How I Kept Leaving and It Kept Finding Me

Reiki Has Been Following Me My Entire Life

I just didn’t know how to say its name yet.

I think I found Reiki long before I ever knew what it was—before I could pronounce it, before I understood energy, before I had language for intuition, or trust in the quiet pull toward things that didn’t make sense but felt undeniable. I was a child then, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Barnes & Noble, planted firmly in the New Age section, devouring books that were absolutely not meant for me and yet somehow felt like they were written directly to me.

I didn’t announce this interest. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t bring it up at school or at home. I simply read and absorbed. And filed it away somewhere deep inside my body, where curiosity lives before it becomes belief.

At the time, Reiki was just one of many words I didn’t understand but felt drawn toward. I didn’t know that years later it would thread itself through nearly every major turning point of my life. I didn’t know it would leave and return and leave again, always reappearing right when I thought I had outgrown it or moved on or chosen something more practical, more impressive, more explainable.

Reiki is patient like that.

The First Return

Love, Redirection, and an Artist Sister

Reiki re-entered my life when I was seventeen, at that tender, chaotic age where everything feels like destiny and nothing is fully formed yet. I was dating my first real boyfriend, the first boy I had a crush on who liked me back, the one I was convinced I’d marry, the kind of relationship that rearranges your sense of the future simply by existing.

At the time, I was dead-set on leaving my hometown to become a forensic psychologist, convinced that I would study minds and crimes and human behavior from a distance, safely intellectualizing pain instead of feeling it. That plan would quietly dissolve over the next few years, replaced by a much less linear path that landed me studying visual communications, living in a loft apartment in a not-so-great part of town, with that same boy, and wondering, without fully admitting it, how I had ended up here.

We spent a lot of time with his best friend, and his best friend had a sister.

She was stunning in that effortless, art-school, slightly untethered way. An artist in every sense of the word. Looking back now, I suspect there were unspoken dynamics there that I didn’t yet have the awareness to clock, but what matters more is what she brought into my life: Reiki.

She had books—actual Reiki books, with diagrams and hand positions and concepts that felt strangely familiar, like remembering something I had once known but forgotten. And while everyone else smoked weed and drank truly terrible beer, I would post up on the couch or a chair and read. I didn’t drink much back then. I had the horrible misfortune of always being the responsible one, the caretaker, the one making sure everyone got home alive. That role would follow me for years, eventually earning me the nickname “Zoo Keeper.”

I studied those books carefully. I memorized the hand placements. I traced the shapes and symbols with my eyes. I felt something stirring, but I didn’t know how to name it, and I certainly didn’t know whether I was “doing it right.” I just knew I was paying attention.

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Disappearance, Grief, and the Long Pause

A few years later, after a slow unraveling and more emotional turbulence than I knew how to process at the time, that boy left me in the middle of the night. I was alone in the loft, alone in that neighborhood, alone in a life I hadn’t exactly chosen but had somehow built anyway.

Reiki disappeared again.

I looked into classes—half-heartedly, quietly. A massage school. A community college. I bookmarked websites and closed tabs. I told myself I’d circle back.

I didn’t.

Life continued, as it does. Five years passed. I grew up. I hardened a little or a lot. And eventually, I did the thing I had promised my younger self I would do: I left my home state and moved to New York City.

I had finally fucking done it.

New York Cracks Me Open

New York didn’t just change my address, it cracked me open.

I found a yoga and pole studio that would alter the course of my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted. I worked the front desk for trade, because that’s what you do when you’re determined and broke and unwilling to give up access to the things that make you feel alive. I took classes. Then I taught them. Pole, movement, embodiment. Eventually, I found myself assisting with meditation and Reiki circles.

All of this happened because my assistant at what remains the worst job I’ve ever had invited me to a hot yoga class. (I was let go from that job the day after my birthday. Not the reason it was bad, but a fun detail nonetheless.)

At that class, I met Christine.

She was one of those teachers whose presence alone felt expansive. We talked often before class, after class, lingering conversations that drifted into energy, intuition, and healing. One day, she shared how she had begun her Reiki journey.

Something in me clicked.

I told her about my strange, unfinished relationship with Reiki, how it kept appearing and disappearing in my life like a recurring dream. Through her, I found Maha Rose.

Certified, but Uninitiated

Maha Rose is where I received my Level I and Level II Reiki certifications.

And here’s the part people don’t always say out loud: I walked away certified, but still confused.

The trainings were short. The groups were large. Twenty to thirty people in a room, moving quickly through material that deserved far more time and space. I didn’t ask many questions, not because I wasn’t curious, but because I didn’t know what I was allowed to ask. Or what I should be asking.

I completed the certifications. I assisted Christine with her Sunday meditation and Reiki circles. I volunteered. I showed up. I practiced. I trusted.

And yet, looking back, I realize how much of it I was just… hoping would land.

Reiki on the Road

When I turned thirty, I did what I always do when something inside me starts to itch: I left.

I traded New York City boss-bitch energy for a backpack and a carry-on, spending nearly twenty months overseas—twelve of them traveling with a group called Remote Year (RIP), the rest largely solo, weaving in and out of friendships and cities and temporary homes.

Reiki came with me.

It became one of the ways I sustained myself financially, offering one-on-one sessions to fellow travelers, working with local healing centers in exchange for space, and later partnering with hotels, hostels, and B&Bs offering Reiki to guests in exchange for my stay.

Reiki crossed borders with me. It adapted. It worked in borrowed rooms and unfamiliar cities. It asked very little of me except presence.

And then, when I returned home, I left it there.

The Original Why and the One That Changed

The reason Reiki first caught my attention all those years ago was my mom.

She was diagnosed with Lupus, along with a handful of other autoimmune conditions, and I learned early that while there is no cure, Reiki had been a supportive ally for many people living with chronic illness. That was my original why. I wanted to help her. I wanted to offer relief.

To this day, my mom has never had a session with me. She’s never asked.

That truth still stings, and probably always will. But I honor her autonomy. I also recognize that even though that was where my curiosity began, it was never where it was meant to end.

Phoenix, Stillness, and the Return (Again)

After coming back to the States, I floated. LA to Phoenix to New York and back again unsure where I was meant to land. In 2019, I chose Phoenix, telling myself it would be temporary. (I had plans to leave again in March of 2020. We all know how that went.)

About a year later, Reiki found me again.

Quietly. Casually. Sliding into my life like it always had, asking me, gently, persistently, if this time I was willing to stay.

I think I am.

Why I’m Teaching Reiki Now

I’m not teaching Reiki because I had a perfect initiation.

I’m teaching because I didn’t.

Because I learned in fragments. I practiced without full context. I trusted something I didn’t yet understand and felt its impact anyway.

This Level I Reiki Certification is the training I wish I had: slower, more intentional, grounded in embodiment and lived experience, not just hand positions and theory.

If Reiki has been whispering to you for years…

If it keeps showing up at the edges of your life…

If something in your body already knows—

You’re not late.

You’re exactly on time.