How I Found Out I Was An Empath

An image of me in 2015

I was meditating the other day, and I remembered a story, because a lot of us think that our awakening happens in just a moment, but honestly, our awakening happens in stages.

When I was living in Seattle— it was 2015, I was 24 or 23— I was losing my hair, I was super depressed, and I was trying to find a job in photography. And I found a job! It was, it was a regional job, and so the first job I had to perform with this company was in Idaho.

So I drove in the middle of winter for seven hours to this church in Moscow Idaho. College town. It's on the border of Washington and Idaho, and I have no shock absorbers on my car. It's the middle of winter. I drive over a mountain range, (The things we do when we're young, right?) and this company took pictures for churches to build a directory. To make their money, they would upsell prints to the people who were getting the portraits. The church would agree to have them come set up for free at their church, and we would take the photos, we would pitch to the people who got the photos at the end, and then we would send them their photos in the mail.

I'm at this little church in the-middle-of-nowhere-Idaho. I have no self-confidence besides driving a car with no shock absorbers over a mountain range. I had nothing to lose.

There's this dude, and he's kind of arrogant. He used to be a truck driver. He's showing me the ropes. I'm staying in this really creepy motel. I don't even know how I got here, how I found this job— It felt like a time warp.

I am super matrixy. I'm trying to find a corporate career. I believe in science, not God. I was very lost. And so I'm at this church. I'm learning from this dude, and there's this other woman there. It's his coworker, and I'll never forget this woman. Her name is Cindy Stone, and she is a cartoon character. She just looked like she'd been through it, and she was trying to get me alone. She didn't want anybody around. It was strange. I was thinking to myself,

" What the fuck is going on?" And so finally, the man who was training me agreed to let Cindy Stone take me and train me. Before he did, he pulled me aside and said, "She has a lot of bad habits, so don't listen to anything she says."

That woman didn't teach me anything. She literally got me alone in a room. And she was like, "I know something about you." She was from Texas, and had a thick drawl. It's funny that I live in Texas now. With her thick-ass drawl, she's like, "I know something about you!"

And I was like, "Oh, God, what?" I just met this woman, so I had no idea what she was talking about.

She replied, "Come on, I know it. You don't have to worry about me. You can tell me, I'm not going to do nothing to you."

I was like, "What are you getting at?"

After going back and forth like this for a while, she was like, "I know you know what I'm talking about." and she kind of gets in my face.

I'm like, "oh my god, what?"She's like, "you're a psychic!" And I was like, "No, I'm not. What are you talking about?" She's like, "Yes, you are! Come on, you tell me. Tell me what gifts you have."

And I didn't really know a lot about psychic work, back then I didn't really believe in it. I was agnostic and I thought you had to be born psychic.

So I just kind of off the cuff, to get Cindy Stone out of my face, was like, "well, the only thing I could say that I would know, is that a lot of times I just know how people feel. If people were to just have argued, I know that they just argued, or if somebody just lied, I know that they lied."

"You're an empath!" She exclaimed. I did not know what that was, but what she did was she triggered me, and it catalyzed me to go research all this stuff and start getting into it.

That was 10 years ago. Look at me now! Thank you, Cindy Stone.