I was born in a lineage of seers and what I call spirit-walkers. Transcending time and space while interacting within the spirit world and unconscious states of humanity seemed like my birthright from the moment I came into this world.
When I was little, I would play in the alcove atop my bedroom closet. I often used to think that I was dreaming while awake since I would see and speak with people that no one else in the house seemed to notice. Alternate realities, various lifetimes, and prior incarnations became my vocabulary, my blueprint for existing as a child so young. I remember telling my mom about my special friends who would visit and play with me. By the time I was six or seven, I had developed a keen interest in the afterlife and in souls who could speak and connect with us from beyond the veil. I remembered lives I’d lived before, and told my mom how I’d died in some of them, and how I persevered in others. Names from history would cross my lips when I was still learning how to read. My curiosity about ESP was strong and I hungered to know more about crossing the veil, time travel, and how to move to and from dimensions. I became fascinated with mysticism even though I didn’t refer to it in the appropriate vernacular. I was raised Catholic and was very keen on understanding the healing abilities of Christ and the Saints. I thought my interests were the same as my friends' but realized very quickly in second grade when I began speaking of such things that perhaps I should keep quiet.
My mother became my guide in this world. She held space for my growing abilities, sometimes conscious and sometimes not. She later shared stories with me about how she would protect me from spirits that she felt came to bring harm to one so innocently young.
My mother was raised in Sicily. Her maiden name translated from Latin means ‘one star’.
She as well was born a vessel for healing through her ability to see beyond the present.
As a young child, she would awaken in the middle of the night to see the Holy Mother standing at the foot of her bed. Most of the time she thought she was dreaming. Her visitations became my visitations.
She remembers traversing the streets of Sicily praying, and sometimes, people would follow. There is even a story that my mother appeared to have ‘died’. She collapsed with no apparent heartbeat and was prepared in burial clothes and placed in the middle of her childhood home for visitors to come and pay their respects. Some time had passed and she woke up as people were praying over her body to the shock of onlookers and family. Stories like this run in my family. Mysterious illnesses brought on by spiritual manifestations, many of which have impacted my own physicality at various points in my life.
Thus my path seemed to be destined for me as a placeholder in my lineage. One who would continue where my ancestors left off. I have spent many years through both traditional academic settings along with mystical encounters trying to understand the dynamics of good and evil in both this world and beyond the veil. What I have come to realize is the ability for me to hold space in any realm affords me the blessing of Presence, the blessing of the Divine. Holding space has become a discipline for me and for my writing. And that is what I hope to achieve when you read my words. The ability to hold space in both the darkness and the light for us to heal individually and collectively.
Selections from “Light Calling from the Abyss”
The sun never realized the light of its own being until it paused one day to see all that had blossomed in its path.
There are days I want to be a solitary raindrop amidst the impending storm whose power and might lie within its intrepid stillness.
Your path has been witnessed already.
By those who have met God.
Honor the unknown.
Your life needs you.
An act of mercy can humble any darkness.
Piece by piece, you gather yourself gently until your life story becomes one that you are no longer afraid to tell.
We may not always get the chance to write our own story, but we have the power to choose how to tell it.
There will come a time when you lose interest in telling your story from that familiar wounded place. You will lose interest in those perceptions which keep you shackled from living an authentic life. You will lose interest in repeating words that dampen your spirit and continue to hold you accountable for pain that no longer serves you.
There will come a time when your spirit wants to soar with reckless abandon in the creation of a news story. The images might be the same, the words might be familiar. The wound will still be present. Your story will become more powerful than the wound because you have finally allowed it to be. The images and words will finally be given the space to find sanctity so that your story is not only birthed anew but made holy for all eternity.
A story once told is never forgotten.
Even when the mind forgets, the wind remembers, the stars reminisce, the moon smiles, and the heavens share your story with all creation.
Be at ease with what you think is lost, for all your memories are held by the holiest of friends above.
Your story will always be sacred.
Your footprints will tell the truth of your story long after you are gone even when the words you speak in this lifetime cannot.
If you can't change your story, change how you see yourself in it.
Author Bio:
Laura Aversano is a medical and spiritual intuitive, an ancestral empath, and a spirit walker. Descended from an ancient lineage of Sicilian adepts, seers, and witches, she has been communicating with the spirit world since childhood. She is trained in the divine mysteries of esoteric Christianity, in plant medicine and shamanism by Native Americans, and in many modes of hands-on therapy. She lives in New York.
Affirmations of the Light in Times of Darkness by Laura Aversano © 2021 Inner Traditions. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com
