The time of dismissing my daughter’s gifts as childish imagination was about to be a thing of the past. What I experienced next was a step toward accepting what Kiani would soon tell me.
My daughter was ten years old then. It had been a rough few months for me. I had been in an emotional battle with someone close to me, and I knew I had to get away from them. I knew the term “energy vampire”, and this one was far worse than any I’d ever encountered.
One day, I went upstairs and laid down for a much-needed nap. Though I’d hoped for a peaceful sleep, it was far from it. I had the most terrible, violent, hate-filled nightmare. I don’t recall the details, but I do recall the terror it filled me with. During it, I became aware that I was dreaming and forced my eyes open.
There, hovering directly above my face, was what I can only describe as a black, smoky cloud. My eyes widened at the sight, and the cloud screamed at me. It was a sound of pure anger and disappointed frustration. Then the cloud spread out and faded into nothing, like smoke from a cigar.
It freaked me out. I can’t deny it. My empath ability (sensing and feeling emotions from others) made it worse because I had felt its emotion and intention. Whatever it was, it had been feeding off my suffering, like a leech sucking blood, and my coming awake broke its hold on me.
I didn’t sleep well at all that night.
Shortly after this incident, a few days after dumping the energy vampire, my daughter came to me with tear-filled eyes.
“Mommy, I have to talk to you.”
I was immediately concerned.
“What is it? Are you okay?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” she said, fresh tears filling her eyes. “I just don’t want you to be upset or think I’m weird.”
“Baby, what? I won’t be upset. What’s happened? Are you sure no one’s hurt you?”
“No, no one’s hurt me.”
“You can tell me anything,” I told her. “I won’t be mad at you or think you’re weird. Besides, you’re already weird anyway,” I added.
She laughed a little and wiped at her eyes. “Remember all the scary monsters I see?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s much worse than that. I see all kinds of stuff. Every single day…”
She went on in more detail, and I listened quietly, only stopping to ask questions to clarify her descriptions.
It wasn’t just shadows on the sidewalk or eyes outside her windows. It was people that look like regular people who vanish into thin air while you look at them. It was humans lacking any color at all, like actors in black-and-white films, but always missing random body parts – an arm here, both legs, half of a face. It was human-shaped shadow figures, walking around corners and into walls. It was pure white forms, fragile and crooked, like badly formed people made of paper mâché. There were also animals. Cats and dogs, deer that stood in misty forms at the edges of forests and even, much to my surprise, lizard-like humanoids, roaming the halls of her elementary school.
Now, as shocking as this all was, I felt her sincerity and knew she was telling the truth. I also knew how hard I had worked to raise my kids to be honest people. “You are only as good as your word,” my Grandfather used to say, and I had made this a motto in my house over the years.
“I believe you,” I told her. “But listen carefully. I want us to make a promise to each other.”
I stopped and looked at her, emphasizing how serious I was.
“Okay,” she said.
“If you promise to always tell me the truth about what you see, with no exaggerating, then I promise to always believe you. Deal?”
She nodded happily. “I promise,” she said.
Then her eyes got sad again.
“Mommy. I’m scared. I don’t want to be scared. I try not to be, but…there’s this little girl…she’s been following me around the house all day. She’s black-and-white, like an old TV show, and her arm and part of her face are missing. Her eyes are all dark, with circles under them, and she looks at me like she wants something. She scares me.”
I don’t recall everything I told her after this, but I do remember telling her that she had to understand that along with all these scary spirits she sees, there are, without a doubt, good and protective spirits too. I had encountered these gentle beings a few times over the years, and many members of the family had as well. The stories were so plentiful combined that you could almost fill a book with them.
I told her that she was a child of The Great Spirit and that he, along with her Guardian Spirit, have always and will always protect her. I told her that I would pray on it and think on it, and together, we would help her overcome her fear.
“The biggest and the greatest of all the spirits is The Great Spirit, and you are his child,” I told her.
“Whatever you see every day…they are little fish in The Great Spirit’s pond. There is no bigger fish than him. Stick by his side and nothing can touch you.”
And we live by this truth every day.
After our conversation, I delved into research on children with her abilities. What I discovered helped not only her but me as well.
_______
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