Our first night in The Stanley Hotel led to an interesting experience. For those who aren’t familiar with this historic place, it is the setting for the interior scenes in The Shining, a movie based on Stephen King’s novel. The place is known to be haunted. Ghost tours run several times a day, bringing many corporeal visitors to the grounds.

​It isn’t unusual for me to wake in the wee hours of the morning, an unfortunate side effect of aging. The first night, I woke at my usual time, cracked my sleepy eyes a bit and saw a glowing form standing next to my side of the bed. In the split second between my brain registering a body where one shouldn’t have been and my gasping quite loudly, several things ran through my mind.

First, I thought Matt had gotten up and ambient light in the room bounced off his naked body, creating the glow. (There was no ambient light in the room.) Then I wondered why he was acting creepy and standing over me instead of shambling into the bathroom, the door being near my side of the bed. I drew a loud breath, but held back my scream. I felt startled, like any sane person under these circumstances, but didn’t feel scared.

I realized this was not my beloved husband standing over me. He still slumbered next to me in oblivious dreaming. The form disappeared as I fully woke, but I felt the strong presence of a pregnant woman. Her body hadn’t looked pregnant, and as I felt into her more, I didn’t believe she still was. Pregnant yet not pregnant. I wasn’t sure if she had died in childbirth, had a stillborn baby, or miscarried not yet at full term. Somehow this ghost woman believed she was pregnant, and I felt intrigued enough to want to know her story.

Sadly, I couldn’t get her to communicate with me. I went back to sleep, and when I woke for real at a reasonable hour, Matt shared with me that throughout the night he felt the presence of a woman. She didn’t try to communicate with him, but a woman kept weaving in and out of his dreams, making them weird. 
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Do you believe in ghosts or in the spirit world? Have you ever seen something non corporeal? Please  comment below and share your experience. I love a good story!

Tomorrow marks 48 years of my breathing this planet’s air, consuming nutrition grown on its land, and hydrating from the vast water supply on the sphere we call home. It also marks the day when I honor the call I’ve avoided for the past several years. My creative nature must rise from the hidden dark corner where I stuffed it in my first decade on Earth. I use logic and reason to restrain its growth and expression, and guess what? Like any neglected child, it now has issues and requires family therapy.

When Matt and I signed up for a series of personal integration workshops this spring and summer, I knew changes would happen. Why would we invest in flying to Phoenix, AZ not once, but three times if we didn’t think there would be benefit? Our first training module occurred in mid-April and flattened me for an entire week. I could barely think and felt extreme exhaustion. The second week I felt better physically, but all the trauma and distress I thought I’d dealt with from my childhood came back. Not just to revisit the old material—oh no, I got to see new stuff. You know, the second season has to outdo the first or else the audience will get bored and no longer watch the show. I remembered more blocked experiences and had to process them. I woke from a dream last Friday morning that left me unable to eat much of anything the entire day. I’ll spare you the details. By Saturday I felt better and thought I had processed what the dream meant.

However, today I woke feeling ill because yesterday I did everything “old Sarah” would have done to hide from her feelings. I completely skipped meditation, yoga, and bodywork, while indulging in food, wine, and binge-reading fiction (which ironically was about a grown woman who remembered she was raped as a girl—even in my escape, I can’t escape). I’m tired of avoiding my power, my creative nature, my gift to those who are meant to read what I want to say or write in whatever form it manifests. 
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Yesterday was a taste of the life I’m trying to leave. I don’t want to be numb anymore. So my gift to myself is to stop running and hiding. Running away doesn’t work, and I’m only making myself and those I care about miserable. I have a structure in place to face my inner self and allow her to shine through the visage I allow the world to see. Do you like the conceptual art that aligns nicely with how I see that inner light?

One year ago I ran across a review on Goodreads of “Our Earthquake Experience: We Will Rise Again” compiled by Shannon Robak and written by the children of Maitidevi Boarding School in Nepal. I purchased the book that same day, even though it is only offered in print format. I exclusively buy electronic books because of a marital ultimatum on how much space I’m allowed for my library. Due to the handwritten nature of this book, a Kindle version isn’t feasible. So it’s now one of the few hard copy books I own—at least until I let someone borrow it and then they pass it on to yet another friend.

Today I decided to enjoy this pre-Thanksgiving weather and finish reading the accounts of the older children in the school. One of the twelve-year-old girls wrote that she wants to be a doctor. Her story is one of the longest in the book, and she focuses on the people around her and the deaths that occurred. She even talks about things a doctor would (body parts, but I don’t want to get gross), reminding me of my sister who is now a doctor of emergency medicine and loved to show us graphic pictures of diseases that normal people would never want to see. (I love you, Lisa!)

I didn’t realize I was obsessed with earthquakes until Matt mentioned not everyone subscribes to the USGS Earthquake Notification Service , a handy tool to stay up-to-date on the latest earthquake locations and magnitudes via email alerts. A friend of mine introduced me to this resource back in 2003, and I’ve been a subscriber ever since. 
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Tomorrow the United States partakes in a tradition of thankfulness. I am grateful that my family and I are blessed with safety and security. I'm also grateful that I have never actually been in a large-magnitude earthquake. 

Kelley Armstrong releases Rituals tomorrow, her fifth book in the Cainsville series. I have read all four previous books multiple times, fascinated by this alternate world living side-by-side present day Chicago. Currently I’m finishing a re-read of Betrayals, the fourth book, since it will get me back into the story for maximum enjoyment of the evolving tale of Olivia Taylor-Jones. I’m not a book blogger, so you can read more about the series storyline on Kelley’s website.

I enjoy books about strong women who do actual work in a realistic world. Authors who can detail a bit of the heroine’s work day grab my attention in a way that satisfies my CPA mind while feeding the fantasy- and magic-loving parts of me. I’ve read almost all of Kelley’s many books and enjoyed each one. Some are true fantasy, some are YA, and others are set in the Canadian Yukon with no magic at all. Her writing and character development are compelling and keep me buying her latest.

If you’re looking for a good series, I recommend picking up a copy of Omens and starting your journey into Cainsville. You won’t regret it.