Growing Up Inside Psychic Survival Camp

Chapter II

 inding Magic on the Battlefield of Life
………….A Wounded Reminder

      I would miss a lot if I didn’t
go back and catch you up on some of the other experiences I had; that opened up the magical world of wonder growing up.

I told you about the big people, but there were more difficult stories too.
Seeing didn’t always bring such an easy comfort ride, it jarred those around me and even created suspicion.  I think it is important to share these formative experiences for several reasons.  The obvious reason is to give you a snapshot of my mind.  The less obvious reason might be to show the path that makes a person who they are, because so many people are being drugged to avoid pain, and I feel they may be missing out on something precious ~ the pain that opens up the Holy Spirit captured inside the body.

I won’t go all the way back now, except for to say that I grew up in what I lovingly refer to as
‘Psychic Survival Camp’. My mother would insist I always knew what she wanted to say and what she was thinking, without actually saying it.  In those times that I just couldn’t grasp it, she would yell at me and tell me: “I know you know”…as if I was playing with her or trying to get her upset on purpose.
This could be followed by a spanking and certainly would come with serious reprimanding.  I consider this a part of my training.

We can flash forward to high school, for several experiences that are worth retelling, but I will let you be the judge of that.
Let’s start with the story of Diane.  Diane was a friend of mine, who was as sweet a girl as they come.  Always asking ‘What do you think?’….The thing is, Diane was also experimenting with some things that were really frightening to me, AND then driving.  I started to have visions, and I became very nervous as that bell started ringing louder and louder inside of me, warning me that Diane was going to die soon.
What was I to do?  Try and talk to her? I did but that didn’t really go anywhere.

I wondered why the adults, teachers, etc. were not really doing something about this growing problem.  I came up with a plan to design a class with credits and find the right experts to come in and educate all the students on the seriousness of abusing drugs.
After making an appointment to see the principal I went down to the office ready to share my idea.  I told him we needed the class as I outlined and promised to do the work to put it together and find the experts as mentioned, and all he would have to do was approve it.
To my shock and what had to be obvious wide-eyed look of surprise, he said there was no drug problem in the school.
I did not back down, I told him that there most certainly was a drug problem (wondering how he passed through the haze of marijuana around the school in the morning, though that was not my worry).   His response was: “Who are these children, what are their names?”….Oh yeah, let me just give you a list and fink on the young adults, which should work just fine…NOT!
Then he finally conceded, but only to a class that would be held after school, and would not have any credits.  Again, my heart sank, knowing that you could barely get students to go to class during the day, let alone come after school, like they were being punished and then give no reward.  They didn’t think there was a problem either, though I am sure there were those who must have thought so too.

So, I gave up.

Several days after this, the Diane bell of warning got so loud, I couldn’t shut it down; I went to another friend of mine Denise’s to finally tell someone else what was happening to me.  While we were sitting in the basement, I began to shake and cry as I let it out, feeling the urgency.  The phone rang upstairs, we heard her mom on the phone and I just knew, it had something to do with Diane.  Sure enough, her mother called down the steps for us to come upstairs.  She handed the phone over to Denise, Diane’s mother was looking for her and she was worried.  We got news about an hour later that Diane was in a car accident and went through the windshield; she died as the phone was ringing.

The next horrific event was when my parent’s house was robbed.  I came home from school and began my run through the house, yet this time, I stopped in the kitchen as though the air was too heavy to walk through.
I stopped dead in my tracks to take the pulse of what I was feeling.  I just knew someone had been in our home, so I checked timidly to see if they were still there, looking around to see any signs of disturbance.  There were none, nothing seemed out of place or missing.  Our colour TV/Stereo was there, nothing out of the China Cabinet, and I made my way upstairs, conscious of the fact I also had a small window of time to get ready and rush off to the bus to go to work at Halle’s downtown.
I glanced in my parent’s bedroom, and again, nothing seemed out of place.  It was very quick that I realized no one was in the house with me.
I dressed quickly and glanced around the house again and dashed out the door.  I saw my little sister Janet coming home from school.  I told her that I thought someone robbed our house (to her shock and horror and instant fear) and that she should call mom and dad at work (which we never did unless it was an emergency) and then proceeded to calm her down and reassure her that no one was in the home, they were long gone, but I had a ‘feeling’.

When I got home from work that night, the police were waiting for me, my mother and father had

that sick and drawn look on their faces.  The police went right into, how did I know?  Our house had indeed been robbed, and they had stolen coffee cans my parents had filled with old gold and silver coins.  They also stole upwards of 60, 000 dollars, yes sixty thousand dollars!  It just so happened that my father had brought money home, to make a purchase of a building/business with another friend of his.
They happened to rob our house in the three day time period, that this took place.
My parents did not believe in putting money into banks or in stocks and certainly not all in one place and my father often had large sums of money stashed.

The police continued to prod my parents and inquire about my own well-being.  They asked whether I was on drugs, have my parents noticed any mood changes or differences in me, have my grades dropped off, etc.  After their insistence that I must have something to do with this, or how would I know, my parents finally allowed them to question me.  Their eyes said it all.  Do I have anything I needed to tell them?  Even as I write this, my eyes well up with tears and my heart grows heavy.  There is nothing like the feeling that your parents might believe that you robbed them.  That I would plot to devastate my family and steal my parents hard earned savings, was beyond my capacity to hold pain.  It took my right up and over the edge of sorrow; feeling not only my own pain, but also my parents as they suffered such a loss.
It knocked me into a despair I couldn’t quite recover from.
~”Just tell us Gloria” the words echoed down the halls of my conscious and dropped like a lode stone through my soul and anchored me into the shadowy depths of a world I only prayed did not exist.

Several days later, while at my school locker in that numbed and heavy state; a student came walking up to a friend of mine who was also at her locker.  She said, ‘Hello Gloria’ and that simple greeting ran through my like a racehorse trying to get out of the starting gate and out of that stirring came a voice.  It rose up inside of me very faintly at first but grew louder and louder as I tried to dismiss it.  “She robbed your house” the voice whispered.  “She robber your house” it grew louder.  Still I tried to shove it back down while sneaking glances at this girl, whom I barely knew through this friend of mine.  I grabbed my books and walked in the strangest state of mind to study hall.  I tried to sit quietly and study, but the words on the page just swam in front of me, as that voice rose up louder and louder, until it was clanging like a church bell rocking me from the inside out as it gonged: “SHE ROBBER YOUR HOUSE!!!!”
I couldn’t take it anymore, and I was growing concerned that it was so loud and had me so shaky that people would notice.  Soon that concern was turning into a rage like I had never felt before.  Something took over my shaking body and then like a guided missile I got up, went to the office where my other friend Debby was sitting at the front desk alone and inquired; “Do you know what class Tammy S is right now?”  Debbie responded: “No, but I can find out for you Glo”.
Debbie went to the tall oak file cabinets lining the walls, their darkened and scarred bodies holding so many lives over the years, now ready to offer up the whereabouts of the girl who had hacked into my life and forever changed my world.
In no time at all, Debbie returned and excitedly told me: “She is in Biology class with Mr. Diuto on the second floor Gloria.”
I raced out the door while exclaiming, ‘Thank you Deb!’ my feet clapping on the marble floor echoing in the empty halls as I ran towards the steps.  Two at a time I slid my feet onto each grooved step, slip, slip, slip.  In what seemed like seconds, I was standing outside the Biology class peering in.  What luck, no teacher was present.  I saw Tammy right away, her being a tall girl of unmistakable appearance.  I called to her, “Tammy, can you come out here for a minute?”  Tammy responded; “Sure Gloria” and with that was outside in the hall with me, just the two of us.
I looked at her, trying to search deep into her eyes for any sign that might give up the truth.  “What is it, what do you want?” She said in a pleading tone.
The long empty hall gave way to such a focus on this exchange of energy between us, it grew like a

cacophony again in me; “SHE ROBBED YOUR HOUSE!!!” in a split second, the words were leaping from my mouth.  “YOU ROBBED MY PARENTS HOUSE!”  Tammy shrunk back to the wall of metal lockers, shaking her head at me and exclaiming; “No I didn’t, why are you saying that?”
But her eyes gave her away, she looked like a wild animal that was caught and trapped in a corner with no way to escape.  I repeated the words: “YOU ROBBED MY HOUSE!!!”
To which she again shook her head, but I was on her like a tiger who had caught her prey, shaking this much taller girl against the lockers and screaming the words over and over through burning tears; “YOU ROBBED MY HOUSE, YOU ROBBED MY HOUSE, YOU ROBBED MY HOUSE!!!!”  All the rage and hurt and anger screaming out of my body looking to finally escape and landing on this girl I barely even knew, and never really cared to know either.  This moment brought us together in a compressed heat that had taken me like a prisoner, a loyal subject that had no recourse but to respond in complete obedience to a power greater than my own.
Soon the rest of the class came scurrying out shouting; “Fight, O’Neil has Tammy against the wall!”  The doors began slamming open with big booms one by one down the hallway and soon there was a crowd of students and teachers all thronging towards us.

Several teachers pried me off and semi broke the spell of all that pain trying to find its freedom from its awful anchor inside of me.  Down the halls we went as they escorted us to the Vice Principals office.  We were instructed to sit in two worn light maple chairs while the Vice Principal walked over and shut the heavy Mahogany door in front of him and took his seat behind his desk that had several messy piles cascading over its top.

“Now, what is all this about?  Who started this fight?”  He asked us.  “She robbed my house!” I retorted.
“Well, this is a matter for the police to handle, not you.” He responded coolly.
Then he added: “This is no way for a lady to behave.”  “You are not the authorities and all you are going to do is get yourself in trouble. Now how do you know that Tammy is involved in this?”
“I just do” I said.
“Well, the police are investigating this, not you.” He stated sternly.
“And I don’t want to hear another thing about this, and especially from you Gloria.” He admonished.  “So I am giving you three days of detention, and I don’t want to see you back in here again and you are to leave this up to the police.”
So that was that.  I was given three days of detention and Tammy was simply reprimanded for fighting and told to go back to class.

It was about a week later, that my parents were informed they believed they had caught the kids who robbed the house.  A neighbor who was a police officer happened to be home that day, and saw kids running out the back door of our home.  He helped identify some of the kids, who happened to be passing around old gold coins.  The police followed up on the tip, and searched the battered Galaxy 500, where sure enough old silver and gold coins were laying around on the floor like trash, as if they had no value whatsoever.
Tammy was one of the kids identified.  They were brought to trial where my parents had to take more time off from working at their store (something that never happened) and watch the judge slap their hands and give some of the repeat offenders probation.
That was it.  No return of coins, no money, just a slap on the hands for invading our home stealing my parents hard earned savings and coin collection, and tormenting me in the fires of disillusionment and despair and carving a river of discord between my me and my parents.
Even though my mother had over the years, grown comfortable giving out commands of half-sentences that I was instructed to complete and did; and even though she insisted to me on occasion that she knew ‘I knew” and that I was reading her mind and many times I wasn’t able to, searched frantically through the attic of my being for the answers she sought: And even though her friends

would beg her to ask her mother to give them “Tea Leaf Reading’s” and even though she herself was often psychic. This one incident and the prodding of the Police who managed to strafe out clues that conspired to convict me on their scant little evidence scarred a shadow of a doubt into my mother and father.  Me, who normally got straight A’s started getting an occasional B and I was experimenting with Marijuana, which was considered a hard gateway drug and it was completely a mystery to my parents who knew nothing about it at all.  It was just one of the reefer madness doorways to hallucinations and whatever else their unwitting minds had conjured up.
My parents who worked long hours, were barely home anymore.  It was often left up to me to prepare supper.  Sometimes my mother would come home with a pot of food and go back to work soon after, leaving instructions and the threat to make sure we behave.
So I had ventured partially into a world that was forbidden, and that was enough to convict me in the jury of the mind, mine and theirs.
I didn’t have anything to do with that robbery.
I did wear nice clothes.  I worked hard too, and between where my mother insisted we shop and what she wanted me to wear and my own taste for nicer clothes, I was labeled a rich bitch by some of the darker elements at school.
I was robbed twice and had the leather coat stolen that I worked hard for to save and by myself.  That light tan supple leather with the white rabbit fur collar begged me to buy it.  Once I saw it, I couldn’t wear anything else.  It did stand out and so did I.  I tried to walk the tightrope between following my own desires and fitting in with the rest of my classmates, but it was no easy walk.
That all started a few years back when I transferred from private Catholic School St. Patrick’s; to go the newly built modern public school with the tall glass window stretching up into the ruffled cement canopy that I learned was the library. Things changed quite a bit in my world.
The new school had both girls and boys attending and some of those boys were cute.  It stood in stark contrast to the cold and ancient austere walls of the Catholic High all girls High School Magnificat that I was to attend.  Even though I was always one of the best students in school, my habit for getting into mischief confused me.  The combination and the knowledge that my friends who lived on my street, and my older sister who I admired also went, was enough to conspire against what was my better judgment.
I convinced my parents that the new school had curriculum that wouldn’t be available at Magnificat’s.  They were simply too busy to really investigate my reasoning and it would save them a hefty tuition fee that Magnificat would require.  So it was settled, I could attend the new high school down the street.
I was so eager and excited for my first day.  I could wear my new clothes instead of the uniform I had worn every day of all the years before.  I had my new suede shoes with the suede ties on the side, I felt like an Indian.  My nice Brooks Brothers plaid suit and sharply pressed blue shirt.
My long blonde hair neatly brushed and clipped on one side.  I nervously found my way through the throngs of children busily buzzing like a hive in the sparkling new surroundings.  Glancing at all the new faces who were glancing back at me, I felt both invigorated and nervous at the same time.  Many of the faces peering back at me also had an attitude and a toughness I had not encountered before.  Kids were chewing gum and so many girls were wearing heavy mascara and makeup.  They looked at me as if I were prey, something to be seized and taken down.

I made my way into room 108, my new homeroom.  Sitting nice and tidy at my desk, eyes beaming with hope the PA crackled on and a student’s voice announced the Principal.  The slight voice of a woman came on as she welcomed us all and extolled the virtues of the new school we were fortunate enough to attend.
Then she started listing some of the new students, and to my surprise, she stated: and we are pleased to have Gloria O’Neil from St. Patrick’s, an honor roll student….the words hung in the air as I felt the rest of the students turn their gaze towards me and the taunting began.  “Gloria an honor roll student, Oooooh!”
That was the beginning of a whole new world.  The girls, who wore the heavy makeup and dressed quite a bit differently than I, would gather in groups and purposely bump me in the halls, ask me to fight them (yes, strange as that sounds) and ask me if I thought I was special in my perfect clothes?  They would insist I dressed ‘queer’ and that I was so uncool.  Heading into gym class was like navigating a mine field.  If the instructor hadn’t opened the doors to the locker room, the girls were strung down the hall waiting, but around the water fountain this certain group of girls liked to gather and collect mouthfuls of water to spray at me as I darted into the safety of the locker room.
It wasn’t all the children who swarmed in these circles and searched for ways to tease me, luckily I found a few who were concerned about getting good grades and were a lot more like me.  But for some reason, they hadn’t been singled out to be picked on.
It wasn’t long before I was trading in some of my matching outfits, for jeans and more ‘hip’ clothing.  My mother seemed shocked that I wanted to go to one of the newer specialty shops in the mall, rather than one of our standby’s like Higbee’s or Halley’s.  “These clothes are not very nicely made” she would say, after I would win her over enough to get her to go inside of one.
Eventually, she caved and didn’t mind saving the money and I started to buy my own clothes too.
Soon enough, a blonde boy named Walter caught my eye and apparently, I caught his too.  We passed each other notes that we were interested in each other, “Hey, I like you, do you like me?” as the method went back then.  He was so cute, I was on cloud nine.  Of course, we barely talked except about homework or what happened in class, but just holding his hand seemed like a dream.  His wide, moist hand holding mine while walking down the halls felt like a stamp of approval and an arrival.  I felt safe and protected too, he was a wrestling champ!
Apparently this was cause for distress in one of the girls in the ‘gang’ though.  One day in gym class, the instructor had stepped out and left the class at the tumbling mats.  One of them, a large girl with freckles and long stringy red hair named Cindy came strolling up to me.  “I’m calling you out O’Neil” she exclaimed.  “Why?” I replied.  “Because you stole my boyfriend, he is mine!” she huffed with her hands on her hips.  She kept coming towards me, and just in the nick of time, we heard the sounds in the hallway signaling the return of our gym teacher.  “I’ll see you after school” Cindy shouted, “you’ll see, I am gonna kick your ass”.
Well, I managed to sprint like a gazelle that day and made it safely home.  What was she talking

about anyway?  Walter wasn’t her boyfriend.  When I spoke to him about it, he made a disgusting gesture and added a ‘yuck!’ so apparently, it was only a relationship in Cindy’s head anyway.
Still, the next day during recess, I was gathered around the pool table with some other girls and Cindy came strutting up to me and gave me a hardy shove.  “You think you can get away from me!” she shouted.  “I am going to kick your ass right now, fight O’Neil!”
Just as I started to gear myself for the inevitable, strategizing in my head how I would go about fighting her, another girl from the bad girl group came up and got between us.  Donna was a smaller girl, but always managed to find a way to sneak a smile towards me.  Now she was standing defiantly between Cindy and me, and she looked Cindy dead in the eyes and said: “If you want to fight Gloria you are gonna have to fight me first”.
What, I thought to myself.  Why is she sticking up for me?  I can’t believe this!
Cindy apparently was taken aback by this too.  She looked confusedly at Donna and asked her, “Why are you gonna fight for Gloria?” while she shook her head in disbelief.
Donna simply replied calmly and coolly; “If you want to fight Gloria, you are gonna have to fight me first, I’m just telling you.  She didn’t do anything to you.”
Cindy looked at me wide-eyed and then replied to Donna, “OK, I didn’t know you two were friends.”  And that was it.  Cindy never called me out again, and neither did anyone else from that school.  Donna M had come to my defense and no one messed with Donna M.
So I managed to find my way.  It wasn’t until I transferred to High School, that it all went sideways again.  For some reason, the infusion of new people into my world had decided that I was exactly the person to pick on and I looked naïve enough to rob on more than one occasion.  I was one of the shortest people in school; did that have anything to do with it?  I wasn’t sure.
It took me a while to harden my image up a bit more, but apparently that was somehow still not mask enough to Tammy and her band of thieves that there was something worth stealing from my home.  Who knows how kids talk to each other and what they say.  We did own one of the latest models of stereo colour TV’s.  But that was not touched.  (thankfully)

This all lead eventually to my Near Death Experience, but that will have to come later...to be continued...

Near Death Experience

http://north-ca-iands.org/NDEs_Stories.html

Scroll down to my story, The story of Gloria O'Neil-Savage, and you can also read it here:



Coming home to Cleveland, Ohio was not what I thought I would be doing, not to live at least. Not after being fortunate enough to sing for a living and with some 
of the best in the business; singing to standing ovations and thrilled at “feeling” and making others “feel”, The Count Basie Band, O’Jays, even Jon Paris and the
Saturday Night Live horn section two nights in a row (I was asked back for the second night) at Chicago Blues in New York City. I was living in Portland, Oregon
which is definitely God’s country; you cannot miss it even if you are sleeping soundly. Portland, Oregon is home to the Mt. Hood Jazz festival and everything
progressive, beautiful, wonderful and right.
None of that matters when your oldest sister is dying of cancer back home in Cleveland, Ohio. I returned home to Cleveland to spend time with her, she eventually
did pass from this world after that cancer had eaten just about every cell of her being. Looking back now, she demonstrated a poetic dignity, beauty and grace. I
am so blessed to have had such an awe-some human in my life at all, and she was/is my gorgeous sister Barbara.
No musical contract or group can give you perspective like someone you love being eaten by the hideous disease of cancer.
In the meantime, my dad took ill with Emphysema. I won’t be leaving any time soon.
This is my attempt to tell the story of what transpired between now and then.
Better go back to design and furniture, something I know just to hold me over while I am here.
“You can’t just start singing like that!” Said my boss, a lovely well-kept woman who owned
 
the furniture/design shop I worked in at the time. This may seem
simple enough a request, but not for me. You see, I do not have cognitive awareness that I am singing. How can I stop doing something I do not even know I am
doing? Another piece of discomfort was the price factor; a customer could become very uncomfortable working on a better price and someone else who is just
nice would have to pay more, I would inform the “nice” person they could get a better price rather than give the problem customer a better price, but that meant I
was taking money from the store owner which was also uncomfortable.
Anyway that night in 1989 after I was “singing” in the store; I was sitting with my handsome Marlborough man/husband I am crazy about. The irritating traffic is whooshing by our house which is very close to the street. We live way out in the country east of Chardon and yet I have to put up with all the loud traffic and trucks!
Now I have several things creating a new dilemma for me. You see, I had managed several furniture design showrooms in the past. I could easily get rehired at any of them. Only, that won’t stop my random singing. Living in the country (last job was 1hour and a half away), and those jobs requiring 60 hour minimum weeks becomes another consideration.  I want to please my husband, be the perfect “Disney wife” take care of and make him the happiest man on the planet!
I would like to have a child, and that clock is tick, tock ticking away in me.
I am also having some physical health problems flaring up and that will require time off of work too.
How can I do a good job for anyone else knowing this?
Make lemonade out of lemons. Listen to the irritation and the answer will come.
More loud traffic goes by.
The light finally goes on inside of me.
I will build my own shop. A simple barn/A-frame will do.
I go outside to see where and how when I literally “see” the barn standing in all of its etheric beauty.
I open the door (no, there really isn’t a door) and walk in and see my writing desk in one corner, cherry bookcase behind it, tapestry and damask couches and brocade chairs, maple and oak end tables, Victorian carved oak bed grouping and hammered-iron headboards.
I simply note my growing inventory list. I will need a good excavator to prepare the field that is approximately 200 feet east of my home, which sits on 27 acres.
I drive down to the local corner store to get a reference. “Dick Bosse” is my reply from the friendly store owner in response to my query. Dick comes walking into the store after the words are barely out of the store owner’s mouth.
While Dick and I go outside to work out the logistics, Dick says we will need Barry’s trucking to deliver the layers of rock we will need.
Barry himself comes driving up in a shiny red truck. Dick and Barry wave to each other and Dick introduces me “this young lady here is Mrs. Savage and she is considering building a store/barn on her property down the street here”. 
Who is building the barn for her?
I reply “I haven’t found that person yet, any suggestions?”
They both reply, “how ‘bout Brower?”
Guess who comes driving up?
Yup, Brower.
Who am I to question any of this?
Several months later, the store is standing. The work, well there was plenty. I just thanked God I could do it. Whatever it was, I was glad my angels were helping me through it all. I had blisters. Sleepless nights. Anyone who has ever built anything knows you go through many, many obstacles even with the best laid plans. I cut wood and trim. I laid stones and rocks by hand in the parking lot. I hung insulation, dry wall, and wall paper.
I built landscaping boxes, and dug posts for my signs. I fought with my (ex) husband about the fact he wasn’t helping me. Worse, he would make it hard for me and anyone trying to help me, should we care to wake the sleeping bear. (This relationship and my waking up to it comes later in the story.)
Anyway, I was grateful to be able to do any of it, and that God was helping me the whole time, how else could I have done all those things I never did before. (I must admit and give thanks to my sisters Bev and Janet, my brothers Bob and David, and my friend Lorraine who also came out on several occasions and gave me a hand too.)
Anyway, I know that gratitude in times of difficulty and strain is a miracle worker.
It is a great tool and gift for us at any time, but when you are thankful in difficult times, it moves mountains.
The store opened following my daily prayers and meditations in the morning. People came with different stories of how they were drawn to the store. They told me more often than not; the song I was playing (whatever it was at the time) meant something very special to them and how it was “weird” that I should be playing it at that time. I knew better. I know the power of the Holy Spirit. That which is infused in the all.
We would end up working together on their house, selecting furniture, colours, arrangement, etc. What happened in the journey was so far past my knowing world. In the process of designing homes, one must listen to women’s stories: their pain, their big love, their deep world. How stretched their beings had become in every direction to be; good girls, good wives, good mothers, good teachers, good friends, good-no- great lovers, and remain nice and certainly not become “bitches” and of course the other dilemma-whores, the can’t win for loosing scenario. Too good in the bedroom and some men can’t wrap their brain around that.
Not their “good girl wife”~ the Madonna complex. Now many of these wounded women were on different forms of psycho tropics and felt bad about that too.
They didn’t know why they were so depressed and how dare they be- with everything so good. So in the process of listening to women’s stories, a blooming took place, the river widened in my being and I began the process of birthing what women needed to make themselves whole. What I did not expect was that I would be birthed anew too and start my own process in the discovery of the Divine Feminine. Yes, this little Catholic girl would become shattered and have to put herself back together again. I would learn to infuse vibrations of sound into the home in a return to my musical being and background. But the stories….

“If one woman told her story ~

The whole earth would crack wide open” - Rainier Marie Wilke.

I started asking what other forms of natural therapy they had tried while concurrently they were asking me what forms I had tried. My response was; yoga, aromatherapy, meditation, Reiki, etc. They would reply with a dazed look in their faces and more often than not, say something like; “Ra- what did you say?”

They also started picking up the books (mine) that I was using for display purposes and asking if they could borrow them. Hmmmm. Not what I had planned, but ok we can do this. Sure you can borrow the book. Soon I didn’t have any books left, they were all being borrowed. What are those things on and around your desk? They would ask. (My affirmations, crystals, rocks, etc.) I prayed and meditated on it all and asked for guidance.

I wondered why? Why were so many women depressed and asking me how I dared to live my life. Surely I was not the only person whose attention this was getting, was I? I Looked up into the “Heavens” and pleaded for answers. Truly this would be frightening for the universe asking me to notice something that other trained professionals should be taking note of and working on. Not me. I am too wild and un-tethered. I just put colours and fabrics together and hold peoples hands during the process. Guide them through the weaving of their desires and their family’s. Oh yes, and the home that most certainly had visions of its own to be listened to. My heart just swelled in this sea of pain these women were in and well, at least if I could make their home “feel” better for them, maybe that would
help.
Things were growing more and more restless inside of me when one Sunday I decided to attend a new church I had designed a meeting room for.
The Sermon was “Did you ever notice how God never picks the obvious person to do His work?”
Come on! My body was buzzing. This buzzing started at an early age and though I won’t share all of the experiences now, I will share some just to give you a flavor of my life.
Many of the psychic experiences I had growing up were “painful” to put it mildly. This is not a complaint because I know now why; they were forever etched in my being that way so I would have a much harder time dismissing them. I am grateful for the rich tapestry that is the weaving of my life!
We will begin with High School and the story of Diane. I started having really distressing feelings about her dying somehow knowing she would die from drugs while in her car. So I went into the principal’s office and tried to convince him of the need to have classes on drugs before it happened to save her. His response was “who are these kids taking drugs?” Oh yah, let me just give you a list of the names of kids in pain around me so you can inflict more pain in their life and I can be a snitch in High school! The only thing he would agree to was a “my little class” sometime after school. Right, you can barely keep these kids in school during school hours but they will come after school to hear why they shouldn’t take drugs? I wanted an accredited class during school, never mind.
So drugs did take Diane’s life. I do know that she is in a wonderful place now from my own experience with death. That story will come later.
It didn’t help to psychically “know” my parents house was robbed either. The police wanted to know how I could know. I should just tell them so they could solve the case, since I had to be in on it or how else would I know?
Was I on drugs? Several days after it happened, I was standing at my school locker; talking to my friend whose locker was next to mine and a friend of hers came walking up to say hello to her and said hello to me too. My whole body started screaming inside. I went to my study hall and all I could hear screaming somewhere inside my body was “She robbed your house!” It just got louder and louder inside me and wouldn’t leave me alone. I went to the class she was in and called her outside to the hall. I tersely said; “you robbed my house!” She looked at me in this strange way and denied it. The next thing I knew I was shaking this much larger girl than me and banging her into the lockers. The whole class came running out exclaiming fight! We were taken down to the offices. I was reprimanded and told
that the police were handling it and I was given detentions.
One week later my family found out that she was one of the thieves.
Going back to when I was a small child; I remember wondering why no one ever talked about the “Big” people watching us/me growing up either. What did I have to do to get grownups to discuss them instead of acting like they weren’t even there? I just kept entertaining them, dancing, singing, acting, laughing and talking for them. Maybe since I had such a hard time being “good”, no-one could talk about it with me yet, this secret of the large beings. Somehow, I felt as if at some
point, we were all going to just acknowledge all this and the whole “invisible/visible” world we were all in. That just hadn’t happened. Sometime during the process of going to school and growing up the invisible people became just that, invisible.
Now in high school I was getting really depressed feeling how “bad’ I was. Not getting all straight A’s anymore which were so easy for me. Why was I so “bad” in such a “good” family?
I actually got myself sick and welcomed it and the days started to drift in and out as I lay in bed and waited for death to please take me. After about two weeks of this, a friend of mine came to see what was going on. She about fell on the floor a gasp when she saw me. My skin had started to turn yellow and my eyes were yellow/green too, my joints were red, painful and swollen. She demanded that I tell my mother how sick I was. (I had been hiding under the covers; my parents owned a store and worked long hours so it was easy to stay unnoticed). All the better for my plan to lay there and die.
But my friend Denise Z was adamant. So, I told my mother how sick I was and maybe I should call the doctor. Now I also had to tell my mother maybe I was pregnant or “something”. God help me I am such a problem. The doctor in the emergency room gave me three shots of adrenalin within an hour an a half. (I was having trouble staying awake at this point). Finally I just said, “Yes I think I feel better now.” This way my mother wouldn’t have to wait anymore and I just wanted to go home and sleep anyway.
When we got home, my mother said she wanted to draw a bath for me that would make me feel better. Ok, I said. When she came in to see me in the bath, she dropped her jaw too and exclaimed: “Oh my God did that doctor take a look at you?” “I think so” I said.
“Jesus Christ I’m calling right now and taking you back to the hospital!”
Back we went, but I remember nothing until the scream coming out of me and a doctor’s hand pushing on my stomach.
They did tests, scans, but I was sleeping through it all. I was gone. I fell asleep soon after waking up to my own scream.
That’s when it happened for the first time.
I woke up in a different place; a coliseum, Romanesque, and very large. It was the murmurs of all the people in shrouds around me that made me come to, including my own. I don’t know what language I was speaking; it seemed similar to the Latin I took, but not that either. Everyone spoke it though. The murmur was almost deafening. I was praying though and I know what I was saying, it was just in a different tongue. I was going over my life/lives. In the center of this vast sea of people was light and light beings. A large chair (like stone?) held “the One-ness of light” and on either side was another slightly smaller Chair with two other beings of light. Around them in a circle were more glowing-adoring beings.
All this I did not see with my naked eyes. No, I saw it more like I used to see the “Big People” as a child. You just did not look up and see. I could not. Until all of a sudden it was as if it were my turn or something and the central figure connected to me and filled me and every cell of my body with this wondrous feeling I can not explain. It was as if my body was singing with love in every cell, filled with this glorious light that was musical from the Being in the center of the coliseum.
After some time, I awoke in another world, a garden. It was here that Jesus walked beside me. We talked and walked without our usual talking and walking and everything around us was lit up on the inside. I then remember being on a street with Him and seeing this long line of people entering a large building. I wondered what they were all going to do there and noticed that I knew the people. This thought brought us “sort of float walking” over closer and into the building. As we entered the line turned into people I knew better and better, relatives and finally brothers and sisters. My nephew whom I adored at the time was asking my sister (his mother) Barb to explain something to him. She just shook her head and had no answer. What! I thought my oldest sister had all the answers. What could
possibly have her so sullen and silent. Then I saw my mother, in even worse shape. that brought my eyes towards a long coffin farther down the room. My body now felt another shift of knowing as I float- walked near the ceiling over to see who was inside. Yep, you guessed it, me. I quickly said I must return because they cannot handle this.
I woke inside the hospital room with my mother holding my arm, head down on it. I said: “Mom you don’t have to worry I was just with Jesus and I am going to be ok.” She shook her head with big tears in her eyes and said “Oh for God’s sake, even now you are trying to make me feel better.” I noticed Happy Days was on TV and fell back asleep.
A Jaguar was chasing me through the jungle and I was barefoot. I was sweating and sweating, panting while I ran for my life. I don’t know how long it was before I became conscious in the Intensive Care room. I knew there were tubes coming out my nose/mouth/arms/stomach and things were beeping everywhere.
My parents and sister were at the foot of the bed with the doctor. A priest and two nuns came and gave me my last rights. The doctor was telling my parents they would have to make funeral arrangements. No one lives after the poison from the ruptured appendix is in the system for two weeks. Once again, I was screaming inside my body, but could not make it come out of my mouth. “I am here I wanted to scream out loud!” Nothing. I tried in vain to move anything, my eyes, my fingers, toes-anything but could not. Out of body, I tried to shake my mom and say I am here, but she felt nothing.
Finally, I got my eyes to open! I just pushed and pushed and pushed and willed them open. I was back!
The ordeal that followed and all the poison/bile coming out of every orifice we normally have and ones they made caused me to start vomiting. My stomach open and pouring out this green stuff too as I wretched was painfully comforting. I could “feel” again.
How I want to “serve” this Loving, wondrous Being who Loves me so much. It is quite something Knowing heaven exists, but I experienced it and somehow I am still in this body. No plane, train, or rocket took me to some place in the sky.
For now I return to the first store I opened on the East side of Cleveland.
So God doesn’t pick the obvious person heh? That is an understatement if ever there was one.
OK God, I will do whatever you want me to, just show me, teach me, give me the teachers and I will have classes in the store if people will just sign up.
Teachers came into my life. I started “dreaming” homes before I even went to them. Colours and energy moved around in that “other vision center in my head”.
My clients signed up for the classes alright. My clients/friends started glowing with that light themselves.
By the time my friend Trish asked my to join her on a women’s retreat called “Sacred Space” on Kelly’s Island, things were really taking an interesting course. But that trip with Trish, where I thought I was helping her, turned out to be the real shift.
On the ferry over to the island, Trish and I started to go up the narrow staircase to the second floor. It was then that a dream I had with my sister Barb flashed into my head. This is how I wrote the story in a Newsletter in 2001:
When I first looked upon the shores of Kelly‘s Island, it was in a dream. My sister Barbara, who passed from this world in 1990, was guiding me on a journey that would forever change my life. In this dream, shades of Indigo, Royal Purple, Parrish Blues and Emerald beckoned to me from beneath a Honey Golden mist. This
futuristic scene rose from the water like the emerald City from Oz.
When I actually went there in 1993, waves of energy rocked my being. Stepping on her grounds, she captured my soul, and we easily merged. I had come to Kelly’
s Island for a Sacred Space women’s retreat with my friend, Trish.
Normally, my days were spent helping other people heal themselves and their home, through my “Interior Design” shop. Every other spare minute was spent working on my own home, which I was rebuilding from a fire, and my marriage, which by then had hopelessly disintegrated. It was time to get a little rest, and hopefully some healing myself.
One “coincidence” and Déjà vu after another had my whole being soon feeling as if 10,000 volts were running through it. I was directly plugged into the source.
Meeting so many, wonderful “glowing” people, I wish I had the space to tell you about each and every one of them. What I’m about to tell you now, though, is
when it really gets good…..
It was at an Art Therapy workshop, that I chose to attend, where I first met her. The instructor read us a beautiful myth and we were all painting and creating from the heart. I couldn’t seem to paint a certain colour I had seen in my vision. Not satisfied with my work, the instructor called us back to circle. Each of us looked at each other’s work, describing what we saw and shared our feelings. One silver-haired woman seemed to zone right in on everyone’s work, her wise
analysis having visible effects on those her azure eyes dissected. Some were moved to tears, including my friend, Trish, who had gone before me. I did not escape her deep insights either. Then, she raised her own painting. There before me were the exact colours and scene from my own vision, which I had tried so hard to create. A voice within me said, “Buy the painting”. I tried to dismiss the voice, not wanting to seem out of place. After all, no one else was buying or selling these paintings. The voice persisted and only grew louder, “Buy the painting”. I was swimming with emotion; this voice had guided me through many decisions by now,
and was never wrong. This woman, whoever she was, was very intriguing – but surely they would all think I was crazy. The words practically leapt from my mouth, “I’ll buy the painting how much do you want?” Soon we were driving to a house on the lake she called “Himmelblau”. This wise woman would become a great friend, teacher and mentor. Her name was Dagmar Celeste.
Two years later, after almost eight years of marriage, I was going through a divorce. Broken, barely surviving the sea of pain and feelings of failure that enveloped me, the barn at Himmelblau became my sanctuary. In this simple and natural environment, I would heal and be re-born. Some of my first adjustments/lessons:
Raccoons make quite a ruckus at night. They lived above me. Mice will generally keep to the area you ask them to. You can not get rid of spiders in a barn. Of course, they were all there to teach me animal medicine, but I also learned to be careful what you ask for.
One day, while crying, praying for spiritual guidance and the strength to tread these uncharted waters of battling someone I loved and cared for so much, and a life I had worked so hard at, someone knocked on the door. It was Indian Bob; he said “Spirit had sent him”. I responded “I’m not really in a good place”. He thanked me for being honest and handed me a stone called a “Wotei”. He told me to wear it for protection and strength. I told him about the stones, rocks, and feathers I
had been collecting since my first visit. I shared some of the visions and stories they had given me. He shared some Native American teachings. I looked around for something to give him, but all I had were cigarettes. I offered him one, he thanked me. It was then I learned that tobacco was the Native American gift of
thanks. Once again my inner voice had guided me correctly. This was the first of many lessons. Bob said, “Tomorrow I will take you to meet the spirit of Clam Digger woman, keeper of the stones. We will visit her burial mound; you are a member of her tribe. Tonight we are having a sweat lodge, you should come.” to be continued..... G.S.
During the course of all this, my own interests were continuing to grow as was my educational pursuits. One of those expansions was Aromatherapy. Linda Green, another woman I met at the Sacred Space retreat at Kelly’s had invited me to come to a Jeannie Rose intensive weekend. At first, I declined because it was rather expensive and I really didn’t fell I had the time. However, one of the women that was going to attend and had already paid the tuition couldn’t make it. She told Linda she wanted me to attend in her place. Again the universe makes up my mind for me. With just a few nominal expenses involved I couldn’t decline this generous offer.
To say that it changed my life is an understatement. I thought I knew about “oils”. What I learned the first day was how much I didn’t know. Jeannie was spellbinding as she passionately described first one then another oil holding them “jewel like” in vials up to the light. As she enumerated endless therapeutic applications for each, she would have us waft the scent and describe them ourselves.
At one point, I was truly angry at what I felt was a theft of information, stolen from wise-women long ago. The chorus of women streaming through my life now parading before my eyes: as the benefits and healing properties awoke visions of assistance to each and everyone, I at some point was included too. Handing a vial of what was introduced to me as “Spikenard” the oil Mary Magdalene used in the anointing of Jesus, Jeannie had selected that particular oil for me to work with for several hours of experience and writing. She also told me I would need to keep working with that oil. Nardostachys Jatamansi, common name Spikenard and nicknamed “False Valerian Root” or Nard oil would become a dear friend of mine that I would pass along to many women and “I would do this in memory of her.”
It was among many things for wounds that would not heal, mental, spiritual, physical and emotional. She was also known as the Grand Balancer. I did not like this oil at all upon my first experience. I would come to love this oil above all others.
The day after my spikenard encounter, my head reeling with all the information on so many levels downloading into my being; a woman named Linda Honeycutt-LaGrande came up to me and just started laughing. She said: “You enjoying all this information Miss Gloria?” I replied that indeed I was, “but how was all this applying to me and why was it all happening to me?” After all, I was only supposed to be an Interior Designer. She just laughed again and lifted her hand, finger pointing at her being as she guided it from top to bottom and stated “Well I guess you really are doing Interior Design now aren’t you honey?”
My buddy was buzzing so hard inside I could barely remain standing. Aromatherapy was a deep and profound value that I continue to share to this day.

Over and over I started turning in all the pain, mine and all the other women’s into the soil of my being. How can I make a positive growth with this pain? So I began to till the soil of pain. That was what we all were doing. Turning it in and surviving. We were standing, loving, sharing and walking forward in the midst of it all and trying to look sexy and pretty to boot. (This of course also requires not eating.) I knew that if we were to recover and survive, we would have to create out of our pain. So creating we were. We were turning the soil and gestating our seeds of despair and hope for a brighter future. I incorporated one healing tool after another into my business model that did not exist. It all really came down to one thing though.
The problem was we had no root to a feminine sacred model that was whole and reachable. Oh yes, we have the Virgin Mother and I was taught but has since been revised, the whore Mary Magdalene.
Just a patriarchy and a long line of blame and shame starting with that disobedient Eve the temptress and her debauchery with Adam tricking him into eating the apple too. So much for listening to snakes! We were banned from the Garden with the Cherubim and flaming sword guarding the gates. We must go back to where it all began and pick up the tools stolen from us long ago. We are medicine women but the campaign to discredit women and disempowering us and the tools we used from nature only got us labeled as “witches”. We must go back to the tools of our ancestry, the Arc of the Ancients….
Flash to 1997, living in Lakewood writing an Aromatherapy article for the Cleveland Bar Journal (OK I am cramming at the last minute with books and notes everywhere because the article is due the next day…) when the phone rings. On the other end a voice is telling me that Raj told her she should call me about working together. Rajendra Khanna is one of the loveliest humans I have ever had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting. Born in India, he is humble, brilliant and sincere and among many things taught me how to meditate around 1984 I believe. He has never had anyone call me.
“What is your name?” I ask her to repeat. “Vanessa”she replies and I want to know if you are interested in selling Aromatherapy products?” The buzzing begins.
OK, you have my attention. I asked for her birth information and drew up a chart. I can see her through the phone and describe her to herself. She starts laughing
and tells me I am “dead on” even to the clothes she is wearing. I ask her~ “When can you come over?” Ten minutes later Vanessa is at my door. The connection is unmistakable. The charge in the air was so palpable we could have run the entire city on the energy.
I shared my vision of the new store I wanted to open with healing rooms, interior design /Feng Shui, books, music, aromatherapy oils and blends and the wellness classes I would like to have there too. About seven hours later Vanessa left.
Two months later we began our work together and started teaching and selling aromatherapy products and the “Total-Sensory-Healing Class that was born in that barn on Kelly’s Island.
We finally opened our first shop (my second) on Rocky River Drive near Kamm’s Corner together in 2002. We co-founded Cleveland Polarity with my friend, MaryJo Ruggieri whom I met while living on Kelly’s Island. We had one healing room and all the above mentioned Total-Sensory-Living and Wellness.
Again the same response from people as my first shop, “I just had to come in here but I didn’t know why, I love this place….”
The stores name: ArcAncient Aromatherapy came to me after days of trying to come up with just the right moniker. The word Arc, in Barbara Walker’s “Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” briefly stated read: “A female vessel bearing fruit or seeds to give birth to a new world out of the destruction and chaos of the old.” Thus, you have: Ark of the Covenant, Joan de Arc, Arc of the rainbow, etc. OK, arc works for me, and since everything we were doing was not
new but practiced thousands of years ago it just sang in my body.
So ArcAncient, Aromatherapy & Interiors was born. The two A’s could be written as: “As above so below” and they also looked like two MM’s when written a certain way and since Mary Magdalene was our Patron Saint of Aromatherapy & healing it all seemed to fit just right.

I saw two extremely large angels holding back the veil (they could hold the earth in their hands) as the words ‘Arc of the Ancients’ and then ‘ArcAncient’ came drifting through.  As they slid into my consciousness, a huge wave of energy rocked my body.  I knew that was the name, and I also knew that I had carried it many lifetimes.  It was sacredly given to me as a vessel to anchor the energy and connect through time to the sacred truth.  The truth that has been buried occulted and hijacked for many many years.  Parallel realities have been implanted on the earth plane through rituals that have obscured the sacredness of the lives we have all been given.  We must connect and anchor the light of the soul consciously in this earthly dimension.

I closed the store in September of 2008, being an astrologer, I saw the economic crash coming and did not want to fight the tides.  I ended up paying for prosecuting the landlord/attorney who hit my then business partner.  Many people who said they were 'spiritual' and spouted a lot of 'supposed spiritual terms' abandoned me, robbed me and believed the lies of someone who I helped start a school up here with.
I see a lot of things being taught, that are not spiritual at all.
Remember this:
Anytime, someone is connecting 'spiritual laws' with 'abundance, money, or stuff', they are not teaching HOLY SPIRITUAL LAWS AT ALL.
This is my version of fun.Gloria O’Neil-Savage’s StoryArcAncient Aromatherapy
Cleveland, Ohio  44135

www.arcancient.com

216-458-1444

Postscript

In 2006, I started noticing how badly things were 'feeling' in the economy and doing astrology charts for many people, I could see the change that was coming. In some charts of prominent bankers, I saw money shifting and buy outs, which really started me thinking.
In running charts for what was coming, I saw the economic downturn and the collapse that would surely hit before the end of 2008.
I closed the doors to the store the last day of September of 2008.

It was an agonizing decision, because I felt people needed me, needed that place to go where so many people made connections to their new friends, and new lives.
I also don't give up easy, if at all.
Finally, a good friend asked me one day how I could afford to spend so much time counseling people and educating them after watching me spend several hours discussing aromatherapy options to assist them in their challenge.
They purchased $15.00 worth of products. (They told me they didn't have much money, this happened more and more often).

I thought long and hard about what she said. She was right, I couldn't afford it.

So I closed the doors.

The weekend after I closed the doors, I was sitting outside basking in the sun (something that was rare if ever in the past 10 years, since I was always working).  The angel Gabriel came to me, that flash of light, and told me ‘I was finished with that part of my work’.  Huge aching sobs wrecked through my body, it had been a long haul.  “I have a new mission now” Gabriel continued.  “It is time for you to write about your experiences in a much deeper way”. 

I haven’t gone into what really happened with the landlord on Rocky River Drive, but I will soon.  It was a devastating and unbelievable experience that ended in a 10 day court trial, which we did win, but which I am still paying for.  I would have to sue him civilly to recuperate all the financial losses of trying to get back what I invested into fixing up the building/space and the subsequent move/storage/move debacle.

So I am working on that book now, it is about all my mystical experiences and they are not all good.  But I walk between worlds.  I always have.  I will continue to update all of you.