When writing your life story, make sure you keep it in the first person. I tell a story about my birth below.

I was born at the Sewart Air Force Base Infirmary located about 20 miles from Nashville, Tennessee.  The military base was decommissioned in 1971, and the base was made into a regional airport. 

    My mother, Helen, told me this story about my birth: She said it was the calmest and easiest of all her deliveries because no one was around.  No family, no friends, no neighbors, no noise - just me, her, the the nurse, and finally, the doctor. 

    I was born just after midnight. The infirmary was small and the doctor arrived late so there was no time for drugs, Mom said. It was a quick and natural childbirth.  I almost was a June baby, but no, I was for sure born in July.

     My dad, Jack, missed my birth because he left earlier that day to drive my grandparents home to Pennsylvania after a three week visit.  I wasn't due for another two to three weeks.  Dad thought he'd have time to drive back in time for my birth. 

     As fate would have it, three hours after driving off, Mom's water broke. She called a cab, called a babysitter, packed an overnight bag, and went to the infirmary alone.

     She said she didn't mind.  "It was nice and quiet."

     That's the story I believed my whole life until 2010. While battling eosinophilic leukemia, I tried alternative medicines looking for a cure. During an ayahuasca healing ceremony, an Mexican Indian Shaman named Arturo Fisher from Ejido Nuevo Leon located just outside Mexicali revealed a very different version of my birth. Arturo said my birth was easy for my mom, but hard on me.

      He accurately described my mother without ever seeing her and reinacted my birth through the use of charades and mimicking. He said I first got stuck around my sinuses when my Mom stopped pushing between contractions. I had pressure around my nose for too long, he said. Then I got stuck again around my chest and lungs for too long. The doctor should have helped by pulling me out, but instead he let my mom do all the work.

     "It might have been better if you had been a caesarian. They let you hang there with her pelvic tight around your face and lungs too long. That's why you have chronic sinus and breathing problems now," the Shaman said.

       "But she said it was an easy birth," I emphatically replied.

      "Easy for her, hard for you. The doctor was tired and didn't want to do much."

       My shaman also used the word "tyrannical" to describe my mother's personality. 

      "It was good she hit you. It made you leave home early and find your own way in life. She did you a big favor by being so tough."  He again mimicked my mother hitting me on the back and laughed saying she was a good mom.

     I agreed with him. He pegged my mother perfectly. I never felt like a victim of child abuse but do agree she raised her six children with a heavy hand. I remember her saying that we were a tribe of roudy Indian kids who wouldn't listen.

     Arturo explained that most Caesarian births do not allow for the proper activation of each of the chakras. When the baby doesn't go through the birth canal, they don't get the proper pressure to activate all the organs.

     "So in one way it was rough on your sinuses and lungs but your other chakras are working well."  He said my brain is my strongest organ and sense of sight is my strongest of the senses, while my sense of smell is the weakest.

     The shaman also revealed that my mother was beaten as a child, so that's what she knew. It wasn't her fault she had a "tyrannical" mother too. It all made perfect sense to me.

     I didn't have children for a number of reasons. First, I was the oldest girl in a family of six and changed way too many dirty diapers for one lifetime by the age of 15.

     Second, I have a bicornate uterus, sometimes called a heart-shapped uterus, so I'm not built for children.

      And third, I wanted to accomplish something meaningful and significant in this lifetime. If I had children, I never would have become a writer. I didn't want to be like my mother. I watched her sacrifice her creativity, her artwork, her singing, and her acting because of her children. I didn't want to sacrifice like my mother did. Why? It looked so wrong. No, that's not for me. Not in this lifetime!

I had a choice, and I took it gladly!

     I "knew" at a very young age that I wanted to accomplish something meaningful in this lifetime. I wanted to leave some kind of mark on the planet.  Birth control offered me the option my mother didn't have in her generation. I embraced it openly, and eagerly.

     My mother warned me that someday I would regret never having children. She was wrong. I thank God every day that I was allowed to be free of that tremendous responsibility, so I could dedicate myself to my studies, my passions, and my obsessions with writing, astrology, and God.

     I owe it to my mother to succeed. I know that if she hadn't had six children, she would have been a movie star or a famous writer, or painter,  or fashion designer. She was multi-talented.

Thank you Mom!

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BABAJI is my husband, Tom's, spiritual guru.

How Psychotropics Saved My Life

     I have told this story over the years to many people but most don’t believe it while others think I’m joking.

     During my sophomore year of high school I experimented with psychotropic drugs - magic mushrooms, peyote, mescaline and LSD.  I had smoked marijuana earlier in Southern California but never tried any other drugs until we moved to my dad’s hometown. 

     Dad moved us abruptly from Southern California after the Tate/LaBianca murders of 1969.  The constant television news reports about the vagabond Mason Family and the gruesome murders pushed him over the edge. He decided to move us away from those "crazy hippies" who lived at the Spahn Ranch in the neighboring hills around Chatsworth.

     Both my teenage brothers revealed that they and other boys from their high school had been approached by two of the Manson women, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Susan Atkins, to have sex for money.  My parents both freaked out.

     The Tate-LaBianca murders unnerved my parents so badly they made a fateful decision and moved us from sunny Southern California to my Dad's hometown of Berwick, Pennsylvania. He said it was the safest place in America to raise kids. 

     I was really upset about moving from California. I cried and whimpered quietly while sitting behind my dad in the back seat of our Cadillac. I couldn't believe we were moving again and cried all the way from Simi Valley to the Arizona border. 

     “If you don’t stop crying before we get to Arizona, I’m going to give you something to cry about,” my mother said raising her hand to slap me.

     “Leave the girl alone, Helen,” dad said in my defense.

       He drove across country nearly non-stop while pulling a packed U-Haul trailer behind.  Mom tended to our German Shepard dog, Missy, and our Siamese cat, Caesar, while trying to keep six kids under control. We all complained about moving back to Pennsylvania. No one was happy about it, but I took it the hardest.

       I became depressed after moving back East. Most people in my dad’s hometown didn’t like any of us, but they especially didn't like him much. That's because he had traveled the world, complements of the U.S. government while serving in the military. His sense of adventure and free-spirit only irked these people because it reminded them what they were missing in life, and they didn’t like it one bit.

      They also didn't like getting cleaned out at the poker table. My dad was a terrific card player. He could read tells.

       I loved California and hated Pennsylvania because of the cold weather, the narrow-minded people and the cruel, snotty girls at school. I began hatching plans to return to the West as soon as I turned 18.  I prayed that I would make it until then.

       Meanwhile, I walked to and from school everyday alone, acting like I didn’t care what the snotty girls said behind my  back.  I developed a superiority complex to defend myself against them and from being hurt.  But I grew more and more depressed as each day passed by.

        I tried to hide my feelings by over-compensating and out-performing the students academically, athletically and in the arts.  "I'll show you," I thought. I sang lead soprano in the school chorus and landed parts in the school plays.  In California, I had been a popular cheerleader and track star but there was no hope of achieving that at Berwick High.

        However, I did find some acceptance with a small group of hippy students who were musicians and artists. The snotty girls and preppy boys treated them like misfits and outsiders too. 

     I'll never forget the day that LSD saved my life. I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye like it was yesterday. It was summer time, and I got invited to party with some of my hippie friends. We all dropped a sliver of window pane acid and drove to a secure location in the woods to trip our brains out.  As the sun started setting the fireflies emerged in huge numbers all around us. We laid in a meadow of tall grass watching the fireflies light the night sky.

       As I stated peaking, the fireflies started flashing brighter and brighter until they turned into light bulbs, then morphed into flashlights, then morphed into big spotlights blazing up into the night. Within seconds, their bright lights enveloped me and dissolved my body into pure light.

      I heard the wind roar up behind me then suddenly lift me to the clouds. I flew faster and faster into outer space then launched into the speed of light - I became Light.  Like a space craft blasting up through the sky to reach the stars, I raced across the universe because I had become “One with the Light.”

      During this hallucination, I saw well-defined particles of light traveling on a wave of light.  This vision rectified the scientific debate over whether light is a particle or a wave. For me, the answer was clear. It’s both. I traveled the speed of light through the universe to the farthest reaches, to a region I can only describe as blissful. It was and is still the primordial soup of light and harmonic vibrations merging together as the fabric of the universe.

     As vibrating light, I floated and became aware of everything. All was known at that Holy Instant. All was right and all was at peace. I had found God. I was a part of it all and a part of him. I merged with the Divine Consciousness and knew that I couldn't believe anything anyone else said, especially scientists and mathematicians because they probably got it wrong or at least partially wrong.  I learned to believe only what I experienced. 

      I also learned that everything was good. There is nothing bad. There is no right versus wrong. There only "is." Everything is just as it’s suppose to be including the bad stuff.  It’s all good.

     I also learned “not to worry anymore” and “not to get depressed” because everything was perfect just as it is.  I realized in that Holy Instant as Light and Vibrating Sound that anything I needed or wanted would always be provided to me. 

     I no longer had to feel bad about the way the high school girls treated me because that was exactly the way they were “suppose” to treat me.  All the so-called bad circumstances now suddenly became good.  I had to experience the good, the bad and the ugly because each event and feeling led me to my next event and feeling which led me ultimately to my destiny today. 

     I stopped feeling depressed. I realized that if I had gone to the same school from kindergarten to 12th grade with the same students, then I never would have traveled the world and never would have become a writer.

     My soul chose this traveling family specifically so I wouldn’t live a normal life, so I would travel a lot and become a free thinker. 

    I also knew I would never have children, but didn't know why at the time. I had to focus my energies on getting emotionally stable, getting a college education and accomplishing something meaningful and significant during this lifetime.

Decades later, after moving to Mexico, I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony with a Yaqui Indian Shaman, a former Navy Seal, a nurse from Canada and some locals. During that overnight ceremony, I learned that psychotropics help cure PTSD in combat soldiers and others who have experienced traumatic wounds. I thank God for that early experience because it helped me maneuver through life with a positive attitude instead of being a depressed and wounded person.

Golden DMT Room