HELLO & WELCOME!
I am a passionate personal development coach and spiritual advisor with a long history of over-coming and thriving with chronic illness.
I am also a visionary who encourages radical authenticity and promotes free-thinking.
Read at your own discretion, trigger warning always in effect. Enjoy.
2 kidney transplant. 2 wildly polarized journey’s. The first time helped me remain on this earth physically. It challenged me to my core as I spent the decade of my 20’s in a sort of physical hell and struggle to stay alive. From severe complications from Lupus to hemorrhaging into my lungs and fighting my own death process, the first transplant I can say offered me the complete experience of the importance of the physical journey to health. The medical teams were extensive, the hospital stays were more like residencies, and my quality of life was null and void. Thankfully I was born with the mustard seed of hope. I also was born highly sensitive, empathic, and deeply connected to my intuition. Deep within me I knew this was happening for a reason that was beyond my scope of vision at the time. Isn’t that how it always goes? There would be no learning and change if we knew life processes from the get go. Little did I know my first transplant was preparing me for my second.
I had this notion entering into the phases of slow chronic rejection in 2015, that having my second transplant would quite possibly compare to having a second child. More experience, less worry, and a well-spring of knowledge to carry over. This accounted for about 10% of my journey the second time. That inner “knowing” that carried me through my first 10 years battling kidney disease was about to rear its head.
AMBUSH SPIRITUAL AWAKENING. This is how I describe what suddenly happened to me one fall day while I was preparing for a biopsy due to a constant rise in my creatinine. It was August and I recall the day more vividly than any day of my life. Because in the glance of an eye, I knew my life would never be the same. Yes, that quickly and 5 years later it has proven to be true.
This part of the story is complex to describe in language that makes logical sense. So bare with me and try to open your mind.
While assisting a transplant patient (I often teach mindfulness, meditation, and offer talk therapy to new patients), I had an out of body experience. I saw visual aura’s around the patient and immediately felt as though I had been air-lifted off planet. The etherealism and metaphysics were enough to freak out even an expert in this field. I was simultaneously delighted to be feeling this but also freaked out at the sheer force of the event. This would be the first of many times I fully realized the power of divine intervention and force that is God.
After the initial “happening," I was taken on a profound, utterly magnificent and wildly transformative process which I have come to understand was my “spiritual” awakening. This was the journey into self which would require near death experience and a complete shedding away of any belief systems, individuals, or even personality traits that would not serve me as I proceeded in “life”. By the grace of God I was given one person who would stick by me throughout all of the bi-polarity, life-changes, and radical shifts, crazy deep thoughts and dialogue, and many things that I won’t mention, that was happening within me.
To offer an example, within the first 6 months after this began, (whilst in kidney failure and prepping for dialysis again and transplant process), I decided (with great consideration and a willingness to follow my heart even though I could not see the forest from the trees in that moment) to separate from my partner (whom was my first donor), resign from my business, move, and basically shift into a place of utter solitude for a while. This turned out to be a very necessary and almost 3 years chapter in my life. Through deep contemplation, a willingness to be completely vulnerable, and a passion to realize myself, I diligently started “the work”. This project would forever change my life because the modus operandi was simply me. The me I can here to be before I was taught often by individuals that barely knew themselves.
It was as though I recognized that the piece of art I had created about my life no longer felt or looked right. I couldn’t just add some trees or new skyline, but rather that I needed to not just take down the art from the wall, but to literally and figuratively place it is a fire and burn it. And that’s just was happened.
This spiritual fire is a gift in great disguise as it often appears wildly dark to the experiencer and from others as a sort of psychotic break, bit of crazy town, or just provokes such a sense of discomfort in others that it’s normal and encouraged to journey alone for a bit. It is not something that can really be explained, it simply needs to be felt. I slowly found others on this path of spiritual awakening that offered me great solace in my darkest moments. It is safe to say here that for me;
“the annihilation of the ego though spiritual awakening was far more powerful than that of physical challenge and facing bodily death”
But I needed the stronger body and process to understand and quite frankly handle the invisible power of spirit in need of yet another light worker. Light worker is a term that many spiritualists take on. One who offers light in periods of great darkness. This was my calling for 15 years as the owner of yoga and wellness centers. But the great irony was that I wasn’t a light worker fully until I had traversed every dark crevasse of my own soul, physically and spiritually. This is what permits one to “sit” in the darkness of others without consumption but more so silence and grace. Understanding Gods hands are all over the process and I was just merely someone who had not only an experience but after many years an embodiment to relate, connect, and offer hope in a way that could touch even the darkest of places in another.
I will explain more of the metaphysics (a term used to describe events or feelings beyond the physical) in future articles. But for now please know that authentic healing is a merge of physical treatment and spiritual transformation. Currently in our medical model this isn’t even touched upon. Often we confide in our faith, pastor, or community to offer guidance around the spiritual process. But I can say whole-heartedly that the authentic journey of self-healing comes from no one else but you and God’s divine hand offering any experience needed (heavenly to hellish) to propel your soul forward into greatness and service.
With love,
Stephanie MoDavis
2x Kidney Transplant Recipient.
Spiritual Activist/Yoga Teacher
New Medicine Visionary
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