The Paradox of a Life Fully Lived

On being an “old soul,” choosing a “smaller life,” and becoming the author of what comes next

My mother told me my first words were, “Mother, I’m going out now.” Not a question—a declaration.

At two years old, after wetting the bed, my father gently put a diaper on me. I remember thinking, Why is he treating me like a child? I’m not a child. Only babies wear diapers. With two older siblings and eight who followed, I grew up knowing a great deal about babies and diapers.

At six, I remember thinking, These adults are not really that bright.

And now, as I approach seventy, I feel both an old soul—and as unbound by age—as I did at two years old.

Knowing That Arrives Early

In the MultiSensory Intelligence™ framework, there is a Signature Intelligence I relate to called HyperNoetic. In this “old soul” orientation, from their earliest years, children are less interested in games or stories and more drawn to questions of purpose, meaning, and justice. It feels as though they are not so much learning as remembering—as if the veil between lives never fully closed when they arrived here.

This brings with it both clarity… and tension. Because to see broadly and perceive deeply is also to imagine what is most possible, and to feel a quiet responsibility to find a path in the service of expanding love. While my large Irish family was a significant playground for finding all manner of ways to serve, for a HyperNoetic, it cannot be limited to one’s immediate circle. This intelligence provokes the longing to build something for the whole world-even as one small human among billions.

For me, relief came with the understanding that prayer, meditation, and focused intention contribute at the highest level. In this way, I know I can serve. I imagine it as flapping my delicate butterfly wings to create a tsunami of grace that ripples out far beyond.

Walking Between Worlds

By her words and actions, my mother taught us to value individuality. Yet my

HyperNoetic intelligence and gifts were not fully understood. This prepared me for a world where “do not enter” or “beware” signs appeared—whether in the hallowed halls of business, education, healthcare or faith traditions.

For much of my life, I searched for a path where I could be radically honest about my gifts without conforming to the status quo or to a marketplace where intuition was often caricatured or marginalized.

Knowing that intuition lives within everyone, and can be cultivated in service of each person’s creative purpose, I felt called to find a middle way.

So I built a bridge.

I partnered with business leaders to advance their conscious evolution and build company cultures that foster meaningful stakeholder relationships– and founded a Conscious Business Network—while maintaining my soul-level Reading and Healing work.

The “Smaller” Choice That Changed Everything

Before I adopted my daughter from China, a Thai intuitive once told me:

You can become a world-class healer… or you can raise a child. But you cannot do both.

I was furious that any prediction would dare to limit my imagination of having it all. And then life happened with its own ideas. In the face of many unforeseen circumstances, and with a deep commitment to raising Ana as my highest priority, I chose not to follow the path of becoming a global healer. Instead, I chose to remain close to home—grounding my work locally while raising my daughter.

Yet, the choice that appeared “smaller” became the most expansive force in my life.

Motherhood humbled me in ways nothing else could. It revealed fierce love as I had never known, but also moments—and sometimes years—of doubt, exhaustion, and feeling unequal to the task.

Like so many parents, I found myself saying: “I had no idea…”

Becoming the Sacred Witness

My daughter is now 22.

Each year, I feel the shift, from engaged parent to sacred witness. Each milestone, I step back to honor who she is becoming. And I see now that this journey, this so-called “smaller life”, gave me something I could not have gained any other way:

A lived understanding of the full spectrum of human experience through the lens of a single mother—from suffering to triumph. I have come out the other side with an entirely different respect for adult humans like myself, who are…

“not really that bright.”

An Emergence

Through my humbling parenting journey, I found deep compassion for everyone who commits to raising a child.

My HyperNoetic intelligence moved me to not only consider the struggles of many of my clients but to attend to the whole world, where the parents of 440 million children are struggling through neurodiverse diagnoses and desperately seeking solutions for their children’s wellbeing, not to mention those children who have no diagnosis but still do not fit into traditional systems.

As these children struggle with behaviors that affect both themselves and those around them, diagnoses and labels expand, but without a developmental pathway or an exit strategy. For a child once labeled and prescribed medication, the message seems to be: “that’s who they are.” At the same time, rates of anxiety, depression, and child suicide continue to rise.

Because I can perceive from behind the eyes of these children, I understand the architecture of their perception and their inner world. I saw clearly that their behavior was not a fixed identity, but a response—emerging from the interaction between their perception, their environment, and the expectations placed upon them.

The Work That Took a Lifetime

I have spent decades learning how to translate the unseen into language that can be understood in business, science, and human development. That integration—of the mystical and the practical—has taken…well, 70 years.

So I built another bridge: MultiSensory Intelligence.™

In its simplest form:

Intuition is a moment of insight.

MultiSensory Intelligence™ is the perceptual system behind it.

While everyone has MSI, these children express it with a depth and intensity that has largely gone unrecognized. In launching The Wonder Children + Parent Community and MSI Discovery Labs as an integrated ecosystem—where science informs real-world application and lived experience, which in turn, advances the science—my focus has expanded to help parents understand and navigate their children’s invisible inner worlds, so they can truly thrive.

The Paradox of This Moment

Not out of the ordinary for me, though perhaps unexpected for this later season of life, I find myself nearing seventy and writing uncharted scripts—launching groundbreaking work, building meaningful ventures, beginning again. I have always related more to my eternal self than to my human timeline. I've come to understand that age merely marks scenes in the play—and unless I surrender that power, the pen remains firmly in the hands of this author.

And so, I sit in paradox:

• Will and surrender

• Mystic and business builder

• Solitude and connection

These are the design elements for my next life adventure. But before I can move forward in grace, there is one more thing…

Releasing the Old Script

When I began mapping my reality as a young person, I held a belief close to my heart, one that helped me remain true to my inner experience, even when the world around me did not.

This belief has allowed me to stay anchored to my inner world as I learned to build bridges that translate and connect the invisible into the visible across the hallowed halls of business, education, healthcare, and faith traditions. I know that journey is finished because the MultiSensory Framework can now help the world understand and honor the inner experience of children as they uniquely express it.

That core belief was “it is all on me”, my long-standing loyalty to isolation and perhaps many single mother’s experience.

It is time to release this belief, and in letting that go, I find myself opening to the joy of support, friendship and walking forward arm-in-arm with others.

Perhaps even Exhaustion, my long-time companion in isolation, can finally step back and say: “My work here is done.”

What Remains to be Said

If there is anything I would offer you, it is this:

Love the mess of your life.

Love yourself within it.

There are no perfect answers.

No flawless role models.

No heroes without their fractures.

There is only one you.

Stay in your own corner.

Stay on your own side.

Honor how you perceive the world.

And remember—the opinions of others are not verdicts.

They are simply design elements.

You get to decide what stays.

And what does not.

You are not just a character in your life.

You are the author of what comes next.

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