Roots
It started on a river in Belem, Brazil more than 10 years ago.
Founder and spiritual director Rev. Esmeralda P.W. Barnes was on a 6-week pilgrimage to her native land. She was sick. Years of grappling with the effects of physical and sexual abuse and addiction took a toll on her body, and things were getting worse. Beyond cascading medical issues, one of her doctors told her she had a tumor in her uterus and was not sure what it was. He sounded ominous, but asked her to come back in 6 months.
Things had been declining health-wise for sometime. She decided to explore her birth country and see her grandmother, perhaps for the last time. Belem was the third city on her pilgrimage; Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia were the first and second. Her return to Belem was not random. She had been in recovery from eating disorders and physical and sexual abuse for 10 years. She was molested twice in Belem when she was 12. It was important, she felt, to go back to the hotel where it happened.
Taking It Back
She walked into the hotel lobby feeling like a ghost. It bustled. She remembered, visualized herself at 12 and summoned the energy of that vulnerable, broken girl who didn’t know she had a choice, a right to safety. It didn’t take long for her to feel a shift.
The next day, she took a boat trip to a river one tributary from the Amazon River. The morning was overcast, the river calm and quiet, except for the distant sounds of exotic wildlife and children literally playing on the river, and not on the banks. It was low tide, and they ran right down the middle of the river and looked as if they were walking on water.
The Call
She watched them and breathed deeply, feeling her heart lighten at the sight and sound of carefree childhood bliss. The wind gently stroked her skin, seeming to whisper a message that would foretell a new branch of destiny for this career journalist.
When you go home, tell the owner of Terra Christa [a metaphysical shop in Vienna, VA] not to move. You will begin working there as a spiritual life coach and counselor using your intuition to help people. This will just be the beginning. The power is within you.
The message was odd, since she had only visited that shop once. Writing was in her soul, and she could never give that up. She wondered how she would help people at Terra Christa, or anywhere else. She knew she had spiritual gifts—premonitions, prophetic dreams, really good instincts and more. It’s a family legacy. But it was difficult to conceive of how she would use them like the message predicted.
The Path
After six weeks in Brazil visiting a total of five cities (the last two cities were her home town of Recife and then Sao Paulo), she returned to the states. Reluctantly, she went to Terra Christa and just couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone—let alone the shop owner—to do, or not to do, anything. Then a customer asked the cashier a question, “Are you all still moving?”
Stunned, Rev. Barnes summoned the courage to set up an appointment with Mary Ruth Van Landingham, Terra Christa’s owner. She gave her the message, and Van Landingham put her on Terra Christa’s calendar as a spiritual life coach/reader/counselor.
That was more than a decade ago. Today, Rev. Barnes is an ordained interfaith minister—after two-years of seminary— with a growing national clientele. Clients in the Washington metropolitan-area have booked readings and spiritual counseling with her at Terra Christa, Crystalis Treasures in Herndon, VA and Esoterica in Leesburg, VA. Her national presence has been building largely by word of mouth and through her stints in New England as a spiritual counselor.
Beyond her spiritual counseling work, she heads a communication firm and is an activist raising awareness about sexual abuse and recovery.
The rest of her story—our story—is literally being written. Stay tuned.
