Salt Lake City Story

 

Salt Lake City Story

 

It was the summer of 1994, I woke up early and packed my two young children, Asia who just turned 4 and Johnny who was 2 years old, into the car and drove down away from the home I had purchased at 25 years old while I was still pregnant with Asia. I had used my own savings and my own credit history to purchase a 4 bed room home with swimming pool. We had four years of bitter sweet memories. Mostly sweet, but I had sheltered my children from the bitter and knew in order to keep us all safe we needed to leave. Their father had taken up drinking which led to hard drugs and violence.

 

I drove 24 hours straight from Massachusetts to Wisconsin, only stopping for gas. I met several friends at A Course in Miracles retreat center where there were other children and many spiritually minded beautiful people. We were having the time of our lives when one week later my father and brother came to take us home, the kids father had told them that the retreat center was a cult. We went home with my father to New Hampshire, but that was not easy, my father worried about me and had set up counseling with a cult deprogramming psychologist and took away my car. I was 29 years old and not enjoying the lack of freedom. However, an unexpected miracle occurred and my brother David, out of the blue, invited me to visit him in Las Vegas, Nevada. We spend one week in Las Vegas, the last day we were there we celebrated Johnny’s 3rd birthday.

 

A couple we had met in Wisconsin had contacted us and invited us to Salt Lake City, Utah. I had never heard of the place, so I asked them what it was like in Salt Lake City, Utah. They told me there were Mormons and mountains. I loved mountains, so things were looking good, but I had never heard of a Mormon. So I asked what a Mormon was, and they told me they were people who had a lot of children who wore hand me down clothing. I love children, and I loved my cousin’s hand me down clothes, so I told them to pick me up. I didn’t want to go back to my father and the cult deprogramming psychologist, and it was not an option to go back to the children’s father, so I figured Salt Lake City was my best option at the time.

 

So I landed in Salt Lake City in 1994 at 29 years old with my 3 and 4 year old angels. I had no home, no car, no job, no family, no friends, and maybe $500 in cash. We all shared one suitcase on our flight to Vegas so I was pretty much a hobo with a total of one suitcase of possessions. We stayed in the basement of a friend of the couple who brought us to Salt Lake City, a family of 10 with one bathroom!

 

I worked in a preschool because any job with my bachelor’s degree was not enough to pay for two young children in daycare. I eventually started my own business teaching class’s, life coaching and massage therapy. I purchased my first home, which I refinanced to buy John’s Place Exotic Elixir Bar after John’s passing on July 24th 2017.

 

Today it is May of 2018, although I have 5,000 friends on facebook, an accredited 200 hour yoga school, Center for Awakening 20 year established 501 C 3 non-profit organization, properties in Costa Rica, Utah and Idaho, a physical and online nature Apothecary, and of course John’s Place Exotic Elixirs I am far less wealthy in many ways because my beloved son John James Delaney III, is no longer physical present in my life. However, he is very present spiritually and I am forwarding the movement he started, for world peace, prosperity, freedom, and health for all people and the planet. It is a big calling but what else is there for me to do?