I had a clairvoyant reading with my friend and colleague, Debbie.

We’ve been talking about it for weeks, but I couldn’t seem to put it on my calendar.  She wasn’t surprised.  (Why would she be?  She’s clairvoyant.)  She said I wasn’t ready to look at things yet.  In fact, she wasn’t even sure I was going to get there this day.  But I did.

This is what she told me:

There was a white, murky energy at my throat.  It was heavy and had the consistency of curdled milk.  It was the energy of a lie.  And it obscured everything.

I was sure I knew what it was.  Who it was.  I asked her about it.

“He’s not telling you something.  He’s married. Or has a girlfriend,” she said.  “He’s not sober.”

“Physically or emotionally?”

She evaded the question, replying, “He’s not sober.  But this isn’t about him.  This is about your marriage. But it’s not a lie.  It’s lie energy.”

I didn’t understand.  I was fixated on the lie.

“It’s not that Lee lied to you.  Maybe the marriage was a lie. Or it became one.  Or he couldn’t lie to himself anymore or something like that.   But it’s not A LIE.

“Oh, and the other one….he’s really cute.  He’s not telling you something.  And in fact, that might be perfectly appropriate.”

She moved on, telling me things about myself that she couldn’t have known.  Things that resonated deeply and made me teary.  And she told me about what was possible.

She spoke of a primary wounding when I was 3.  That my father pushed me away because my female energy was “too much.”   “He couldn’t have it,” she said.  I have no recollection of this, but it made sense to me.  I asked if she was referring to my adoptive or my birth father.  She was uncertain.

She said I am beginning to “clear” that, to love and accept that part of me.  And in doing so, I will find myself surrounded by others who can not only “have” my powerful female energy, but embrace it.

She said that I could have more.  So much more. Financially.  And in every aspect of my life.

I want to believe her.  But I don’t – yet.  I hold onto things, experiences, people  – like a pit bull.  Because I cannot yet trust that there is more, better.

Thinking about the cute one who isn’t telling me something, I had the following conversation with myself.  Out loud.  Driving:

“You seem to believe he is the only sober artist you will find attractive, who finds you attractive. ”

And then, “I don’t want a sober artist.  I want to be the sober artist!  I want to fall in love with myself.  With my big, sexy, gorgeous life.”

I felt excited by this idea. Untrusting. But excited.

The next morning, I told my friend Lynn about this conversation.  I told her about Debbie and the “lie energy.”  About Lee and the artist.

“Maybe the lie isn’t about either of them.  Maybe it’s about you.  That you are the artist.  You told yourself that you weren’t, but you are.  That is the lie.  That is what is obscured,” she said.

It’s what Julia Cameron calls “the shadow artist” in her book, The Artist’s Way. An individual attracted to those who do what they only dream of doing.

I’ve dated symphony conductors. Pianists.  Sculptors.   Shadow artist.

More recently, I fancied myself a shadow Rabbi.  I had thought Rabbinical school was my path.  And it was not lost on me that I had slept with a Rabbinical student in my 20s and had a crush on a Rabbi in my 40s.

Me as the shadow artist – that is the lie.

Debbie said the milky white started to clear toward the end of our session and a fluffy pink energy flowed into its place.  Like cotton candy.