My Daughter Shines Her Light Into My Life With the Number 22
“This is how we keep June alive, every day.”
Our daughter, June, was born on September 22, 2020. Prior to that day, I had attended church only a handful of times. I rarely prayed. I had no firm religious or spiritual beliefs. I questioned my own spirituality and relationship with a Higher Power. I glommed onto other’s experiences and tried them on for size.
Maybe I’ll pray while kneeling at my bed tonight.
Maybe I’ll attend church on Sundays.
Maybe I’ll try meditating.
I’ve always been an all or nothing type of person, and the idea of believing in a Higher Power felt impossible, almost sinful, if I wasn’t in the very least dedicating my Sunday mornings to worship.
That was until my Chilean host-sister shared with me that I was the church. I could be anywhere in the world and pray. I was my own sacred four walls.
That was before June was diagnosed with cancer.
When we entered our new reality, that June had stage IV neuroblastoma, we embarked on an eighteen-month treatment plan with no guarantee she would survive. I fell into darkness. Life outside of a hospital room ceased to exist. I folded into myself, nearly collapsing. The foundation of my belief system which had been made from a thin concrete had many holes and cracks. I stopped believing in anything and ignored it while caring for June.
More recently, I’ve learned that during the time of regression when I lived in a permanent state of fight, flight, or freeze, there was a deeper process occurring. While my outside world went dark, my world within began to flourish.
While deep in the trenches of hell, I built a stairwell in my church. Later, I would use the steps to climb, crawl, and slither myself up and away from the ruins the cancer left behind.
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June relapsed and died ten months into treatment. Immediately, I stopped wondering where I stood on the spirituality spectrum. In part because to go on living, I had to believe in something — anything, really. Mostly, I was desperate. The worst had happened to me as a parent, and if I didn’t find a reason to live, I might have died too.
The reason I survived is because of what my spirituality provided me with: hope. The two had always been intrinsically tied. The beliefs I unknowingly cultivated during the course of June’s treatment, surfaced after she was gone, and lifted me from bed each day.
The walls and stairwell in my church were stained with death’s ash. Suddenly, as my soul cried out, mourning June, the ashes filled the empty crevices in my foundation and hardened. It was the exact moment I knew there was a Higher Power because June began to send me signs.
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The day June was born, my grandmother reminded me that my newest baby shared a birthday with her son. A great-uncle whom June would never meet. He had passed away several decades before at an untimely age.
“I hope she has better luck than he did,” my grandmother said before we hung up the phone.
A sentence that would later haunt me also became the reason I was infatuated with numerology.
Did his birthdate dictate his life’s outcome?
Why was June also born on the 22nd?
Were the two related?
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The number 22 flowed into and out of our lives from the day June was born. In the months after her delivery, we isolated indoors during our first Covid winter.
Many memories of June’s first winter were spent watching the Disney movie ‘Soul’. I’d breastfeed June with my three year old daughter snuggled next to us on the couch. The three of us watched it one-hundred times that winter. If you’ve never seen it, I won’t spoil it, but the movie portrays a near-death experience, the discovery of the soul, and the main character in the movie is a soul named ‘22’.
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2022 also happened to be the same year that June died. Feels like a fateful exchanged etched into a soul’s contract when a person dies on the year that shares the same number as the day they were born.
In numerology, the number 22 is considered a ‘Master Number’. A Master Number is one of the most powerful numbers symbolized by an extra strength presence in the cosmos. The number 22 is meant to connect us to our spiritual plane and find the purpose of our existence. It is no wonder, that after meeting June, both of those things have come to fruition in my own life.
Feeling the energy of the number 22 will drive you to use your most precious talents to leave a lasting legacy. This is a summation of the influence that my number 22, June, has had on me. For example, I started writing again after she passed away, something I hadn’t done in over a decade. Something I had lost, but found again, thanks to June. I write to heal and to honor her everyday. I write to keep June’s legacy alive.
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In my every day waking life, I find the number 22. When I began to see through the fog of grief for the first time after June died, the number 22 appeared everywhere. It was a near constant reminder that wherever I went, she went too.
Most often, I see the number 22 on a license plate or a road sign. When it pops into my sphere, I always consider what my last thought was just before I spotted the number. It’s my spiritual roadmap. I value it’s significance. I receive it as a universal response to what had just passed through my subconscious. 22 brings deep thoughts to my conscious mind. Ones I may never have acknowledged as they flowed in and out of my brain on my drive to the grocery store or gym. Many of my ideas for a story are affirmed by the number 22.
Many times, the number 22 appears while I am in a doom spiral. It has the power to pull me away from fear and anxiety by reminding me that I am not alone. A fearful thought followed by seeing 22 is a quick bridge to more positive thinking. For example, if I am worrying about my health and a negative thought such as “I might die” comes to mind, but then I immediately see the number 22 on a license plate in front of me, I am reminded that I am protected and June is with me. After seeing 22, my fear usually dissipates and I am able to consciously replace the terrorizing thought of death with a mantra such as “I am healthy”. I repeat it until I forget what it was I was worried about.
Other times, I use the number 22 as a guide. It’s not a determining factor, but for example, when we decided to move and began to search for homes in Maryland, the number 22 presented itself in the very first home I toured. I never envisioned living in a home such as that first home, but after seeing the number 22 on the address, I remained open-minded that perhaps the road could lead there for our family.
It’s no coincidence that it lead directly to the neighborhood we now live in. If you peek out our bedroom window in our new house, you can see the first house I ever visited whose address ends with 22.
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We don’t take numbers lightly in our household. Whether it’s a number at the top of a receipt, a strange or coincidental occurrence that happens on the 22nd of a month, a road sign, or a rabbit with the number 22 tattooed in it’s ear at the fair, we find it, we see it, and we bring ourselves consciously back to June.
When we drive, my five-year-old daughter points out every number 22 she spots. It was the first double digit number she was able to read and voice. Every time she says, “Mama! 22!” we both smile and say, “Hi Junie.” We are creating meaning. June lives on through 22 and therefore, through my daughter and our family as a whole.
This is how we keep June alive, every day. We assign meaning to the very evident signs in front of us.
The number 22 is especially important because some days no one speaks June’s name in our household. School, activities, visits with friends, and staying present in our daily lives may not allow us to travel back in time to June. It doesn’t mean that every day we don’t think about her. The moments when the number 22 graces our lives are precious because we are reminded to say June’s name aloud. In that instance, she lives with us in the present time.
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I will forever follow the path of number 22. She is my northern star, my cosmic beauty, my effervescent golden baby. June shines her light into my present life using the number 22.
After June died, I searched high and low for meaning. I visited with mediums and psychics who were not able to give me what I was seeking which was to have my baby back in any form. In the days after she died, I cried out in the night, begging for her to send me a sign that she was not forever gone. The response to my pleas was silence. The frenetic energy surrounding finding the baby I had just lost so unnaturally clouded my vision.
Turning inward and listening to my intuition taught me to rely on myself and to not search for June in others. I began to draw from the skills I learned while we were going through treatment. When I did, I was able to see what had existed all along such as the patterns and numbers in my waking life.
Instead of shutting off my brain because ‘I must be crazy’, I leaned into it. I lost my daughter to cancer, surely, things couldn’t get worse.
I share this now for those of you who need a nudge to lean into your daily meaningful experiences. The ones that are sprinkled and take root all around you, often unnoticed.
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22 is the tip of the iceberg. It’s only one of the signs I see. There are many more. In that same first home we toured which was newly built and staged, there was a book called “Honest June” in the back of a closet. Just one children’s book in the entire house. The same house with the address that ended with number 22.
It’s also not a coincidence that the license plate on my daughter’s bus starts with 22.
Or that just after I finished writing this story, I went to a nail salon where the woman doing my nails whom I had just met asked me if I had any children.
“Two.”
Intrusive thoughts about losing June flooded me. My eyes wandered the salon, scouring white walls and hanging plants, looking for refuge in number 22.
As the nail technician pulled a box of polish from the drawer and set it on the table, I thought, “I’m so sorry I left you out this time, June.”
Just then, I noticed my number 22.
A physical presence may be lost, but a soul is never truly gone. We forever energetically live on.
It is up to us to keep our loved ones alive, to find meaning, and to believe in what our eyes see. For in this belief system, we give ourselves the hope we need to claw our way out of hell and to live our best life after losing someone we love.
For many months after June died, I searched for the signs which finally appeared when I was weary, frustrated, and hopeless. When I felt like giving up. They gave me hope which helped me to practice patience. Today, I don’t always have to consciously look for the signs. I’m not beaten down when they arrive. I find the energy flows freely and directly to me whether I am asking for it or not.
Every morning I wake up in my church and I am alive. I thank my Higher Power for giving me this day. I tell June how much I love and I miss her. Then, I open my eyes really wide and just believe.
