Adventure Begins Here

Twin Flame. A modest name for a powerful force. She came to visit during a season when she was unraveling, arriving like a storm cloud holding the rain.

A fellow hypnotic healer, this friend came to visit me back in 2020. At the time, she was hollow—faith fractured, abundance lacking, trust in herself evaporated. She was suspended in the Void, that womb-like darkness where the soul waits for instruction from Source. Every healer passes through it. Of course when one person is inside the Void, anyone standing too close feels gravity. 

Twin flames are proverbial mirrors, reflecting ourselves back to us to gain perspective into One’s Self. Where are areas needing improvement? Where can we grow? Twin Flames don’t always come wrapped in romance. Sometimes they come wrapped in discomfort.

She told me one night, her voice sharp with pain,
“You are not my twin. You lack the compassion.”

Those words stayed with me for a long time. I thought about compassion. I thought it meant pouring. I hadn’t yet learned it also means containing. 

What she didn’t realize—and what I didn’t yet fully understand—was that the mirror was already working.

Because mirrors don’t flatter.
They reveal.

To truly understand her statement, you have to understand everything that came before it.

If I lacked compassion, would I have spent an entire week building her a website from scratch—free of charge—so she could finally launch her brand and stand in the world as a self-employed practitioner? Would I have opened my home, my family, my inner sanctum to someone I barely knew, believing fresh air and distance from her life might help her remember herself? 

She was resentful I didn’t take her to Glacier Park when she came for that visit – angry at an unspoken expectation. I brought her to the reservoir instead: still water, no entry fee, no crowds. Just nature. I chose quiet over spectacle. Medicine over monument.

While in grief, we don’t always recognize gentleness as care. Sometimes we want proof that costs something.

On a hike, we got lost– of course we did. Lost in the woods, lost in ourselves. By the time we made it back, my muscles were shredded, my spirit threadbare. I was completely depleted by the time we made it back. It was after that hike—after my well had run dry—that I finally understood the phrase “compassion fatigue.”

And that’s when I got honest.

I told her she needed to get a handle on her energetic signature. Her mood, her negativity, her despair had begun to permeate my house. My parents mentioned to me they felt uncomfortable in their own home—afraid of saying the wrong thing, walking on eggshells around a stranger. She had become a gravitational force, and everyone was orbiting her sadness. They didn’t want to confront her because she was my guest.

Looking back, there were moments that unsettled me in ways I didn’t yet have language for. 

One afternoon, my mother and I were sitting in the living room when we heard a strange slapping sound coming from her room. We exchanged confused looks, unsure whether to intervene. Later, I learned the truth: she had been quietly punching herself in the face. She hurt herself badly enough to leave an abrasion near her eye.

She was doing externally what she was doing energetically—collapsing inward, attacking herself, eroding her own structure. And I was doing the inverse: overextending, absorbing, trying to stabilize her collapse with my own spine.

Twin flames expose polarity.

We had talked about partnership, about creating a hypnosis program to ‘heal the healers’ and that idea resonated deeply within me. Spirit had already whispered that collaboration was part of my path, so I stayed open.  I gave her a hypnosis session for free, intending to help her stabilize. The irony wasn’t lost on me later—I was healing a healer while actively ignoring my own need for containment. 

Intuition doesn’t whisper without reason.

I began to feel her latching onto my energy. It felt invasive, heavy, and unclear. I worried her feelings had crossed the boundary of friendship. My nervous system reacted before my mind could catch up. Boundaries were dissolving.

Twin flames don’t just mirror wounds.
They mirror limits.

Yes, I can help others. But I cannot bring them so close that I lose my sanctuary. I need a space—physical and energetic—where I can reset and replenish. I didn’t have that. I had offered my home, my body, my energy without a buffer, and it cost me.

She planned to stay a month. She never bought a return ticket. She left after a few weeks instead, when the energy in the house became too heavy to sustain. She blamed me for the higher cost of a last-minute ticket, which only worsened the financial stress that had contributed to her spiral in the first place.

The cycle always feeds itself.

On her way out, the universe staged its final punctuation mark. A ticket in Idaho. A bus out of Missoula. A two-hour drive, on my dime. And still, one last attempt at healing for my friend—an overnight stay at a lodge and a relaxing hot spring soak the night before her departure. Mushrooms for us all, Alice. We laughed, giggled, everything softened. For a moment, it felt like what I had hoped her entire visit could be—ease, presence, light. The storm thinned.

But then the sirens. 

On the drive back from the hot spring soak, we were pulled over. The officer grilled us about the smell of pot, confiscated paraphernalia, and issued my friend a ticket for possession. He was about to escalate the situation when he got a call—something more serious. He let us go.

We packed up quietly at the lodge and drove to the bus station. I never saw her again.

Here is the truth the mirror revealed: She was my twin.

Not because we were alike—but because she showed me where compassion had become self-abandonment. Where service had replaced sovereignty. Where my open heart had forgotten the wisdom of a closed door.

Twin flames don’t come to stay.
They come to show.

Sometimes the most compassionate act is not opening your arms wider. Sometimes it is learning when to lower them.

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