“Don’t you hear him barking?”
“Hon, there’s no dog.”
“It’s a husky. He just winked at me!”
I later learned that Siberian huskies are considered to be very spiritual dogs, since they’re so closely related to the wolf, which Native American tradition says is the highest spiritual teacher in the animal kingdom. I suspect the MSG helped trigger my vision because it’s a chemical, and when people alter their chemistry, it can do some crazy stuff to their soul.
A Serendipitous Encounter
At twenty-eight, I was a hot mess. I’d just stopped smoking and my anxieties were nonstop. I didn’t want to leave the house and was in a constant panic that something bad would happen if I did. My therapist called this “anticipatory anxiety,” which is when you anticipate future events in a way that causes you to feel anxious, and that interferes with your ability to function in everyday life. The thought of going to work, the butcher, or a birthday party made my mind reel.
One night, Mom had a candle party—like a Tupperware thing, but with scented candles—and I decided to go at the last minute. She lived next door, so this I could do. Mom’s friend Pat Longo is a spiritual healer and works with people who have physical or emotional ailments, including chronic anxiety; she also teaches classes about living a balanced, positive, and fulfilled life that includes meditation and healing. Like me, Pat also decided at the eleventh hour to go to Mom’s event. All these last-minute decisions don’t say much for her parties, do they!
I told Pat about my anxieties and how sick I’d been, and though I’d known her for years—her son and my brother grew up together—she had no clue about the anxiety I suffered as a child, and certainly nothing about how I sensed Spirit. She put her hands over my head and began to channel healing energy from God. For three weeks after, I felt so calm that I wanted to do it again. But when I called to make an appointment, Pat told me I didn’t need another healing, that there was nothing for her to mend within me. She asked if I wanted to take her spiritual awareness class instead to give me some perspective and balance in my life. She suspected Spirit communication was causing my distress, but didn’t tell me that right away.
Whatever Pat did to me made me feel better, so I decided to go for a class—why not? I also trusted her with my well-being because my family had known hers for years. If Pat were some random spiritual healer, I wouldn’t have been able to believe in her or her evaluation of me. I put on a good face for friends and family, but I was still fragile on the inside and wouldn’t have felt safe with just anyone. I also knew I’d feel secure in Pat’s classes because my mom had taken her course a few years before. She was actually one of Pat’s first students, though she only went to learn more about feeling positive and healthy from the inside out. My dad and us kids used to rib her, like, “Oooh. You’re going to your voodoo class tonight.” Pat says Mom was starting to touch the surface of her own abilities by the end, but she put her spiritual energy into working with the church instead of developing them any further on her own.
After that first night in Pat’s class, I got sidetracked and didn’t go back for, um, a year. When I finally did, the classes were held on Wednesdays, and every week there would be a downpour. One of my phobias was driving in the rain, so I cut class for that whole first month. But in my heart, I wanted to make this work, so I practiced driving in thunderstorms, up and down the block. I was ready to go back to Pat’s the next month, though it continued to rain every Wednesday.
I think Spirit made it rain to help me break through my fear, on my way to honing my gift. This shouldn’t surprise me; it always rains during milestone events! There was a monsoon during my son’s baby shower and my daughter’s Communion , and Hurricane Hugo hit on my wedding day. It wiped out St. Thomas Island, and my honeymoon was canceled. Even when I taped The Tonight Show a few years ago, which was intimidating and such a big deal for me, it poured cats and dogs. Leno’s producers assured me that it never rains that much in LA in October, and wouldn’t you know, the minute I was done shooting at five p.m., the sun came out.