The Woman Who Found Me in the Dark

Before I learned the word for healing, I experienced it. This is that story.

I don’t remember how old I was. Only that I hadn’t started school yet. I was still speaking

Hmong. Still navigating the world in the language of ancestors, not yet shaped by English or

the eyes of outsiders.

Most mornings, I’d wake up to a wet bed. I knew I had an accident in my sleep. I didn’t know why it kept happening, only that it left me ashamed and overwhelmed before the day even began. I cried—not just because of the wetness, but because something in me already knew I wasn’t supposed to be this way—messy, emotional, needing.

One of the earliest memories I carry like a stone in my pocket is this: I had picked up a baby

bottle. One of my younger sisters had just come home from the hospital. I wasn’t curious about her, exactly. I was curious about her things. I touched the bottle. My mother’s voice cut through the room like a slap. I ran.

I hid in the closet and sobbed into the darkness, my small body shaking with a shame I couldn't name.

And then, light.

My grandmother came to me. She didn't say anything at first. She simply sat beside me, her presence quiet and full. When my crying had subsided to a whimper, she murmured something in Hmong. I don't remember the exact words. But it doesn't matter. What mattered was the tone: a low, humming warmth that felt like a blanket woven from sound. It wasn't the words that consoled me, but the melody of her care. She was the first person who ever came to find me when I cried.

That moment rewired something in me. It showed me that love didn’t always have to be

explained. It could just sit there beside you, breathing softly, asking nothing in return.

She was never a loud presence in my life. My grandmother lived nearby during my earliest years but moved away before I started kindergarten. We didn’t see each other often after that. But she remains a core memory—not for her words, but for her movement.

I see it in the way she would take me into the city with her. I’d sit beside her on the bus to

Chinatown, her calloused hand a gentle anchor on my shoulder. We’d wander through

stores I didn’t understand, smells and colors swirling around me. I never knew exactly

where we were going. But it didn’t matter. I was with her.

Then there was the night.

We arrived as the sun was beginning to bleed into the horizon, and I remember watching the day surrender completely to night from a stranger's living room window. I don’t remember why we were there, or who we visited. What I remember is the typewriter—how it felt under my fingers, the keys clicking like a secret language.

It mesmerized me. Here, in this strange room, I could be loud. The sharp, percussive clicks were a declaration, louder than I was ever allowed to be. I didn’t know what I was writing. Only that something inside me wanted to say something.

And I remember the fire. It was just the three of us outside: my grandmother, me at her side, and a woman who tended the flames. Their low murmurs wove a tapestry of sound, a soft, rhythmic counterpoint to the crackling logs. A ceremony was happening.

My body didn’t know the words, but it understood the rhythm.

Looking back, I believe it was Reiki. Or something like it—an energy healing practice passed

through hands, not institutions.

After that night, I stopped wetting the bed.

At the time, no one asked why. No one celebrated the change. But I’ve come to understand

what was happening:

The bedwetting wasn’t misbehavior. It was my body’s way of processing what I had no language for—fear, overstimulation, feeling emotionally unheld. A somatic leak. A sacred

signal.

And what happened that night wasn’t just a mysterious event—it was an intervention. Gentle. Ancestral. Effective.

My grandmother didn’t teach me in the ways people usually mean. But she taught me how

to move through the world with quiet strength. She taught me that you don’t have to say the

right thing to bring comfort—you just have to show up. She taught me that real healing

often comes in silence, in stillness, in being seen without being fixed.

Where I Am Now

I’m still that girl in many ways. Sensitive. Prone to tears. Still feeling like an outsider more

often than not. But now I know that those feelings are part of the gift.

I didn’t become hard. I became hollowed out—in the way a flute is hollowed, so breath can

move through it.

Today, I walk a spiritual path shaped by energy, memory, and unseen guidance. My

abilities—mediumship, intuitive sensing, the soft language of spirit—have come online not

because I chased them, but because I finally stopped running from who I was.

That night with my grandmother is part of my foundation. She didn’t give me answers, but

she gave me something better: a living memory of what it feels like to be held by love that

asks nothing of you.

That’s what I try to offer now. In my readings, in my presence, in my energy—I try to carry

her stillness. Her firelight. Her grace.

She found me when I cried.

Now I listen for the cries of others—spoken or silent—and I show up.

That is my work. That is my lineage.

That is how I remember who I am.

Maybe you’ve had a moment like that too—one that didn’t make sense at the time, but later

revealed itself as a turning point. If so, honor it. Trace it back. There may be magic waiting

to be remembered.