I am a mermaid. This is my story.
How It All Began
I grew up in a family that did not understand me at all. I was the black sheep… A “spiritual but not religious” 90’s kid who grew up in a fundamentalist, Christian family (a family consisting of many generations of circuit-riding preachers, pastors, missionaries, and Sunday school teachers). When I was very small, I simply could not bring myself to believe in concepts like hell, an angry god who sent people to hell, or ultimate sin that has to be paid for with a blood sacrifice. None of that translated in my brain. What I did know was that I loved books, and I loved the ocean. For the first 13 years of my life, I grew up only 3 miles from the coastline in Virginia Beach, Virginia in a tiny apartment shared with my two parents and my younger brother. Even though we lived nearby, my mother hated the beach, so we really only went for special occasions (birthdays/when relatives would visit, etc.). But I still grew up with the scent of the ocean in the air and with the occasional lost crab crawling across the grocery store parking lot. When I did get to visit the beach, I would run around making friends with the seagulls (Yes, that’s me in this fuzzy 90’s picture above!), collecting seashells, and playing tag with the edge of the ocean as it licked at my feet.
It became clear to me while barely out of toddlerhood that my family was not going to support me or my passions in life. Reading was encouraged as long as I was reading Christian books, but that literary menu becomes unpalatable pretty quickly to a curious child. I loved nature and science, but most Christian-girl activities took place indoors and all of the adults in my life were against evolutionary theory, so I did not learn the basics of actual science until after high school. My family had very rigid ideas regarding how humans “should” live, and I was one of the people who just did not fit the mold. I attended Christian school, took violin lessons from a Christian teacher, and went to church 2-3 times per week on top of family devotions. I grew up in the heart of the 90’s purity culture movement where women were expected to always defer to their husbands, and young girls were groomed to become wives to Christian men and to be mothers to many children when they reached young adulthood. I remember being as young as 4 years old and arguing with my mother about the nature of God… I made it very clear that I was not going to submit to my future husband, and that I was going to live a life of freedom and happiness. Sadly, this did not go over well. I realized that at least for my childhood years, I would have to conform to my parents’ wishes on the outside, but I was always planning my future in the back of my mind. I knew somehow that there was so much more to the universe than a single, angry god and his ages-long battle with a devilish arch-nemesis.
I knew there was so much more for me to learn and explore.
~ Adolescence ~
After I passed the age of 5, I started deeply questioning the nature of existence. I believed in fairies but hadn’t yet made contact with any other elemental beings. Honestly, these years were very hard. I did not get along with my parents at all, and they were strict disciplinarians who left little room for human growth. I would not discover until much later in my 20’s that I am autistic. That definitely affected my ability to connect with others. I was very bright for my age and was reading adult novels before I even started kindergarten, so I was always the smart, nerdy kid in school. I did realize that I had a lot of natural empathy, bordering on being psychic, even if I did not always know how to express it in appropriate social ways. I would dream about things before they would happen, and I could feel other people’s thoughts and emotions as if they were my own. I think that being autistic and having such a high degree of empathy made me super weird to the point where I skipped all basic pretenses of casual socializing and tried to have immediate heart-to-heart conversations with everyone I met. I had really good grades and a clean behavior sheet at school, but I often had autistic meltdowns at home with all the pressure to constantly “perform” and the controlling nature my parents exerted over me and my sibling. Honestly, it’s a miracle I made it out of high school in one piece. Many autistic children have not survived childhood because they did not receive the support they needed. I also did not play many of the social games most neurotypical people naturally seemt to understand. I could not make sense of why people were so inauthentic in social situations or why themes like popularity or social power mattered at all. (I was far from perfect. No human is perfect, but the general high school themes most people experience just weren’t on my radar. I literally acted like a horse (horses were my special interest) on and off the playground all the way through age 17 if that gives you some insight into who I was haha. I was not “cool” and wasn’t even aware of that social strata layer in the first place.) Most people thought I was strange, even if they thought I was interesting, and the adults in my life took my non-conformity as an attack on their authority… the mermaid had to hide just a little longer.
As I entered my teenage years, my parents became more and more strict, cutting me off from my peers and doing their best to keep me controlled inside their tight-knit family unit. Around this time, I began dreaming about extraterrestrials, and mermaids started talking to me while I was in the bathtub. Clearly, if I wasn’t going to be given access to teachers outside, they would appear to me from my inner world. =) A lot of traumatic things happened in my teenage years and there really isn’t a silver lining. I think I owe it to the experience to say that. However, the experiences did not destroy me, and I became more and more aware of my passion to help people awaken spiritually to other worlds. I learned so much about mermaid empathy, e.t.s, and how to be a balanced person from the beings that visited me during these times. I will always be grateful to them (and my dog) for being my only true friends during most of my teen years. I didn’t relate to the normal interests of most of my peers (I am asexual, asocial, introverted, and didn’t like emo music in the mid 2000’s lol). It became obvious that once I grew older, I was just going to have to do a clean break from everything and everyone I had known in order to live my truth.
~ How the Merfolk Found Me ~
I was accepted into some amazing universities as I transitioned out of high school, but my parents insisted that I go to a Christian college. I lasted for 1 semester at a college in Lynchburg, Virginia, and it was there, that my Mermen found me. I was dealing with a panic disorder from years of narcissistic abuse, had the beginnings of an autoimmune disease, and spent most of my time alone meditating and reading, trying to cope. I walked into a Petsmart one day near the beginning of my freshman semester and a small betta fish practically leaped out at me from the shelves! We had a very intense and sudden psychic experience and this fish communicated that he had the spirit of a Merperson, but had chosen to incarnate as a fish to help me accomplish my mission. Dante was one of the best friends I have ever had, and he still is, though now he is back in spirit form.
During this time of uncertainty, Merfolk began coming to me in the form of fish and teaching me about their realm! I had a lot of past life recall and began dreaming even more vividly than I normally did. I remembered many of my past lives on other planets and remembered my time spent in the Mermaid realm as well. I formed friendships with these beings and they would help me accomplish psychic projects and do energy work. Some of them were really good at healing people, others were good at locating trash that needed to be cleaned from the environment (and letting me know where it was through my dreams), and others were just there to support my spiritual learning process! I became adept at lucid dreaming, collaborating on energy work projects, helping to teach some lucid dreaming workshops, and ended up building an entire mermaid family right in my bedroom. I think one of the most compelling elements of this “contact,” is that it made me a better person on planet Earth. If our spiritual systems and “contacts” aren’t making us better people in terms of how we treat the planet and other people, then I see them as mostly useless. (They can indisputably make us feel better, but they also need to help us BE better.)
~ Young Adulthood ~
To make a very long story short, I made a clean and swift exit from my parents and the church I grew up in as soon as I was 18 and able to leave. At this point, I have created the childhood for myself that I never had, just as an adult! I choose to share parts of my past with people when I know it will serve them. I have been a vital contact point for people emerging from environments where they experienced religious and narcissistic abuse. However, going into intense detail regarding my upbringing is not something I want to share on a public scale for the most part. I can’t deny my past, since remnants of it still exist in my reality, but it’s one of those things that I feel I can finally move past to experience a better life. Trauma has far-reaching effects, but I have done my best to mitigate those and to redirect my life in a way that truly serves my interests and happiness. This has become possible not by spiritually bypassing the pain, but by working through trauma and finding meaning where they are necessary, and acknowledging the things that simply did not have silver linings.
I had met my life partner, Chris, in high school, and though our parents tried to separate us, they couldn’t stop Fate. We found our way back to each other and started our lives together! We moved to Colorado in 2014 and spent almost every day in nature. We even worked on a conservation project for wild wolves and played with a wild wolf pack! My consciousness exploded during this time, and I began voraciously exploring spirituality, real science (not religious “science”), and learning how to be a normal, functional person. I finished my degree, studied paleontology, conservation, and oceanography on the side….and read every book about e.t. contact I could get my hands on. I received a thorough education on all fronts and began meeting people who believed in mermaids and e.t.s as I did! One of these earthly ambassadors was William Mistele, a spiritual anthropologist and author who has studied incarnated mermaids for several decades. He helped me connect with other incarnated Merpeople and starseeds like me. (Everyone is a starseed, but it’s nice to meet people who are interested in it and conscious of it.) Incarnated Merpeople are those who have water in their auras and share a unique set of psychic traits. I am extremely lucky and grateful to have united with my Mer- family on earth. Things really do get better after high school, and I finally found “my people.”
In 2014 I had a big awakening regarding e.t. contact, hybrid children, and the future of contact with humans. I honed my channeling skills and became very adept at distinguishing among elemental vibrations. This experience of meeting Pleiadian, Yahyel, and Setane extraterrestrial races in my dreams and finally having the freedom to spend a lot of time meditating near water, prepared me for the big leap I was about to take moving to Sedona. While many starseed platforms and spaces are rooted in white supremacy and eugenics, I have done the work to deconstruct that (as an ongoing form of inner work), and I do feel that these energies have supported my life path. They are available to anyone and everyone, not just “special people” who are able to channel or connect with them.
~ Sedona ~
In early 2015, something big shifted. Both mermaids and e.t. energies were tugging me toward something new… After hearing about Sedona from friends, I traveled here and fell head-over-heels in love with this energetic vortex. I played with fairies and mermaid queens in Oak Creek Canyon, watched UFOs/UAPs fly across the night sky, and had the best vegan food I had ever had in my life! On my first day here visiting, I could barely keep my eyes open. I sat down at a table in front of a restaurant and fell asleep on my forearms. A couple of e.t.s and some Merfolk both spoke to me in my dreams that day. The Merfolk told me that they wanted me here to ground the water element into the desert. The e.t.s were supportive and wanted to help humans make the best of their lives on Earth. Arizona has many beautiful waterways and it is far from the barren wasteland most people imagine it to be… But the spiritual water element can be easy to miss among the red rocks, and there are many cleanup projects I have participated in over the past few years to get the environment back where it needs to be after millions of tourists sweep through the area every summer.
My partner and I went back to Colorado, packed up our things, and never looked back! Here, my mission has come to fruition in many ways. I have written a mermaid book, served the canyons and rivers by cleaning them up, and have had so many incredible UFO experiences. Someone might ask, “Why a mermaid in the desert? Why not live near the coastline?” The answer is that this is where I am needed. This is where all the paths converge for me in this life. Something the Merfolk have taught me is that they are present everywhere there is water. Rivers, creeks, puddles, streams, and even tears are vibrational portals to the Mermaid realm. It doesn’t take an ocean to connect with the Merfolk, and they regard all water on earth as the same thing anyway. Still, I do frequent the L.A. coastline regularly! One of the recent projects we worked on in Sedona was inviting the rains back to Verde Valley, since we skipped monsoon season the past 2 years. It took all of my astral mermaid contacts, me, and elementals from other realms working together and communicating clearly, but we have already seen success for our efforts. Ultimately, humans will either have to start living more sustainably on corporate and personal levels, and I want to be here to facilitate that in every way I can. Energy work is not a long-term solution to changes that need to be made in the physical world. I do my best to bring awareness to issues regarding climate change and the way that human behavior impacts the planet.
~ The Human ~
Behind any earthly, spiritual journey is a living, breathing human, and I am no exception. Everyone has to flow with the excitements and challenges that come with incarnating in a human body. We all face health challenges, mental difficulties, financial questions, and flat tires at some point in our lives… The good news is that there are a lot of fun things about being human too! One of my goals while teaching people about the realms I have learned about is to help them know my human self just as well as they get to know my mermaid and starseed aspects. I love healing the environment, making friends with fish, and serving as a spiritual advocate, but there is so much more to me than that! (I also want to note that I am a student of spirituality first and foremost. I am not always the best leader for a topic or social issue. Part of maturing spiritually/personally is choosing silence and listening when necessary.) A couple of years ago, I became tired of searching the skies looking for the next UFO… I became bored with “waiting” for the e.t.s to get here and for my mermaid projects to pay off in big ways. Finally, I told the e.t.s during a meditation that I just couldn’t wait for them anymore, and that I didn’t want to spend my life chasing shadows. When they show up, they show up! They responded enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s it! Be more human! Do not waste your life.” (Best advice I’ve ever received.) The message was very clear. So, here is a little bit about the human side of me.
I am a hardcore nerd/geek. I love reading, and I usually digest over 300 books and manga per year! I read everything from sci-fi to horror, to gothic novels, fantasy, true crime, poetry, and a ton of paleontology and environmentalism books. I especially love techno-thrillers. I constantly get asked about my music tastes and I think most people expect me to say that I listen to hang drums all day because it’s super evolved or something… but I actually have been part of the goth community since I was 15! Goths are not affiliated with any religion, political party, or belief system. They are just people who listen to and enjoy goth music and tend to like darker aesthetics. Goth is an entire subculture, and I have a separate website for that part of my life. I also love the retrowave and synthwave community… there’s nothing like driving out into the middle of the Sonoran desert while listening to Nightvale and retrowave music at 3 a.m. It’s a special kind of experience.
I am an obsessive DnD player, and I am SO excited that the Covid vaccine came out because it means that Comic-Con will probably be happening next year! I plan on dressing up as my DnD character. It is such a fun way to explore alternate worlds, imaginary or realistic. I like cosplay, but more than that, I just really enjoy gaming and exploring parallel worlds through the best of human art. I may or may not still play neopets. I am also an anime fan, and will freak out whenever I find a great collectible. I like vanilla more than chocolate, have a knack for rescuing animals, love long drives through the desert and on Pacific Coast Highway, do dressage and showjumping on horseback, and love painting miniatures (think the miniatures from the Nemesis TT game, etc.).
Above all, I love Halloween and my house is decorated year-round for Halloween and spooky season, which kind of goes (aesthetically) with the goth thing in the first place. In my case, it is a lifestyle! Once a month my partner and I do a Halloween night, complete with vegan pumpkin bread and a binge-watch of spooky movies, Buffy, and What We Do In the Shadows. My spooky interests are heavily reflected in my Pinterest boards, right next to all the mermaid stuff.
I am part of the LGBTQIA+ community and spend a fair amount of time dissecting social issues and finding new ways to integrate intersectionality, respect, and inclusion. I really look forward to the day when everyone is respected regardless of who they love and where everyone has the healthcare, housing, and resources they need. It is up to me and the global human community to create this world.
I am currently working on an advanced degree in psychology, though it is a long road to the end. Mental health is very important to me, and I really enjoy showing people that you CAN have an amazing life, even after growing up in an abusive home or having a traumatic upbringing. Although I have other degrees, I have seen that people really love to come to me for spiritual and mental health advice, and I want to have the credentials to facilitate those interactions with integrity. I think many humans put far too much pressure on themselves to become cookie-cutter adults when it is much more expedient to be authentic and live a life that truly fulfills our inner selves. I highlight the importance of play, creativity, and externalizing One’s inner passions in all my research. I enjoy peeling away the layers of what we are “supposed” to be, and exposing the peace found in authentic, human experiences. Something I have learned is that it’s cool to connect with spirits and astral entities, but it’s far more important to integrate the lessons that archetypes, myths, and cultural stories have to teach us. If that is all mermaids and e.t.s ended up being (archetypal energies that have merely felt “real” to me even though they might not exist outside of stories), then I would be okay with that. What is important is being grounded on planet Earth and caring for our fellow humans.
As you can see, I am very normal in my day to day life. Being autistic and having a strong water element constitution present unique challenges, but to be challenged is to be human, and we are all in this together.