Loraine Van Tuyl, Psychologist and Author, #EmergesProud

When I first saw the title of Loraine’s book; Amazon Wisdom Keeper: A Psychologist’s Memoir of Spiritual Awakening, I instantly hoped that she would agree to be one of our proud #Emergees. I am delighted to be welcoming Loraine to the #Emerging Proud community in a 3 – part blog series featuring her personal story, work, and then finally, delving deeper with a live interview…

This is no run-of-the-mill Psychologist. Loraine was clearly a wise keeper of intuitive knowings since childhood, something which so often resonates with sensitive Empaths.

She talks about how leading others to freedom is the key to unlocking the door to incredible inner strength, which is the aim of this campaign; as we speak out and help to lead others to their authentic freedom, the stronger we in turn become. Alone we are nothing, together we are everything.

Here Loraine describes her incredible awakening journey, so far…

My Initiation and Emergence

Around age 7, I started to fantasize about running away from home. Every time my matter-of-fact, junior-high-school-principal mother and I had gotten into a conflict over rigid rules that made no sense to me—which happened almost daily—I dreamt of living in the jungle, like Mowgli, where I’d be protected from the harmful influences of humans and modern society.

On weekends, my family retreated to our orchard, a few acres of land on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Suriname, the most tree covered country in the world according to the World Bank. I loved our visits to this restorative sanctuary, where even my mother relaxed, and I felt safe, free, wild, and swept up by the mysteries and magic of the natural world and the abundant beauty all around me. I played hide and seek with critters, birds, monkeys, and imaginary friends, Anne Frank, Helen Keller, and Joan of Arc, who validated my premonitions about my purpose and inexplicable, passionate impulses and feistiness.

Our Maroon housekeeper, Elfriede, my confidante and sensitive, nurturing caregiver, offered me a bridge to my West-African maternal lineage. She supported my natural abilities in communing with nature spirits, the same ones that protected the indigenous tribes and descendants of runaway slaves from brutal slavemasters for centuries. I also felt an ageless, otherworldly bond with freedom fighters and tribal medicine men while watching low-budget, lengthy documentaries about their healing practices with my father.

A revolution broke out when I was 10 years old, and three years later, I lost my lifelines to my nature sanctuary and my close-knit community when we moved to Miami. I dallied in darkness for years in dire situations that significantly threatened my safety and future, and almost cost me my life.

After many twists and turns, I rediscovered my senses, inner wisdom, and mission and enrolled in a doctoral program in clinical psychology. About three years in, I experienced my first mysterious call—drumming sounds. I feared that they would be pathologized as auditory hallucinations if I told anyone, and while flipping through the DSM, often worried if I suffered from delusions, anxiety, obsessive compulsiveness, borderline lability, paranoia, and grandiosity because the descriptions fit me so well.

My childhood advisers appeared. Anne Frank reminded me to keep my feelings a secret in unsafe situations and to write about them instead. Helen Keller had taught me to trust my intuition, and Joan of Arc showed me that leading others to freedom unlocked the door to incredible inner strength.

This is what I accessed when I wondered how a client could possibly trust her or himself when I, a powerful insider, still had so much trouble trusting myself and my healing power. It gave me to the courage to deeply examine problematic mental health processes by treating myself as a case study, tracking my spiritual emergence journey and unique biases and life experiences from my childhood all the way up to my first years in private practice in my book, Amazon Wisdom Keeper: A Psychologist’s Memoir of Spiritual Awakening. This journey has laid the foundation of my next project, a guide book and online course entitled: Soul Sanctuary Alchemy: Expand with Grace and Guidance from the Sacred 7 Directions.

In part 2 of Loraine’s blog, she’ll be spilling the beans about her ‘Soul Sanctuary Alchemy’ course, before we finally get to hear from her, in a live interview coming over the next couple of weeks…stay tuned; you are not going to want to miss it!

Loraine holds out her hand to humanity through her powerful poem…

You Can Be ONE Too

I am an incubator for love, freedom,

and the mysterious.

A prism of safety for all of our rainbow colors

and shades of gray, depending on orientation

or the day.

A general contractor of unfinished business,

mending short-circuited wires

blown by fear and despair

with the infinite glue of our hearts and tears.

A pot made out of clay,

earth, air, fire, and water,

filled with ancient wisdom

and modern knowledge

to support and feed shaky

and starved human portals.

A sacred well of fierce and skilled navigators

not daunted by annihilation terror

while crossing the dark sea of the soul.

A fiery cauldron and crazy alchemist,

brewing and spewing potent potions and soothing antidotes

that salve and salvage

connection, clarity, and hope

out of sinister algorithms, twisted cynicism,

and hollow tropes.

I am an incubator for love, freedom,

and the mysterious,

called to re-Mind and reveal to others

how they can be ONE too.

~ Loraine Van Tuyl