One of the many gifts that came from my early childhood intimacy with traumatizing illness, was the way in which it opened my psychic centers to be able to “see” and “hear” energetic realities that remain elusive for most. While it took me a couple of decades to work with this heightened sensitivity in a way that didn’t fry my already challenged central nervous system, I am grateful for the fact that I have never doubted the presence of angelic beings.

For as long as I can remember, I have been acutely aware of their presence.

When I was very sick as a toddler in the hospital with meningitis, dealing with significant neurological damage from the waist down, one of my only distinct memories from that time is the presence of beings I came to think of as “the big gold guys.”

These extremely tall luminous beings, who stood as high as the hospital ceiling, kindly and devotedly helped me to “connect the dots” of the injured neural pathways in my feet, legs and pelvis. For months the doctors stood back in baffled awe, as I mysteriously recovered many of my neurological capacities.

Two decades later, in my early twenties, I sat in a required physiology class as part of my Holistic Health Practitioner training, learning about the intricate design of the human nervous system. As the slides of ganglia and myelin sheaths were projected upon the screen at the front of our classroom, I found myself stunned to tears recognizing that the starry “dots” the angels had helped me to connect twenty years earlier were in fact the ganglia, and the myelin sheaths were nothing less than the golden “lines” of light, necessary to connect them.

How many countless times in my life have I reached out to the angels for support when I was struggling? How many times have I remembered to ask for help, just in time. Reeling in searing pain from a migraine, or down on my knees in brokenhearted despair, or sitting with a furrowed brow by the side of a fevering child, or quietly, less dramatically, in a moment of simple prayer.

Last year I went through a very challenging passage in which I was navigating some painful neuralgia along the right side of my spine, for many weeks. Hots and colds would temporarily relieve the symptoms, but other than that it was constant.

One night it got very inflamed, and expanded into the right side of my abdomen. The intensity of this physical pain delivered me into a powerful experience of terror of death. Suddenly I remembered to ask for help, and it was as though legions of angels rushed in, surrounding me, comforting me, relieving my pain, scolding me a little for taking so long to ask for their help. They had clearly been waiting at the periphery of my energy field, just waiting for an invitation to intervene. (I’m not exactly sure how it works, but it seems in most circumstances angels must be asked in one way or another, in order to extend their help.)

What a gift it is to know the presence of angelic support, not so much in a way of “wishful thinking” but in as solid a way as I experience the warmth of my son’s hand in my own, my daughter’s laughter in my ear, my partner’s kiss on my waiting cheek.

I don’t believe this perception is a special power or something reserved only for certain souls. I think it’s more about a willingness to “unlearn” a widely conditioned denial. Luminous ones are always near, always generously available in service. I invite you to open to their presence, and see in turn what opens in your life and heart. <3