How Feeling Everything Became My Greatest Teacher

When I was little, I was afraid of everything. I’m sure that didn’t make things easy on my mother, especially when there were other siblings to wrangle each day and I became her shadow, following her into the bathroom and clinging to her legs whenever strangers were around.

It’s funny, the things that bring us back to our childhood thoughts and memories, what stirs something in us to look at how far we’ve come. This all sparked from me riding the Ferris wheel at the state fair the other night. Me, the girl who has spent her adult life facing fears head on, riding rollercoasters with loops, drops, and speeds that make you feel alive on a whole new level of adrenaline. Yet there I was, sitting in the smaller of the two Ferris wheels, completely open aired, nothing to hold onto, and realizing that this simple ride had brought back every childhood fear I thought I’d outgrown.

It’s crazy how riding a Ferris wheel bubbled to the surface every fear I had as a kid…my fear of heights, dying, and things I couldn’t control. But what really caught me off guard wasn’t the fear itself; it was my sensitivity to everything around me.

Every time my parents took me to a theme park, as much as I wanted to be there, I’d leave doubled over in physical pain from the amount of energy and excitement in the air. Back then, I didn’t have words for it. I just knew something in me felt overloaded. I hated it, and it bothered me because I knew I was ruining everyone’s time by needing to be looked after. I didn’t understand why every time I went into a crowd, I’d feel deathly ill.

Looking back now, I can see that what I was sensing as a child ran much deeper than I realized. As an adult, I’ve come to understand myself as an empath, and I often think about how much of that fear was my younger self and my soul trying to make sense of all the energy around me. Certain relatives, would make me cry for no clear reason. I can laugh about it now. They weren’t unkind, just unfamiliar, and I was probably over there reading their entire energy field before I even knew what that meant. But I remember feeling an instinctive unease, like I was standing in the middle of energy that didn’t belong to me and thinking, nope, not for me!

Maybe that was the beginning of learning boundaries, not the kind you set with words, but the invisible kind that say, “I need to feel safe in my own energy first.” That awareness took me years to develop, but I believe it started the moment I arrived here, adjusting to the vessel I had been given. I know, it sounds a little out there. Sometimes I feel completely like an alien when I write things like that, but honestly, there’s some truth to it.

When I think about childhood through the lens of spirit, it makes sense. We come into this world as infinite souls entering a brand new experience, sensitive and curious, yet completely raw to what being human feels like. Our souls may remember the vastness of love and connection from where we came, but our bodies are learning the limits and edges of this physical world. No wonder it all feels overwhelming at first.

As children, our sensitivity isn’t just exploratory, it’s protective. We’re scanning our surroundings with invisible antennas, feeling out what is safe, what is familiar, and what is not. We’re placed into family systems and environments that will shape our emotional and spiritual growth, each one offering lessons that slowly connect the dots of who we are becoming.

And while we may not always understand our purpose along the way, every stage, every fear, every challenge, every breakthrough, is part of the unfolding. Who we are is not random. It’s a divine choreography if you will of learning, remembering, and returning to ourselves.

I sometimes think about how fortunate we are to live in a time when conversations about empathy, energy, purpose, and soul growth are part of our everyday awareness. When I was growing up, no one talked about empaths or energy boundaries. We were just told to toughen up. But now, I get to live in a world, my world, where sensitivity is not a weakness, it’s wisdom. Where the inner child that once hid behind her mother’s legs now stands in the light, aware that she was never too much, only deeply in tune.

Throughout history, this awakening has always existed, just in different language. What we now call spiritual growth might once have been called enlightenment or faith or simply living with awareness. No matter the words, it’s always been about remembering who we are beneath the noise.

As my spirit guides once said to me, “Your awakening, my love, does not come but once. This is the path of many roads, many mountains. What you seek has never been lost, but the length of your journey to discover this, my dear, is completely up to you.”

That message has stayed with me through every season of change. Awakening isn’t a single moment of clarity; it’s an ongoing return. It’s the process of remembering what has always been true within you, even when life feels uncertain or heavy. It’s walking yourself back home, over and over, until peace becomes familiar again.

And that, to me, is the gift of an awakened life, to keep peeling back the layers, to meet each moment with curiosity, and to remember that even our earliest fears were simply our souls learning how to feel at home here.

A little love note to end on: 

Every time you honor your sensitivity, you honor your soul. Every time you pause to listen, you expand your light. The awakening isn’t something that happens once, it’s a lifelong remembering that you were never separate from the divine, only learning to see it through human eyes.