Shamanic Soul Coaching: The Shaman & The Angry Student- My Dark & Dangerous Path to Shamanism

Sarah Norwood, Shamanic Soul Guide, Psychic Medium, Intuitive Reiki Master

The earliest memories of the Souls visiting me (during the night) was when I lived in Bedford, Massachusetts as a young girl. I vividly remember waking up to my bed rocking. I would lay there with my eyes wide open and feel the end of my bed violently shaking as if someone was desperately trying to get my attention.

Often, I awoke to see Spirits at the foot of my bed, standing outside my window, or entering my bedroom through the cracks in the door.

When I saw what I called a ‘ghost’ back then, I would be utterly and completely terrified. I would freeze.

I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even yell for my Mom and Dad who slept down the hall. I would cover my head with my sheets and sweat profusely underneath them until sleep or dawn came.

There was not one day that passed, where I didn't live in sheer fear. Feeling alone, I KNEW I was different from the other kids my age. How could I share my experiences with the ‘ghosts’ I saw with the neighborhood kids without them thinking I was nuts?

As a child, processing my paranormal experiences seemed impossible. I felt like a ‘crazy’ girl. Actually, I have been called just that my entire life by various boyfriends, friends and even some family members.

I began to believe I WAS bat-shit crazy!

When other kids would be talking about the cartoon, "Tom & Jerry" or the popular show, "Sesame Street", I would be thinking about the woman I just saw walking with her head down in my backyard, clothed in a black Pilgrim-looking dress.

How do you even start a conversation about that?! How do you NOT feel insane?

These experiences continued throughout my adulthood. Some nights, I would wake up knowing that I was not alone. I would ‘feel’ a change in the air and knew a Spirit was watching me in the dark. Desperately scrambling for the light switch with shaky hands, I could not turn it on fast enough. That old childhood terror would grip me once again.

Frequently, I saw darkened shadows sweep across my face when my eyes were closed AND open.

It would not be unusual for me to wake up and see a man standing next to my bed. Instantly, I would lose my breath and choke back screams. But, by the time I backed up in my bed to get away from this dark figure, the Spirit would vanish. I knew they watched me.

I knew they KNEW that I could feel and see them.

I felt like there was truly something wrong with me…isn’t it schizophrenia when you can see and talk to spirits??

Growing up Catholic, I was told not to ‘mess’ with the Souls. And, it seemed I only had evil ones lurking around me during my darker days.

As I grew into a teenager and entered my early twenties, I disconnected from my psychic gifts. I was most comfortable in the chaos, daily crisis situations, beatings from my boyfriends and the numbness that ruled my body. I shut down.

My life was out of control.

I didn't want to see or feel any more ghosts for the rest of my life!

I couldn’t feel, see, or even hear my Guides during this time because I chose not to FEEL anything!

I drank, smoked, swore, ate crap and found a source of sick comfort in being punched and slapped by my abusive boyfriends. Being hit actually felt good to me because the blows were somewhat of a release.

The violence was constant. Something I could trust. I would get high off it.

Every day, I breed even more destructive energy until I was one big dark mass.

How did I go from being an intuitive kid to beaten on a regular basis for eight straight years?

Let’s throw in a little sexual child molestation in there and you have a recipe for enough darkness to swallow the earth.

Being forced to give a hand job to my male babysitter at 5 1/2 didn't help either, but was a defining catalyst which shifted the path of my life forever. My early childhood sexual abuse catapulted my Soul into extreme darkness and danger. It, also, lead me directly to the chance meetings of three Shamans and ultimately, my own Shamanic healing.

In the following pages, you will read my story. It is about the Spirits, symbolic sight, the angels that talk-(and sometimes yell) - in my ears and how being in love with myself brings love to those around me.

I guess the abuse will come up anyway because that is what facilitates my connection to other people’s pain during my Shamanic Reiki energy healing sessions. I understand that the devastating effects of trauma are individual and my sensitivity to this enhances my ability to do this kind of healing work.

The Shaman & The Angry Student

You know when you can look back on your life and clearly see when everything shifted? When your life changed- quite literally- over night? That was the day I met my Shaman, friend, and teacher, Dr. John Myerson.

I was 19 years old.

I was a Sophomore in college, in the midst of an abusive relationship, and a serious health crisis. I had contracted a severe case of mono-hepatitis and was the sickest I had ever been in my life.

My father mentioned to me that his old martial arts friend, John, could help me. He said John was a powerful Shaman, Acupuncturist and Herbalist.

I was so ill that my parents flew me home from college in Radford, Virginia to Massachusetts so that I could see John and get well.

My only experience with a ‘Shaman’ (prior to this) was with my eccentric, English teacher that had invited me to a drumming only one year before. I journeyed instantly, but that is a whole other story!

Little did I know that I was ALREADY on a Shaman's path when I agreed to go to this second Shaman with my father’s encouragement.

Traditional doctors were only wanting to medicate my symptoms. My Dad told me John would get to the bottom of it. I grew up with my father instilling the belief that every physical symptom was due to a stored emotional energy. I knew I had a lot stored inside of me because of my childhood and teen-dating violence relationship, but I had no idea how my own anger was actually killing me.

I had been storing enough rage inside of me to blow up the entire world!

My father told me that this doctor friend of his was different. He worked by healing people’s pain and illness with energy and by discovering what worked best for the individual.

At this point, I couldn’t imagine what would heal me. I felt like a 90 year old woman that had been to hell and back more than once when I walked into John’s office waiting room. His office was located in a two story house in Framingham, Ma. At this time, he shared it with an accountant that occupied the first floor.

I remember sitting in the waiting room on my first visit with John and feeling an energy gently rocking and swaying my body. Something was moving me and it pissed me off. I was a shell of a person and found ‘feeling’ and ‘seeing’ more annoying than anything else. I was so so so tired of it.

The Souls unnerved me and frequently left me scared shitless.

I was SICK of ‘seeing’ things that scared me, but ‘feeling’ was an entirely different story. THIS, I would absolutely NOT allow. I preferred to stay numb to anything that forced me to feel.

It was normal for me to see things that could not be explained in any logical manner. For instance, I wouldn't blink when the ghosts in the house I was dog-sitting for in college opened all the cabinets in the bathroom. It was just another day, when I saw enormous prayer hands in the window of this same log cabin while sun-tanning outside.

The prayer hands were probably saying, “For God’s sake, PRAY GIRL!!”

I couldn't explain these experiences away. I tried cursing my constant visions away, but nothing stopped them.

Even when I couldn’t ignore the fact that the TV shut off every time I left a room, or the dog I was pet sitting barked hysterically at the wall in front of him. Even the long, grey haired woman and man with a hat that made my boyfriend and I run out of the house like two petrified kids as we both asked the other one, “Did you see that??!!!” was quickly dismissed. We couldn’t even speak about it as we drove away like a bat out of hell from that haunted house and barking dog.

I rejected my sight, intuition and anything that remotely resembled ‘a feeling’.

So, as I sat waiting for this ‘healer’ that my Dad praised, I was less than happy about feeling the Spirits that moved me in the chair I was sitting in. My upper trunk of my body was being pushed forward and to the side. I was used to it by now, but angrily shook the presence of this unfamiliar Soul away. It didn't feel malicious. Just curious.

Still waiting for my appointment, I casually looked behind my chair and saw a small frame with a quote inside of it. It said, “Have the courage to become who you really are.” This made no real sense to me at the time. I sighed, stretched and forgot about it.

Little did I know that I would spend the next 20 years doing just that!

Suddenly, John appeared at the top of a winding staircase that lead to his office on the second floor. He was a larger-than-life kind of man, wearing clogs with a ridiculously peaceful smile on his face. I was immediately on guard for I trusted no one, ESPECIALLY MEN.

Anxiously, I walked up the stairs and followed him into his little office. It was cozy and full of interesting and colorful things. Stones, books, plants and a little Indian-looking guy that felt like it was staring directly at me during the entire session. I sat down on his comfy, striped couch and we just looked at each other for a minute. It was like I knew I had finally met my match without even speaking a word. Unfortunately, I had a wall so thick around me that if someone even dared to break it down, I usually destroyed them.

I was ready to go to battle.

By the age of twenty, I had been beaten, raped, sexually abused, and mentally devastated. I, also, had a nasty eating disorder that controlled 24/7 of my thoughts.

I was comfortable in this darkness. This darkness I knew.

So, when this jolly looking man with a beard leaned back in his chair and looked at me, I was waiting to attack. The only men I interacted with up to this point in my life, other than my Father, wanted sex or power.

John didn’t want anything.

He patiently asked me what he could help me with. I wasn’t even sure I knew. But, I felt his energy getting close to mine. I told him, again without speaking, that there was no freaking way he was getting close to me. He responded without words as well.

What the HELL was happening here??

He let me know somehow that he was SAFE. After very little conversation, we decided that I should get some acupuncture. I can’t remember the conversation clearly, but when I was hopping up on his acupuncture table, I found myself sharing that I had gone to a Shamanic drumming in college. Impulsively, I shared that I had met an Angel named Sasha on that journey. He looked at me directly in the eye and said, “She will be with you for the duration.” I did not understand what this meant, but I just knew he was right.

After the acupuncture treatment, I went home and raged for weeks.

The acupuncture brought me back into my body and down about twenty-five notches and I didn’t like it! I hated it. Feeling physically hurt my body. Being manic and dissociated was my emotional state of choice.

How dare this guy make me FEEL???! And, the God damn headaches that came with it!! Darn him! But, as the weeks went on, I could feel John's Soul checking in on me. I would feel his Spirit in the room with me.

Still not wanting anything from me.

Still keeping me safe.

Still only offering loving energy.

Again, I didn’t trust this foreign energy as not sexual. No man was there just to help or love me, right? No man in my book didn’t lie, cheat or hurt me. This man was different and my initial reaction was that there was no WAY I was trusting his loving energy.

I went back to college for two more years before I saw John again in person.

Although, I continued to feel his Spirit from time to time, especially in periods of grief and sorrow, I tried to block him out. Maybe it was the love that he radiated that was too much for me. Whatever it was, I wasn’t ready.

UGGGGGG, LOVE MYSELF? REALLY???

In the two years that followed, I spent my time having babies, getting married, finishing college, getting a divorce and moving back home to Massachusetts. I left Virginia with a newborn on my arm and another one tightly holding my hand. I trusted no one except for my children.

As I graduated from college with two babies, a pending divorce and three more years of serious violence under my belt, I knew I was in trouble.

I was barely surviving. I couldn’t function. I hid in my children.

If I did this, I would be safe from the ugliness and lies in the world and from the all the pain.

When I was forced to be in public alone, meaning without my two children as barrier to reality, I pushed everything aside and wore a beautiful mask. Could they see my hand shake as I gripped my water glass at a restaurant? Could they see my imperfection if I bleached my hair like the celebrities on TV and applied my lipstick just so? Could they feel or smell my fear?? Not if I wore a veil of pretty smiles, polite words and a new Ann Taylor outfit. I presented a perfect image to the world. But, inside, I was hollow, sad and literally crumbling into pieces.

By this time, I was the single Mother of an infant boy and a fifteen month old, special girl. My girl didn’t talk. She hummed words into a song and we practiced sign language at the encouragement of Early Intervention Teachers. She also had very ‘abnormal’ brain waves and petit grand mal seizures, said a top Neurologist at Mass General. She didn’t like to be touched and rocked while pointing her fingers.

Was this normal? No, said her teacher. Madeline was ‘mute’ in school and had what I was told over and over for the next several years, ’a flat affect’. And, my baby boy was pure joy in the nano-seconds in between his eight hour long colic crying sessions. He would scream and puke until he fell asleep every day. I would turn the vacuum on and watch his eyes slowly shut at the loud, disturbing vibration of the cleaning machine. With throw up dripping down my chest, I would try to gently set him down on the couch only to have his eyes shoot open in a reminder of his stomach pain. If the vacuum didn’t work, we would go to the kitchen sink and turn the water faucet on high. I would rock him back and forth until those beautiful green eyes shut again. This time, I would try to place him in the electric swing. This usually worked unless my daughter was in one of her ‘my brother takes up my Mommy’s time’ moods and poked him until he awoke once more.

My days consisted of “Elmo’s world”, “The Big Comfy Couch”, “Tellytubbies”, Spaghettio’s, baths, walks with the double stroller, dance time, kitchen and stove play, screams, pulling hair, dumping toy bins, diapers, more diapers, sign language for ‘more juice’, daily visits to all three playgrounds in our town, baby pools, naps, crying and hopefully, a hair brush to get out the snarls in my long, unwashed hair.

I was unemployed and living in my parent’s basement.

I was broken.

There were days where I didn’t get out of my pj’s or even brush my teeth.

I would lie on the floor in my children’s playroom and become a toy to play with for the kids. We played house, they walked on my back, fixed my messy hair, danced around my parent’s basement and obsessively watched Tellatubbies to the point that I was dreaming of big yellow and green people.

The next day, we would wake up and did it all over again.

I was hollow, but happy with the little, safe world that we created together. My daughter still didn’t speak by the age of 3 years old. So, we continued to use sign language. Why wasn’t she talking? Was it what she witnessed while standing in her exersaucer while her father and I still lived together? Was it the cord that was wrapped around her neck during birth? Would she ever talk or learn? And, worst of all…was this ALL my fault??

It was the first time in eight years that I had no bruises on my skin. But, I was back home, living as a child with my own children.

Death. Life. Decide.

What prompted my next ‘John’ visit was the suicide of an old high school friend of mine. I had reconnected with him during the few years I was living at home after my divorce.

He told me that I felt like ‘home’ to him.

Growing up in high school one of us always had a boyfriend or girlfriend, but we had immense respect for each other. Now, we were both free. Only problem was that he was a high-end drug dealer. You know, just a small issue when you have two children to protect! But, a part of me, did love him because I remembered the ‘real’ him.

And, he remembered the ‘real’ me.

I remembered his innocence. The person he truly was before the fast-paced life of drugs and money took over his entire being. And, I desperately craved to be with someone that could remember who I was before all of the teen-dating violence I experienced.

For, I no longer knew who ‘me’ even was anymore.

I had been gone for so long, just a shell of my former self.

I was only good at one thing my whole life, other than dancing, and that was being a great Mom. Any love that I had left inside of myself, I gave to those kids. They had saved my life…literally. I owed them.

And, now, my dear old friend liked me for whatever I was now. He accepted me, praised me and wanted me to meet him for dinner to discuss our possible future.

I said ‘No’.

A week later, he shot himself in the head.

The night my girlfriend called to tell me, I accepted the information with no response. I ignored her hysterical crying and simply hung up the phone.

I wanted some apple juice. Yes, Mott’s apple juice. It is weird the things that stand out in a moment of shock. My parents were staring at me as I told them, “Tony shot himself in the head at the beach yesterday.”

Then, I got my juice, went down stairs and climbed into bed.

The next morning, the kids and I were getting ready to go to our weekly Mom’s playgroup at the church. I started to put my black eye-liner on and caught my eye in the mirror.

I started shaking and lost it. I was so fucking mad at him. WHY WOULD HE DO THIS?!

I started to cry, but quickly pulled myself together as little Madeline and Andy walked into the bathroom. I went to the playgroup and casually told a friend what had happened.

Then, I returned home and told my Father that I was NOT ok.

I did not leave the house for six months.

Now, I know rationally, that it wasn’t because I had cancelled a date with him that he took his own life. After all, he was supposed to go to jail soon to serve a long sentence for drug dealing.

But, I felt completely responsible anyway. At the funeral, his best friend came up to me and said, “You know, Sarah, he just wanted to talk to you. You couldn’t even give him that.”

Ok, if you could physically punch guilt into my face and stomach, that is what it felt like.

I scream cried that night. You know the kind of animal torture, moaning cries that come from deep within the Soul…from the very core of your being?

I thought the anguish would never end.

My kids found me curious to be around during this time period. They would crawl into my queen sized bed and cuddle with me for hours. They would lie down next to me, their big eyes questioning mine as they tickled my hair and back with gentle fingers. They would poke at me, talk to me and hug my life-less body.

They loved me when there was no love left inside of me.

They loved me still.

I would stare blankly out at the field of grass from my sliding glass door and wonder how life just went on. How does that happen? I couldn’t leave the house without having a full blown anxiety attack. I couldn’t pump my own gas or go to the mall without losing my breath. It was like I had been shot in the chest and the hole never healed. The emptiness made me nauseous. It was constant nausea that never left.

And, to make matters worse, the darn spirits were still bugging me! At night, I could still feel something watching me. I slept with the light on.

How old was I?

Twenty five years old and scared of the dark? Scared of EVERYTHING.

So, I started talking to the Soul of my dead friend that took his life. I would sit down and ask the Spirits to send me a message from him.

I had a journal, so this is where I received the messages. My hand would start writing words in a vocabulary I didn’t recognize. It was his words, telling me to let go and LIVE.

Somehow, I called John and managed to go see him. My Dad dropped me off with the kids in their car seats in the back seat. John went downstairs to meet my babies.

Then, we went upstairs to his office and began.

We began the work that I still do today with him. It sucked at first.

We had to do a Separation Prayer with all the men and boys that had ever hurt me to sever their energy with mine.

What I found strange is that I was the one holding on to them! You mean, I can’t blame the boys of my past for my own self-sabotaging behaviors? Nope! I had to cut the cord and release their Souls from my own.

This was an agonizing process because it would trigger horrific memories of embarrassing violence, pain, anger and the realization that I loved myself so little that I allowed all of it to happen.

I was comfortable in the pain. Letting in the love felt like burning my skin.

Honestly, I invited all of the abusive relationships I had into my life because they felt good. The abuse was the only thing I could feel. The hits. The blows.

So, releasing this was like cutting off my arm. I was used to the addictive ‘cycle’ of violence. Living a normal life was SO foreign to me.

Rapidly, I learned that I was just as responsible as my abusers were for the violence. I created this energy because of my own control issues and insecurity. I didn't have even one drop of self-worth. I built a life around the hate I aimed at myself.

This made me a fighter. I loved drama and crisis’s because at least it gave me the same highs and lows I had experienced in all of my relationships.

Fighting became a part of who I was. I took no crap, but yet I took only crap.

I was just as mean as my abusers. If they punched me, I scratched them. If they spit on me, I threw something at them.

I craved the release.

Now, I had to work with love? Release my abusers by loving myself?

WHAT?! Yes, this was major WORK and John didn’t back down or give up.

Neither did I.

I respected and trusted John because he was always there. Consoling me, teaching me, putting me in my place, encouraging me and reminding me that I was worthy of love….that I was a loving person.

I was so rough around the edges that I had no idea how he could even say this to me. A loving person? No, I was a screaming lunatic!

The pressure to hold it together in front of my children was a heavy burden. I would go out to the garden room and meditate while they napped, often calling on the Soul of the boy that molested or beat me.

Some days, I would scream into a pillow, lock myself in the bathroom and hit myself in the head just so I wouldn’t take my anger out on my angels. When they would wake up from their naps, I would quickly wipe my tears and go back into an imaginary play world with them. That was the easy part of my life. Being with my kids was easy.

But, it took me five months to ‘sever’ the cords, or spiritual energy, with just one of my abusers! How long was this going to take?

John knew that patience was NOT my strongest virtue! He just kept telling me to ‘stay with it’.

Stay with the pain, the anger, the emptiness, the humiliation.

All he wanted was for me to stay with whatever came up and love it.

Love it? Really?

Why would I love a man that bit my breasts and shoved my head down into a pillow with his hand while calling me a cunt? I hated them all!

He would tell me that you can’t send certain Souls away with anger because that is the energy that feeds them. And, he didn’t mean for me to ‘love’ my abuse or the abusive events that engulfed my past.

He meant for me to love the girl that suffered the abuse.

Finally, I began to ‘get it’ as I felt my abusers leave my Spirit, one by one. When one of my ex’s or abuser’s energy would release from my Spirit, I would feel it almost pop out of my chest and with it would go all of the anger and sadness. Then, I would no longer feel anything good or bad for them. I only felt a peaceful, calming forgiveness…as much for me as it was for them.

To this day, I am grateful for all of them. They helped me grow, learn, and to put it in literal terms- to own my shit. I was an active participant and carried a lead role in all of my abuse--except for my early childhood sexual abuse.

Dating me was like dating a wild animal.

It couldn’t have been easy for my boyfriends! I have compassion for them now and know that they too were suffering in their own kind of hell.

They flocked to me with hurting Souls. They attracted my violent energy as much as I attracted theirs.

We ALL needed to heal.

Ironically, today, I love those that have hurt me the most. They helped me on my path to who I have become in this lifetime.

What a wonderful gift! I have gratitude for every person that has ever violated my Soul, even Bobby (my abusive teenage boyfriend).

My experience with my abusers allows me to understand and connect with other people’s pain on a deeper level.

I can give HOPE to other victim’s and survivor’s because I survived.

I own 100% responsibility of the critical part that I played in the violence and pain in my own life. It was MY energy that attracted the malicious energies of my abusers.

It was me that that called on the darkness.

And, the darkness answered in a BIG way.

I invited insecurity, fear, control, manipulation, and anger to rule my life for many, many years. Not that the beatings were ever my fault. Domestic violence and sexual assault is NEVER the victim's fault. But, I knew no other way to be. So, I willingly stayed rooted in the deep hole of shit I had dug for myself.

Being angry and numb was so easy. Feeling pain, forgiving yourself, and releasing guilt and sadness was fucking hard.

Towards the end of my eight year journey with domestic violence and emotional abuse, I started to 'see' again. My gifts are in the 'seeing', 'feeling' and my client's energy as their Spirit's tell me a story.

Three Times A Charm

Every few years, no matter where I was in my life, light or darkness, I would encounter another powerful Shaman. It was as if I was randomly steered towards Shamans wherever I went. This time, it was in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I was visiting my Aunts that live in Colorado Springs on a summer vacation in 2002. I went without my children.

I was always ‘called’ to the mountains.

On a warm, summer morning my Aunts took me to explore the magical town of Manitou Springs. I wandered into a metaphysical store called, “Whispering Winds”. As I browsed the candle and tarot card aisle, a beautiful, dark haired woman approached me. She asked, “Would you like a reading?” I immediately told her “Thank you, but I have no money.” She smiled and with more force said, “I will read you for free.” I felt as if there was no choice in the matter and I didn’t want to be rude, so I followed her into a tiny room in the back of the store. It was filled with crystals, angels, Goddess statues, and all sorts of New Age items. I felt like I had walked into another realm or time in space. Gone was the casual tourist exploration of my morning. I didn’t even know where my Aunt was anymore for I had no time to tell her about getting a ‘reading’.

I also did not know who this woman was, that she owned the store and was a descendant of a long line of Shamanic Healers.

All I knew was that I was ‘feeling’ an intense energy, one that told me that I was not alone. She stared at me as she expertly flipped her tarot cards over. The first thing she said was, “You are a Master, like me. Do you know that?” I nervously laughed and asked, “What does that mean?” She said that I would be doing what she was doing one day. She told me that I would be a ‘Great Healer’, but I had to move from where I was living now to meet my Soul Mate and to begin my Spirit Journey.

At the time, I lived outside of Boston with my two children. The Shaman woman continued on with my reading about how I would meet a younger man that would be my equal, my team-mate and that I would write a book by the age of 45yrs old.

Within three years, I picked up and moved to the state of Colorado, met my Soul Mate (husband) and began a career as a Shamanic Healing Practitioner and Reiki Master. And, I started thinking seriously about writing a book.

Three Shamans later, here I am! My wild English teacher, Psychotherapist Dr. John Meyerson, and famous psychic and Shaman, Ruth Perez, all manifested at three crucial turning points in my life.

There are no mistakes nor coincidences. If you are destined to be or do something, I truly believe that if you ask for guidance, the teachers and Way will organically appear. Even if you don't ask for it, if you are meant for it, it (whatever that is for you) will ultimately appear.

Today, I am the Shaman who lives WITH Spirit and WITHOUT rules. I invite my clients to do whatever works for them, whatever feels good. By honoring what you love, and who you REALLY are, you will find YOUR Way! <3

By loving me, I can love you.