street and I started choking gasping so hard that I woke myself up. But even when my eyes open to the hotel room, I realized I couldn't breathe if someone was sitting on my chest holding me down, their hands wrapped around my throat. I tried to call out to James but I could only choke out something like a hoarse whisper.
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He stirred and made a sound and as soon as he did the thing on top of me disappeared, as if it had been sucked backward into a vacuum. James said that when he'd woken up to the sounds I was making, he thought there was no way they could be coming from me. Neither of us could replicate the Gollum like rasp and my voice. The only way I could have made those sounds was if someone had been pressing on my vocal cords strangling me. I was shaken. But when James finally felt like it was okay to leave me alone long enough to take a shower. I sat up in bed and realize that I felt lighter than I had since landing in Hawaii. It was as if I'd been carrying around a sack of bricks for a week without even noticing it. Until that moment when I was suddenly free of them. I immediately texted the only person I knew would understand.
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My friend Rosie, Joan. I told her about my dream with the smoke and about waking up to find something heavy and faceless sitting on my chest choking me. Three dots dance on the screen as she typed back. I sat there waiting for her response. It finally appeared in a gray bubble on my screen. What if it wasn't someone else? She asked? What if it was you? This is the glimmering a podcast about living in a state of magical realism. I enjoyed when the reason I knew Rosie was the one to text about my night terror was because she told me that she'd had similar experiences.
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There has been a series of dreams that have had especially in 2021. And I can't believe that we're even talking about this right now. Because I just had a dream this morning about shadow Rosie coming up.
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And in these dreams, I often find that my shadow self is sitting on top of me. It is this dark figure that I can't quite see. But I know that like that is me a part of me. And what's interesting is that I often see shadow Rosie, like in my bed like it's it really just feels as if I'm not even sleeping at all. It's like I'm having this experience away. And often. I want to say like in all the dreams one of the things that has been recurring is that she tends to want to like choke me.
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And what's interesting about the choking aspect of it is you know, we're talking about an area of the body that's associated with our throats.
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When we think about our throats.
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It's the the thing that we're using to help us speak up and to use our voice. And when I think about like, well why does my shadow self want to choke me or want me to like, not use my voice? And ultimately it goes back to the fact that our shadow selves are there in a sense to like protect us, and to maintain a certain identity of ourselves, like a past version of ourselves. So though, so I realized that part of this choking is really just a way to stop me from speaking up and stopped me from like being more authentic with myself.
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Over the previous two years, Rosie and I had both been living through the shedding of one phase of our lives. And we're currently in the confusing, messy middle part of stepping into a new chapter. We had connected years earlier as online acquaintances through a mutual friend in the spring of 2020, just before Jack died, the three of us had formed a Small Business Mastermind. Back then Rosie was a marketing consultant. But all that's changed now. More on that later.
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One day I told Rosie I was reading a book called you were born for this by an astrologer named Channing Nicholas. To my great surprise, Rosie wanted to know more. It wasn't long before Rosie and I relieving each other daily voice messages. Hi, Rosie, I am out running errands. i Hey, Joy.
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I just got back from Manmad I feel like I haven't talked to you in like a week or something or it feels like forever since Okay,
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so I'm having a real Mercury Retrograde moment.
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So I had like three dreams, all of which were interesting. They're not okay,
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here's the magical thing that I forgot to tell you about. So like me, Rosie had grown up in a spiritual environment that cost her to trust in the unseen. Her parents were both born in Cambodia, but were forced to flee during the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1970s.
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They didn't meet until they were both on the other side of the planet in the American South, in the 80s. While they hadn't brought many personal belongings to America, they did bring elements of their culture with them, including their spirituality.
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So, Buddhism is deeply embedded into the Chi culture. And so for us, that really, what I witnessed and what I experienced was, you know, we had like, the altars and the food offerings at home, but then, you know, there was also like the visiting of the monks, the visiting of the temple. And that in of itself was like this huge grand experience, you know, there was like this particular order of the things that we needed to do once we got to the temple that really stuck with me as a child.
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So you know, that included like the the food offerings, the food preparations, doing the the, the prayers, with the incense and everything, and also like consulting with the monks, like it was like a huge process, not only at the temple, but then, you know, we also did some of those things when we were at home as well, if we were having like those ceremonies, which is known as one in my language.
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Separately, when I was a child, the first home that I remember living in, was on Lindsey Street, we call it like the Lindsay house. And so we literally just shared like a brick wall. That was like separating us from the public librarian. And I read so many books growing up, in particular, the genre that I was very interested in was like about spirituality and magic. So I just remember that like, I would check out books that were about like, telekinesis, witchcraft, trying to just understand like different dimensions or realms or different like, beings, existences of beings outside of like humans. And so, like to this day, I just can't. I have no idea how like nobody, like not even the librarians or my family ever questioned the books that I was reading as a kid, because I was like seven, eight years old, reading these books.
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But as Rosie got older, spirituality and magic slowly trickled out of her life.
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Her focus went toward all the usual things like academics and boys and her siblings. There were seven of them, including Rosie she was also coping with multiple traumatic experiences that she kept secret for her entire childhood
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I've had to heal from what and I think, you know, it's subject to anybody's judgment on like the timeline, but it definitely feels like a lifetime of healing. I have experienced a lot of sexual trauma and My life and in different like parts of my life in very different situation. All of them very unique. And I, that in of itself, I think is just kind of strange. But I just remember that whatever it happened in my childhood, regarding like sexual trauma with family members, it wasn't too long after that, that I went to a doctor with my mother and the doctor had told my mother, my body has like this issue with yeast infections. And it's going to be an illness or an issue that I that I'm going to struggle with for the rest of my life. And I just remember that message being imprinted in me. I remember that, that happened after the sexual trauma experience with my my cousins.
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And I remember thinking, Well, is it because of like, what's happening with my cousins. And that was not something that I had ever vocalized or shared with anybody until I was in my late teen years. So there have been other things that I've been through like assault on a couple of different occasions with a person that I was that I was dating with a complete stranger at a train station, and more recently with a father figure.
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So that is some, just like some of the experiences I've had.
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I've also had to work through witnessing a woman who died by suicide, and that was obviously unexpected, I was just driving in a parking lot, and she decided to jump from the top of the parking structure.
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By the time she graduated from college, Rosie knew the only person she could rely on was herself. So she immediately began looking for a job.
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I applied to all these different types of jobs.
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And literally, the only one that I heard from was this nonprofit job at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. And so when I finally did my second interview, which is with this woman that named Jess, I knew that the minute that I met Jess, that we were just supposed to have each other like in our lives, and I knew that she would play a very significant role in my life.
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My relationship with Jess was incredibly special, because we intimately got to know each other with the work that we were doing together. And she was also like, a another mother to me.
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She was like a friend to me. She was She has all these things like a mentor, a teacher, a sister, a mother, like she was everything like that, to me, we definitely extended our relationship beyond what it was just at work. And they felt like on her end, I must have been like that little sister or like that daughter to
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her. Rosie had for so long had to fight for herself, for her safety and her survival.
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But with Jess in her corner, Rosie had an advocate, someone who believed in her and wanted her to thrive.
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Eventually, we parted ways organically from like a career perspective. And she was able to step into like this really great executive role at a different organization. And at that point, that was my, I felt like that was my time to say, Okay, it's time for me to move on. And finally moved to Los Angeles, which is what I really wanted to do. I did that gig in Los Angeles. And then I decided, well, I really wanted to try out being self employed.
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Like I wasn't sure what that meant. I just knew that that's what I wanted to do. And not long before that. I had found out that Jess had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
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At the time, Jess was only in her early 30s. She was active, successful, happily married. She and her husband spent their weekends outside hiking, biking, and hanging out with friends. It was a shock to everyone that Jess was sick, including Rosie.
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And so Jess is is was so young, when she had gotten that diagnosis and I just remember that when I learned about the news. I just remember like asking the universe, if for any any way any reason. There's an Any way that I could work with her again, I would be so happy in not knowing what the future would really hold for us.
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So in 2019, that's when that prayer was answered, just reached out to me and said, hey, you know, I definitely need some help with what I'm doing. Would you be interested in like, having a relationship 2.0? And that way, then like, Yes, I absolutely would.
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For a few blissful months, Rosie and Jess were back in the groove of working together again, because she was dealing with her cancer, just needed extra support to stay on top of things, and Rosie helped to fill in those gaps. And December just went away with her husband to her favorite place in the world. Kawaii. She and Rosie were scheduled to meet the day after she returned.
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The meeting was at 7am, we were working on East Coast time. And I'm over here in California. I was at a cafe I am waiting for the meeting to happen. It was only supposed to be like 1530 minutes, we're just trying to catch up on the projects that we had lined up for the week. And I remember like this, this cafe that I was at, it was super cute coffee shop. Super bright and vibrant.
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And you know, like I'm sitting here waiting to have like this conversation with someone. And I felt like the scenery and the environment was in that I was in at that time was completely opposite to the news that I came across later in the day and what I really felt in my heart.
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Eventually Rosie wound up leaving the coffee shop. Later, she got a call from one of their former colleagues who told her that Jess had died that morning.
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I was in so much shock I I could not believe it.
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Just to me has always, not just to me, but to everybody has always been this warrior. And we believed that she would make it through this. And she had, over the course of several years been battling cancer and really made it through each time and not this time. So I just I remember after that call, I went back into the office where I was meeting with my other client in Pasadena and I told them like, look, I gotta wrap this up, I have to go. I just heard some really bad news. And I need to be by myself. I laughed, I was driving around, and I found myself randomly in this neighborhood. And I just remember how present I was in that moment. Because in that moment, I could recognize all of the falling leaves on the tree.
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They were gold, yellow and orange. And it just was so beautiful. It was such a beautiful moment. And they felt like this was what was going to allow me to like understand what had just happened with Jazz.
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Jess wasn't the first contemporary that Rosie had lost. In 2017. Her brother Kang died in a motorcycle accident.
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And like after her brother's death, Rosie simply pushed on after Jess passed.
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I did not give time to myself to like really process grieving over to us I felt like I was probably burying myself in the work.
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By the time she moved into a new apartment and 2021 all of her repressed grief came to a head.
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That's when my spiritual awakening like really kicked my butt it kicked off.
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And all these things started happening primarily through these incredibly vivid and wild dreams that I was having. But then also I just felt like in my day to day I was losing love and motivation and energy for everything that I was working on everything that I was working towards. I just did not care anymore. And from a physical standpoint, I started to become very sensitive to a lot of things. It was just like, I was a ticking time bomb. And every day I could not predict whether I would have energy, whether I'd be having headaches or feeling nauseous or just like having these weird physical symptoms that I could not explain. But they were affecting the way that I was operating.
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At that point, I had begun working with an energy healer, since my own grief had thrown me into adrenal fatigue.
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And I suggested that Rosie might want to meet with her too.
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I decided okay, like you know that that won't hurt like that is a very normal thing to do. Like I'm not But I'm not opposed to that, because in my childhood, we definitely consulted people for similar, similar topics. So I did the Akashic Records reading and the esoteric healing session. And in from there, the message, one of the messages that came through was that I am meant to heal and empower people in this lifetime, which was very hard for me to accept. And then a few months after that, I decided, Okay, I'll do a mediumship reading and see what that brings up. And, again, during that mediumship, reading, a similar message came through, which is that I should definitely become a healer from a professional capacity. And I was like, Okay, I mean, if that's it twice, time twice is enough of a message for me, I guess I'm gonna do this. So, I think by that point, I had enough time to process this idea that healing was something I'm really meant to do in this life.
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And since then, I feel like I have been shown all these different ways in which I am capable of being that a healer not just like from a personal standpoint, but like professionally and to help people in this capacity where, where they can be on their healing journeys in the same way that I have been healing basically, my whole life.
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During one of those readings just also came through to let Rosie know that they were still working together. Even though Jess was on the other side. Now, in some ways, she said she could help Rosie even more from there, Rosie enrolled in esoteric healing program, and began exploring other energy healing modalities. At the same time, she was also beginning to remember the ways that she had felt connected to nature as a child. And now nature began showing up for her in ways she couldn't miss.
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The night of September 9, I was trying to go to sleep, but then all of a sudden, somehow I was caught in the middle of a thunderstorm. We never get that kind of like weather in, in where I live, like I'm in Southern California, we don't really get thunderstorms anyway. So it was just so peculiar that literally all around me, there was nothing but like lightning strikes and thunder. And I felt like that was somehow significant to my journey as a healer, it and this message that I'm supposed to receive as to like, what am I capable of, and I remember the ways in which, like, my body would respond here to to the lightning strikes or to to the sound of the thunder. And since that night, my hands have never been the same. They omit a spiritual heat. And I, I always think of that night as my activation night, you know, or initiation night, where it helps me understand that like, Yes, I am so much more connected to everything, and that this was part of the path. And since then, there have been like this recurring theme about like lightning and energy throughout my path, as I'm going along and learning the ways in which I am stepping into my path as a healer.
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As you move toward this new path as a healer, Rosie received more and more signs about death and rebirth, she began finding dead hummingbirds in the same public place again and again. And even though they were out in the open, she seemed to be the only one who noticed that. Even when she called the custodian to take care of them, no one ever came. She then realized that the births were there for her to address. So each time she found one, she wrapped it up in leaves, and buried it in a nearby park, where it could be reintegrated into the earth. And her dreams had a similar theme.
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I saw a woman who was hurt, her skin was covered by some sort of disease. She was clearly very sick. And then I saw another woman laying next to her, like just sitting next to her holding her arm. And she looked exactly like the woman who was sick. And there were all these people around her. And I remember the woman who wasn't sick, she was telling her friends, like I need to let go, I need to say goodbye. I need to say goodbye. And what has been interesting about that dream.
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What I felt was what I saw was that the sick woman was also the other woman who said that she needed to say goodbye. And I felt like what she was seeing was like this old version of herself. And you know, while like this woman was sick, it was more of like not necessarily having a physical disease but more of like, disease in In this analogy of having this old identity, this old identity that was was causing her to like not step into her full potential
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Rosie was releasing her old identity and stepping into a new one. It was scary, but she knew she was being guided not just by her guides, and by chest, but also by her grandmother.
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My grandmother, when she came through during this reading has, has come through many times during my other mediumship readings. And that is because not only is she a loved one, she's also a guide, I learned that in my second mediumship reading. So one of the reasons why it's important that to know that she is one of my guides is because I've been on this path to becoming a healer. In what I learned about my grandmother was that my lineage of healing does come from her. And for her, it was more about it was something about like the kitchen. And so when I think about the kitchen, you know, thinking not only just about cooking, but we're talking about herbalism. And so what's been very interesting about having that information unfold is how I started with embracing and practicing energy healing and vibrational medicine vibrational healing, and that is now evolving into integrating more practices and interest with herbalism specifically, flower essences. So I was able to land on that because there was a push from my guides, especially my grandmother, to explore my ancestral lineage and explore ancestral and cultural healing practices,
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she has since begun to weave parts of her childhood experiences with spirituality into her practice.
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Though those aspects of visiting the temple, and making offerings to our guides, and our ancestors, working with like incense and holy water, and consulting with a spiritual advisor to like get, get some answers and clarity and guidance that had made such a profound impact on me. And when I thought about like, Well, how do I really incorporate more of my culture, my heritage, my lineage into my practice to make this more unique, and it speaks to me on so many levels, I realized that looking back into my childhood, helped me dig into that a little bit deeper. And ultimately, I feel like my sessions, they're evolving into more of like a ceremonial style kind of session where I want people to like play with all these different types of materials, live and dried plants, essential oils, and essences and stuff like that.
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And just being able to like make these offerings to the altar or the guides and really like connecting to ourselves.
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As a healer, Rosie also has to prioritize practicing on herself. And when she does, she finds that she can connect with just calm her grandmother, and her guides.
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Every day, I am always in conversation with all of my spirit team, especially my loved ones, like my grandmother, my brother, and jazz, you know, my life is full of magic. And I see that magic everywhere I go, the songs that play while I'm listening to Spotify. It's the things that I come across when I'm doing research online when I'm curious. And you know, when I'm out and about, it's the numbers that I'm seeing. It's just so wild. And one of my favorite ways in which I know that Jess is communicating to me is a very specific color combination, which is blue and yellow. Often I see it with vehicles, I'll see if I see a yellow vehicle and a blue one.
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We'll follow up right after that. It's beautiful to see the way in which like these things unfold before me and just knowing that these are the forms of communications from all of them, letting me know that I am loved and supported and that they're always with me
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What Rosie and I have come to understand is that healing work is about our evolutionist souls. And that work continues even after we leave our bodies. In that way, it's a circle, our out of body loved ones are helping us to heal here on Earth. And within that process, we're helping them to heal in the place where we all come from.
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The experience with my shadow in Kawhi was strange. It was just one in a string of many unexplainable things that had unfolded in my life over the previous year and a half. Before Maggie, and Carrie and Rosie came back into my life, I'd gone through a phase of trying to talk about these things to anyone would finally stop me wasn't the way these people looked at me as though I'd grown to heads, though I should have taken that as the hint. It was that so many of them kept asking me the same question. A question I hated. They'd not appear to be processing what I just said to them. And then they'd say, What does your husband think about all this? Which I took to mean?
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What does your husband think about the fact that you've gone a little crazy? I resented this question, because I knew it had been circling through their minds the whole time, I was trying to share the wonder I discovered with them. I resented that I listened to their stories without judgment. And now I was being judged. And most of all, I resented the fact that I didn't think anyone would ask a man, what does your wife think about this change in you? But as a woman, people seem to feel like James's experience was the only way to validate mine. After that morning with my shadow, they go a part of me that bristled at that question began to fade. And I realized that, okay, maybe some people were asking if James had thought I'd gone crazy. But some of them, most of them, in fact, were asking because they couldn't see how their own relationships could withstand the kind of change I'd gone through. If our relationships were all trees, it was as if they were asking me how mine bent in the storm without breaking so that they could determine if there's could withstand the same wind. But it was the wrong question. It wasn't about what James thought of my spiritual awakening that mattered. It was how James thought about everything that mattered. Next time on the glimmering.
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And I just remember thinking, who is me, you know, and I was the kind of kid who always was super curious about just everything in general, but certainly about things that are related to the mind, and spirit.
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To learn more about Rosie Joan visit, Rosie joan.com. That's our osiechuong.com. There you can learn about her local and distance energy healing sessions, and about her guidance for those who are experiencing their own spiritual awakenings.
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The glimmering is written and produced by me joy Uyeno. The show is mixed by lead and Williams. If you liked the show, please subscribe and leave us a review to help other people find out about us. You can also follow us on Instagram at the glimmering pod. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time for the final episode of season one of the glimmering
