Something Angels Taught Me

In my early teens I started to suffer from debilitating migraines that often left me weak on the right side. My vision and depth perception would be blurry, and I would have difficulty speaking for days. Doctors tried to convince my parents I was doing drugs. It was the late sixties, and a lot of teenagers were doing drugs as it was the IN thing to do. Thankfully, my parents knew me better than that. In an effort to help me cope my mother would give me sleeping pills to knock me out. I would sleep for days. There were weeks before I felt normal again. I lived in fear for years that there was something horribly wrong with me.

The migraines became a regular part of my existence. I was desperate for relief. The next twenty years of my life became an endless journey of doctors, allopathic medicine, alternative health care, herbs and psychics. Eventually I was properly diagnosed. I was suffering from an unusual form of migraine known as aura or ocular migraine. There was nothing anyone could do except offer me different medications, all of which had less than desirable side effects. There had to be a better way.

When I turned 40 the migraines suddenly increased in regularity. Instead of a few a year I was having one every week. They started to escalate in intensity, and it was taking longer to recover from each episode. I started to develop other physical symptoms such as dramatic weight loss, insomnia, constipation and anemia. I kept telling my doctor, “There’s something wrong here. It’s not just migraines, there’s something more going on with my body.” My doctor just laughed and told me “It was all in my head.”

Then I began to collapse at work. I became so weak that my employer had to help me go on short-term disability, despite my doctor’s assistance that I was only looking for “attention.” After years of insomnia, I was now sleeping almost 23 hours a day. With each passing day I was becoming weaker to the point that I could no longer stand up and walk without assistance. I would have to roll myself out of bed and crawl on my hands and knees just to use the bathroom. I started to notice a funny odour, in the bedroom that was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

One afternoon I awoke with a start to find a beautiful angel standing beside my bed. She smiled at me and said: “It is your choice; you can live, or you can die.” At first, I thought I was having a hallucination but then I realized that she was real, and I needed to listen. I had to decide. That’s when I realized that the odour that I couldn’t identify in my room was the smell of my own death.

It was a deep sense of relief to say, “Take me, I can’t do this anymore. I give up.” As soon as I said those words, I was floating upwards out of my body, and I was filled with such heavenly peace. As I moved up towards the heavens I was immersed in this brilliant blue, white light. It was at that moment I realized that I was leaving my family. I hesitated. I thought about my husband and my children and realized that I couldn’t leave them alone like that. As I hovered, I called out to the angels and asked, “Can I change my mind, please? I choose life.”

I felt a wave of love surround me. My heart swelled with such indescribable love. Then I heard, “Yes.” I immediately fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up the next day, I was surprised at how much better I felt. I was able to get up, eat and walk around on my own, something I had not been able to do for over a month.

Shortly after that angel’s appearance in my life, funny things started to happen. I started finding the practitioners who eventually helped me to recover completely. I discovered energy work and that radically changed my life. Not only did healing work save me but it also changed my career trajectory. My life has never been the same.

I had known about angels since my childhood when I saw orbs all the time. I had had encounters with them and visions. Things that I thought were completely normal. But life got in the way and those encounters became a distant memory. After my near-death experience, I realized it was time to learn more. I went to the library and borrowed all the books I could find on angels. I read that angels will communicate with you when your mind is distracted through the process of writing down your thoughts. Their words of wisdom would appear in notes, quotes, songs, books, music, signs or in journals. Curious, I started to pour through my old journals. Sure enough, I found instances where I had written things down that were in a different voice. The sentence structure was more formal. The information written down was profound. Surely that wasn’t me? I pondered. Then it dawned on me just how often the angels had been talking to me. I was completely oblivious.

It was those little statements that I had written down in my journals that showed me that I had actually been receiving divine guidance for years. I never knew. Would I have liked the healing journey to be easier? Yes, indubitably. But having to work through my health issues taught me so much about myself. It was only later that I understood how important that journey was or how it would help me in the future.

Journaling did not come easily to me. I only started after the consistent urging of my mother despite my very vocal objections. The early years of my marriage and parenthood were not easy. My mother, rightly knew, that writing down my struggles would go a long way to helping me figure things out. Little did either of us know how much the divine would also be helping me as I wrote out my feelings.

I will be eternally grateful to my mother for strongly encouraging me to start a journal. It became a safe place to just be me – warts and all. Through the process of journaling, I learned that I could problem solve in privacy, whine or dream. It became a great source for personal therapy. And as I have learned over the years the process of writing down your feelings occupies the ego mind enough so that your intuitive mind is more open to receiving information from the divine, guides and angels.

It was through the process of journaling and my healing work with clients that I started to understand that everyone is intuitive but not everyone knows how to get in touch with their intuition. I asked my guides why that was so. Their response was because few are shown how to listen and trust the information being given to them by their intuition. “When you are shown how to listen to your intuition you realize that the inner divine wisdom is always there, guiding you,” they said.

We are all intuitive. Journaling is one type of tool that can help you to discover your intuition and develop it. The process of writing down your thoughts can help you to understand the difference between your intuition and your ego. Intuition is always loving, kind, gentle, and feels safe. The ego is always filled with uncertainty, questions everything, uses words like should, need, or have to. It makes you feel uncertain and anxious. As you journal your thoughts you also begin to become more comfortable with your connection to your angel guardians and divine wisdom. All you have to do is just start writing whatever comes to mind. The divine will do the rest. It’s all pretty amazing.

Atherton Drenth is the author of Intuitive Dance. Building, Protecting & Clearing Your Energy (Llewellyn Worldwide), Following Body Wisdom and the Art of Intuitive Journaling. Atherton is a Clairvoyant, Medical Intuitive and Holistic Energy Practitioner facilitating transformational healing for her clients. She has been extensively trained and certified as a Medical Intuitive and Holistic Energy Practitioner. She has been in private practice since 2000. She is also a compassionate teacher committed to helping others develop their full intuitive potential through yearly workshops. She has a private practice in Ottawa, Ontario.