It was the day before Christmas Eve, and I was in my mid twenties, I landed in the emergency room with severe abdominal pain. I was curled over, vomiting, and no one knew what was wrong. I’ve always been a pretty healthy, resilient person. I rarely get sick, so seeing me in that condition scared everyone. The doctors were running tests, my family was worried, and there wasn’t an answer yet. At one point, I rolled over in my hospital bed and I looked over at my dad. He quickly shifted his position, because what I saw- was he was praying. The interesting part? My dad was an atheist—or at least he considered himself one at the time (the last few years I believe he has changed). I’ve thought about that moment many times since. When everything we think we can control suddenly falls apart, something inside us often reaches for something greater. Even the atheists. It’s almost as though there is a part of every human being that remembers there is more to life than what we can see. Lately, I’ve been thinking about that while working with an attorney who has spent decades exposing injustice in CPS and family court. She has devoted years to gathering evidence, documenting misconduct, and building meticulous legal arguments. More than once, she’s stopped on something she's spent years working on- because she reached the point of realizing that filing another lawsuit wasn’t going to change the outcome. It has me thinking... Why does prayer and healing and shamanic journeys so often become our last resort? Why do we spend years trying to force change externally before we ever look inward? What if we reversed that? One of my Hawaiian mentors taught that we begin by healing ourselves, and then we take action from a different place. Not because we stop pursuing justice—but because our actions become aligned with the outcome we want. Other mentors have taught me that everything that happens here is a mirror to what is happening on the astral. If you’re longing for your children, longing for justice, or carrying pain that no courtroom seems able to resolve, I invite you to start there.