My life has been full of parallels and guides. This is a legacy not of my own but from long before me. I have reflected on the many ways my life has been guided, like waves of the ocean, chapters of my journey. I have endless stories of these parallels. Testimony to the guides of life that I’ve come to know. Here I will share a few, maybe in your own reflections you’ve also come to know of these forces of the universe.

My dad arrives in California after multiple attempts. He is working at a restaurant saving money and plans on returning to his homeland after this is over. He hears of a program through word of mouth and applies to it. My dad is granted citizenship.

My mom is pregnant and home alone when she hears a cat sound, she looks around the apartment and realizes the sound is coming from within her. Her daughter is crying in the womb. She has heard of this before, through stories in her hometown. Although she is tempted to she doesn’t tell anyone. She holds this secret until my 7th birthday, when she can finally tell me.

We are living in New Mexico when something occurs, my family makes the decision to leave. My dad quits his job and we head to Illinois with no source of income or home. We stay with some family in a house with three different families living under the same roof, a few months later my dad secures a job as maintenance at an apartment complex. A free apartment is included as part of his employment package, My family doesn’t have to worry about rent for the next 30+ years.

My mom was going through a difficult period in her life that manifested in self-destructive tendencies. I was entering my teen years and we were fighting at home constantly. One day at the park with family friends, my friend’s parents let my family know they were going on a religious retreat to an area in Ohio. My family let me go with them. One of the ladies in our group, Flor, helped guide the group through prayers. I remember feeling so at peace. I prayed for my mom during this trip. Weeks after I got back, my mom stopped these behaviors. She later told me she had lost her desire to engage in these activities, seemingly out of nowhere.

Art supplies were expensive but the complex we lived served as student housing for a near by art school. Art students would constantly leave art supplies when they moved out and so I had a constant supply of art materials coming in to use.

I don’t remember how but the name “School of The Art Institute” comes into my life, sometime around my freshman year in high school. I look into the school, that’s where I’ll be going. I knew I was an artist since I was a child, but now I know the school I am going to attend. I spend the next few years, ordering their student catalogs, reading them through passing periods and attending programs.

I am exhausted, I commute multiple hours a day to school in the city, I work two jobs, one is easy, one is at a restaurant. Family life at home is not good, my mom and I are constantly at ends, she keeps telling me that I should not go to school, that I should focus on God and that I can’t live under there roof anymore now that I am no longer religious. The constant stresses make it difficult for me to focus on anything and I feel like a zombie as I’m going through life. I leave and I don’t speak to my family for a few years.

I am working at Chicago Public Schools on a freelance project, I have saved up enough money and my contract on the project is about to end with no foreseeable funds to continue. I decide to go to Europe, it is my first time I am able to afford a trip, my first time traveling anywhere that isn’t in the midwest in 10 years, my first time ever stepping foot in a new continent and my first solo trip. I land and a few days later I walk into a bar in Madrid where I meet a woman while sitting at the bar. After some talking she invites me to her birthday at that very bar the next day, unbeknownst to me at the time, she works at Vogue Spain. The next day I go to the party and there I meet a lovely French woman. She mentions the company she works for Publics, and tells me that they have an ad agency in Chicago. She tells me about the Bla bla car driver she just met on the ride to Madrid and we share stories of love. After exchanging emails we become pen pals for the duration of my trip, she tells me about her mom whose sick I tell her about my travels. Half way to my trip I get an email from Leo Burnett asking if I am available for freelance work. I am not, I am traveling, enjoying my month long trip in Europe and in no rush to get home. Two weeks later, a few days before I am set to arrive, another email comes in, this time I am available.

It is nearing the eclipse, I am excited it is the first time I will ever be seeing it in totality. I decide to take this time in preperation for the eclipse as a sort of spiritual journey. I realize there are behaviors I have been carrying with me, vestigial behaviors, that no longer serve their purpose in this season of my life and are causing more harm than good. I decide to leave these behind and ask that anything that I no longer need to carry with me to remove itself. I am looking at the eclipse as a form of new beginnings, an incineration of old things. Two weeks before I am set to go to Mexico, on a Tuesday afternoon, I get a chat on my work computer to jump on a call. I do and I am informed that I am part of a company wide layoff.

I’m not sure where to begin, but I trust, deep in me is a knowing. The universe situates me where I need to be as it always has and always will. I keep going in the direction that calls me, an act of trust I’ve learned is wise to follow. I begin my journey, the journey has proven more difficult than anticipated. But I keep exploring this calling, the visions, the knowing. Guides that have been there since I can remember.

The Petrified Forest National Park, February 17, 2025