Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Terilyn Aquino. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Terilyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
The biggest risk I’ve taken is owning the title of “psychic” or “intuitive healer” and sharing my spiritual gifts with the world. Being psychic is not received well by society, at all! You say the word, and people immediately think you’re weird or crazy. The funny part about it all was that I knew how crazy it sounded, which made me scared to share it with the world, let alone my loved ones. When I finally got the courage to begin to tell my friends and family about my gifts or my interests, I could feel people pull away and I’ve lost close friends in the process.
What allows me to own this new title and feel confident in my work are my clients and what they get out of our work together. Seeing the immediate impact that my sessions have on people and hearing about the long-term effect of them make it all worthwhile. These sessions have helped clients get the confidence to start their own business or finally start a family of their own. People have described them as life changing. Even while I’m in session, I sometimes get so overwhelmed with gratitude because I can’t believe that I get to do this type of work and get to have this big of an impact on someone’s life.
I have learned that as long as I remain in my truth and move through life doing the things I love, the people that are meant to be in my life will be in my life. That risk is worth taking again and again. The days where the word psychic, healer, or even spirituality are weird and taboo – I think those days are long gone.
Terilyn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Terilyn, and I am a psychic, intuitive healer, and entrepreneur. I created Haightlove, which is a healing business that offers both psychic readings and energy healing sessions.
My story starts a couple years ago, when I was working at a big tech company and I began to get anxiety attacks. As time passed and my stress levels grew, my anxiety attacks started to grow in size, where they eventually became full blown panic attacks that I would have frequently and anywhere and everywhere – at work, with friends, at the grocery store, or even sitting on the couch watching TV with my partner. I had no idea how to handle it, was scared, and didn’t know why they were happening. I took all this as my cue to start therapy and as much as I thought therapy was helping, I still felt overwhelmed and extremely unhappy. I really couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin and felt so disconnected from myself and the people in my life.
In September 2022, I went on a 3 month medical leave for my anxiety and while I was on leave, I got laid off. As you can imagine, that didn’t help the anxiety much but it became the catalyst to the journey back to myself. My mental health was front and center. I have always been someone that has loved anything and everything wellness but never really explored my spirituality. Seeking answers or some type of guidance, I met with a psychic for the first time and in the session, she told me that I was a witch… and I remember thinking at the time, “Ok.. this is super weird. Thanks but no thanks.” Not feeling like I got anything from that session and still feeling desperate for answers, I saw another psychic and heard a similar message. This time though, this psychic told me that I was meant to be a healer and that my anxiety was my soul’s way of trying to get my attention – that I was going down the wrong path. And when I heard that, I immediately began to cry because that felt so right in my heart, as if I finally got the answer that I was searching for.
Since that session, I have spent over a year and half dedicating myself to my self-work. I became a student of life and a student of me. I had the opportunity to get really clear on what and who actually brings me joy. I had to part ways with long term friends that I thought were going to be my bridesmaids. I learned about the body and how to process my emotions in a healthy way. I revisited old memories that were difficult to look at but were ready to be forgiven and released.
As I continued to focus on my healing journey, I started to develop spiritual gifts along the way and as exciting as it was, it was more disorienting to say the least. I didn’t know what I was channeling, or if I was doing it right. I was terrified by these gifts and felt lonely – I didn’t feel like many people that I was close to could relate, or if I told them, they would think I was weird or judge me. I ended up taking classes and meeting a community of healers that helped me cultivate my gifts and with time, my confidence grew. I eventually was able to practice with family and friends, and they were amazed by what I was able to share and how validated and empowered they felt after our time together. I knew what I had was something special, and I wanted to share it with the world.
This is when Haightlove was born. Haightlove’s mission is to help people achieve inner freedom through gaining a deeper understanding of themselves and how they share themselves with the world. My work, specifically in the energy healing sessions, is centered around the subconscious mind and helping my clients understand how their mind works and opening them up to different perspectives and ways to think. About 95% of our brain activity is unconscious, meaning that 95% of the time we’re not calling the shots, our subconscious mind is. Our subconscious is responsible for a whole lot – it controls the vital functions and processes of our bodies. It’s where we store memories, emotions, behaviors, beliefs, values. Most of our daily activities are governed by the subconscious mind, without us even realizing it. We could have picked up habits and beliefs along this path of life without knowing it, and we may not be too fond of these habits and beliefs. They could possibly be limiting us from more happiness or deeper levels of joy. And even if we do want to go down that road of understanding our subconscious mind, we may have no idea where to start.
My sessions help guide this process and orient my clients in the right direction through the use of my spiritual gifts. I am channeling the client’s own higher spiritual power, and I refer to this as several names – Source/Spirit/Universe/God.
Sessions include a meditation, an interactive portion where I am asking the client questions, and a healing at the end. These sessions help provide clients a safe space to share themselves authentically and meet them where they’re at. They can provide clarity and validation, and promote self trust and self awareness. When we have this type of self discovery into our mind and how we think, we then get the choice to change and THAT is powerful. It puts us in the driver seat of our life instead of taking a backseat and letting life happen to us.
We all strive for happiness and peace but there isn’t any manual for success. What I’ve found is that the manual gets created by the individual and the individual can only figure out what works for them and what makes them happy when they begin to really understand themselves and how their mind works. As someone that felt like I had to be like everyone else to be able to feel cool or accepted, it’s been liberating to learn who I am and feel safe in who I am. I really believe this work I’m doing is incredibly special and want people to come away with it feeling like they can feel safe in who they are and live their lives the way that they want to.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Could be quite the cliche, but the biggest lesson I had to unlearn was that productivity equals progress. In this busy world, we place so much value in productivity, stress, and working more hours. We accept it too as our norm. We believe that we need to work harder to prove our worth only to find that we are more burnt out and less happy. I’ve learned that rest is a key ingredient to growth and creativity. I have made it my absolute priority to rest as much as I work. I stumbled upon a book called Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. In it, he describes successful leaders who prioritized sabbaticals, hour-long walks to break up their days, and deep play. When I began to take on this radical way of thinking, I gave my brain the time, space, and energy to finally just be. Within those resting periods, I have found that I get my best ideas for my business that I wouldn’t have been able to with consistent overworked hours.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
When I was laid off from my job in the big tech layoffs, I was committed to not returning back to a corporate job. I was driven and motivated to get my business in a place where I could do it full time. I have an incredible partner that was supporting me the whole way and even if we had to buckle down on our finances, my business was worth it.
Although with time, our resources became more limited and I found myself putting all my eggs in this one basket. I have all the intention in the world for my side hustle to be my full time job – it’s my dream. But it began to feel like my business wasn’t fun anymore, like I HAD to make it work or it was a failure. This type of stress limited my creativity and limited my excitement around what I was doing. If there’s anything that I learned from this process, slow and steady really does win the race. I want to be able to respond to my business, not react. Once I came to a realization that if I were to return back to a corporate job, a huge weight was lifted. Returning to work gave me the resources and the time to give my business the love and time that it deserves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.haightlove.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terilynaquino/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terilynaquino/
Image Credits
Jerrick Orozco Hailey Coleman