Ep2: From Illness To Healed: Heather’s Story Of Becoming Intuitive

Dec 2, 2019

Stories of spontaneous healing (aka “ spontaneous remission”), wherein a person miraculously recovers from a life threatening disease, severe trauma, or even death, have been documented for millenia- serving to amuse skeptics and befuddle physicians.

In this episode, Heather Alice Shea shares the amazing true story of her own spontaneous healing and how her medically unexplainable recovery from a painful, chronic illness re-ignited her faith, hope and trust in a Higher Source.

The truth is this; sometimes, to find the light, you have to first walk through the shadows. These “dark nights of the soul”, as uncomfortable as they are, are sometimes what’s needed for us to reconnect with our Higher Selves, rediscover our strength and remember who we are and why we’re here.

Would Heather be the visionary, heart centered intuitive and community servant that she is without having first gone through this painful ordeal?

You’ll find out in this inspiring episode!

 

Soul Stirring Quotes

“I chose grace.”

“Faith comes to us through our experiences and choices.”

 

Episode Timecodes:

  • [ 00:30 ] Becoming an intuitive 

  • [ 03:50 ] Being diagnosed with a chronic illness 

  • [ 06:45 ] My Lt. Dan moment 

  • [ 14:00 ] Choosing grace over anger

 

Links Mentioned:

Connect with Heather

Email: hello@heatheraliceshea.com

Timezone: America/New_York

Website: heatheraliceshea.com

FACEBOOK GROUP

The Atmana Intuitive Coach Collective

Join The Atmana Intuitive Coach Collective Facebook Group here: 

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Episode Transcript:

Today I want to share story, my story into becoming intuitive. And even though most people don’t know it, I think that we all have a story or two about moments when something unfathomable happens to us and we respond in unexpected ways. So this is one of my stories and it also serves to sort of illustrate how I stepped into my work as an intuitive coach. I didn’t, I didn’t always do this kind of work. So if you listen to episode one, I shared my story into what inspired me to become a mental health counselor and a healer and a helper in the world.

And this story paints a picture of how intuition and spirituality got added in the mix. So this is my story, but I also believe that it’s your story too. I think it’s all of our stories and my hope and telling this story is that it moves you in some meaningful way to ditch your own demons and embrace your own power with enthusiasm.

I’ve never been one of those people. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of people who from childhood have the ability to perceive the fantastic or the paranormal they claim to be able to see orbs or lights, auras and see things in your energy, communicate with spirits or know things that are impossible for them to know. Things that totally defy logic and reason. And to be honest, deep down, I’ve always slightly envied those people even while I was rolling my eyes at them, not because they were gifted so much. Hell, most of the time I thought they were bat shit crazy. I envied them because they believed with great conviction in something larger than themselves. It was as if they knew a secret that the rest of the world had yet to discover and knowing it was the key to their inner serenity. I longed to be able to believe like that, but I never could.

I grew up in the South in a very conservative religious family, and I was taught as a child that if you do good things, good things happen to you. And if you do bad things, bad things happen to you and that God will disapprove of you and punish you, if you aren’t a good girl, and if you’re suffering or you’re hurting in any way well, that must mean you’re bad and you’re not good enough, and you have to strive to become worthy of God’s love.

So at a very young age, I knew that this wasn’t correct and right, but at the same time, I was being taught by every adult I loved and admired that this was the reality of the world and the nature of God. So I had a very hate relationship with the divine. I wanted to be close, but I also couldn’t stand what I was being taught. So, I longed to feel connected to a divine something or someone beyond myself. But the religion I was indoctrinated into felt to punitive. And then the new age spiritual sort of esoteric realm to seem too fantastical to sensational or too ridiculous to be true or real.

So I felt very much a person stuck between worlds. And then I literally, literally, and I don’t mean, I don’t mean metaphorically or figuratively, I mean I literally experienced a miracle. Something so mindblowingly powerful that I couldn’t dismiss it as new age nonsense or explain it away by traditional religion or debunk it through rational thought and scientific inquiry.

So here’s the story. In 2008 I was diagnosed with a debilitatingly, painful, chronic illness. My doctor said that surgery would make it better. And so I tried it over and over and over again. And with each surgery they would say, Oh, this one’s going to fix it. And it never did. I had a surgery a year for five years, and not only did it not fix it, it actually got worse, so much worse that over that time I went on to try exploratory procedures to no avail. And I went from just, you know, being really sick to, you know, “Do you have a living will?” Kind of ill and my fifth surgery, it was just absolute hell on earth. And I finally snapped emotionally and mentally, I just couldn’t take the pressure of it anymore on a mental and emotional level. And also physically I was just wearing way too thin to be able to endure it.

So I was failing to recover, truly fearing for my life. And I was so filled with rage and resentment towards an aloof and uncaring God who had abandoned me despite a lifetime of trying to seek and please and, and do well, you know, in the eyes of of God. So I thought to myself, you know what? Screw this. If I’m gonna die, I damn sure want to know why. So I was laying in bed one night realizing like, wow, you know what? I might not actually pull through this and if I don’t what am I going to do? And my thoughts immediately went to my daughter. Um, she was really still very young at this time and I had this vision in my mind – Flash kind of flashed through my mind of her finding my body. And my father passed away in 2006 and when I went in to see him, he was already in rigormortis and his body was stiff. And I remember putting my hand on him, um, to touch him and watching his whole body move, like not just as upper body, but his whole body moved and that kind of an unnatural a way that, you know, rigormortis makes a body move. And it, it stuck with me and I didn’t want Ava to find me like that. I didn’t want her to have that same experience. And so of course I went into Heather mode. I was like, okay, well if you die, here’s what you’re going to do and you’re going to get up, you’re going to go get Brandon, you’re going to make sure that he does not let either in the room, he’ll call the police, they’ll get somebody to come in. I’ll have everybody come over to be able to take care of him. And then all of a sudden in my mind, I said, Heather, no, babe, you’re not going to do any of that because you’re going to be dead and you’re not going to be able to protect her from that horrible reality.

And that’s when I absolutely lost it. I said, you know what, I’m fine if I let, if I suffer, but when it comes to my kid, I fully like momma bear it up in that moment. And so I decided I was going to get my answers. I was going to have my reckoning with God as to why this unbelievable shit was happening to me. I call up my Lieutenant Dan moment. If you’ve watched the movie Forrest Gump, when Lieutenant Dan and Forrest were on the shrimping and boat and the, the, um, the hurricane was bearing down on the Gulf and, Lieutenant Dan was up in the rigging of this shrimping boat and Lieutenant Dad, “It’s you and me God.” Well, that was me, uh, in this moment. So I, I remember laying there and saying to God, I mean, I was like full, like, really? This is actually really kind of terrible blasphemous stuff.

But I was like, I didn’t, you know, screw you like of saying this to God, like you’re, you’re an asshole. You’re all of these horrible things. Like I can’t believe you would do this to me. I can’t believe you would abandoned me. And if I’m gonna die, you’re at least gonna reckon with me. Like I want to know what the hell is going on. And you know, just, just really given it to him. And um, all of a sudden I got really calm. This wave of calmness came over me. I’d never had anything like this happen to me before in my life. And I heard a voice very plainly, very calmly say, Heather, you can remain and your anger and your bitterness for the rest of your days, however long they may be, or you can choose Grace and forgiveness, but the time is now choose wisely.

And I was like holy crap. And I was actually really excited because I was like, yes, I’m getting somewhere. Cause that had never happened. So I was like, okay killer. I’m about to have my reckoning. So I, um, I had learned to meditate in the meantime to, to, uh, reduce pain. It was very, um, efficacious and pain management with the illness that I had. So I had found that I could meditate quite easily and drop into a really deep state of meditation. So I decided that I would do that, that this time and as I went into to meditation, I just felt wave after wave. It was just the most remarkable experience. I know it sounds so crazy, but it’s so true that things like this really do happen. Um, I just felt this overwhelming sense of peace and love start coming over me in waves.

And so all of the anger and the hatred and the resentment and the pain and anguish and the, and the guilt and the shame and the, just the everything of my life, everything horrible and icky that I’d ever felt in my life. It was like I could just feel it falling away from my mind, my body, my spirit. And I knew in that moment I had a choice to make. I had asked for this. I had asked for this reckoning and I knew that I had to make a choice. And so I said to myself, okay, well, no matter what I do, I’m going to do it all the way. If I, if I choose to forgive and embrace grace, I’m gonna do that with every fiber of my being. And if I choose anger and resentment, I’m going to be the most angry person on the face of the planet.

And of course I don’t want to, I didn’t want to do that. So I chose, I chose grace. And so I said to the universe, God’s spirit, you know, whatever you consider to be a higher power, I said, I want you to know that I choose grace and that I want nothing from you. I don’t want answers. I don’t want the reckoning. I so desperately thought that I wanted, I accept my life. I accept what has happened to me. And if I live, if I do not wake up tomorrow morning, I’m okay. And I’m so grateful for the time that I’ve been given in this life. And the one thing I asked for, as I said, I want more of this feeling. I just, if I could just have more of this feeling for just a few more moments to have a respite from the physical pain, I would just be so, so grateful.

So I fell asleep in meditation and I woke up that next morning, completely healed, like physically healed. I had some, um, there was still some soreness around my stitches, but I was fine. And I’ve never had an episode ever again since that day.

But here’s what’s crazy. After I woke up that morning, I could still hear that voice. It’s like, it opened up this channel inside of me that just connected me to this greater world around me. And so over the course of about eight months, I started really trying to figure out what the hell just happened. How did I manage to fall? You know, kind of ass backwards into healing myself after all of these big fancy doctors couldn’t do it. So after months of devouring every scientific and esoteric book I could get my hands on, I discovered that the, this power or this, this voice inside of me is this is what the ancients said would call your higher self or your defined presence.

In the Christian tradition, we call it God, whichever works for you and that this power resides in each and every human being waiting to be, to be realized. And that if we open up and if we say yes to it, we human beings have the ability to connect to that voice and to hear that voice and to receive this guidance every single day. We don’t have to wait until we’re in a crisis moment to feel this connection and we can do it every single day. And so my life’s work as an intuitive guide, a coach and a business mentor just sort of organically unfolded from there. And of course at the time when all of this was happening, I certainly didn’t know that whole experience was a part of my, my Dharma, my destiny, and that bringing intuition and this powerful connection that we have to this source of wisdom within ourselves would truly become my life’s work.

And as I reflect on my story, I think there are many things that could be said about this story, but for me the biggest epiphany was this, that I was totally wrong. I am one of those people. And so are you. You are not a flawed being. Finding your way back to divinity. You are not a flawed being trying to reconcile, him or herself with a judgmental God. You are a perfect manifestation of God. You are a perfect manifestation of infinite creation. You are the divine here in physical form and miracles will happen in your life The moment that you have faith in and listen to this wisdom that’s waiting within you. So you know, ultimately I believe that true faith and self realization aren’t things that can actually be taught to us. I believe that faith comes to us through our experiences and our choices.

No religion or dogma or creed or movement is ever going to be able to tell you your truth or give you what you need it because it’s not out there, right? It’s inside. And that’s where you’ve got to learn to look at in order to find it. So, you know, my experience was no cakewalk. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but it taught me how to fully embrace and transcend my own suffering and pain from a place of authenticity and compassion. And I believe that because I’ve had my own personal dark night of the soul and I faced it and I made the right choice for me, I made the right choice. I think that is what is allowed me to help other people do so as well. So no matter where you are in your own story, I want you to know that inside of you is that same voice just waiting for you to finally listen.

Now, in listening to this story, you, you might think it’s fantastic and of course it certainly is, but I have learned to see the true miracle in my experience. And I used to think that the miracle was the spontaneous healing, or you know, my intuition being fully unlocked or being able to hear and see and sense, you know, the emotional blocks and traumas and other people as an intuitive and an empath, I used to think, wow, okay, all that stuff is pretty freaking miraculous. But what I’ve learned is that actually isn’t the miracle. To me, the true miracle was that I chose grace, that I chose to forgive myself, that I chose to be okay with everything that had happened to me, not because I hoped to make it better, but because I accepted it just the way it was, warts and all. That’s the miracle that I chose the grace.

I chose forgiveness. And that’s an opportunity that every person on this earth could make at any given moment. So as you listen to this, I want you to ask yourself,

What are you holding onto that needs to be forgiven?

What are you holding onto that needs to let go?

What part of yourself needs more love?

What part of yourself is dying to be born?

What part of yourself could be healed if you could stop denying it and wanting it to be quote unquote fixed but healed through acceptance of it. That’s the power that you have inside you. You can unlock that. We can unlock that every single day. And my story is truly a living, a living manifestation of that to stop today and spend a little time thinking about moments in your life when you have had an inkling or an experience of hearing and being in relationship with your own internal voice from within.

And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re like, Oh, you know, well, I haven’t really had many experiences like that or I’ve never had an experience like that. That’s not true. You have you, what you haven’t learned is how to pay attention to it. So, you know, I started my story saying, Oh, I’m not one of those people. But the truth is I’ve always been, I’ve always been that person. I just didn’t see it that way. You know, I didn’t, I wasn’t looking at it through that perspective.

But as I look back on my life, like even when I was a kid, I realized that I’ve had profound moments of tapping into, you know, the ether and being able to see and hear and feel and know things that I couldn’t possibly see, hear and know. And of course, um, if you’ve been a part of, you know, my world at all or followed my work, you know that there’s a ton of science that supports, uh, the efficacy of intuition in being able to accurately predict future events.

Um, and also since you know, what people innately need in order to move them forward and help them heal, if you want to learn more about the science of intuition and how intuitives like me and, and others who do energetic type of work have you want to learn kind of the, the mechanics of how it works, you can go to my website, heatheraliceshea.com/resources and I have several really good videos. They’re all short. I don’t, I think the longest one might be 20 minutes where you can go and familiarize yourself with the psychophysiological processes through which we send and receive intuitive information. So I always joke and say it’s not the 17 1700’s anymore. We actually understand exactly what the sixth sense organ is. It’s actually a neurological pathway between your brain and your heart. Um, so we know what the, we know how intuition works, we know what, how it comes in and we understand how you can reliably learn how to develop this skill in your life.

So I deeply thank you for listening to my story. It’s, it’s vulnerable for me to tell it. I have a tendency to not to not tell it as much as maybe I should. I want to thank you for holding space for me to get vulnerable and to share it with you and to go through this crazy journey called life with me on this awesome pod.

Okay, let’s wrap up with three quick things. So my intention for this podcast is to be of impactful service to you. And one the ways that I can tell how well I’m doing that is by reading honest reviews of the pod. So the reviews really allow me to see the topics and the ideas that are resonating with you the most. So I would be forever honored and grateful if you would leave a review on iTunes for the show.

And I get super excited every time or of you comes in because it helps me stay in my purpose and in my intention of supporting the coaches and entrepreneurs out there doing the heavy lifting of helping other people heal and expand and grow. So if it feels aligned, go to Heather Alyse, shay.com forward slash podcast and show me some love by leaving me a heartfelt review and to express my gratitude each week. I read the names of everyone who leaves a review as a thank you to you for helping this podcast thrive. And speaking of showing the love, did you know that I make 100% free tip sheets for almost every episode on this podcast? Yes, I do. So you can go to Heather Alice, shay.com forward slash podcast tip sheets and enter in your name and best email address. And I will send you over a page link where you can download them all into your little heart is content.

And the third and final thing is that I get emails each week asking how to begin the process of becoming an intuitive coach or from existing coaches and therapists who would like to begin applying intuition in their sessions. So if you are interested or you feel called and would just like to explore the services that we offer over @up coaching academy then just head over to my website at heatheraliceshea.com and check out our different offerings for coaches and creatives who would like to explore intuitive development, business development, or both. So that is it for this episode. My lovely. Remember you are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. So step into your greatness and stay after it.