Before We Begin: Where Life Has Taken Me

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that many of my recent stories have revolved around Baby Lux, grief, and an unexpected Mother’s Day journey through Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Hermès.

I ended my Hermès story by saying that the boutique chapters were complete, but there were still a few beautiful boxes waiting to be opened.

And they are.

The unboxing stories are still coming. So are the travels, family adventures, biking trips, celebrations, and countless other memories still waiting inside my camera roll.

But while I’ve been slowly trying to tell those stories, life has continued unfolding.

And lately, it has been leading me somewhere I never expected…

Into Reiki.

Into meditation, energy work, cacao ceremonies, and a quieter, more inward kind of healing.

At first glance, luxury boutiques and Reiki might seem like completely different worlds. Orange boxes, designer jewelry, chakras, singing bowls, and sacred ceremonies do not exactly sound like they belong in the same story. 😂

I won’t pretend that one directly led to the other. But looking back, I can see that they emerged from the same season of my life.

My Luxury Series was never really just about acquiring beautiful things. It was about Baby Lux. It was about grief, safety, receiving love, allowing myself to be cared for, and trying to understand what healing looked like after losing our daughter.

Reiki opened another part of that exploration.

What would happen if, after looking for comfort and tangible reminders outside myself, I also began turning inward?

What might I discover if I became still enough to listen—to my body, my emotions, my intuition, and the parts of myself I had spent years setting aside while being the breadwinner, problem solver, mother, wife, and person who always had to keep everything going?

I didn’t enter this world with complete certainty. I had questions. I had doubts. A part of me was curious, while another part remained skeptical.

I am also not writing this as an expert or trying to convince anyone to believe what I believe. I am still learning, questioning, experiencing, and finding my own way through all of it.

I am simply documenting what happened to me.

Since this journey began, I have completed Reiki Level 1, gone through 21 days of self-practice, continued to Reiki Level 2, and entered another new chapter through cacao.

But before I tell you where I am now, I need to take you back to where it all began.

Not with an attunement.

Not with a ceremony.

Not even with Reiki itself.

It began with a Facebook ad that I could not seem to forget.

The Calling

Looking back, my Reiki journey didn’t begin when I received my Level 1 attunement.

It began much earlier, with a Facebook ad.

I came across an ad from Leah Lañojan for something that caught my attention enough for me to inquire. At the time, I wasn’t completely sure about any of it. I had questions. I had doubts. There was a part of me that was curious and another part that was skeptical.

And yet, for some reason, I couldn’t completely dismiss it.

It kept calling to me.

I would think about it, question it, step away from it—and somehow find myself coming back.

At first, what I was considering wasn’t even a private Reiki course. I was interested in joining Leah’s Goddess Retreat. That was supposed to be my entry point into this world.

But before committing to anything, I wanted to meet her.

Meeting Leah in Valencia

The timing turned out almost strangely perfect.

For Father’s Day, I had gifted Hanz an all-expense-paid, one-week family trip built around his Enduro bike ride in Sibulan. Since we would already be in the Dumaguete area, I arranged to meet Leah in Valencia.

At that point, I still hadn’t fully decided.

This wasn’t the kind of experience I wanted to sign up for simply because I had seen an enticing Facebook post. I wanted to meet the person behind it. I wanted to talk to her, understand how she worked, and get a sense of whether any of it—and whether she—felt right for me.

So during what was essentially a family trip connected to Hanz’s biking, another little journey was quietly unfolding alongside it.

I met Leah.

And something shifted.

What had previously existed only as curiosity, messages, questions, and doubts became more tangible once I was sitting with the person who would eventually become my Reiki Master and teacher.

After meeting her, I felt comfortable enough to move forward.

But even then, what eventually happened wasn’t what I had originally signed up for.

The Retreat That Didn’t Happen

I had planned to join the Goddess Retreat, but some of the other participants later backed out. The retreat didn’t push through.

Ordinarily, I might have taken that as the end of the story: Okay. Maybe this wasn’t meant to happen after all.

Instead, it became the reason something much more personal could happen.

Because the group retreat was no longer going ahead, Leah was able to create something specifically for me: a customized private course she called ALIGN.

What was supposed to have been a group experience transformed into a one-on-one journey.

Looking back, I see that cancellation very differently.

It was a blessing.

I consider myself an introvert (an extreme one at that). Being around people I don’t know and am not yet comfortable with can overwhelm my nervous system. That was one of the reasons I had so many doubts about joining the Goddess Retreat. I worried that I might become stressed in an environment where I was supposed to be healing.

Fortunately for me, the original retreat didn’t push through.

I wouldn’t have to enter this unfamiliar world surrounded by strangers or follow a program designed for an entire group. Leah would have the time and space to work with me—my questions, my experiences, my pace, and whatever arose during the process.

And I had no idea yet how much would arise.

ALIGN: A Reiki Experience Created for Me

On July 15 and 16, 2026, the idea that had begun with a Facebook ad finally became real through my private Reiki Level 1 course.

I initially thought I would simply learn what Reiki was, receive my attunement, practice the hand positions, and earn my certificate.

ALIGN became much broader and more personal than that.

Leah introduced me to Reiki and chakra work, meditation, grounding, energy awareness, and the practice of placing my hands on my own body with intention and attention. But the experience also included inner-child work, cord cutting, sound healing and singing bowls, womb healing, angels, cacao, sacred geometry, the Sri Yantra, and manifestation.

Some parts felt familiar. Others were completely new. Some spoke directly to my emotions, while other parts challenged the rational and questioning side of me.

I didn’t feel that I had to switch off my skepticism to participate. I could remain curious. I could ask questions. I could observe what I was feeling without immediately needing to explain, prove, or disprove it.

That mattered to me.

The one-on-one format also gave me enough privacy to become emotional without wondering how I appeared to a roomful of strangers. It gave us the freedom to pause when something needed more time and continue when I felt ready.

There are parts of those two days that I want to keep sacred and private. There are also experiences that are difficult to translate into ordinary words without either making them sound too dramatic or reducing them to something smaller than they felt in the moment.

What I can say is that ALIGN invited me to look at parts of myself I had often placed behind my responsibilities—the little girl I once was, the woman who had spent years surviving and providing, the mother grieving Baby Lux, and the person underneath all the roles I perform every day.

For two days, I wasn’t primarily the owner, manager, virtual assistant, homeschool mother, wife, breadwinner, or fixer of everybody’s problems.

I was simply me.

Listening.

Feeling.

Receiving.

Receiving My Reiki Level 1 Attunement

One of the central parts of the course was my Reiki Level 1 attunement.

Within the Reiki tradition, an attunement is the ceremony through which a student is initiated into the practice and prepared to work with Reiki, beginning with self-practice.

I won’t try to turn my attunement into proof of anything, and I don’t expect another person’s experience to be the same as mine. For me, its importance was both spiritual and symbolic.

It marked a decision to become more intentional about slowing down, listening inward, and participating in my own healing instead of treating healing as something that would simply happen to me with enough time.

After everything my body and heart had carried, receiving rather than performing felt significant.

By the end of our time together, I had completed Reiki Level 1 and received my certificate. But the certificate wasn’t the ending.

It was the beginning of the part I would have to practice on my own.

My 21 Days of Reiki Self-Practice

After the course, I committed to practicing Reiki on myself for 21 days.

From July 15 until August 4, I returned to the practice each day and observed what was happening within me. I gave myself time to become still, placed my hands on the areas of my body I had been taught to work with, and tried to listen without demanding a particular result.

Not every session needed to feel dramatic or mystical. Much of the practice was quiet.

That quietness may have been part of what I needed most.

I am used to measuring my days by what I finish: emails answered, staff concerns resolved, payroll completed, lessons done, posts published, rooms booked, and problems prevented.

Reiki asked me to spend time doing something that did not produce a report, payment, finished task, or visible result.

It asked me to pause.

At first, even making that time for myself was a practice.

But as the days passed, I began noticing subtle changes, not supernatural proof, not a life suddenly free of difficulty, but changes in the way I responded to ordinary life.

I felt calmer.

I became more conscious of my emotions before reacting to them. I found it easier to pause, soften, forgive, and return to a more loving place. I also noticed that I could focus better when I was working instead of carrying every concern in my mind at the same time.

The atmosphere in my relationship with Hanz felt more peaceful too. Reiki did not magically remove every difference, stressor, or responsibility from our lives. But I felt less compelled to meet every uncomfortable moment with defensiveness or urgency.

Whether those changes came from Reiki itself, from meditation and intentional rest, from giving myself daily attention, or from a combination of everything, I am still exploring.

I don’t need to exaggerate the experience to value it.

Something about those 21 days helped me relate to myself, and therefore to the people around me, with more gentleness.

That was meaningful enough.

What Reiki Level 1 Gave Me

Reiki Level 1 did not turn me into someone who suddenly had all the answers.

If anything, it made me more comfortable admitting that I don’t.

It did not erase my grief over Baby Lux, remove my responsibilities, fix every old wound, or transform me into a permanently calm and enlightened person. I am still myself. I still manage businesses, homeschool Tuz, work for clients, worry about staff, think about money, edit content late at night, and occasionally overthink things that probably did not require that much thinking. 😂

But Reiki gave me another way to meet myself inside that life.

It reminded me that healing does not always have to look like striving, solving, analyzing, or pushing forward. Sometimes it can look like becoming quiet enough to notice what I am carrying.

Sometimes it can mean placing my hands over my own heart and giving myself the care I so readily give to everyone else.

And sometimes it can simply mean allowing myself to receive.

That theme, learning to receive, connects this experience to the stories I had been writing before it.

The luxury pieces from Mother’s Day represented love, memory, safety, and allowing Hanz to care for me. Reiki explored some of those same needs from another direction, not through something I could wear or hold, but through the relationship I was slowly rebuilding with myself.

One did not invalidate the other.

They are both parts of the woman I am becoming.

Closing My Reiki Level 1 Chapter

On August 4, I completed my 21-day Reiki self-practice.

Completing it did not make me feel that I had finished Reiki or completely understood it. It made me feel that I had reached the end of my first chapter and was ready to decide whether I wanted to continue.

I did.

Since then, Reiki Level 1 has led me to Reiki Level 2 and, most recently, to becoming a certified Cacao Priestess… experiences I will share in their own time and in their own way.

For now, this is the complete Reiki Level 1 story I want to tell.

Not every private detail. Not every meditation, symbol, emotion, or moment from those two days. But the whole arc that mattered:

• A Facebook ad I couldn’t forget.
• A skeptical woman who kept feeling called.
• A meeting in Valencia.
• A group retreat that was cancelled.
• A private course created specifically for me.
• An attunement.
• Twenty-one days of choosing to return to myself.
• And a quieter shift that became noticeable not because my life suddenly changed, but because I was beginning to move through it differently.

I still have luxury boxes to open, travels to remember, businesses to run, a child to homeschool, clients to serve, herbs to grow, and an entire camera roll filled with earlier versions of our life.

Those stories are still part of me.

This is part of me too.

The woman who first clicked that Facebook ad did not know exactly what she was looking for. She only knew that something about it would not leave her alone.

I still don’t have every answer.

But I am glad I followed the calling to see where it would lead.

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This article describes my personal spiritual and wellness experience. It is not medical or mental-health advice, and Reiki should not replace appropriate care from qualified healthcare professionals.