Spirit in the Woods

This true story took place on the Big Island last fall. The shove from behind by a spirit led to a blessing in my life. The request to write my story birthed this foreword to a book titled Love: The Harmonizing Essence authored by Suzenne Seradwyn & Elijah Carter.

“This place is weird! I feel completely disconnected from my body,” I said to my friend Suzenne who was standing nearby. 

We were hiking the King’s Trail through an ironwood glade. The ground was spongy and slightly slippery from the pine needles carpeting the forest floor. Cavernous holes in the ground dotted the woods. Formed by collapsed lava tubes, these apertures were dark and foreboding.

I’m not superstitious, but that day I felt as if someone else had control of my body. Being careful to tread solidly, I planted each foot firmly on the ground. The trail opened up to a bluff overlooking the splashing Pacific licking the edges of the Big Island. Still feeling disembodied, I gingerly stepped from jagged lava rock to boulder, to rising escarpment. This part of the island where we reside is a beautiful and savagely dramatic landscape. 

We turned back, Suzenne walking along the coastline while I wandered into the forest to the peculiar, otherworldly place I had passed through earlier.

As I surveyed the terrain determining where the holes were, I felt a shove. There was no one behind me. Falling forward, my knee caught on the glassy edge of a ridge of aʻā lava. My leg twisted and buckled under me. Shocked that I had lost my balance, I rose and limped toward the sound of the crashing surf.

Suzenne was looking for me. “There you are, girl. Why are your pants ripped?”

She helped me hobble back to the road. “Let’s go get you a bandage,” she said. Her partner, Elijah, lives next to the trailhead.

As I entered his home, Elijah slowly looked me up and down and said, “Get on the massage table.” 

I really wanted to get off my feet. As I lay there, he cleaned and bandaged the wound. It was ragged and bleeding.

“This cut is deep. May I run my hands over it to increase the healing?” he asked.

Muscles un-tensed. Bones loosened. The throbbing stopped.

Elijah’s voice drifted into my dreamy state. He said, “I’m getting a message from a relative of yours. They are a family member—but not related. He wants you to send him love. He is trying to contact you.”

I was mystified until a bolt of realization struck and chills ran down my spine.

“Jesus, it’s my adopted brother, David. We were both adopted at birth two years apart. He was a criminal. I have no connection to him and he died over a decade ago.”

Elijah said, “He is asking for love so he can pass on.”

I felt tremendous repulsion and stuttered, “God, he was a terrible person. He never hurt me, but he hurt a lot of other people. I don’t want anything to do with him.”

As I said this out loud, my feelings shifted. I felt receptive and warm. “Elijah, did he shove me to get my attention?”

Hmmmmm was all Elijah murmured.

Stillness pervaded my body. There was a presence standing near my shoulder at the edge of the table. I turned my internal vision in that direction and knew it was David, whom I’d spent my entire childhood avoiding. He had emanated evil. And he had been dead for years—much to all of our family’s relief.

Yet here I was now, wounded, lying on a massage table, aware that his spirit wanted me to give him love. Love. Love? Without thinking about the oddness of this situation, and with Elijah’s support and encouragement, I turned toward the presence and said, “I love you.” Not “I forgive you.” Just “I love you.” I could feel how much he needed to be loved. 

And then he vanished. 

Elijah did another scan of my energy body and said, “He’s gone.” 

The wound healed quickly. There is no scar.

Two months later, I received an email. It was from a man who said he thought we might be related. He had found me through a DNA ancestry service. I checked him out on Facebook. He looked just like my son and he had my button nose, thin lips, and Nordic complexion. I called him and we talked for two hours.

He’s my full-blood brother. Same mother. Same father. My real brother, also adopted at birth. A fantastic person. We are in each other’s lives on a regular basis after not meeting until I was 67 years old. 

Did my experience in the forest and Elijah’s facilitation of the experience with my adopted brother two months earlier initiate this connection to my real family? Did freeing David by embracing him with love free me to meet my true brother in this lifetime? I will never know, but I sense there is a bridge between these encounters. Elijah was the medium. And Suzenne led me to his table.   

 

A few months after this magical journey to meeting my true brother, Suzenne and Elijah sent a note requesting I consider writing the foreword for their book Love: The Harmonizing Essence (available on Amazon):

Although this book is being presented as a work of fiction, there are several aspects to it that are based on true-life events. As Elijah and I pondered over the question of who we’d consider the  appropriate person to write the foreword, we came to the conclusion that there was really only one candidate.

As a prize-winning author of multiple travel books, this individual also  happened to be a neighbor and one of my “besties.”

Lisa Alpine was that person. I’d met Lisa through many social events since my arrival to the Big Island in 2014. We’d developed a close friendship based on our mutual love of ecstatic dance, jungle explorations, hikes over and inside lava tubes, yoga, the exchange of sumptuous recipes and food we grew on our respective properties, as well as the many extraordinary sunsets and stories shared over a sparkling beverage.

“But what do you want me to write about?” Lisa asked.

“Just tell your story,” I responded.