As I step into my Life’s Purpose, I am inspired by gratitude for the joyful life I now live and happily commit to a life of service.
Finding my true calling as a spiritual teacher and healer has taken my whole life. As a child, I loved going to Catholic Church services with my grandfather, but drifted from my faith during college. I was studying biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Religion just did not seem in line with my politics nor my future career as a scientist.
And then, the unexpected happened. Already four years into the PhD program in Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, I began to feel compelled to write a novel. It was the first inkling that I could and should share my life’s story as a way of helping and healing others. I was 27, but already recognized how I was healing generational wounds passed down to me from my family. Years of therapy had helped me to do this and to see Universal Truths I wanted to share.
Leaps of Faith. Leaving science was my first leap of faith. It was the beginning of getting to know myself on a spiritual level and learning how to be true to that. Calling myself a writer was the next step in fulfilling my spiritual potential. It meant making a career transition by becoming a science writer. Once I finished my doctorate, I enrolled in the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz.
Combining my love of science and my aspiration to be a novelist, I became a health and medical science writer, working at the San Jose Mercury News, The Monterey County Herald and Latina magazine. I did freelance work for CNN.com, WebMD.com and National Public Radio’s Latino USA. I also worked in public relations at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University. Later, I became a part-time freelance writer so that I could work from home and write my novel.
Infertility problems and bouts of clinical depression during this time lead me on another part of my spiritual journey and to my next leap of faith. This part of my story became the basis for my first novel, The Accidental Santera. This was not the book I had in mind when I left science. That book may still be written someday. The spiritual transformation I was experiencing was turning out to be a much more immediate and compelling tale. It was so full of the irony we look for as journalists that I couldn’t resist sharing it.
You see, I was a trained scientist who had just become a priestess of Afro-Cuban Santeria! Writing about the internal and external struggles that I faced during this amazing transformation helped me to make sense of myself. I also found out, once it was published, that there were a lot more people like me out there than I would have imagined.
The truth is, however, embracing the religion of my Puerto Rican father allowed me to find relief from my depression, finally became a mother, appreciate my Catholic roots, and, most importantly, led to the realization that I was a psychic and a medium. For someone who never felt at home anywhere, I had finally found a “home” with God, the Orishas (the Gods and Goddesses of the Yoruba pantheon central to the practice of Santeria) and my Ancestors.
Angel Calling. My spiritual and professional lives merged in September 2011 when I saw my first Archangel. The Archangel Gabriel not only brought me the message that I was to have a third child (at the age of 43), but that I was to start using my intuitive gifts to help others in a professional capacity. I began learning about and working with the Archangels, especially Archangel Michael. It took only a matter of weeks to know that it was time to devote myself to being a spiritual counselor, teacher and healer. I was guided to start Spirit Makeover and become an Angel Therapy Practitioner®. Today, I enjoy a growing practice and am at work on two books. Most of all, I have found the peace that comes from living an Angel-guided life and living out my Life’s Purpose.
