Hi, my dudes 

This is how I got started. 

 

I am a domestic abuse/trauma survivor. I started A little Hippie, A little Hood after the relationship I was in ended, but before I had experienced my spiritual awakening. It was such a weird time for me. 

 

I met “Richard” about 6 years ago. 

At the time, I was just putting my life back together from a previous failed relationship. I was working full time, raising my 3 boys, taking martial arts and trying like hell to get back on my feet. My mom had passed a few years prior and I was still in so much pain, but it seemed that things were finally starting to look up for us. 

 

When I met Richard, every internal warning system I had inside my body went off. I was hesitant, but ultimately, I ignored those warnings. 

In my defense, I didn’t really understand them. Nothing that I felt matched anything he said. I started to question and doubt myself. 

 

He began coming to where I worked every day. He was sweet, funny, helpful and soooo fucking hot. Despite everyone I knew warning me, and how I felt deep inside, after three months of him showing up and showering me with attention every day, I agreed to go out with him. 

 

I didn’t know that Richard was a narcissist. I also didn’t know that I am an empath. 

I wasn’t aware of what any of this meant either. It was a foreign language to me. 

In terms I could understand and that made perfect sense, it was the classic angel meets devil scenario. 

 

Let me tell you something important here, it took 9 months for Richard to show his true self to me. That day, he snapped. There was no legitimate reason. It happened suddenly and without warning. 

 

It was like he flipped a switch. His eyes didn’t even look the same. I had never seen anything quite like it. I remember being so shocked, scared. Here I had thought I changed him. I fixed this broken man that everyone had warned me about, all with my love. 

 

I left him that night. I was so heartbroken. 

 

The next day he called me. He was really apologetic. He had a lot to drink the night before. I forgave him. I went back. 

 

Life became really unpredictable at this point. Richard was an active alcoholic. 

 

I started feeling like crap all the time. I was getting lost when I was driving on familiar roads, forgetting things concerning my kids, I was stuttering, losing weight, I was losing feeling to the left side of my body. Slowly, I was losing mobility. Everything ached so badly. I started going for tests. A couple months later I was looking at diagnosis’s of the early onset of dementia and multiple sclerosis. 

 

Life continued to spiral out of control. 

 

At this point I was too weak to leave. I didn’t have anyone to help me. 

 

The truth is, even with the help, I wouldn’t have left. I wasn’t ready. I was still very much in love with him. 

 

One day I was in the shower. I had locked the door because I was home alone. He came home from work early. The bathroom door being locked set him off. There was a loud crash as the door splintered into pieces when he kicked it in. I felt so much fear. He reached inside the shower and pulled me out by my neck. He never let go as he held me off the ground and screamed at me about locking the door. He told me to leave and pushed me outside of our house. I ran next door to the home of his family members, naked, still wet from the shower. I was humiliated. I was crying, and begging for help. The relative who answered the door told me he was really sorry but that I needed to leave before he got in trouble with him too. 

 

I died a little inside that day. I left him again. A domestic violence agency helped us to afford shelter in a hotel for about a month. Then I  got my own place. You would think that was a relief but it wasn’t. The amount of pain I was in inside was making it so hard to breathe. It was crippling me. I wanted it to stop. 

 

So I did the only thing I knew that would stop the pain, even if it was only temporary. 

 

I went back again. I thought for sure that after what had happened, he had to have learned his lesson. I would have bet my life that things were going to be different. After all, we loved each other and we were “soulmates”. 

 

Nothing changed. 

 

A couple months later I was in bed taking a nap. I was really sick that day. His daughter came in and woke me up. She said the police were outside with her dad and wanted to talk to me. 

 

When I saw Richard in the back of the police car the first thing I noticed were his eyes. I saw the same look I had seen the first night I saw him snap. 

 

The police told me that they found him intoxicated, sleeping behind a bar in the next town over. I asked them to please take him with them for the night so the kids and I remained safe. 

The policeman actually laughed. He said that Richard was being jovial and was in a fantastic mood. I’d be just fine. 

I knew otherwise. 

I went inside and told my kids to get in the car. 

As I went to leave, Richard grabbed ahold of me and pulled me onto his lap and put me in a choke hold. I couldn’t breathe. Everything was going black. 

 

At this point, I was ready to give up. I had been fighting this man and being sick for years. I was so weak, so sick and so tired. 

 

I remembered my kids were outside waiting for me. Instinctively my martial arts training from years before kicked in. I was able to find the strength I needed to break free. I made my way to the door. 

I looked back to see him coming down the hall with a rifle that he always had loaded. 

 

I made it to my car and we managed to escape safely. 

 

He led police on an 8 hour manhunt with that loaded rifle, a backpack full of ammo, a bunch of pills and a 30 pack of beer. It was like something you would see on tv. There were negotiators, heat censored helicopters, several swat teams, and, of course, the local news teams. I was not only devastated but once again I was humiliated. 

 

He went to prison for assaulting me. Many people want me to feel shame for this. I don’t. 

He didn’t get charged with the manhunt or holding police at bay with a loaded weapon. He terrorized our whole town that night and they let it slide. 

We lost our home that night. Shortly after we also lost everything we owned. This began us being homeless and staying with friends for about 7 months. 

 

I had major PTSD on top of everything else that was going on. I focused on myself and healing. I learned about how your emotions affect your physical health, started reiki, began educating myself and working on a healthier me. My illnesses began to ease and for the most part fade away. 

I rented a cute little house in the country near my childhood home. My kids and I were once again picking up the pieces. 

 

Roughly two years later I was woken up in the middle of the night by my bulldog. I took him outside and noticed that the vacant house next door was being moved into. Although it was late, I didn’t think much of it. 

 

Over the course of the next few weeks things began to feel weird for me. I felt so heavy. I started feeling sick again. I noticed similarities between the neighbor I could see in the distance and Richard. Their body language was eerily similar. We had a PFA on Richard though so I kept dismissing the possibility. 

It didn’t take long before I learned that our PFA was not honored. Parole let him move into the house directly next door to me. When Parole was contacted about their error, they said that they would not ask him to move. They said that unless he directly speaks to me, there was nothing they were going to do because he had signed a lease. My lease was always month to month. Even though my kids and I resided in our home for over a year at the time, they suggested I be the one to relocate my family. 

 

We had been through so much. 

 

It was then that I stopped running. 

 

I wasn’t going to let him take anything more from us. I stood my ground. I refused to move. Luckily around that time he was found in violation of parole and taken back into custody for the next few months. He moved shortly after. 

 

He wouldn’t recognize the person I am today. Nobody that knew me then would. I’m really proud of that. I hold no ill feelings towards him anymore. I see his pain. He has not changed. I am grateful for the mercy that was given to me. I am grateful for the lessons he taught me. Without them I wouldn’t have found myself. I wouldn’t have found the courage to conquer all my demons. He was my biggest heartache but he was my biggest lesson.  

 

I could have saved myself and my family a lot of pain if I knew about self love, boundaries, being an empath, codependency and narcissism, to name a few things. My mom was really fantastic. But you see, she couldn’t teach me what she didn’t know. Nobody ever taught her this stuff. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Just a lack of knowledge. 

I see that this struggle didn’t stop with me and my mom. 

 

My awakening happened right before Richard moved next door. Literally 7 days prior. I knew nothing about spirituality or what was happening. I had heard of awakenings but in my mind that meant God walked on water or something like it. I was unbothered by this stuff. I didn’t care. I was pretty mad at God. My mom had died, I was sick and my life was a disaster. Don’t talk to me about God. That’s where I was at with it. 

 

I was a lost cause. There was a full moon that night, I was crying pretty hard in my bathroom. A woman I was receiving reiki from had told me that this particular full moon was powerful and that I needed to let go of everything that I was carrying with me. She said it wasn’t mine to carry anymore. I didn’t understand much of anything she said. I just knew that reiki was helping me move and think again, which I thought was impossible,  so whatever she said, I listened to and did my very best. 

 

I was sobbing as I imagined throwing all of my pain and baggage at the moon that night. I unloaded everything I could think of. What happened next is really hard to explain, especially without sounding insane. I was held in this bright white light in my bathroom. It came out of nowhere. It was quick like lightning. I could feel a presence next to me. I knew it was God and I knew I was ok. He showed me a lot of stuff that night in what I can only describe as a movie clip. I saw all the times I had steered myself down the wrong path. I saw the different ways I could have gone and how different my life could have been. We watched all the different scenarios. Each time there was a different outcome, his love for me never wavered, it didn’t matter the outcome. That’s what I remember feeling the most about that night. Even after everything I had been through, he loved, forgave and accepted me in ways I never thought possible. 

 

After the “movie clip” ended, things ended just as quickly as they began. The light was gone, God was gone, it was just me standing in the bathroom looking around like WTF. 

 

I later learned that what I had experienced was a Kundalini spiritual awakening.  

 

I have always been a super sensitive, emotional person. Because of this, the word crazy was always thrown at me. I’ve seen psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists. Their solution to my anxiety and sadness was medication. I support medication but after 15 years it was pretty safe for me to say, my issues were never going to be fixed with medication. These professionals weren’t even looking in the right place where I was concerned. I was self sabotaging without knowing it. I lacked personal boundaries and self love. I learned that I’m an empath. That right there was my “crazy”. It helped explain my sensitivity and how I can read other people’s energy. All of my “crazy” personality traits can be explained by educating yourself on what an empath is. This has helped me to finally love and accept myself. It was so hard to stop listening to the voice of the world and tune into my own. 

 

I started this page/community so that people like me didn’t feel alone. 

 

Three years and almost 400,000 people later (edit ** 5 years and 2.6 Million people later!!) it has become so much more than that to many of us. 

 

I’m here because I want to show you the same unconditional love and grace that was shown to me and open your eyes to some different perspectives. 

 

I love you. It’s that simple. 

 

Thank you for your love and support, 

~Shannon Lee 

 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE