Scars & Spoils (My Story)
My journey as a natural-born mystic & how I became a channel for angels & other spirits.
Mysterious Beginnings
Before I was born, God sent eagles to bring my name to my parents.
I am a natural born mystic. I was born “veiled” or “en-caul,” still encased in the amniotic sac. This is considered to be the sign of a prophet, or one who can traverse the veil by various ancient cultures.1
I have a pre-birth memory of basking in love and light. I still remember experiencing heaven, “swimming” in the thickness of God’s presence before I came to earth...
I have been spiritually sensitive my entire life. When I was a child, I’d feel benevolent beings in nature and dark entities in sketchy places, such as rest stops or certain aisles of stores.
When I was a young girl, I once tried to tell someone that I could “dream without being asleep.” I now know, those are called visions.
There was a moment in childhood where I heard an audible spiritual voice repeatedly calling my name...
I was the girl who “knew things.” I told women they were pregnant before they themselves knew it, and often predicted the gender as well. I also made comments like “she’s anorexic” when I’d walk into a crowded room while nodding towards a stranger who was a completely normal weight. (Spoiler, that same woman later shared her story about being a recovering anorexic to the utter shock of my friends.)
When I was 15, I came into my parent’s bedroom during some ungodly hour of the night. I was covered in sweat and shaking like a leaf. I told them that I’d just had a dream, in it, I saw demons dragging my friend’s spirit from his body. I knew something or someone was trying to kill him. I was convinced the dream was real. This friend, Sterling,2 was like a brother to me, his life was obviously in some kind of danger. Despite my desperate protests, I wasn’t able to convince my parents to let me call anyone in the night. (This was before cell phones.) “It was just a nightmare,” they told me.
That morning the phone rang, the second it did I knew who it was, and what she would say. It was Sterling’s mom, hysterically telling my own mother that he had just been found dead. The cause of death: an unintentional drug overdose.
That experience is a scar I still wear...
Ascent
I first led others into spiritual experience through the magic of music, specifically as a worship leader.
I spent 4 years (during my high-school and college years) leading a full-time, thriving ministry as a youth worship leader at the area’s most prestigious mega-church. I had 5 rotating senior high teams, and a varying number of junior high teams.
I could walk into a room, scan the crowd and identify the musicians in the room. It didn’t matter if they already played or merely possessed the undiscovered talent hiding within them. (I could even identify which instrument they would have a talent for.)
I taught others how to play instruments that I myself did not play, intuitively translating music theory and principles into techniques I rarely found others utilizing.
I took several students from their first music lesson to playing on-stage in less than 3 months.
Our church became renowned for its’ musician training, attracting gifted individuals from the surrounding churches into our program.
During my next venture, I spent 2 years leading worship at more than 20 venues. (Pastors and others would call and ask me to play. I never needed to open doors for myself, my reputation did that for me.)
At one church I was told to prepare myself for a difficult time during the first service “no one raises their hands, and only half of them sing.” Within the first song, the entire room was voluntarily standing and shouting the lyrics so loudly they were drowning out the drum kit.
At another church where I did interim worship, the entire atmosphere transformed during my summer there. It was a stiff baptist church where everyone raced out the door the minute the pastor finished his sermon. By the time I left, the suit-and-tie pastor was wearing sandals with a Hawaiian shirt and putting his arm around the wife he previously bickered with. People now stayed after service to chat with everyone, saying how nice the place had become.
At age 21 I was told that my resume credentials had led another high-performing worship leader to believe I was at least 30-something due to my wealth of experience and accomplishments. Similarly, a pastor at another high paying mega-church told me I had a “top 2% resume.”
Descent
My prophetic abilities were the reason for my inexplicable degree of success. But there was a problem, many pastors are only comfortable with spiritual experiences that make them look good. If an experience grew beyond their ability to label and control, they quickly become threatened by the shifting status quo. Because my music facilitated spiritual experiences, I was eventually kicked out of the church where I grew up. I also ran into problems at subsequent churches. Things would start off wonderfully...until the spiritual atmosphere began to shift. Suddenly, the pastors feared their congregation would follow the Holy Spirit as their primary leader rather than the institutional structure of the church -of which they were the head. This made me a threat in their eyes… Not all pastors were like this, there were a few who were quite the opposite. Unfortunately, in my experience, the latter were the exception while the earlier were the rule.
Witnessing the inconsistency between leaders who claimed to follow God, yet rejected anything more than casual spirituality, disturbed me to my core. Creating a deep fracture within me…
Another scar was forming.
But the wounds weren’t healed. I found myself suffering from an emotional version of internal bleeding.
And I began to slip into depression during the months that followed…
Shattered
Another problem with having prophetic abilities is that I had a lot of trouble understanding many of the decisions others made. I didn’t know that I had more information than they did. I thought I was reading body language and nonverbal cues when I got many of my spontaneous psychic/prophetic insights. I assumed they knew the same things I did…
Eventually, my life became shattered into areas where I would let my gifts guide me, and other areas where my church upbringing taught that emotions couldn’t be trusted. As my keen insight watched others ruin their lives through impulsive decisions, I became wary of my own intuitions. No one in my life talked about spiritual abilities and how they functioned so I wasn’t properly honoring the difference between insights and lusts. I tended not to base my actions on lusts, but I didn’t realize others were making different decisions, and this caused me to begin separating from the gifts that flowed through my deep places...
My body couldn’t handle the dissonance.
I collapsed into a crippling illness.
I suffered demonic nightmares every night.
I was bedridden for 4 years.
I nearly died.
...Another scar...
Constant exhaustion gripped my body to such a degree that my limbs felt unbearably heavy. As a former dancer with a slender build, this was an entirely foreign experience to me. The walk from my bedroom to the bathroom, which was just down the hall, felt like climbing a mountain. I also suffered chronic nausea for the last 3 years of my illness making it difficult to eat properly. Despite a complete lack of energy, I suffered insomnia, leaving me in a constant malaise. That was just the physical side of things.
I was also being tormented by demons every night until the sun rose. My sacred gifts of awareness seemed to have turned on me, bringing me nothing but terror and pain. I was unexplainably ill, meanwhile the associate pastor who emotionally abused me and eventually drove me from the church was promoted to head of the organization. And the presence of God, which I’d always been able to access...I couldn’t feel it anymore. These experience threw me headlong into a dark night of the soul.
While others my age were freshly graduated from college, focusing on finding apartments and landing careers, I was deconstructing my entire inner world... My outward life had been forced to an absolute stop, so I spent my years of illness soul searching: tearing down the frameworks I had either built or absorbed.
...Slowly, from the shadows, I started to rebirth.
About two years into my illness, a friend of mine named heard that I had fallen ill. He stepped back into my life. He had been learning about natural health and was going through his own spiritual awakening at the time. He helped me navigate the second half of my illness.
We transformed together.
Healing
Near the four-year mark of my illness, we heard about an event. Some described it as a Woodstock for worship leaders. 50+ tents sprawling across a field each playing music, and each representing a U.S. state. The Colorado tent would have worship leaders from Colorado playing in it. And the Alaska tent would have Alaskans. There was even going to be a teepee to honor and represent the Native American tribes. It was a multi-day event. It’s sole aim was to host the presence of Jesus and just see what happened as a result. No agenda, no preaching, no celebrities or hype, just music. An unadulterated spiritual experience.
Storm and I each received clear spiritual guidance that if I went to that event, I would be healed. Storm was determined. None of the hurdles that should have prevented my ability to go were going to stop him.
At the time I could only walk about 100 feet or so, on a good day. My exhaustion was so severe that exerting myself beyond my meager limits would leave me vomiting and throw my body into a feverish state. Because the event we were attending was a large festival spanning a couple of miles in total, it was going require a lot of walking. So, we rented a motorized scooter to help me navigate the distances between the tents.
I prayed, asking God to improve my condition enough to make the travel possible. He did that exact thing. He also made it clear to me that he wanted me to play a set at the event. I hadn’t played since I had fallen ill, doing so would be placing all of my energy on the altar. I felt like the widow who placed two copper coins into the offering box while Jesus was at the temple. He then pointed out to his disciples that she has given all she had to live on.3 That is what it felt like I would be doing. If I gave that much energy, I risked getting worse and I couldn’t afford that. I decided to do it anyway, I didn’t have much left to lose, and the chance at getting healed was worth a great risk...
When we arrived at the multi-day event, many things happened. One involved a man who I’m convinced was an angel in human form. He walked up to me and looked at me with eyes that were back-lit, (this was only one of his strange features) and told me all about my illness, even things I had shared only with Storm. He told me I would be healed that weekend. Then he told me that I was going to start interacting with angels, and that I “would see the heavens open.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but his ability to understand my experience to such a degree convinced me he knew what he was talking about. I believed him.
On the last day of the event, there was a huge drum circle where everyone gathered. It was led by a Native American chief who believed that The Great Spirit, whom they played for, is the same Creator who has a son and is spoken of in the Bible.
As the drums played, the crowd danced and clapped to the rhythm. Meanwhile, something subtle happened… My body, which felt unbearably heavy, suddenly felt light, unburdened. I danced and sang for a long time yet my body felt healthy and functional.
I’ve been healthy ever since.
Rebirth
A year after I was healed, Storm and I married.
Around that same time, we met a man from Kenya. He had many stories of interactions with angels, they had even saved his life. He led a prophetic school which we attended. During one of the classes, he prayed an impartation over me to begin interacting with my own angels. This was the second time someone told me of what was to come…
About a year after that, I had a vision of Akiemba, one of my two guardian angels. That vision was the first of many “dives” as I began calling them.
I spent the next few months staying in a lot, practicing my newly unlocked gift and pondering the experiences. Ironically, my visions started only a few months before the pandemic of Covid came onto the scene in 2020. I was already in my own little cocoon before everyone else had to enter theirs for “quarantine time.” While the rest of the world was holed up, hiding from an invisible enemy, I instead was finding friends within an invisible realm...
A New Life
The first few years were a mix of ecstasy and difficulty. Some days life felt wondrous! Others, my world was again shifting on it’s axis and I had little spiritual community to support me and no mentorship. Some days I would arrive at the house of my only prophetic friend and sob, not knowing how to navigate the gift or it’s implications. On others, I would burst into my husband’s office unable to contain my excitement over my most recent vision!
At some point, a friend of mine loaned me a book about an open-eyed seer. His name was Blake Healy and he was born with the ability to perceive the spiritual realm. Storm once again became determined. I needed to go to one of Blake’s conferences. Despite the event occurring at a horribly inconvenient time, he packed up and took us anyways.
After the conference, I met an older gentleman who was also an open-eyed seer and a mystic. He had trained in a spiritual order for 20 years. God had given him instructions that very morning to go to the event and to stay late. He was told that he had someone special to meet there. The man prophesied over Storm and then myself and we talked for a while. We discovered we have the same species of angel, a type not often assigned specifically to humans. We took an instant liking to each other, swapping numbers and agreeing to stay in touch. (Our angels also took a liking to each other and often volunteer to help each other on various quests.) This man is now my mentor and spiritual father. He was also the first person I shared my dives with (aside from Storm.) He eventually became insistent that my dives were a gift meant to be shared with others…
My mentor introduced me to a small group of people who meet monthly to practice prophecy and hone their spiritual gifts. This group has become a wonderful place where I can let my hair down and share freely. It has also provided an opportunity to sharpen my skill set within the context of community. This became the environment where I began sharing emailed excerpts from my dive journals. Later, at the direction of my angels, I decided to open my dives to a wider audience, and created the substack you are now reading. And it is here that our journeys collide... Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure!
Peace,
-Willow Lothlórien
“Love does come with many implications. Love will be your undoing. Love will cause you to change your behavior, slowly but surely it will undue all of your wounds and will not allow you to live in brokenness…”
-Marcus, my guardian angel. Quoted from our conversation:
If you’d like to hear more about my journey,
-Consider the interview below as a “part 2” of this story.
In this piece Elior Finlan and I talk about some of what has happened since I started interacting with my guardian angels, how these experiences have impacted my life, and what in the world dives are like…
Footnotes
Caul deliveries represent less than 1 in 80,000 vaginal births according to estimates from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5952438/c
My friend’s name has been changed to Sterling protect his family’s privacy.
See Matthew 12:41-44 to read about the woman and the copper coins.
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Wow, what a journey! The courage you had walking through it all 💜Thank you for sharing your story!
Wow, we have had a lot of similarities on out journey called life. I am much older, I suspect. I am almost 75. And you had a lot of mentorship and guidance along the way. I had none. Which meant I tripped and fell a lot as I learned. I would have given anything to have had someone to talk to about all my experiences, which started when I was around 13. I was one of those who just "knew" things and thought it weas that way for others, too. Anyway, I'm the one who sent the dragon pics. Your journey sounds fascinating...and familiar. Wish there were people like you in my part of the World.