Spirit speaks to me through birds of prey.

Hawks, vultures, eagles, and owls alongside crows and ravens are regular visitors carrying messages, offering protection, or walking me across a spiritual threshold I may be afraid to cross. I’ve had a volt of turkey vultures appear out of nowhere and land in two trees flanking my walking path on each side as I prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary while grieving my childhood. I can almost always spot a hawk overhead, but it is the Redtails arrival that stirs my deepest awareness. I’ve had owls appear in dreams and would hear their call under the moon when I prayed in the dark down by my lake. In the beginning of the summer, my son and I were leaving a doctor’s appointment and he told me he was fighting feeling woozy following a blood draw. As we were leaving, I noticed him walking hurriedly to the car, almost throwing himself in the front seat trying to find a place to land as his vision narrowed. In the driver side, as I leaned over to support him, his body lurched upright and forward, and he began coughing on his vomit as he was losing consciousness. I held his head upright from his limp body, my hand to his mouth. Just as quickly as it happened, he seemed to come out of it, suddenly opening his eyes, calm and clear, he cleared his throat, looked outward toward the trees, and said, 𝘔𝘰𝘮, 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘸𝘬. There she sat, a Redtail perched in the parking lot tree before us, her white breast facing us, watching us, taking flight within seconds after he acknowledged her presence.

About 10 days before my Bella transitioned, I was walking through my neighborhood when a Redtail hawk swooped down from a nearby tree behind me, flying so close that I instinctively crouched out the way. “𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰, 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘯𝘦” I said, “𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺?”, I asked. I continued walking, quiet but alert, my eyes fixed to the sky where the hawk flew, following me. I eventually lost her in the bright sun and the vastness of the blue above me, but she met me around the next turn where she flew directly across my path, landing in the grass across the street. I stopped, our eyes locked, I synced to her heartbeat, and I listened.

I have learned that the language of the spirit messenger is not language as we know it. I used to ask for its message and then expect to “hear” words in my mind, but over time I learned this is not how it works. The message is higher energy that is light as air but simultaneously dense. It is carried via a telepathic frequency which moves through the body arriving to the ears of the heart, and for me at least, can take some time to be translated to language I can understand. I know I must be patient. Time is not linear, and air spirit messengers only deliver what is needed and move on with their day. They don’t care that I’m dying to know what their message means in that moment. And in case you were wondering, google isn’t going to help you either.

I learned that my only job is to acknowledge them and to ask what they have for me. Then I must wait for the other pieces to come together, and the translation will arrive in my consciousness. Sometimes it’s a day, sometimes it is a week, a month, sometimes 6-months, but all I know is everything is divinely timed. Inevitably, the a-ha moment arrives.

Bella wasn’t a raptor but her Spirit, still fresh in new form, visited me on Friday morning. In my prayer I felt her, my eye opened to her breathing, then her cold nose, and lots of wet kisses and zoomies all around. So much peace! So much joy! So much love! Besides offering me the joy of her presence and taking the edge off my grief, she left me with a clear message to trust what is next, that she would be running alongside me as she ran with me all those days of her living. 𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧, she said, knowing the alchemy she and I practiced all those long afternoons in my prayer room.

After a busy work Saturday on the land at our new lake house this weekend, followed by a great dinner with friends and a bottle of wine with my husband, I woke up late Sunday morning to the sun glistening off the water and a distinct stillness over the lake. With a cup of coffee in hand, I felt the familiar ache. Bella would have been sleeping beneath my feet, tired out from a long day before of surveying her new digs, running in the water after chasing bunnies and squirrels and chipmunks and barking endlessly at new sounds. She would have had her head nuzzled under her arm, snoring as I would read and sip. I found myself seeking comfort by reading the words that poured out of me when I wrote my tribute to her. Outside of making myself cry, I found it delightful and peculiar that my soul intersected my story of Mother Mary’s calling with the story of Bella’s departure from this plane and I heard in my heart, 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘢 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨.

I began reflecting on how far I have come. Leaving the only faith life I have ever known was brave and the path has not been easy. I have suffered much to come to terms with what I now understand. I’ve had to face brutal truths and had to choose to trust what I heard and saw within the eye of my heart despite what I have been taught and practiced my entire life. The hardest part, I think, was dealing with the fact that I suddenly no longer fit or belonged anywhere. My community fell apart. The people who I loved the most did not want to hear my story and didn’t have much to say about my path except to pray for my saving. I felt alone and unseen and found I was filled with shame. I had to anchor into my own knowing and walk forward to do the hard work to undo the deep programming and fears Catholicism rooted into my head as a child. The more I dug, the more I undid, the more I found needed undoing. It was terrifying, disorienting, and emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausting.

Of course, there were bright spots where answers to ‘now what’ led me to paths with unexpected and exciting moments that confirmed I was on the right track but inevitably they would lead back to my doubting everything, followed by more twists and turns, dead ends, and numerous back roads that were fun to explore but weren’t for me. It is that rainy afternoon where I found myself on the floor of my closet locking eyes and heartbeats with Mother Mary that will forever remain a timestamp of my faith life. It was Mary who helped me understand that I belonged only to Her and to myself.

From that day forward, I spent my days focusing on learning to discern her voice, which always led me to the voice of my own soul. I learned to know its frequency in my body, and with her grace, learned patience while my minds eyes and ears developed enough to translate readily to my brain.

Let me be clear. I was not great at this.

I fought so hard denying it all, fearing I was crazy, being terrified others would think I’m crazy. My Catholic roots sent me to hell more than once and darkness delighted in my terror and doubt. My ego pulled out all the stops, all the tricks, sabotaging every single effort put forth from within.

The good news is that Spirit is just as relentless and 𝘰𝘩, 𝘴𝘰 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵! I had to undergo a tremendous amount of spiritual “training” to find the courage to unbind myself from what I thought was true, to create space to remember and then give myself permission to practice what my soul already knew.

It turns out she is quite skilled at the art of summoning the darkness forward from within, giving it a voice, and holding the space to hear what it had to say, while gently asking it what it needs. This is the teaching and work of the Magdalene. She taught me fear, rage, envy, intoxicated wisdom are only a by-product of darkness we refuse to summon forward. The darkness holds tremendous power and is the key ingredient to our true belonging. But if left to fester, it becomes toxic and noxious, and keeps us small, afraid, angry, sad, depressed, and always an arm’s length away from the majesty of light and love within us.

Trusting the Magdalene, I learned quickly that the reward comes just from being brave enough to conduct this summoning. The actual healing happens outside of what we can understand and is fully taken care of by the Beloved who would never let a hair on your head be touched. His only ask of you is child-like trust as He and the Magdalene will walk you to the ledge where you will be asked to freefall into that very darkness you summoned.

𝘏𝘢! I laugh because it is so much easier said than done, I assure you. But I can also promise that you will land in a featherbed so comfortable you never want to leave, and slowly come back to consciousness in this world, disoriented and somehow different. The mystery is always celebrated without knowing the how.

This is how the alchemy of the Way of the Magdalene transformed my inner life and healed my deepest wounds.

The name of the Magdalene Center for Healing and Holistic Wellness came during the height of the pandemic, following the visit of a hawk who dove from the sky to snatch a snake sunning himself on my back lawn. I have worked since then, mostly failing miserably, to bring this vision down to this world, but now I understand there was a tremendous amount of inner work to do to before that could happen. I had to learn to become skilled in practicing the Way and living it myself before I could teach it. I then understood the Redtail hawks message from his recent visit:

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘳 (𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯), 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵, 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘪𝘭, 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘥; 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘨𝘰 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘴𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯.

Our weekend at the lake house was ending and I felt this pull to picnic under a tree down by the water before we left. As Mike and I sat on the blanket, the same stillness from the morning surrounded us and the afternoon sun lit up our skin and danced off all the emerging facets of fall. We ate almost in silence, letting the stillness hold us, taking it in with each breath and bite. We began talking about where we are and what is next, dreaming of the next phase of our lives as our last child will be leaving our nest before we know it.

Suddenly, our eyes were drawn from each other to a sound over the water. Powerful flapping wings beat the air and treated our ears, and it seemed as if every living thing stopped to witness the most magnificent bald eagle soar across the water in our line of sight. We sat stunned and awed. The hairs on my arms and legs stood tall, tears welled, and my soul bowed her head with mine.

On the way home in the car, I realized that the night Bella's legs fell beneath her in my kitchen was one day after the landing visit of the Redtail. As we held each other on the kitchen floor, I referred to that moment as holy because my soul already understood her transition across the veil would bring my integration. Her life’s mission was nearing completion.

Mine was just about to begin.