Maybe I expected more depth from our relationship. We could never talk candidly with each other like I speak with my daughters today. It was an unspoken rule. On one of those trips back home, I remember vividly the day she suddenly shared a confession.

I learned to celebrate the small wins, the light in the darkness, the time spent in gratitude for the life and health I have. I do not feel like a sick person anymore; I am a recovering person.

Life always happens day in and day out, whether or not we feel like escaping. Designing, I told myself, was the opposite of escaping. In the context of escaping life, however, I see capturing my life as redesigning it, conjuring happy thoughts of new beginnings and changes we think might help make our lives work better.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with power. Even the word felt uncomfortable. The thought of having it made me sprint in the opposite direction because I didn’t know how I would respond if I had a lot of power. In other words, if I had genuine power in my life, what would I do with it? I wasn’t sure, and that scared me enough to leave the subject alone for years.

Others tend to distrust this type of healing work, and I don't blame them. There is nothing to see, no physical mending of body parts, no medical tests to be run that confirm healing has taken place. This is healing work made visible only by words and descriptions of souls disappearing into the light of their new destination. How do others know what I see and hear souls say is real? They don't.