“Do I have a spirit guide?” People often ask me.

“Ummm,” I answer honestly, “I think so.”

Some New Agers swear we all have spirit guides (Yes. You, too, dear skeptic). And supposedly these entities sign up to guide us through our lifespan. Sounds great, right?

Well I’m the type of chick that needs proof so I won’t SWEAR we have them. But I can share a few stories from my own experience that lend themselves as evidence.

I’ve encountered one particular entity five notable times so far. (Notable meaning  interesting enough to retell here.) I need to make clear that all five encounters were with the SAME Spirit. How do I know? Because Spirit, like humans, have energy. A voice.  An overall feeling. It’s like if someone blindfolded you and asked you to hug twenty women, one of which was your mom, you could blindly tell which was your mother, right?

I was really little the first time I heard him. (Yes him we’ll get to that later.) I was having anxiety issues over our chubby friend in the North Pole. Ironic that someone with my imagination had such a hard time believing, but seriously, he never made sense to me. I swear the issue kept me up at night. We didn’t have a chimney. Reindeer weren’t anatomically built for flight.  He had the exact same handwriting as my mother. I think a lot of kids have this quiet struggle at 9 or 10, but I was like, 4. And it really stressed me out.

So one night I sat on the couch watching some Christmas special trying to  work out the logistics of Santa visiting every house on the entire planet in a 24 hour period.  And that’s when I heard this voice. A calm, smooth, inside-my-head male voice clearly state (I’ll paraphrase):  All you need to do is believe in the Spirit of him. That’s what makes him real. You don’t have to understand it. Just enjoy.

Sounds kinda theological, no? But that’s what I heard. I ran to the kitchen and told my mother (who was washing dishes) that I DID believe in the spirit of Santa Claus. I remember being very excited about this. It wasn’t him as a person I had to accept. It was the idea of him…what he represented (toys!) …and THAT I could put on a plate and sop up with a biscuit!

I need to impress upon you that this was not my stream of consciousness. Remember, intuition is separate from your brain voice/ego. I remember pausing, kinda cocking my head  to ‘listen’ as Santa was explained. You know that sensation when you’re hyper focused and you just stand there frozen while your eyes go kinda blurry? When your body pauses though your brain is fully aware?  It was like that, but in the “silence” I heard/felt the words.  It happens the same way now.

The second time I heard him I was in 4th or 5th grade.  I was under the covers starting “The BFG” by Roald Dahl. I read the name “Sophie” and thought how very much I liked that name. (I spent a great deal of time envying other girl’s names as there were at least three Jennifers in every single class I’ve ever had . . . EVER. (But I digress)  I continued reading about Sophie and her big friendly giant when the voice interrupted with:

Your first daughter will be named Sophie.

This was so clear… it was almost like I heard it out loud. I wasn’t scared, I just couldn’t believe it! I threw my book down and scrambled to the kitchen where my mother lived. I told her my first daughter would be named Sophie and she pulled a bubbly hand from the sink, pat me on the head and sent me back to bed.

I’d like to offer two very interesting things here.

Number 1: He said “first” daughter, certainly implying I’d have more than one. Interestingly, I was blessed with a stepdaughter before I had my firstborn daughter.

Number 2: I’d forgotten ALL about this incident. I was 8 months pregnant with “Lillian” when someone said the name “Sophia” at a family gathering. THEN I remembered. The memory washed over me like a warm bath. Sophie. And my mom was there as well. Took a bit of prodding, but she remembered it too.

It’s worth mentioning that before we  decided on ‘Lillian’ I called my bump ‘La Fonda’. For months and months I privately called her this until my intuitive friend Neil rubbed my belly and said, “Wait. What do you call her?” He frowned at me. “You need to stop whatever it is, because she feels like you’re making fun of her.”

Suffice it to say I stopped calling her La Fonda.

I’ll share my other encounters in my next entry. I wouldn’t hear my Spirit Guide again until I was in college.

And then he had to yell.