The Day My Birth Father’s Death Was Shown to Me

I’ve told this story more times than I can count, and I even wrote about it in Dare You to Move. But no matter how many times I revisit it, the memory still stops me in my tracks.

I was 13 or 14 years old, sitting in the living room folding towels, watching Oprah. She was wearing this purple business suit and holding a microphone, walking through the audience. I don’t remember what she was talking about — because in the middle of the moment, her voice began to fade into the background.

It’s the same thing that happens when I channel for people now: the person in front of me starts to blur into the periphery, my gaze shifts off to the side, and it’s like my mind steps into a different room. I’ve learned over the years that it’s a kind of “spiritual virtual reality.” The outside world keeps moving, but something else is opening up inside of me.

That day, Oprah’s voice became a faint, muffled hum — like the adult in Charlie Brown. The TV screen dimmed in my awareness. I felt myself being drawn into a tunnel. And then… I was no longer in my living room.

In front of me was a pickup truck parked in a public lot. My birth father sat inside. I had never met him before. I was only a year old when he died. And then, in a moment I’ll never forget, I watched him take his own life.

I couldn’t move. It felt eerily like the sleep paralysis my clients sometimes describe — where you’re awake, aware, but frozen. I stayed there until the scene ended. And then, just as suddenly, I was back. Oprah’s voice was clear again, the purple suit sharp on the screen, and I was still holding that same towel in my hands.

For years, I had carried questions about my birth father. I knew he’d died, but no one had ever told me how. It was a family secret, locked up tight. And in one horrifying, surreal moment, I was given the answer.

Later that day, when my mom got home, we were talking in the kitchen. My heart was pounding as I interrupted her and asked, “Mom… did Craig take his life?”

Her face went white. She looked at me as if she’d seen a ghost, then softened and whispered, “Casey… how in the world did you find out?”

I froze. I didn’t know how to explain it without sounding crazy. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what I had just seen — not in detail, not then. So I lied. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know… I just had a feeling.”

The truth is, by that age I had already experienced moments like this — knowing things before they happened, picking up pieces of truth no one had told me. But until that day, I had never had proof. Meaning, I’d never had a witness. This moment was both terrifying and solidifying: terrifying because of what I saw… and solidifying because it confirmed something I’d suspected — I have a gift.

But having a gift in my world didn’t feel safe.

When I was young, I had been severely sexually abused in addition to multiple layers of other forms of abuse piled on top. Being missed as autistic and ADHD made the trauma hit on even deeper level. 

Telling my mom about it ultimately saved me, but it also set off an explosion of chaos and attention that quickly died down into complete silence. No one knew how to help me. And the people who were around me most often were living out their own unhealed trauma. Their projections became my mirrors.

So I learned to stop speaking about myself. Instead, I became the one who asked the questions, who stayed curious about everyone else’s story. I never wanted anyone to feel as unseen as I did.

Even now, as an adult, I sometimes feel misunderstood. But the difference is that now I have a circle of people who stay curious about me, who ask, who listen, who hold space. And that is enough.

Back then, though, I was afraid. Afraid to tell my mom what I saw. Afraid of being sent away, labeled, or — because we were in the Catholic Church at the time — subjected to something like an exorcism. I didn’t have language for what had happened. I didn’t even have language for who I was yet.

But that moment with my birth father’s death changed me. It taught me that my connection to the unseen wasn’t random. It was precise. It was real. And whether I liked it or not, it was part of me.

This was the day I began to understand that my life would always be lived between two worlds: the physical one everyone else could see, and the spiritual one that opens for me — sometimes without warning — and shows me the truth before it arrives.

It would have been around September of 2021, years after that first moment with my birth father, when another voice broke through. I was driving in silence, on my way to visit a family member, when the phrase Dare You to Move kept running through my mind. Over and over, like a song without sound. I somehow knew it was the title of a book I was meant to write.

Later that day, on the way home, I finally turned on the radio. The very first song that played? “Dare You to Move.” It gave me chills. That night, I wrote my first paragraph.

What I didn’t know then was that this book would become a four-year journey. I started in September of 2021 and published it myself in early 2025. I wrote through breakthroughs and breakdowns. Around August and September of 2023, something in me shifted — years of trauma work finally collided with the process of writing, with my work alongside clients, with the research I devoured to help them and myself, with therapy sessions where I spoke truths I’d held in silence for decades. It was like a river burst through stone. Change came so fast it was dizzying, yet so slow it felt endless.

The calmer I became, the less haunted I was by survival mode, the clearer my connection grew — to myself, to others, and to Spirit. The less noise inside me, the easier it became to hear the truth. That is still true today.

I don’t always get it right. I will never claim to. But what I feel, what I sense — more often than not, it proves to be true. And as I keep healing, I keep listening.

That listening is what brought me here: to this place where I can say I am a trauma therapist who openly uses my spirituality in practice, who sometimes lays out tarot cards in session when a client asks, who blends mediumship with clinical work in a way that helps people find gentleness where there was only fear. I can feel their energy in my body, and together we find ways to release what was once unspeakable. Clients often tell me that naming these truths through energy, through cards, through Spirit — makes it safer to finally lean into the dark and not feel consumed by it.

That is who I am. Someone not afraid of the dark. Someone willing to go there with you, because I have lived there myself.

I have been in therapy for 15 years. I have unpacked abuse, betrayal, family rupture, military trauma. I have walked through hells of my own and come out with both scars and songs. And I am not here to drag anyone out of their dark before they’re ready. I am here to sit with them in it — the way others have done for me, the way God has always done for me even when the noise was too loud to hear Him.

I didn’t get here alone. And I don’t expect anyone else to, either.

So if you see me rocking, bouncing, or stimming in my videos, know that it means I feel safe. Take it as a compliment. If it distracts you, close your eyes — listen for the message. Sit with the discomfort. Because the golden truths often hide inside the noise.

And if it bothers you so much that you can’t stay, then simply move along. I won’t take it personally. Not everyone is meant to connect. But for those who do…

For those who pause long enough to listen…

For those who are curious enough to sit in the tension, the dark, the questions…

That’s where the real work begins.

Because the truth is, I am still that little girl who learned to stop speaking of herself, who found safety in listening, who made everyone else’s story her mirror. But now I know the power of a mirror.

And I dare you to look into yours.

Because if you do, you might just discover that what you thought was chaos… might also be love. That what felt like endings… might also be beginnings. That what you thought was darkness… might also be the doorway to the light.

This is not the end of my story. It is only the beginning. And maybe — just maybe — it could be the beginning of yours, too.