On a cold and clear December night in 1985, I drove alone up the Napa Valley. I had just been to the first ceremony I had attended in years. I had been thinking intensely about Tara, and had done a lot of work to release the grief I held for her death. I also tried to release the grief that I held for myself and my unborn children. As I drove, I let the thoughts of where I had been and what I had just done wash over me. My emotions were spinning through the grief, the sadness, the joy of the ceremony and the comfort that I had felt while being a part of it. The most beautiful shooting star I have ever seen came close to the top of the Western Mayacamas Mountains, shooting its blue and green brilliance across the sky. I had the very clear feeling that Tara Jyoti had sent her star light (the literal translation of her Sanskrit name) to wish me well and to say good-by. I found it easy to finally let her go. The pain of her death gave way to loving memories of her life.

I opened myself to possibility as I restarted my spiritual practice, and slowly moved closer to my inner being. The energetic opening that began in my late twenties and that I had shut down after the death of my niece started to come back to me. The meditations that I did during that winter brought me back to myself. So much of me had been lost to the stress of my sister’s insanity and the deterioration of my marriage. I was turning towards myself for the first time in years. It was a bitterly cold winter in the Napa Valley, and as I walked my dogs through the vineyards in the crisp pre-dawn air, I felt the hugeness of the sky, the Universe, and my connection to it. As I walked, and sang, and prayed, I felt myself growing again. I saw the colors of the energies as they danced around me, and I felt the presence of the Unseen Ones. I had come home to my knowing.

My husband and I were not living together at the time. He had left me for the second time, and, in his usual pattern, was not communicating with me in any way. It was not his way to talk things through; he would suddenly stop talking and disappear emotionally. When he’d physically disappeared two years before, I hadn’t known where he was for two weeks. This time, at least I knew that he was staying with a mutual friend on the other side of the Valley. I was approaching my thirty-fifth birthday in the spring and I was feeling the devastation of not having a child. After multiple miscarriages, my doctor was suggesting that I was getting to the age where I needed to stop trying. As Christmas neared, my songs turned to Christmas carols. “Silent Night” became almost a mantra for me.   Even though I never considered myself a Christian, I found myself making supplication to the Mother Mary, and I poured out my heart to her. Mother is Mother, after all, and the frosty silence of the early mornings drew me to the song.

For ten years I had shouldered the guilt of having had an abortion. When Mike and I were newly married, I had conceived and he flatly stated that if I had the baby, he would leave. At the young age of twenty-five, I had seen my future with this man, and agreed to his terms only because I felt hope for another pregnancy at a later time. Ten years of dysfunction and four miscarriages later, I was alone.

Not long after the night that I saw the shooting star that released me from my grief over my niece’s death, I was on my early morning walk, singing softly to the stars, when I was met on the road by the spirit of a woman. She didn’t speak, yet I heard her in the very depths of me. I heard forgiveness, and the need for me to forgive myself. The information that she gave to me was instruction for me to reach out and grasp the spirit that was waiting to enter my body.

On New Year’s Eve, as I went to blanket my horse, I met Mike who was caring for his horse as well. As we stood out under the brilliant moon, we began to explore our relationship. During the next few weeks, we came closer together, and I had the opportunity to speak my piece with him. I would be pregnant by my thirty-fifth birthday in April. He could be the father, or not. While he did not move home, we did start sleeping together, and, when I read somewhere that a certain herb is good for pregnancy, he bought a bag of it at the natural food store and presented it to me with a huge smile. I started drinking the tea just as I began my moon time, and I conceived at the next ovulation. I knew I was pregnant from the first moment. There was no question for me as to whether this baby would stay inside me. The child’s father would not move home until I had a pregnancy test. When he did, he was attentive and supportive. We began to work on our relationship once again.

It was a beautiful time of bliss for me. There was the beauty of having a little person forming inside me and the new hope for a solid relationship with Mike. There was also the opening that I was feeling on an energetic level. As I reached each stage of pregnancy, I reached another stage in my spiritual evolution. I went through a great clearing and shifting, seeing myself in a completely new light, literally. My dreams were vivid. At night, I would lie in bed, and see the colors emanating out of me from my chakras, and there were rings of sweat at each one.

During delivery the following October, I was completely aware of the spirits in the room. Kyle came in to this world well-escorted. During the transition phase, Kyle became tired. I left my body to go and have a talk with Kyle’s spirit. My spirit gently embraced his, and brought him in to this world.