I was raised Catholic, with faith, family, culture, and heritage woven into my early life. My mama had a deeply personal faith. I remember her praying with us and for us, and I always knew that behind closed doors, she was praying for many. Over time, I became much the same—a prayer warrior myself.

As a child, I also understood faith largely through the religious traditions surrounding me. There were prayers to remember, Hail Marys, confession, Mass, and things I understood I was supposed to do. At times, faith felt intertwined with fear and with trying to do the right things in the right way. I didn't have the language then to separate religion, tradition, relationship, grace, and faith. It was simply the world I knew.

And yet, I'm deeply grateful for what was planted in me there. I learned about God. I learned about Jesus. I was introduced to Scripture and prayer, and words from the Bible were planted in my heart so early that they have never really left me. Even as my spiritual searching took me through many places, those seeds remained.

Our home also reflected an interesting mixture that I wouldn't think much about until later in life. Alongside images and statues of Mary, whom my mother deeply adored, were little Buddha statues and objects from other traditions scattered throughout the house. As a child, none of it seemed contradictory. It simply coexisted.

Maybe we were just covering all the spiritual bases—Mary, the saints, Buddha… you know, just in case.

I can smile at that now, but looking back, I can also see how naturally that same kind of spiritual coexistence became part of my own life. I loved God and Jesus while also making room for beliefs, philosophies, symbols, and spiritual practices from many different traditions. For years, I believed they could all fit together somehow.

I even recreated some of that mixture in my own homes. Over the years, I had Buddhas and images or statues associated with figures I encountered through yoga and Eastern spiritual traditions—Ganesha, Shiva, Krishna, and others.

I wouldn't have described what I was doing as worship. I wasn't bowing before these figures or praying to them as my gods. In my mind, they were symbols. I connected them with qualities or ideas I had come to appreciate through the traditions I was studying—Buddha with peace and meditation, Ganesha with removing obstacles and prosperity, Shiva with transformation, and other figures with ideas such as wisdom, abundance, devotion, or spiritual growth.

I could have a Buddha in one room, a Hindu deity somewhere else, Scripture nearby, pray to God, talk openly about Jesus—and I didn't experience those things as contradictory.

With new eyes, however, I find myself asking a fascinating question:

Why did that mixture feel so natural to me?

Was some of it simply childhood familiarity retroactively labeling? Had I learned very early that different religious symbols and beliefs could comfortably occupy the same space? I can't know exactly how much those early surroundings influenced what later felt natural to me, but I can certainly see the resemblance now.

And I'm less interested in then every statue I owned as something I was secretly “worshiping.” That wouldn't accurately describe what I believed I was doing then.

The deeper question for me now is:

What meaning was I giving these things, what was shaping my understanding of God, and what was I eventually allowing to carry spiritual authority in my life?

That question would become much more important later.

My father approached life differently. For a period, he professed atheism, although he later came to believe in God. He was an incredibly curious thinker, and as I grew older, we could spend hours talking about God and Jesus; religion and philosophy; psychology; humanity; suffering; healing; love; and the power of the mind. We didn't always reach the same conclusions, but he taught me to question, think, explore, and keep asking why.

Looking back, I can see how both of my parents shaped me. My mother gave me faith and prayer. My father gave me questioning and an insatiable curiosity to understand. Somehow, both became part of me.

Then, as a teenager, after experimenting with drugs, I had one final experience that changed the course of my life. What followed was a nearly seven-year progression of intense anxiety and panic, depersonalization, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and eventually agoraphobia. My world shrank as my fear grew. I desperately wanted to understand what had happened to me and how I could become well again.

My parents responded in their own ways. My mother leaned into her faith, while my father searched tirelessly for answers—doctors, psychologists, therapists, hypnosis, and anything he thought might help.

And somewhere in those years, I became a seeker too.

I wanted to understand the mind, body, fear, consciousness, healing, God, and the human experience. What began as a desire to become well would eventually shape much of the next three decades of my life.

Years later, when I was 22, pregnant with my first son and attending massage school, I met my friend Michelle. There was something about her joy and her genuine love for God that stayed with me. Her faith felt alive and personal, and looking back, I can see that another seed was being planted.

Several years later, while pregnant with my second son, I began seeking God much more intentionally. I reached out to churches, visited different congregations, and studied the Bible with Christians from different denominations. I invited people into my home to open Scripture together, pray, ask questions, and talk about what we believed. I wanted to know what was true. I wanted to know God for myself.

My husband had also been inviting me to a non-denominational church for months before I finally went. Eventually, I found a church family and was baptized into Christ. For close to twelve years, we raised our boys within that community. We studied Scripture, worshiped, served, built friendships, and shared life with other Christians.

Those weren't years when Jesus was somewhere on the edges of my life. My faith was real, and my relationship with God was deeply personal. I loved Jesus and wanted my life to reflect what I believed.

And for a beautiful season, the seed that had been planted was growing.

If you know me, you know that curiosity rarely stops with one question. Give Alice a rabbit hole, and apparently, she will explore it.

Over the years, my search took me deeply into New Age, New Thought, metaphysical, and alternative spiritual teachings. I explored Reiki and energy healing, yoga philosophy, chakras and kundalini, manifestation, astrology, Human Design, meditation, breathwork, hypnosis, sound and frequency practices, dreamwork, Eastern philosophies, and teachings about higher or expanded consciousness. Some I encountered briefly. Others I studied, practiced, taught, or immersed myself in for years.

This wasn't casual curiosity. I pursued extensive training, read countless books, attended workshops and retreats, learned from many teachers, and eventually incorporated what I learned into my own work with others. I wasn't standing on the outside looking in. I was deeply immersed in it.

Much of it didn't feel dark or dangerous to me. Quite the opposite. It could feel peaceful, beautiful, fascinating, healing, and profoundly spiritual. I believed I was exploring the extraordinary relationship between the body, mind, consciousness, spirituality, and God.

Meditation, in particular, had been part of my life for decades. I first began exploring it as a teenager and formally learned Transcendental Meditation around the age of eighteen. Over the years, I visited ashrams, learned from different teachers and traditions, and spent countless hours in meditation, breathwork, and contemplative practices. Eventually, entering deeply relaxed or altered states of awareness became remarkably easy for me.

My attention had been trained inward for a very long time.

Yoga eventually became much more than physical movement. I explored yogic philosophy, meditation, pranayama, chanting, mudras, and teachings surrounding chakras and kundalini. Within the traditions I was studying, these weren't merely exercises; they could carry ideas about consciousness, subtle energy, devotion, and spiritual transformation.

And I had experiences that seemed to make those teachings real.

At times, I experienced extraordinary physical sensations—waves or rippling movements through my body, including a strange ladder-like sensation that is still difficult for me to describe. Within the framework I had learned, I interpreted experiences like these through the language of kundalini and energy moving through the body.

Reiki brought its own experiences. I often felt strong sensations in my hands, sometimes more distinctly in one hand than the other. I understood those sensations through the Reiki framework I had been taught: energy moving, being channeled, or my becoming a vessel through which healing could occur.

The sensations were real. What I now question is the meaning I assigned to them.

That distinction has become very important to me. A powerful bodily sensation doesn't necessarily tell me what caused it or what it means spiritually. Breathing, focused attention, repetitive movement, meditation, emotion, expectation, and nervous-system activity can all accompany profound bodily experiences. A sensation can be real without my interpretation of it being true.

Dreams became another world of exploration. For years, I treated dreamwork almost like a field of study—lucid and conscious dreaming, symbolism, archetypes, Jungian ideas about the collective unconscious, masculine and feminine imagery, spiritual messages, and what I sometimes interpreted as visitations or experiences beyond ordinary consciousness.

Eventually, that curiosity led me further into ideas about astral travel, nonphysical realms, and expanded states of awareness.

During the last couple of years, my exploration intensified through the Monroe Institute's Gateway material. I became deeply engaged with practices designed to explore consciousness beyond ordinary waking awareness. I was fascinated by how quickly I could enter those states, and I was preparing to go much further. I had even put down a deposit for an intensive week at the Monroe Institute.

Some of those experiences felt extraordinarily real.

And that eventually became part of the problem.

I had begun letting the intensity of an experience determine what I believed about it. If something felt peaceful, expansive, profound, synchronistic, or seemingly beyond explanation, I was inclined to believe the interpretation surrounding it.

The same thing happened with manifestation, intuition, energy work, and experiences that seemed to confirm what I was learning. Over time, I became increasingly confident in my own ability to understand what was happening spiritually. I even referred to myself as a “master manifester.”

There were times when I intentionally opened myself to whatever the universe might bring in, believing I was surrendering, becoming receptive, or allowing something greater to move through me.

Today, that language gives me pause.

Not because I need to deny everything I experienced. I don't have to deny an experience to question what I believed it meant.

I'm also learning that I don't have to assign spiritual power to everything that affects me. Breathing can simply be breathing. Movement can simply be movement. Music can move me deeply. Stillness can quiet my mind. Therapeutic touch can care for the body. Nature can fill me with wonder.

The deeper question became: What was I giving spiritual authority to?

By then, even familiar Christian words had taken on different meanings. Jesus could be described as a model of elevated consciousness. “Christ” could become a consciousness available to humanity. “I AM” could point toward discovering divinity within ourselves. Awakening and spiritual evolution could begin sounding remarkably similar to biblical transformation.

The words sounded familiar. The meanings had changed.

I hadn't recognized that shift while it was happening. I believed God had created an extraordinary universe and that perhaps I was simply discovering more of how it worked. But somewhere along the way, I had also begun placing tremendous trust in my intuition, my consciousness, my experiences, and the spiritual systems through which I interpreted them.

For years, I had been asking:

How much deeper can I go? What else is there to discover?

Now I found myself asking very different questions.

Where is this leading me?

How do I know that something is from God simply because it feels peaceful, profound, or real?

What am I giving spiritual authority to?

And ultimately:

Whose voice am I following?