The Moment Everything Changed Direction

Years back before I knew my authentic path of service, I was living in England and heading into a hall that hosted the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival. The place was packed and to one side there was a section of tables for psychics and mediums.

I stood in line looking at them all sitting behind their tables. I had been to psychics before, and many simply generalise rather than get specific like many of the so-called psychic mediums of today, so I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest. However, I had found that in England many are trained very well, especially back in those days. Perhaps that was due to the spiritualist churches of that era teaching how to master the craft via active training and experience.

Many had the classic elder woman look with grey hair. However, then there was one head that literally stood out amongst the sea of grey.

It was a dark-haired woman with a short cut, and the shape of her head reminded me of an ET-type shape, large at the top and narrow to her chin.

We could choose who was next available. As synchronicity would have it, she became available.

I sat down across from her, and once we got past the initial greeting, I was very mindful not to feed her any information she could use to reflect back to me, as many not-so-experienced psychics do this.

I noticed the deck she had in front of her. I had seen these particular cards once before briefly in my spiritual travels. They were called the Zen Tarot. Quite different from the Rider-Waite deck.

She asked me to shuffle. What came to mind was, ’Where am I headed?’ As I didn’t have a clue. I had come through a very dark night of the soul and was rattled by it, to say the least.

I can't recall many of the other cards but one, which stands out in my memory to this day, ‘Schizophrenia.’ I was startled due to questioning my own sanity, and read "The Bridge Between Two Worlds. A Shaman's View Of Schizophrenia & Acute Sensitivity", my first book for more on that.

The card itself she explained depicted a person suspended between two cliffs high above the clouds, caught in a state of deep indecision and mental split. The card depicted exactly how I felt. Very split and hanging on for dear life. Then she asked a question that would completely change the trajectory of my life.

Psychic ‘Where are your books?’

Me ‘Sorry, what books?’

Psychic ‘You have at least three major books to write; you need to get on with it. And then she tapped the card.

I had been deeply concerned for my own mental health due to hearing menacing voices and felt psychically attacked by what I felt were entities. I also had a cousin and distant cousin on my mother's side who were diagnosed with the label of Schizophrenic.

I had collected reams of research on areas of possession, rituals, ghosts, shamanic viewpoints, etc, but didn’t see them as becoming a book in any way. It was just a way to help me try and understand the psychic invasion I felt I was experiencing and how I might navigate through it.

However, as soon as she asked the question, I saw a deeper reason for my research, and how all that investigation and working through it would merge into what would become my first book.

Those on the path of consciousness say there are no coincidences, only synchronicities. From that moment on, I felt a deep sense of purpose rising from within.

I needed to share my story and my recovery through my eyes mainly due to the fact that I couldn’t find another book that addressed it as I wanted to write it. The Bridge still continues to be one of my most revered books in helping both those suffering and those that care.

This message took me not only to write my first book, but it also showed me that one of my pathways was that of an author.

It also led me to train in contemporary shamanism and turn it into the path of service that I still run today.

I have also trained in cellular trauma and clinical hypnotherapy, much like the branches of a tree, forever growing. Contemporary shamanism will always be the trunk and the roots, solid and dependable, at the core of what I do.

Book one had been written.

My second book came out of a story I had in my head since I was 16 years old. At that time in school, like many others I imagine, I was quite taken with the story of Joan of Arc. The hearing voices part intrigued me, as did many other otherworldly experiences she went through.

I imagined myself performing as Joan of Arc due to wanting to be a stage actress from a very young age. I saw the story being brought into modern-day times and adapted. I liked her courage to speak out and also her incredible vulnerability, along with her inability to know what to believe at some stage. An incredibly complex young woman.

Her death and how she died was an outright injustice, and that era's treatment of women affected me deeply.

I tucked this story of modernising it into my pocket for what I did not know.

Much later in my life, during the years I looked after my elder, I joined a fabulous writers group, and this story floated out of my pocket to be looked at once again. I tried for a while to write it, but frustration took hold.

I have a French name, but I knew little of the French culture or characteristics. Sure, I could research the heck out of the history, but it didn't flow, so I pushed it aside.

Then one morning, I woke to a completely different idea forming. What culture did I know well? I had been brought up by a Scottish mother born on the west coast of Scotland, who always told me I had the fey; second sight. My grandfather was from Glasgow, as was my nanna. Back then I didn’t know as I know now that my father's ancestry had equally deep roots in Scotland. The Highlands.

So I began writing.

I have never written something that took on a life of its own like this book did.

I found myself writing the visions that came through like flowing water. Even the dark ones, and I was so surprised at what arose.

Only last year a male friend who was reading it said, 'I didn’t know that particular incident happened to you. It was so detailed, so I think it must be true.'

'It isn’t.' I replied. It came through me, and I let it fly. Sure, other parts were loosely based on true experiences, but many wrote themselves through me.

"Voices Within" became the novel that I always wanted to write. The most common feedback is, ‘I can't put it down!’

Women gravitate to it primarily because it is about a young woman in Australia whose mental health is in question and her journey to find answers beyond the norm, which takes the reader all the way back to 16th-century Scotland and the witch-burning times.

It's not for the faint-hearted, but those who have traversed the darkened landscapes within and have reached the other side will resonate with her development, her insights, her falls and hopefully, primarily, her resilience and efforts to find meaning.

It definitely has echoes of me in it, but the character holds her own narrative and couldn’t be more grateful.

Writing it was difficult, gratifying, and it let me share the way I work within the shamanic framework to move through the inner landscapes of imbalance.

It took on a life of its own, and I marvelled at that journey that was being written, even in its very dark parts.

It is the story from my young sixteen-year-old self that I was meant to tell, many years later. 
And although I am now a woman of wisdom years (hopefully lol), age is a timeless paradigm when we venture beyond the bounds of this earth suit life.

I have written other small books here and there along the path, but the third had to come through a deep shift in my life, as is my way.

It's building now. And the healing catalyst has been a profound and lucid dream that clarified a great deal and brought me some much-needed closure and insight.

Titles always turn up quickly for me, and this third one that is building is called "The Weaving of Consciousness."

It's wonderful to feel it bubbling away.

When I look back just last year and how dark everything was for me at times, I am now smiling that I held my course as best I could.

I look in the mirror some days and marvel at this new birth from death and what is once again flowing through.

There were times last year in the darkness that I honestly thought, Im done. My creative flow is dead. There is no more.

Silly me. It was of course just another shamanic death of the ego.

It was one of the hardest rides I have taken, but now I am free and as my heart expands, so do the words that flow.

My clients often say to me, I feel so very safe with you because you 'know' the dark places that we can get lost in, and you always seem to find your way out.

In Voices Within, that's what I wanted to explore and show that it's possible to find your way to meaning again.

Blessings on your journey within and without.

Odette

(c) O. Nightsky 2026

(All cover art credit to (c) Marc Potts)