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Last night I had a powerful vision.

Don’t worry, folks. California is not going to be wiped out by an earthquake or tsunami…at least not now.

Anyway, with the Mercury and Jupiter retrogrades ending, it is a time for life-changing revelations. And did the Universe spare any expense for me? Nope!

I was dozing off to sleep and this is what I saw:

I was on the phone, trying to break up with my imaginary boyfriend (there is no guy in real-time right now, just so we are all on the same page). I am freaking out saying, “I won’t be able to give to you what you deserve. I am a mess. I was cheated on. I had a miscarriage. I have been thrown away by everyone in my life including this last guy. I’m damaged goods. You don’t want me!”

The vision cuts to my imaginary boyfriend—who was gorgeous by the way—sitting in his car on the phone with me. He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t shame me. In fact, he disregards it completely.

Instead, he says, “You like sushi?”

Oh…he had a beautiful Scottish accent.

Thrown off by this, I say, “Dude, I’m breaking up with you and you’re asking me if I want sushi?”

“Yeah, yeah. Does your wee one like it too?”

“No, she hates sushi. Get her McDonald’s; she can eat in her room and watch a movie since it’s Friday. If you could get extra ginger with mine. That would be great. Thank you.”

The vision continues, and he shows up to my home with the sushi takeout and McDonald’s. My daughter grabs her food and teleports herself to her room (It’s imaginary movie night after all).

I’m standing at the counter with my imaginary boyfriend, whom I am still committed to breaking up with, staring at him in utter confusion while ugly crying.

“Rosie,” he says. “Look at you! I don’t need to know what they did to you. I see the scars in your eyes. But you’re wearing what they did like a scarlet letter. You have no need to be punished for getting hurt. That’s their punishment, not yours. Take those off ya!”

I look down, and hanging around my neck are the letters of all of the people who abused, used, mistreated, and hurt me over the years. The bars of iron were heavy, and the plaques hanging off of them were even heavier. I slowly took each one off (physically feeling the release in my heart chakra where I had kept these hurts over the years).

He smiled at me and said with loving reassurance, “Great! Now we won’t have to go through this when I meet ya in real life! Let’s eat!” Then we sat down in my imaginary house, at my imaginary table, eating our imaginary sushi.

Being a spiritual medium is more than just being able to connect with those who have passed on to the other side.

It is also accepting and trusting the visions God sends in order to help us grow. It also means that we have to do the releasing work in order to heal so our readings come through with greater purity.

Last night’s vision revealed to me what had been blocking my heart from receiving and giving love in my life. I was wearing all of these transgressions on my heart as if it were a “Scarlet Letter.”

My heart has been screaming, “Look at what happened to me! They did a great job hurting me!”

I was memorializing their work rather than setting those injustices down and allowing life to trample them into the ground. I was allowing them to have all the credit at my expense when I should have been writing a much different narrative for my life.

This reality became evident while writing another piece about my experiences in life. Instead of focusing on how the experience strengthened me, I made it all about the other person.

Understandably, it is difficult to let some of life’s hardships go, especially when we have been abandoned by those closest to us, or deeply betrayed in some way. It is almost automatic for us to internalize their behavior, making it a reflection of our own self-worth as opposed to seeing the act for what it really is: a reflection of their own self-worth and self-denial.

The weight we carry sometimes becomes a badge of honor in a sadistic way. Because we are survivors, right? We survived the trauma; we survived the abuse…we survived. Yes, we did survive, but we gained more than a scar.

See, a scarlet letter in Puritan society was meant to shame those who had done wrong. In their time, it was primarily for adultery and worn by women. The point of it was meant to shame the women for their sexuality in a society that stressed piety over pleasure.

It is also beneficial to note that men were rarely held accountable even if the woman was wrongfully accused. This protection of one part over the other lives on to this day. Out of helplessness, victims and survivors are forced to wear their traumas as a mark of shame instead of creating their identity around the gifts they extracted from the event.

Why is that? Family, friends, and society often abandon the victims while exercising sympathy for the perpetrator by focusing on the inner wounds they chose to act out of.

Culturally, we live in a society largely shaped by Judeo-Christianity that stresses forgiving our perpetrators rather than seeking vengeance.

Little emphasis is placed on the perpetrator needed to atone for their sins. In the Christian eye, as long as you confess, Jesus wipes the slate clean, and all is forgiven. However, they forget about the fact that the person who did wrong needs to follow up with the victim in order to rebuild what was broken and seek forgiveness in order to complete that atonement.

Oftentimes, spouses who have been cheated on (male or female) are told to forgive their unfaithful partners and ask for their forgiveness as if they were the one who was responsible for their partner’s lack of integrity.

There is a grain of wisdom here; it is better to do the hard thing only to find the light rather than submit to the darkness, shaping ourselves in the likeness of Anakin Skywalker. However, with a culture that has become more and more protective over perpetrators, victims/survivors often feel helpless.

Somehow the tables flip, and they have to compassionately look at the struggle the perpetrator has gone through that led them to their transgression. Yes, understand their point of view, but not to the point of invalidating the person who was hurt.

Another contributing factor to the mass helplessness felt by survivors is that they see their perpetrators thrive after they have committed the transgression while their victims are left picking up the pieces, fixing themselves, and finding the strength to move on, knowing full well that person will never come back to seek forgiveness or to repair the damage they created.

Survivors often experience a secondary abandonment by society at large because they are left alone to tend to their wounds while watching the other receive the support they actually need.

This leads many survivors to create meaning for themselves while their assailants move on as if nothing happened.

So, what are we to do?

Religions, spiritual practices, and society at large have become perpetrator-friendly, safe havens, while those who have survived are left to their own devices to heal.

We have become so conditioned to see the struggle of the perpetrator that we take on the entire load of the trauma instead of the fair amount we are responsible for.

We blame ourselves for what they did because we either created that situation or because it was some karmic balancing by an omnipotent God who controls the ethers.

These toxic ideas hamstring the healing process making survivors feel as if they had it coming all along. Regardless of karma or some sinful reaping, no one deserves to be abandoned, abused, used, then thrown away, or mistreated; let alone feel shamed for the intolerable actions initiated by someone else. Standing up for yourself or responding to abuse, manipulation, or even abandonment is acceptable.

It is your soul saying, “This is not okay. I am worth more than this.”

The truth of the matter of this: you are worth more.

Your traumas, especially those who perpetrated the traumas or mistreatment, do not define you. The day you take off your “Scarlet Letter” is the day you set yourself free from those who hurt you.

Throw that letter back to the person who put it on you. It is their burden to carry, not yours.