Reclaiming scattered parts of herself

Throughout my childhood and early adult life, I experienced many traumatic events beyond my control. Survival and coping mechanisms took hold as I struggled to function and maintain my course. Over the years, without realizing it, I had isolated and lost parts of myself—parts of my soul—as I navigated everyday life. But as I grew older, the strategies that had once protected me no longer served me, and my body began to manifest the pain of embodied trauma. Unprocessed trauma is a heat-seeking missile that tracked my ass down in spite of my best intentions. My body, the vessel I had relied upon to carry me through life, was failing. My soul, compromised by years of trauma and survival, needed healing so that my body could begin to heal as well. Aware, yet lost in a sea of hurt, I spent seven years navigating the abysmal. Crystal Sidelinger helped guide me through this journey. It was not a journey I could go around. I had to go through it. Navigating trauma, uncertainty, and the unknown is something humans are uniquely equipped to do. We are extraordinarily adaptable creatures. We may not fly or breathe underwater, but we have learned to survive in nearly every extreme climate and geography on Earth. Yet we do not accomplish this alone.

Only together do we do hard things.

As social creatures, we need guides—people who help us find our way when the path becomes obscured. The abysmal is a dark place, traversed best by feel. Journeying through the strange landscapes of our internal and external worlds requires trust, intuition, and careful navigation. Crystal Sidelinger possesses these gifts in abundance. Working with intuition, inspiration, and deep sensitivity, she is a highly skilled Soul Retrieval Guide. A diviner of the unconscious realm, she gently and effortlessly guided me into trance. Together, we wound our way deep into the caverns of the soul, retrieving images, symbols, and feelings that illuminated lost and forgotten parts of myself and my ancestral past. The rituals, insights, and spirit guides we encountered became essential tools in my healing arsenal. Over the years, as I navigated seventeen surgeries and the profound physical healing they demanded, these practices helped sustain me. Crystal helped reconnect me with Spirit and Source, allowing me to feel loved, held, and guided through a time of immense transformation. Through her guidance, I began to reclaim the parts of myself that survival had scattered. What had once been lost in darkness could finally be seen as whole.