About our Founder -- Sheila Hatfield
Looking back over my life, I've realized that I've overcome a lot of adversity -- in all areas of my life -- socially, financially, physically, and emotionally. I've done things that many people call miracles, and floated through most of life with a tenacity and faithful ignorance that have served me well. Somehow through it all the ever present voice kept telling me that everything was going to be ok.
My birth story will need to wait for another writing session, but in a nutshell, my birth was an experience that could easily be turned into a horror movie. It is crazy to think they could treat us that way, here in the United States, in the 1970's. My mom suffered from extreme depression and personality changes after the experience, and she never quite recovered. I am lucky to be alive at all.
My early child hood was littered with physical and emotional struggles. I had severe exercised induced asthma, severe hay fever, and am completely deaf in one ear. I spent a lot of time inside being told that I couldn't run and play like the other kids-- weight gain, sugar addiction, and hormone issues kept me there. My father had a humble career, and sent half the money we had to South America to support his other children there. We lived very frugally, but always had enough.
My mother turned to religion and became obsessed with The Church, having several religious experiences that pushed our family apart. I grew up strict Roman Catholic, but by my late teen years, had lost faith and was tired of the dogma. My father died of melanoma cancer when I was 18 after a long career as a mining engineer and working at a uranium mine for many years.
Luckily I was smart, and the local college was affordable -- I studied Computer Science and Math, and that career serves me well, even today. I worked and paid for my entire college education myself, living at home most of that time with my mother.
I was in a major car accident at 19, got severe mononucleosis , was struck by lightning, and also had a major health breakdown in the next 18 months -- I was working full time, in college full time, my Dad had recently died, and it was finals week! I woke up and I couldn't walk anymore -- my body just didn't know which way was up.
Western medicine did not offer me much help. After many tests and specialists and brain scans, a neurologist told me "you have something wrong between your head and your feet". I was a poor student, and had very limited resources -- I stopped going to the doctors, and learned to walk and balance again on my own -- it took many years before I was comfortable riding a bike or walking on uneven terrain again.
Since puberty, I had been put on birth control pills to regulate my hormones because my menstrual cycle was so screwed up-- what I didn't know was that I also had an undiagnosed case of PCOS. During college I met my husband, Larry, at one of my intern jobs, and we were engaged to be married several years later.
After a few years of marriage, we decided we would like to have children, but were prepped for the possibility that I was unable to conceive due to all the health issues I had. The PCOS diagnosis finally came after what seemed like months of appointments, specialists, and tests: it was severe -- the Doctor told us I had a zero percent chance of conceiving and that we should give up and try adoption.
And then by a fluke, a friend of ours introduced us to Reiki (for free even). I was very skeptical, logical, and focused on western medicine and mainstream society -- but I thought it would be interesting to see what it might be about.
I didn't feel much of anything until the last evening of the class -- we were friends with the instructor and my husband was practicing on me. He asked the instructor to come over and help him... and it was late, all the rest of the students had wrapped up, and so... they worked on me for about 30 minutes. And when the instructor started helping, I started feeling a very strange sensation -- a tingling buzzing thing I couldn't quite describe, and it continued, and I felt many emotions come up and I got emotional, then I could feel them physically lifting off of my body in a very strange way I never knew was possible before, and my abdomen felt brighter and lighter in a way I never realized was possible until that moment.
And I was hooked - whatever had happened was something I felt! I had to find out what it was. I started taking every class I could find and reading all the books I could find as time and budget allowed on alternative health and healing: Reiki, Shamanism, Divination, Meditation, Feng Shui, and Sacred Geometry, Essential Oils and exploring eastern and pagan religious philosophies and practices.
I became a new person, a person who felt in control of their life and health, my religion fell away, and I became spiritual and open to miracles and magic. I was in a high tech software engineering job at the height of the dot-com bubble, and things were stressful at work, I worked a lot of hours, and commuted an hour each day to and from downtown through a ton of traffic. I started meditating, doing energy work, and mystical things started happening in my life -- magical things, and life and my health started to change.
Although computers and the internet were amazing, I decided spiritual enlightenment was more valuable, and that I should try to change the world and bring healing and self empowerment to others. So I quit my high paying and high stress tech job, and started my healing business in 2001.
And although I didn't create a hugely successful franchise of healing centers around the globe like I was hoping, I did finally have time to heal and focus on my health. I meditated and healed myself for about an hour each day -- it wasn't easy -- lots of trauma came up that I had to deal with.
One day I decided that if this stuff really worked, I needed to let my body do what it did best, and stop taking the hormone therapy they had prescribed me for the rest of my life. So -- I stopped taking it. After 8-9 months of working on myself each day, I had a breakthrough -- I found the emotional blocks that were the major source of my fertility issues -- and I released it through hours and hours of sobbing emotional release and meditation. It was an incredible and traumatic experience, and now looking back I wish I had recorded more specific details about it.
The next month at age 28 -- I had the first normal menstrual cycle I had ever had. The month after that, I was pregnant with a positive test, and when I went into the Doctor's office to get a checkup and ultrasound my doctor looked at me surprised. "What did you do?!" he asked looking over the images, I responded "what do you mean?", he continued "You are definitely pregnant! And there is no sign you ever had PCOS -- all the cysts are gone, and your ultrasound looks completely normal."
It was a miracle! I made some off handed comment about meditation and energy work... "Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.", he said as he obliviously went about wrapping up the visit and scheduling my next appointment for prenatal care.
My two daughters are now nearly 21 and 17. Motherhood and my tech career took over, but I never stopped learning about who and what I REALLY AM. Life is still adventurous, and full of challenges -- challenges that help us grow and learn who we really are.