From Redundancy to Reiki: Finding Her Way Back | Debi Barr

Debi Barr describes herself as “feral at 50” — but that phrase only makes sense when you understand the path that led her there.

Raised in Northern Ireland in a strict religious environment, Debi learned early how to be the “good girl”: quiet, compliant, and careful not to disrupt the fragile emotional balance around her. Beneath that, she was already experiencing the world differently — sensing energy, questioning beliefs, and noticing things she couldn’t explain.

As she grew older, that part of her life was gradually set aside. She built what looked like a stable, successful life: career, marriage, children, and financial responsibility. But underneath, the pressure was building — emotionally, physically, and mentally.

A sudden job loss became the turning point. What initially felt like instability revealed something deeper: she had lost her connection to herself.

This conversation follows Debi’s path through grief, depression, medication, financial stress, and eventual reconnection with her intuition. It explores how she rebuilt her life, redefined work, and developed a spiritual practice that now forms the basis of her business.

This is not a story about a linear transformation. It’s a gradual return — shaped by difficult decisions, trial and error, and the process of learning to trust herself again.

Key Takeaways

• You can build a life that works on the outside while feeling disconnected internally.
• Early environments often shape how much of yourself you allow to be visible.
• Major disruptions (loss, redundancy, illness) can expose misalignment rather than create it.
• Coping mechanisms (work, medication, alcohol) can mask deeper issues but don’t resolve them.
• Rebuilding isn’t immediate — it often involves trial, error, and gradual change.
• Returning to creativity or intuition is often less about learning something new and more about remembering.
• Financial pressure and identity are closely linked — especially when work defines self-worth.
• Spiritual practices can become practical tools when grounded in real-life experience.
• Support doesn’t always come from structured systems — sometimes it’s built over time through personal networks.
• Change can look disruptive from the outside but necessary from the inside.

About: Debi Barr is a soul guide, mentor, and bestselling author of The Call of the Sacred Rebel. She helps people reclaim their power and remember who they really are - through deep energetics, spiritual mentoring, and creative expression.
Her work blends spiritual insight with unapologetic self-expression, guiding others to live with courage, clarity, and purpose.  

Connect at FB, LinkedIn, IG, Website

Transcript

Intro and Listener Questions

Debi Barr 0:01

Pink hair, feral at 50 is my hashtag right now because I turned 50 last year. And I thought I'm gonna age disgracefully. I am gonna just, you know what, for the next year anyway, I'm gonna rock the pink hair and see what happens. Because I'd always from I was about like 10 years ago, I was like, I put a pink wig on at a party one night, and I was like, oh, I like that. And then I was too scared to do it. And then I thought, you know what? I turned 50 and I went, you know what, I'm gonna dye my hair pink. And I did. So and then I coined the phrase, I'll be feral at 50. So that's what's happening because life's too short to be boring.

Regina Sayer 0:37

Feral at 50, yes, you did hear that. That's exactly what my guest Debi Barr described herself as hot pink here and feral at 50. This is such a fascinating discussion with someone who really is the epitome of someone who follows their dream and someone who came back to themselves after realizing after a major crisis that she had turned into someone who she wasn't. And where had that person gone? Where had that creative, fun, spiritual, mystical person disappeared to? And so she worked on herself and it took years until she came back to that person and gradually built the business that she has now. So it's a really interesting discussion. It's fun, it's imaginative, it's spiritual, it's practical. And it talks about what happens when the rug is pulled out from underneath you, when you lose your job, a job you've given everything to that you thought, no, this is not possible. There are so many aspects of this story that I think will really reach out to a lot of people. Debi tells it with practicality, she tells it with humor, and she tells it with realistic insight into what was happening with herself that I'm sure that many people can relate to. Through it all, she manages to find her way to Reiki. It's a very different viewpoint on Reiki than I've actually heard before. Now I have two levels of Reiki, and I do discuss with her some of the questions that I have based on what she does with her Reiki. And I just thought that that was so interesting. I've not heard that before. It's also about, you know, what happens when the people that you love pass on and how they come back to you in spirit. So there are a lot of different aspects in here. I think the most important one is finding yourself or returning back to that being that you once were or that you hoped to be. And after being lost along the way, managing to do what it takes to come back to it. So I hope that you'll listen. I hope that you'll be inspired. And if you think you know somebody who might need this inspiration, who might have a similar story, please do pass along the episode, share it. It's a way of helping other people. And I think that would be something that Debi would also be really glad that you did if her story could help somebody else that you know as well as you. Welcome back to Wisdom Without the Guru. I have a couple of questions, as usual, for you to think about before we start into our dialogue with our guest. Think about this. What happens when you spend years hiding the most important part of yourself? And what about this in terms of career? How do you rebuild when a career you thought was secure disappears overnight? And I think a lot of people can relate to that because a lot of jobs disappeared after COVID. What if the end of a marriage turned out to being the beginning of your real calling? So our guest today has lived all of those questions. Born in a small town in Northern Ireland, where it's quite hot right now, amazingly, Debi Barr grew up in a strict religious household where spiritual experiences were something you just didn't talk about. She built a conventional life until a series of losses from her father's death to career upheaval forced her to start asking who she really was beneath the roles and expectations. So Debi's path has been anything but straight. Along the way, she's navigated family riffs, personal reinvention, and the delicate balance of bringing a deeply spiritual business into a world that doesn't always understand it. Today we'll explore how she found the courage to reclaim her voice, the practical steps she took to turn intuition into livelihood, and what her story can teach us about finding purpose after life pulls the rug out from under you. So welcome Debi. Thanks so much for joining.

Debi Barr 4:57

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for that lovely introduction. It was the most beautifully put way that I have I have heard. So thank you very much for that.

Regina Sayer 5:06

We've been having actually having a chat before we started because um when this podcast is being recorded, it's during a summer heat wave. And Debi's telling me that um oh what did you just say about the air con?

Debi Barr 5:20

Yeah, if they uh if this if these temperatures, if uh climate change keeps going the way it's going and the global temperatures keep rising, we might have to think about having air conditioning in homes in Ireland. And these are words that should never be put together because it's not normal for us. So uh yeah, I'm praying for the autumn season to come in and to cooler temperatures, but right now it is uncomfortably hot here.

Regina Sayer 5:42

Well, you already said you're you're an autumn gal, right? Is that you? Yeah, you like falls.

Debi Barr 5:49

I am. I am a big autumn girl. I love the spooky season as I call it. It's just I feel the magic in the air and the transition. I love the colours, the colours of the leaves. Um, and I was blessed to be in Canada this time last year or in September, just as the leaves were changing, because obviously they're beautiful fall colours.

Regina Sayer 6:09

Yeah, when I lived in Singapore, that's one thing I really missed is because you don't have this, you know, where it's quite close to the equator, you don't have this transition of seasons. So, you know, you had just a tiny little bit of difference. In about like January, February, where, you know, it got slightly cooler, but you didn't have these beautiful change in colours like that. I don't know. It's hard for me to pick what my favourite season is. It's definitely not winter, I can tell you that.

Debi Barr 6:39

The reason I think that people don't like winter, apart from, you know, obviously it's darker and it's cold, is the fact that we continually push through. We continually keep trying to run at 100 miles an hour as if it's still summertime and we're still trying to do all the things. And yet nature and everything around us is advising us to slow down, to go within, to rest, to recuperate. But we don't do that. We just keep going. And then obviously Christmas is right in the middle of it for the northern hemisphere in the winter, and it's, you know, the most crazy, busy, stressful season, and everybody's just trying to do all the things. And I think perhaps if we listen to nature and listen to our bodies, it might not be such a bad time. It might be a time for rest and gathering with your your friends and your family around your fire and having stories and talking and having you know community. But maybe I'm just living in a dreamland. I do quite like the autumn and the winter because I like those, I like that cocoon that it creates.

Regina Sayer 7:39

Yeah, I like the autumn because I love it when the leaves start to change and there's that different smell in the weather, you know. And but for me, growing up in the Bahamas when it snows, that's just a bit too extreme for me. I really I don't I don't like it. It scares me because I don't like to drive in it, you know. I'm just a totally green person when it comes to driving in snow and ice.

Debi Barr 8:01

So I do like a little challenge. Yeah I do like a little challenge with but it we get quite a lot of snow and ice here, so it's something that we just get used to.

Regina Sayer 8:11

But that is actually a good point that I will keep in mind when winter rolls around that I should hibernate more.

Debi Barr 8:16

Yeah. Yeah, hibernate more. It's an excuse. It's an excuse to eat gorgeous warming soups and stews and root vegetables and nourish yourself and just, you know, stay indoors and away from all the people.

Regina Sayer 8:29

Oh, I do that anyway. Work from home.

Debi Barr 8:33

Same.

Regina Sayer 8:34

Anyway, getting into the actual content of our actual podcast. So you were born in a small coastal town in Northern Ireland. So talk about your life growing up, you know, what it was like living in spiritual or Christian or whatever you want to define it as, household. And you also grew up in quite a large household as well. If I remember, you said you had nine half-brothers and sisters.

Debi Barr 9:02

Yeah, although they didn't live with us.

Regina Sayer 9:05

But all those dynamics of all these different relationships that there were, and you know, what that meant for you and how you viewed yourself, of course, looking through the eyes of a child, because we can always with hindsight say, oh yeah, I acted that way because, but at the time you didn't know. And um, you know, what are your safe places that you went to, you know, or the fun things that you did, not only places, but safe people that you had in your life.

Debi Barr 9:33

So yeah, I was born in County Down in Northern Ireland, born in the mid-70s, to parents who had previously been married to other people who had then got together and had me, was the sort of short abridged version of the their story. They were both at the time when they when my parents met, um, and they they had me. They were not married, which was not the the done thing in Ireland at the time, but that was kept secret from me for many years, and I didn't know that until I was sort of much older because they were so ashamed of it, because it was each of their families, they were going through divorces, so obviously there was time to have all this. So long and the short of it was I had nine half-brothers and sisters, um, all of whom were at least 10, if not 20 years older than me. So my parents were a good bit older. They were in their 40s when they had me, they'd had their first families when they were in their 20s. So there was a generational thing as well that obviously when I was at school, quite often people would say to me, Is that your granddad picking you up? Is that, you know, or it was my dad? And I used to feel really kind of embarrassed about that.

Regina Sayer 10:42

And that's what they say to my son about me and and my husband, because I was 40 when I had him. So they used to always say my hair was short and grey, and they say, Oh, is that your grandmother? And he used to be so embarrassed.

Debi Barr 10:56

Yeah. So it's a similar, it's a similar thing. You know, I, you know, I remember feeling hugely embarrassed and being like, no, but at the same time fiercely proud that no, that's my daddy, because my daddy was my world. He was he was really strict, he was scarily strict. My dad had been going to be a minister, had been wanting to train to be a minister whenever he was in his first marriage. But then when he got divorced, that ceased to be an option for him, and he was no longer able to do that. So he had, in his own words, backslid from the church and had, you know, got involved. He was playing guitar and singing in a bar. That's where him and my mum met. So they had met in a bar in a completely secular environment, no Christianity involved at that point, got together, had me. So for the first number of years of my life, there there was not a heavy overtone of Christianity, but then they rediscovered their faith. And at that point, when I was about seven or eight years old, I could feel the weight of this Christianity sort of pressing down. When I was a very young child, I remember my my dad was always he was fascinated with um, you know, teaching me things and helping me learn. And he was an artist. So I used to love to watch him paint. But he had um he had heart trouble, um, had a massive heart attack whenever I was about six years old. And it was that that really I remember, that was probably some of my earliest memories are of don't be too noisy, don't do these things. What what's your daddy's heart? What's your daddy's heart? And I learned very quickly that it was easier for me to be seen and not heard. It was easier for me to be, you know, to be quiet and be a good girl. And I was constantly seeking their approval. It was like, you know, as kids do, we constantly seek our parents' approval. And I didn't have a bad childhood by any stretch of the imagination. I knew I was loved and I knew I was cared for, but there was something else going on that didn't, I couldn't understand what it was. These other people, these nine half-brothers and sisters, as a child I didn't know what that meant. I was like, what do you mean, a half what? And then they were married to people and there was like in-laws, and I was just, I spent most of my young childhood confused as to who all these people were. I was like, what's going on? Who are these people and why do they not seem to like me? What's the what have I done? Because obviously I had been the product of this affair, clearly, that my parents must have had, and then this little bubble of joy bundle comes along and goes, hi. And I just wanted to love everybody, but everybody was a little bit off with me. And I could I it wasn't my fault, you know, and I didn't understand. But as an adult, I can look back and understand. I can understand the the stress and the acrimony that must have been there. I remember that my mum was always a little bit fragile and spent a lot of time upset when she spoke to her sister or she spoke to people from her background um or spoke to her children. There was always tears. And then I started to think, oh goodness, you know, I have to be really good so she doesn't cry. And I have to be really good so my dad doesn't get upset and hurt his heart. And because my dad was very strict, it was also like I knew it'd be good, so I, you know, he never smacked me, but one look would have been enough to have you run in for cover. Yeah, it was he didn't need to say a word. But if he did, then you were, you knew it was over. You were you were you were gone. But my safe place as a young child was in the garden. I used to love lying on the grass and playing with the daisies, and I used to love looking up at the sky. And as my mum and dad had started to get into their church, there was an awful lot of talk about people going to heaven, and you know, you do these good things, and then you know, then you go to heaven, and if you're bad, you go to hell. So there was this fear of I better not be bad because I don't want to don't want to go there. That sounds awful. But I would have lay in the garden sometimes playing with daisies, making daisy chains and playing with my I had lots of teddy bears. My teddy bears were my safe space, so I had all didn't like dolls. Teddy bears. So I had all these lovely cuddly bears, and I'd have maybe sat with them teaching them how to make daisy chains or teaching them in some shape or fashion, or having my little stethoscope and pretending to be a doctor or whatever. And I would lie sometimes on the ground and look up at the sky. And I'd look up at the sky and I would see these sparkles. I know we talked about this previously. I saw these sparkles, and I was like, I thought everybody could see these. I was like, I said, Mum, I said, are those those little sparkles that are in the sky, are they all the people going to heaven? And my mum looked at me like, What? It's like, gee, can you not see those? I said, Oh, those little, I said, they're like little squiggles and little swirls of energy. I says, little sparks of light going up into the sky. I says, That must be all the people going to heaven. And she just looked at me and went, Yes, love. But she looked at me like I was crazy. And I had other sort of spiritual or energetic experiences like that as a kid, where

Regina Sayer 15:41

I'm gonna jump in here with that because I just want to talk about the fact that we did talk about this before because Debi is the first person that I have ever met that has had that same experience because I have had that experience, but I had that experience as an adult. If I had it as a child, I don't remember. Because after I had that big energetic opening or whatever it was that kundalini rising, I don't know, whatever you want to call it in Singapore, I was looking out the window one day and saw all these little shiny, sparkly things shooting all over the place. And I was said to my husband, Hey, do you see that? He says, What? And nobody else saw it. And I even went to the eye doctor to and he said, Okay, let's see if you got a retina tear or something in your eye. And there was nothing wrong with my eyes. And it's interesting because I don't see them all the time and I haven't seen them in a while. But two or three days ago, I saw them again. It's wild when you see them and they turn into these at night for me, they turn into what you say are these like spirally shapes. And it's only in certain places. I think it's the energy. I think it's only in certain places where you see all these squiggles. I mean, when I went back to the Bahamas when my mom was was very sick and just before she passed away, wow, in her house, oh, it was just everywhere, everywhere. I couldn't sleep at night. I was just looking up at the ceiling, like, whoa, what's this?

Debi Barr 17:08

I think it's where where you're comfortable as well. Because when you're comfortable and relaxed and you look and you see, that's that's usually when you see them. But I do see them quite like I can see them sometimes. If I let my eyes go into self-focus, I can see them in the walls of my house. I can see them on the floor, I can see it's not just outside, but as a kid, it was always in the sky. It was always because I remember lying on the grass and I used to, I used to think that when the planes were going past and leaving, you know, like the white trail behind them, I used to think that they were scratching the sky. I used to say, Look, the planes are scraping the sky, because you know when you if you scraped your skin, you left a white mark. I thought that's what was happening in the sky, that the planes were like scraping across the sky. It was the innocence of a child.

Regina Sayer 17:50

Did you ever see the ground moving? Because I see

Debi Barr 17:53

sometimes like a shimmer.

Regina Sayer 17:56

Yeah. And I remember one once time in Singapore, I had one of these, you know, these wooden dividers that you have. And uh it had this Indian design on it. And I got up one day and I looked at it, and the thing was moving in this wave. And I was like, let me look again. And it was this wave pattern, like, and this is what I felt in my body, actually, a wave going through my body. And that, you know, it got to the point where I couldn't even look at the ground without seeing this wave. People would say, Okay, meditate, sit still, look at the ground. I was like, no, I don't think so.

Debi Barr 18:33

This is the thing, it's just energy. It's just energy, it's everywhere. But as a kid, I you know, I had these experiences. I was, I remember always, I couldn't understand why the adults were always fighting and why they were always angry with each other and why there was always something going on. Because all I could see was the beauty in everyone. I could see like this radiance shining out of everyone, and I was like, why is everybody so cross? Everybody's so beautiful. Why, what's happening? And you know, I couldn't understand.

Regina Sayer 18:58

Did you have any friends that you told out that you told about these things that you saw?

Loss of her father and its long-term impact

Debi Barr 19:04

No, because this was the thing. As a as a child, even though I had all these half siblings, I was raised as an only child with older parents. So I spent an awful lot of time on my own in my own little world. And I spent a lot of time drawing and playing with my teddy bears. I had friends at school, but we didn't see each other outside of school very much. So in school, we would have done the thing, but in school, I was the good girl and I did what I was told, and I loved to learn. So I was there to play with my friends, yes, and to like I loved, I like I soaked up learning like a sponge, and I still do. It's like it's one of my favorite things to do is to learn and to be reading and to understand. And I remember even as a child inventing homework to do because I loved it so much. Like I literally had my basic reading books, you know, Mark and Jean and Pip the Dog or whatever it was. And I remember saying to my dad, I have to practice my handwriting and I have to write these out. And my dad was going, You're in P1, what are you doing? And I was like, No, I've been given homework, hadn't been given homework. I was just inventing this because I loved it so much. And anytime I got frightened, I would have this dream, or what was apparently a dream, of this big lion coming to look after me. But the lion initially used to scare me. And I used to run into my mum and dad's room and go, There's a lion on the stairs, help me. And they would be like, She's having that dream again. But I realised as an adult that it's it's not a dream. It was my spirit, one of my spirit guides, one of my animal guardians coming to look after me, the strength of a lion. So my early childhood was very much sort of, you know, there was a lot of play, a lot of wanting to be a teacher, teaching my teddy bears in a little, in a little circle, wanting to be a medic, you know, having my my stethoscope in and pretending that I was checking their heart and checking their pulse and all these things. And I think that came from spending so much time in hospital with my dad whenever he had had multiple heart attacks at this point.

Regina Sayer 21:00

Was it scary?

Debi Barr 21:01

Yeah, it was. It was scary because he was my world. You know, I leaned on him. When I got if I got sick, I went to him. I didn't go to my mum. I always went, I want my daddy, I want my daddy. It must have really hurt my mum. And but I was like, I want my daddy, I want my daddy, and I never wanted my mum because my dad had a way of calming me down and making me feel safe. Whereas my mum, because she was quite nervous energy, she nearly inflamed the situation by trying to make it better and trying too hard. And it was like, so I always wanted him. He died suddenly when I was 14. So when that happened, it was like, what do I do now? The bottom of my world just completely it had gone. And I was like, things like this don't happen to people like me. What? Um, and I was so shocked. And I remember thinking, if I walk back outside out the door and come back in, this'll all just have been a silly joke. Um and obviously it wasn't. Um, because a friend's father had died about six months before. And I remember Thinking things like this only happen to people like her, which was a terrible thing to think, but that was what came into my head as a 14-year-old. I was like, that doesn't happen to me. This is my life. And I was so shocked because he had been absolutely fine that day. What really upset me was the fact that I didn't say goodbye to him before I went out because he was he was working. My dad was in the middle of writing a book at the time. When the door was closed, you did not interrupt under pain of death. You did not interrupt him if the door was closed. So I didn't say goodbye. And I went into my friend's house next door, and when I came back, he was dead. And it was like such a shock.

Regina Sayer 22:37

How did your mom and like the church make you feel around that?

Hiding parts of herself and early spiritual experiences

Debi Barr 22:45

Yeah, the church rallied round my mum, and I'm not, you know, it wasn't it was nice to have that support, but I was very aware. And at this point, obviously, I was approaching, you know, I was approaching my mid-teens. I had started to explore what these weird things were that I was seeing and what um explore quietly, privately behind the scenes, because we didn't tell, we didn't tell mum and dad that. And I also was into my rock music, and I couldn't play that in front of my father either. So it was there was a lot of my life that was hidden behind the scenes. And then the good girl came out and went to school, and then when the when my bedroom door was closed, I was reading about paranormal. I was reading about all the different things.

Regina Sayer 23:22

And where did you get those books from? how did you sneak those books into the house?

Debi Barr 23:27

The library. The library.

Regina Sayer 23:29

And they didn't when you lived in a small town, no doubt, they didn't tell on you.

Teenage years: music, identity, and questioning belief systems

Debi Barr 23:33

No, no, it wasn't that small. So um it was a small town, but it wasn't a village. It wasn't, it wasn't like tiny. So it had started to have a bit of urban sprawl, and not everybody knew everybody, so that was okay. I think had I lived in the Republic of Ireland where it was like little smaller villages and everybody knows everybody, and you are you you do what you're told because everybody knows your mommy, and we'll tell on you, that would have been different. But no, I was sneaking these books in. And randomly my father had a big, massive book from Reader's Digest called Into the Unknown, and it was sitting in his office, and I used to go and say, Can I borrow that? And he would go, Yeah, because it was a scientific exploration of these things. You know, it was more sort of written from the point of view of, you know, can we explain what spontaneous combustion is? Can we explain what this so I was like soaking all this information in, and when he died, then I took that book and that was mine. And when he died, I didn't have to sneak the books in because my mum didn't, my didn't care what I was reading. Um, she was too consumed by her grief, bless her, and too consumed with trying to keep going, you know, and that she was trying to still live up to the church standards that, you know, she had to be the grieving widow for a period of time and had to do everything that, you know, according to still get to church. And she didn't drive, bless her. So she was relying on people from the church coming. So there was an awful lot of people from the church in the house all the time. And as a result, then I really had to mind my P's and Q's. I had already started to explore who I was with how I was dressing. So I would wear black and I would have earrings and I would have like my nails painted black, and I would, you know, when my dad was still alive, that was the only way I could kind of express my displeasure at being made to go to church every Sunday at least twice. Sometimes three times on a Sunday, you would be dragged along because he was a lay preacher for the church. So he periodically would have stood up and done some teaching, and he was a Bible class leader. You know, he would have regularly delivered a sermon on the evils of heavy metal music and how his daughter was evidence of this corruption.

Regina Sayer 25:35

How did you get into heavy metal music? I mean, I know that was probably the age for it, but um that time period.

Debi Barr 25:41

Always I was I never liked the trendy pop stuff. So even my my very first record that I ever bought was Adam and the Ants. So it was like an oh stand and deliver. It was my very first, the very first sing single I can nearly speak that I ever bought was Adam and the Ants. And I remember jumping around my living room at about the age of five with a stripe across my nose and pretending I had guns, and like I was loving my life. My mum and dad were into country and western music, so I was like, no, we are not listening to Charlie Pride and the Crystal Chandelier today. Thanks very much. So I was like, what can I listen to that's not that? And that was from the age of four or five. So I think I came into the world already liking an edgier vibe and to shake things up a little bit. And I initially was into sort of like pop rock. So I liked a little bit of aha and I liked Bon Jovi. Um and Bon Jovi then was my gateway drug into heavier, into heavier music because Bon Jovi was my John Bon Jovi was my idol for years. I loved the man. I had posters all over my wall. There was no one like him. I cried for days when he married Dorothea. When he married his childhood sweetheart, I wept. I put a black dot on the date on my calendar, and I was like, my life is over. He is never going to marry me. This was my my escapism was music, my escapism from the structure and the rigidity of the Christian sort of heaviness and the you must do it this way and you must conform to this path and be a good girl and do your exams and then get married and have kids. And so I find my escape in the lyrics of music.

Regina Sayer 27:23

By the way, if you're just listening to this podcast, Debi is sitting here in a black top and she's got hot pink hair.

Debi Barr 27:34

Pink hair. Feral at 50 is my hashtag right now because I turned 50 last year. And I thought, I'm gonna age disgracefully. I'm gonna just, you know what, for the next year anyway, I'm gonna rock the pink hair and see what happens. Because I'd always from I was about like 10 years ago, I was like, I put a pink wig on at a party one night, and I was like, oh, I like that. And then I was too scared to do it, and then I thought, you know what? I turned 50 and I went, you know what, I'm gonna dye my hair pink, and I did so, and then I coined the phrase, I'll be feral at 50. So that that's what's happening because life's too short to be boring. Uh so yeah, my my escape as a child, my safe place that you asked me, was music. Music and writing, creative writing. And I used to write stories for hours and hours and hours and sit up and look at the stars. And I was very I had friends at this point, teenage friends, um, who were then my safety network, and we're still friends to this day. So that's actually really nice.

Regina Sayer 28:31

Do you get the writing from your dad? Because you said your father was writing a book. Was he an author?

Debi Barr 28:37

I think so. He he wanted to be. My dad, bless him. He was a very intelligent man. He was always stretching his mind, always trying to understand things. And yes, yes, he was very strict. Yes, he was very into his church. But he also would have listened and debated. So it wasn't just, you know, his his way or the highway, it was his way or the highway for me as a child, as in you will be home and in bed for nine o'clock, even if you're 14. Those rules were set in stone. But when it came to spirituality and his church and his religion, he was always trying to learn. One of his big regrets was that he had never been had the opportunity to go to university or had never had the chance to do like any sort of formal study. Because it just when he was growing up, it wasn't an option. Sadly, just before he died, he got accepted onto a foundation degree with Open University, and he was so excited. He had just got all his books for this foundation degree, and he had just he bought all his little flashcards and he had got everything ready, and he was so he was like a child with excitement. And as part of this, he was trying to he was writing a book on his understanding of the book of Revelations and the Bible. That's what he was trying to write his book on. And as I say, he had just all the books from from the open university had arrived about the September or the October of the year he died, and then he passed away in December. And so he didn't get very long. And I think that stuck with me as well as a lesson of if you want to do something, do it now because tomorrow's not promised. So it gave me a real sense of if you want to do something, you've got to do it. Yet at the same time, I had I had that push-pull. So yeah, I think I got the writing from him a little and the learning, the voracious learning need from him.

Regina Sayer 30:28

And what kind of writing were you doing?

Debi Barr 30:30

At the time I was writing, I was writing um typical teenage fantasy about, you know, the boy, the boy down the road that you liked, the the the guy from the travelling fair, or, you know, these escapism sort of stories where life was not in this little room hiding behind a wall. It was like you were out living your life and you'd had your kids and you were doing your, you were teaching and you were doing everything you wanted to do. So it was they were very, probably very childlike, but they were also me stretching the muscles off writing. And I would have also written stories. Um, I remember at school writing a really powerful and evocative piece about fox hunting from the point of view of the fox. I took on the persona of the fox in this story and was like talking about like the stress and the fear and the my heart thumping as I was being chased by these dogs. And I was always trying to express emotion or what was what was bubbling under the surface with me in my writing in some shape or fashion. Because when dad died, I just threw up a big wall when I was like, I have to be okay because mum's not. I have to be okay.

Regina Sayer 31:36

You said that after he passed away, you had visitations from him.

Debi Barr 31:40

I did, which um which actually kind of made me laugh a little because obviously he was so into his church, and it was like, you know, when you die, you go straight to heaven and that's it. And you know, there's no such thing as ghosts. And yet he's the first person to come back. You know, he's like, I'm okay, don't stress, it's all right. And the visitations, one of the first ones was a couple of nights after he died. I had a very lucid dream, very real dream, very lucid. I was aware I was dreaming, so I knew this was something, something different. And I saw him talking to Jesus, and he had his book, he had his revelations book that he was writing, and he was going, Um, was I right about this bit? It was like he was checking with God, with Jesus. I didn't see the character what I actually saw in my mind. I always this is gonna sound really silly, but in my in my child like imagination, this big God character sort of sat in a heaven that had like a big glass screen and like watched everything, you know, and was like watching every move you make, but there was a wooden floor, like a bare wood floor and Moses sandals and like the white, the white frocks that they all wore. Um so all I saw was the most the wooden floor, the Moses sandals and the white, the bottom of the white dress, and then my dad sitting there. So it was only my dad I really saw against these feet, and he was showing this, and he just looked over his shoulder and he went, I'm okay, you don't need to worry about me. Look after your mum. And I was like, Okay. And I felt a sense of peace that he was okay. Things like this would have continued where my dad played guitar and his guitar was downstairs, and periodically you would gear as if it had fallen over. You know, there would have been like a as if somebody had strummed it or it had fallen over, but you would go down and it hadn't moved, but the strings were vibrating, or you would hear his key go in the door at the time that he would have come into the house, or sometimes I would have heard glasses rattle in the kitchen where he would have been making a cup of tea or coffee or something, and I would have heard like the cups or the the the crockery rattling.

Regina Sayer 33:34

And did your mum hear these as well?

Debi Barr 33:36

Yeah, mum always heard she heard him snore beside her in bed sometimes, and she was like, My mum definitely had a gift that she didn't use because my mum regularly would have said that she had seen things or an elderly couple lived in the house before us, um, and my mum regularly saw them in the garden and saw them around the place, but she never did she just just carried on, and yet she couldn't see how that was contradicting her very strict just go straight to heaven. And I was like, Well, who are these? But my mum never less her, she she left school when she was 12 to look after her mum. So she never had an education, so mummy was very easily led. And if my dad said this is what happened, then she just went, That's what happens, you go straight to heaven. But as mom approached her end of life more recently, she saw her mum, she saw my dad, she saw her other husband that she married after my dad. She started to see people coming for her as she was waiting to go, and she was quite comfortable with that. So she opened up to her spirituality a little bit more in her later years, and I was more comfortable talking to her about that and saying, you know, they're waiting for you, that's why they're here. And she was like, Okay. In the earlier times, not so much. She was just like, I'd hear your dad snoring last night. And I was like, Okay, so he's snoring from the other side, he can't escape it because he was a terrible snorer.

Regina Sayer 34:52

Did you go and talk to the church ministers or anybody about this and tell them that, hey, my dad keeps showing up at our house, kind of thing?

Debi Barr 35:00

No, because by this point I had started to pull back. By this point, I was sort of 15, 16, and I was getting to that stage where you can't make me go to church, I'm not going. And my mum was like, Your daddy would have wanted you to go. And mum had married again. Mum was starting to wish it was in a relationship with another really strict Christian, a member of a different church. So they they changed churches from the church that we were in to his church. I used that juncture to go, I'm out, I'm not doing this anymore. So uh as I started getting into my sort of 16, 17, 18, I said, You can't make me. So I didn't really. I spoke to a minister once, not long after dad died, while we were still in the original church, and just sort of said, Is it possible? He was a young minister. He was he was kind of cool about it. He was like, anything's possible. You know, we believe in the Holy Spirit, so why don't we believe in perhaps your dad just letting you know he's okay? So he was quite cool about it. Um, the older ministers I wouldn't have spoken to because they would have just shut it down. So yeah. Um I did dabble a little bit a few times in stuff that you know I started to I started to try and understand like the more occult sort of things and the, you know, what happens if we, you know, what happens if we do these certain different things? And I started to get pulled with play with energies that maybe weren't helpful for my health. And as a teenager, you want to push the boundaries, you want to explore different things. So there were friends who were quite interested in kind of getting around and gathering and chatting about things like, you know, can't can we can we levitate each other on our fingers? Can we can we put a key in the Bible and see if it'll spin like a Ouija board and all this sort of stuff? And it started to get a wee bit dark and a little bit just nonsense, but teenage nonsense. And I remember I pulled back from that a little bit and I sort of leaned into the church for a couple of months trying to find what I was looking for, but I couldn't find it there. It was still too strict, as in, you know, you cannot do all these things and you must only live this way. And it was like, I'm pretty sure that's not with the real meaning because I had done a lot of reading by this point too. And I was like, I'm not sure. I think there's a spin being put on this to control us. So I was starting to get to that stage.

Regina Sayer 37:08

And had you dabbled in crystals and tarot by then, or any other kind of metaphysical tools.

Debi Barr 37:16

Yeah, I had started, I was using a lot of incense, I was using a lot of crystals, I was starting to play with these things and being like, what are these and what can I do with them? I didn't know, I just they were shiny and they were nice, and I thought, I'll have these. These are nice. I used a lot of music and sound without realising that's what it was I was doing. Um, I didn't have a set of tarot cards, but I had like oracle cards and angel cards and things because mum wouldn't have had tarot in the house. And even right up to she passed, I didn't really make a big deal of the fact that I taught people tarot, so I was like, not talk about this, you know. So I was playing more with oracle cards and sort of little freebies that I was getting out of magazines and things like that, because I was still at school and I didn't have a lot of money, so I wasn't able to go and buy like a nice set of tarot cards or anything like that. And at that point, I had met who would become my my husband. At 17, I met this man who eventually ended up becoming my husband. So I was getting a bit distracted, obviously going down into the okay, so this potentially is going to be the person I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with. I was doing my A levels, I was thinking about going to university. So life was starting to get in the way a little bit. Whilst I loved all these things, other priorities like exams and university were starting to call my name. And I always had in the back of my mind, I have to do these things to make my dad proud because he he always wanted to go to university and he didn't. So I was like, I have to I have to make this happen. I have to go and get the degree and be the be the one and only person in the family who's got a degree at this point. There was a bit of pressure put on me, so I kind of started to to slip away from what at that time just felt like sort of things that I was like toys. They felt like toys as opposed to real tools at that point because I didn't really know the borrow of them at that time.

Regina Sayer 39:00

And then you got a new toy, your boyfriend.

Debi Barr 39:02

I got a new toy. And I often think about this because my husband was 12 years older than me. I often think that if the time if my 17-year-old had come home with a 29-year-old, we would have had some words to say. Whereas that was it just didn't seem to be an issue. My mum didn't really miss. She just was like, He seems nice. And I'm like, Yeah, he is, you know. So there was a big age difference. And again, I think that was probably me looking for safety in a male figure and looking in some shape or fashion for maybe a father figure in some way. And I think also as well, it was because I was so, so much older than my years as a child. People would say she's an old soul, or you know, she's been here before, was a phrase I heard an awful lot. She's been here before, she's been here before. So I was always so much more emotionally intelligent than the boys my age, which I think women always are, like they they do say that women mature much quicker than men in that respect. I was always interested in people who were a little bit older than me. But um, the man who became my husband then was 12 years older than me. But I went through university and everything still, and he was he was in the background. And when I graduated, we got married when I was 21.

University, marriage, and entering conventional life

Regina Sayer 40:13

So you studied French and Spanish because you wanted to become a language teacher. Somehow that did not happen.

Debi Barr 40:22

It did not happen. I know. That is the only do you know that is the only regret? I loved it. So my my schooling was weird, and I think now that I understand my human design and I understand that I'm a manifesting generator who likes to try lots of different things, and I understand I have a 3.5 profile, which means I have to try lots of different things. I can now understand why I made the choices I made. So I did my GCSEs at 16, and then I had to pick my A levels.

Regina Sayer 40:51

That's that's a general certificate of education for anybody who's not familiar with the UK system.

Debi Barr 40:57

General certificate of secondary education. It's a UK thing. So I had to do these. Um previously they would have been called O levels and A levels. The GCSEs were the O levels. I had done my nine subjects, and I was very pleased with my results, and I was like, okay. And then then I had to pick three subjects from that to take to A level, and I didn't want to hem myself in. So I did I did French. I love geography, and I was like, well, geography works as an art or a science. So if I go to university, I can pick either art or science, depending on where we go. French is an arts thing. And then against all understanding, I dropped Spanish and did maths. No one will know why I made that decision, because it is a crazy decision, because I was the only person in the A-level maths class who was not also doing physics. But I wanted to try and keep my options open. And maths is another language in a certain way, anyway, isn't it? So it's just the same thing. So I ended up with three A-levels in French, maths, and geography. And then I went to university and I was delighted to find out that I could actually pick Spanish up again from scratch and do my degree in it because I had a GCSE in it. I was like, I can actually lift this again. So in first year of university, I did French, Spanish, and philosophy, because you had to pick a third subject for the first year. And my biggest regret is that I did not keep doing philosophy and do my degree in philosophy instead, because I adored that year of doing philosophy, and it was one of my favourite things, and it was where I was getting the highest marks. And in hindsight, I wish I had done philosophy with Spanish and drop the French because but at the time I wanted to be a language teacher. At the time I thought this is my path, I'm really good at languages, I can do these things, this is no problem at all, and I want to be a teacher, but I didn't again want to be hemmed in by doing a teacher degree. So I did an arts degree, Bachelor of Arts. And then my plan was to then go to Stranmillis, which is our teacher training college here in Northern Ireland, and to then convert and do a postgrad or to stay at Queens, where I went and do a postgrad certificate in education to convert into teaching, which was a great idea until I didn't get on that course.

Regina Sayer 43:06

And what happened?

Career path: banking, law firm, and IT

Debi Barr 43:07

I had just got married and I couldn't could if we didn't have kids. I could have, I could have gone to England and spent a year, but I'd just got married, so it didn't seem like the dumb thing to leave my new husband and disappear off to England or Scotland to do this extra year, which I would have had to fund myself. Um and I couldn't afford it. And he did not want to move either. He was 12 years older than me, had already started to establish a career for the local in the local council. Um he was working in um mechanical garage and he was happy. My ex-husband is someone who likes things to stay a certain way, and he's you know he's very set in his ways. He's a Taurus and he's very stubborn. And it's like right okay. He wasn't up for it. And I also wasn't sure. But I thought, well, do you know what? I'll go and work for a year and then we'll see what happens. Of course, you work for a year, you get used to having some money coming in, you don't want to be a student again. So I went into the Banking at that point into data entry. I sort of thought that perhaps in the bank I could get into like the foreign exchange bit and then maybe somewhere find some sort of way to use my languages, but it didn't happen. I ended up in the typing department. That's how old I am. There was mainframe computer and a typing department with handwritten letters from the bank managers that we had to type. So that was my first full-time job. And I really enjoyed it. It was one of those things where it was like, I actually, these this isn't me just playing at home anymore, playing that I'm doing something. This is actually, these letters are landing with real people outside. It's like, oh. So I stayed there for a couple of years and then the the pay was shockingly bad. I moved into advertising because the pay was better.

Regina Sayer 44:43

When you say shockingly bad, I want you to say what shockingly bad was, just so people can have some idea.

Debi Barr 44:49

Shockingly bad was um I was being paid 6,000 pounds a year. And this is in the 1990s. And I was getting paid 500 pounds a month for a 40-hour week in Belfast. Wow. Um the pay did go up a little and eventually it crept up a little bit, but I was shockingly bad. I worked through certain things and the pay went up, I think, to 8,000. And I was like, ooh, um, but still that's not great. And I remember then I approached the bank manager in in the place where I worked. I worked in like a, it was called the branch service centre. So it was a back office that serviced all the branches. Um and I approached him and I said, Listen, you have me training people that I had every job I ended up in, I ended up teaching or training in some way. And I'd been there a couple of years and I was training other people who were bank officials. I was a data processing official, which is why I was on the shockingly bad pay. They were bank officials and they were on 25,000 a year. And I was teaching them how to do the job that I was doing so that they could step in and do it. And that really annoyed me. And I was like, why am I teaching someone who's earning three times as much as me how to do this job? Surely there has to be something you can do. And he goes, I'm sorry, the processes have changed, and this is what we do now. We no longer hire bank officials, we hire data processors. And I was like, Yeah, so you can stack us high and pay us cheap. So I left and I was sad to leave because I enjoyed the people that I had met and I enjoyed being an adult and earning my own money. But I moved then into advertising because uh my friend worked there and I was like, right, okay, she seems to enjoy it. It's actually my friend who is now my partner because we grew up together through school, and she was working for the Belfast Telegraph as a sales representative. Um, and I thought, okay. And a job came up for their sister paper Sunday Life selling advertising space, and I thought, oh, we'll give it a go. Pay was 11 and a half thousand. I thought, whoa, that's a lot of money. I was like, that's much better. Um, and I cried every day going to work. I hated it, I hated every second of it. It was the worst job ever. I lasted six months.

Regina Sayer 47:00

Sales is tough. I did it too. I disliked it.

Debi Barr 47:04

Targets, the pressure, the soullessness of it. So I remember I had applied for other jobs and I got a job in a local solicitor's farm and a legal firm in my hometown as the senior partner's personal assistant. And I thought, this is gonna be great. And I danced around the flat that we lived in, and I was so happy, even though I was taking a £2,000 pay cut, and I walked into that job and I didn't care that I'd taken a pay cut because my happiness was more important. And I was like, I need I need something better. And I knew I wasn't traveling to Belfast and having to pay car parking fees in Belfast, and I wasn't paying travel and all. So it actually worked out the same price or the same money. I loved that job and then I stayed in that job for 10 years, working my way up. I started as the senior partner's personal assistant. I moved into then doing um new house sales and doing the conveyancing for it. I was trained as a paralegal. I was then running case files. I ran the conveyancing department while this conveyancing solicitor was on maternity leave. Meanwhile, I was having children and I was on maternity leave and coming back in and out. I worked in the marketing department, liaising with the mortgage lenders and the brokers, and I eventually fell into the IT department because they brought a case management software in that was useless and not fit for purpose. And as a very experienced conveyancer, I was going, This doesn't work. So I started to work with the IT department to try and help them.

Regina Sayer 48:27

And all this time you had left behind all the spiritual stuff, you weren't doing anything with that.

Redundancy, depression, medication, and coping

Debi Barr 48:32

So all this time then the spiritual stuff had been, it was gone. It had wasn't even like I still was interested in anything that went bump in the night. I was still quite interested in spooky stuff, and you know, I would have watched good horror movies and I would have been still into, you know, having a little chat about paranormal and would have been very open to the fact that, you know, people can speak to you from the other side, but I wasn't actively doing anything about it because I had just got sucked into life. I had my first child in 2001, and then I had my second child in 2004. I was working my way through this law firm. It was one of the largest law firms at the time in Northern Ireland. So from 1999 to 2005, I was working in the legal department very much, and then I shifted into helping out in the IT department to then getting so bored and fed up with the lack of progress, watching over someone's shoulder as they were writing this case management code to tell us a piece of software how to how to run a sale or a purchase or a remortgage. And I was like, I could do that. So the IT manager was like, Well, if you think you can do it better, crack on. And I went, I will. I was given access and I eventually ended up becoming the IT system developer. And I moved out of the legal work altogether, and I wrote 72 different case management systems for the firm. And then in 2008, I was made redundant, and it was a shock to the system beyond all belief. It was like, what do you do now?

Regina Sayer 50:00

And why were you made redundant?

Debi Barr 50:02

It was the property crash, um, the big recession in the UK. The office I worked in was three floors, and in the middle floor, there was about a hundred people. And I watched as every single one of them were made redundant as this property crash started to come in. But I still thought I would be okay because I worked in IT and it was a very technological firm, and everything was based on their IT and their forward-thinking innovation and you know, their case management systems and their tracking and all the stuff. And so IT was like their favorite thing. And I thought, I'm all right, I'm working in IT, it's the property department people that are going to be let go. And then out of the blue in November 2008, I was called down to speak to the boss. And you always know when the boss calls you into the room, can you come down to room three at four o'clock? You're like, I'm getting my P45 here, something's happening. But it was normally on a Friday he would drop those bombshells so you could stew on it all weekend, but it was a Tuesday, and he went, I'm really sorry, but I'm gonna have to let you go. And I went, What? And he goes, I have to offer you a voluntary redundancy, or if you don't want to take it, we will have to just let you go. And I was like, Okay. My legs turned to jelly. I felt sick to my stomach. Because at this point, my kids were both still really young. They were like seven and four. My husband and I had made some really questionable decisions with our finances, and we were robbing Peter to pay Paul here. We had credit card upon credit card. We were taking a minimum payment from one to pay the minimum payment on the other. And we were in that real bind of living paycheck to paycheck, where there was just too much month at the end of your pay, and you were going, This is hard. And then all of a sudden, I was made redundant. And at the time, my husband was still working in the garage for the council. So he wasn't on the best pay in the world. So I was actually earning more than him. I had become the major breadwinner in the house as a professional IT person. I was earning a good salary, and all of a sudden it had been taken away. My boss said, Go home, think about it, let me know what you want to do. We can either compromise you out as a voluntary kind of thing, or the only other thing we can do is we can bring you back in as a conveyancer, but it meant a £10,000 a year pay cut. And I couldn't afford to take that pay cut. And I also knew that if I went back as a paralegal, I would be unpaid IT support because let's face it, if I was in the room and the printer broke, who were they going to ask? If I was in the room and the case management system broke, who were they going to ask? And I remember having this decision to make do I play it safe and take this step down, keep my job and keep paying the bills, or do I just stand up for myself and say, no, I'm going to take the voluntary redundancy? So I took the redundancy. I remember shaking, thinking, I'm walking away from a job, but I also knew I had nearly 10 years of service, so I was getting a little bit of a payout, and it was the payout that actually was going to help tide me over to find something else. And I did find something else the very next week. Um, and I started a new IT job, literally within a few days of stopping the old one. But it was the shock to my system, and it was that was my wake-up point. The night I went home to lie on the sofa and think about it. And I was on the sofa because when I told my husband that I'd been made redundant, he said, What are you gonna do about it? And then he went up, it was just a bad turn of phrase, you know, he's not a bad man, but he just had no way of no concept of how to support me through it. And he went up to bed and was snoring, and I could I couldn't lie beside him, so I came down onto the sofa and I could still hear him snoring upstairs, and I was so cross, I was so scared. You know, when you close your eyes and that you're crying and the tears bubble up behind your eyes, and then the hot you open your eyes and the hot tears come down your face. It was November, it was cold. I was lying on the sofa with a blanket, worried sick about how I was going to support the family through this. Then I saw a little chink of moonlight come through, and the moonlight kind of landed on my face. And I remember sitting up and opening the blinds and looking out and looking at the moon, and it was almost like I had this epiphany of when did you forget who you were? When did you forget about all the things you love to do? When did you last write? When did you last draw? When did you last laugh? Because at this point as well, I was heavily medicated on antidepressants after the birth of my second child, and I was struggling to get through life. I was running on autopilot, I was working long hours in IT, trying to look after two small children. My husband was working through the day. We couldn't afford double childcare. So he was out at work through the day and I was with the kids, and then I would go in and work in the office at night and work from like four till ten at night or four till eleven at night, and then come home, go to bed, get up, look after the kids all day. He would go to work. It was this hamster wheel of heaviness, and the only way I could get through it was on antidepressants, and I was on a really high dose, and everything just was flat. And I was looking for the answers on the bottom of a bottle of wine on a Saturday night with my friends and trying to get to the, you know, they would come round and we would have a drink, and I would be like, you'd end up in tears because it was only then that you accepted there was something wrong.

Regina Sayer 55:04

How did you get on the antidepressants? Did you go to a doctor or did you go to a therapist at some point?

Debi Barr 55:09

I went to a doctor because I just couldn't function. I was um I just was finding that I was having quite dark thoughts, and I was like, the only thing that was keeping me here was my kids, and I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Life's too hard. This this earth place is horrible. I don't like it, and I don't like where I'm going, and the stress and work and the constant demands, everybody wanting a piece of you, and I was working alone at night. Everybody else had gone home, and I was in the office on my own at night in the dark, and then I was coming back home and getting straight into bed, and then having to get up with the kids through the night, and I was just exhausted. And I realized then my doctor explained to me that you know perhaps there was a little hint of postnatal depression going on. There was something happening, you know. Um, second child's always slightly different than the first. And I had trouble breastfeeding her, and I had um I had like infections after I had her, so I had a bit of a rough time after the birth with her, and I think all those things contributed. And it was my friends that said to me, You're not yourself, you need to go, you know, go and see a GP. And I was like, right, okay. And I walked into the GP surgery and just broke in, broke down in tears. And she was lovely, she held me through it, and she was like, Okay, I think we need some medication to help you. And I was so I didn't want to do it, but a couple of my friends had recently started to take antidepressants, and I could see how it helped them, and I was like, okay, I'll try. But with me, what happened was the low dose wasn't enough, and they just kept going and going and going, and it was getting higher and higher and higher. And I was like, I think the redundancy was almost the universe giving me an intervention because I had been to the doctor and said these don't work. And she says, Well, it's either you start to think about coming off them and we find a better way for you, or lithium is your next step. And I was like, I don't want that. That's padded cell material, like that, that's where I'm gonna end up in in the psychiatric ward. I don't want that. And I had a decision to make. So I think between that and the redundancy, there was very much a right, you've got to figure out what you're doing here. You've got to figure out your life. You only you can rescue.

Regina Sayer 57:07

They never suggested therapy of some kind that you go and talk to somebody about everything.

Debi Barr 57:12

No. There's no mental health pathways in in Northern Ireland. It's it's very poorly. They're trying their best, but the NHS, the National Health Service in the UK, has very poorly managed mental health services, poorly funded services. So there are no at that point in time anyway, there were no mental health pathways. It was never suggested to me by conventional medicine that I could talk to someone or have holistic therapy or healing or anything. My only option was antidepressants and a bottle of wine. Dangerous mix.

Regina Sayer 57:41

And did your husband notice what was going on with you?

The turning point: questioning everything

Reiki, energy work, marital break-down and rebuilding from scratch

Debi Barr 57:44

Yeah. But, you know, keep taking the happy pills, love, you'll be okay. Sort of vibe. Um, he was quite a drinker himself, so he numbed his issues with alcohol, and I numbed mine with uh fluxetine and chardonnay. I think the redundancy, what it did for me, the that moment with the moon where I was like, when did I forget? And it gave me this resolve in my belly where it's like the little spark hadn't quite gone out. And it kind of fanned the flames of, do you know, I'm never gonna let somebody pull the rug out from under me like this again. And I then started to look at my life and I was going, nobody's gonna ride in and rescue me here. Nobody's gonna like come in and be like, it's okay, Debi, I've got you. I was like, the only person that's gonna rescue me is me. And that's why I then went into the boss the next day and I said, Thank you very much for the kind offer of the 10 grand pay cut and the other job, but I'll take the redundancy. And he looked so shocked and he was like, Why? Because he knew I was struggling for money. He knew because I had told him. And I was like, any extra hours going, I'm taking them because I need the cash. So he knew I was struggling for money, and he couldn't understand why I wouldn't stay in a job. And I just said to him, It's not happening. I am worth more than this. And that was the first time I stood up for myself, and it felt so good. And I was like, right. I then took another IT job, but there's something that shifted in my head. Stayed in the other IT job for a couple of years, or it was not even a year, it was eight months. And then the IT manager from the original firm left and there was an opening, and I went back to the firm I was made redundant from, and I came in as a manager, came in as a senior member of staff at that point. There was a two to three year period in that period where I was really working on myself. I had got off the medication, I was exploring crystal healing again. I was exploring essential oils, and I was starting to think, how can I do something that's going to allow me to be me? How can I do something that's going to stop people from pulling the rug out from under me? And I started to explore all these things, and then Reiki found me. And once Reiki found me, it was 2011 when I did my first Reiki training. Then it was that was a game changer because then I was doing meditation work and breath work, and I was taking the time for me, and I was understanding who I was. And for once I stopped having all the noise. I always had to have a radio on or a TV on or something on, and it was now I can see that that was me, yeah, distraction. I was avoiding the life, this is not how it's supposed to be. This is not how it's supposed to be. The Reiki gave me a sense of calm and peace. And when I did my master training in 2012, then all the walls I'd built at 14, 15 came crashing down. All the pretence at the life I had built, I just couldn't hold the pretence anymore. I couldn't hold the pretence that I was happy in my marriage. I couldn't hold the pretence that I loved my job. I couldn't hold the pretence that we weren't having an absolute financial nightmare that we were still robbing Peter to pay Paul, even though I was earning the most money I'd ever earned. Everything was just wrong. The energy was just wrong. It was everything was pushing against me when I was trying to move forward, and I just let it all go. And it was the most liberating, yet painful. Like I cried for about three days. All the emotions that I'd stuffed down as a child and as a teenager all came out. My husband didn't know where to put himself. He was like, What is who are you? What has happened? Because he never had met the real me. He met the version of me behind the wall. So then the marriage was over. Um, I was like, I can't do this anymore. My best friend from school who had supported me the whole way through, she'd recently gone through a divorce, and her and I then that started to gradually get closer and closer, and we're now in a relationship and have been for a number of years. Everything shifted. So from the outside, it must have looked like I had lost my mind. Because I had the IT job, I had the car, I had the kids, I had the cat, I had the husband, I had the house, I had all the things, all the trappings of societal success. And inside I was screaming. And it was like, do you know what? When those walls came down, was it scary to implode my life? Absolutely. Anybody who tells you healing's easy is a liar. Because it's not, it unpicks, it unravels you, it pulls you apart. But that's what sometimes is needed for you to remember who you really are.

Regina Sayer 1:01:55

And who supported you at this time? Did you have any kind of spiritual community at this point that you were with or a mentor or somebody that you could speak to about how everything was crumbling down?

Debi Barr 1:02:07

I had myself and my Reiki practice and my friends and my who is now my my partner, Carrie. I spoke to her a lot. I spoke to my friends about it. I spoke occasionally to my Reiki master about it, but it wasn't that really where it was going. I didn't have a community, I didn't have a spiritual space, which is why I've created one because I couldn't find one when I needed it. There wasn't something for me. I tried to go to some of the spiritualist churches where they do mediumship and where they have these sorts of things happening, but I found that there was a lot of cliques and a lot of it wasn't a nice space to be in, and it wasn't for me. Um, much as I love the concept of you know spirit and mediumship, and I've been to the Arthur Findlay College in London and trained in mediumship, but it's not it's not my path, and it just didn't feel right. So no, I did it by myself. I did it by myself with a lot of reading, a lot of leaning into my Reiki practice, leaning into my spirit guides and my evolution team that were around me and leaning into my unseen world. And then I started to train in shamanism and I leaned into the community then that I built with the shamanic teacher and the community there. And I started then to make connections in the spiritual community with other people who were doing the work. But at the time the walls came down, it was me, myself, and I. And I couldn't even talk to my mum about it because she had no idea what was going on.

Regina Sayer 1:03:28

What type of shamanism was this?

Debi Barr 1:03:30

Traditional shamanism medicine wheel work. So it was a course that I did with a trainer here in Northern Ireland who had trained for many years. There was a Celtic flavour to it, but there was also a lot of traditional shamanism, and the combination of travelling to the unseen realms, the lower world, the middle world, the upper world, the animal guides. My lion came back very much at that point and was really helpful to me in my practice and in my meditations and in my journey work. So it was very practical, hands-on, natural healing, earth-based, land-based, yeah, working with the energy of the land, working with the energy of you. So that really helped me because the only other place I had to talk about this work was with my partner, my now partner Carrie, with her next door neighbours who were both Wiccan. They invited me in as a, you know, come and let us explain to you what this is about. So they were sort of showing me the ropes with regards to Wiccan circles and the elements and the ritual magic and that sort of thing. So I had them to talk to a little bit, my partner Carrie to talk to, and then my shamanic teacher. But other than that, I did it very much on my own.

Regina Sayer 1:04:39

Were you still working at that point when you were?

Debi Barr 1:04:41

I was still working. So I had been working still for uh the the law firm as an IT manager, and I stayed with them until 2012. And then from there I moved into another company closer to home. But I had moved strategically to be closer to home and to give me more freedom. But it was still an IT company, so I was still working in IT for another three years. But while I was working in IT, I was using the money to fund my training. I was using the money to build my business because um I had started in July 2010. I had qualified as a crystal healer, and then I was training as reflexologist and as an aromatherapist and as all the things behind as I was working full time. So I was starting to see clients in the evening. I needed a job where I could work nine to five and then come home and see clients at night and see clients at the weekend. So I moved out of the IT manager's job because I had no life when I was working there because they constantly were I was the IT department, so it was just a nightmare.

Regina Sayer 1:05:37

And your husband at this point, was he with these people coming into your house to have these types of sessions? What was he and your kids too? What did they think?

Debi Barr 1:05:47

Kids were okay. Kids were kids were relatively well behaved. My my two kids, I'm very blessed to have two amazing kids who were very good at amusing themselves and doing stuff upstairs quietly, because they knew that when Mama had a client, you had to be. Quiet because I was doing this in my living room. My husband, by the time clients were starting to come into the house, he and I had split up, but we were still living in the same house for three years after we split up because neither of us could afford financially to move. So there was a little bit of touchiness at times where maybe sometimes he would be a little bit difficult and would maybe be drinking and just be a wee bit annoying. And then other times he would be as good as gold. It just depended. So it was not easy to start trying to build this business with this happening. I tried to get premises. At one point, I did have a room that I was subletting of someone else, but it didn't work out. It was too noisy. And sometimes as a little power struggle, my husband would wait, my ex-husband would wait to the last minute before he would come home and let me away to go down to the shop to get it open. So it was not easy. It was not easy, but I was determined because I needed to make a change. I couldn't, I could see that I needed to work for me. And I gradually kept going and going and going. I moved into my own house then in 2015. And at that point, then I left my job and I decided, right, I'm doing this now. And I created a little room in my house. Um, it was just my house at this point, me and my kids. It was nothing, he wasn't there, it was all lovely. And I left my job. And for three years I was self-employed, seeing clients and doing my best, you know, stacking them high, seeing all the Reiki clients, doing the reflexology, doing the massage. Never wanted to be a massage therapist or a reflexologist. But Reiki and crystals and tarot reading were a little bit too much for people. But gradually I was starting to trying to sort of squeeze it in a little bit, you know. So at the end of their massage, I'm like, Do you want me to kill a card? You know, at the end of their reflexology, I'd give them some Reiki, and then they were like, Oh, that's nice, what's that? And then gradually it started to become more and more than that.

Regina Sayer 1:07:44

I have a question about that because you know, I think that people who are external to Ireland that you think that, oh, it's Celtic, that's paganism, you know, there's all of this already there. And yet to hear you speak, it's not.

Debi Barr 1:08:00

Particularly in Northern Ireland, it's not. Particularly in Northern Ireland. So the further west you go, the more fairy you get. Okay, so the further west, out towards Fermanagh, out towards Donegal, out west, it starts to get a little bit more pagan, a bit more spiritual, a bit more fairy folk, a bit more Celtic. And there are certain pockets of it in Ireland itself. Northern Ireland's a different thing. Northern Ireland is a real melting pot of different cultures, different societies, and there's a lot of fear and a lot of control in Northern Ireland that's not conducive to it. So you have to remember as well that Ireland as a whole, the main bulk of Ireland is a Catholic country, and then you've got the Protestantism in Northern Ireland as well. So there's a strange political melting pot, and quite a number of my friends, it wasn't the Catholic Church that was stopping, it was causing any problems. It was actually the Protestant Church. It was the three Presbyterians that were quite often come to your door and tell you to cease and desist your devil work. And that was a hypnotherapist was told that. I've had yoga practitioners who were told what they were doing was the devil's work. I haven't thankfully had anyone come to my door because they would be given good shrift and told to leave.

Regina Sayer 1:09:07

They still do that?

Debi Barr 1:09:08

Yeah, they still do it. Not as often, but sometimes. Sometimes you will still get people protesting against the fact that, you know, yoga is the devil's work and that people who read tarot cards are creating a satanic cult and all this nonsense. And it's like it's become part of my brand identity to be like, you do know these tarot cards are just pieces of paper with pictures on, and it's the intention and the energy behind them that carries the message. You know, you're not opening a portal to hell because you buy a deck of tarot cards, no, please. I spend a lot of time with um education and reminding people, particularly beginners, that there's nothing to be frightened of except fear itself, you know, and it's like, let's let's do this in a safe and managed way that makes you feel comfortable. Nobody ever has to read a tarot card if they don't want to in my circles. They can bring angel cards, they can bring oracle cards, they can do whatever they like. But yeah, and so that still was happening. So for those three years, 2015 to 2018, I worked on my own, fully self-employed, trying my best. And then I had a bit of a difficult time with the kids at this point. And as they were growing, they were sort of expressing where they wanted to be, and they kind of wanted to go live with their dad and they wanted to try different things. And unbeknownst to me, he was filling their head full of all this stuff, and we'll not get into that story, but it was like, right, okay. They chose to go live with him. And at that point, then the little bit of government help that was helping me keep my business afloat with like child benefit and things disappeared. And I was like, My business isn't as strong as I thought it was, I can't manage. So I went back into uh part-time work. I worked for the YMCA as an admin officer. It was really good fun, and again, it was a melting pot of lots of different cultures and lots of different people, and they were very well aware of what I did. So I came in and I was like, This is who I am. I am, I know this is a Christian organization, but I read tarot. I am a Reiki master, I teach people how to do energy healing, I teach people that the power is within them. I'm not big into my Christianity, but I will never diss anyone's beliefs so long as people don't try and force it. And it was really good fun. I enjoyed that, worked for them for about a year and a half while still building the business, and then made the decision to go back into the legal world for a year, get better money, and to really focus my business on where it needed to be. And then I left that job in February 2020, just before the UK went into lockdown, and everybody was like, You crazy woman, why did you not stay? You could have had furlough, you could have been sitting in the garden, still getting your salary. And I was like, Yeah, but in 2019, I felt guided to put my entire business online. And I spent 2019 using my IT skills, using the things I'd learned to put a Reiki business completely online. And when March 2020 happened and everybody was closed, I was still working. And it was the best year I'd ever had in my business up until that point. And from then it has done nothing but go strength to strength because I was focused and I knew what it was I wanted by that point. I had remembered who I was, I knew exactly what I stood for. And then as I moved through that, I was able to then invest more in myself and in mentorship and in business coaching and all the things, which has led me here to where I am now. Your story's never linear, it's a spiral and a winding path.

Regina Sayer 1:12:17

I want to ask you about this relationship that you have with your childhood friend, because I mean that must have come as quite a surprise for you in your life to be married to a man and then fall in love with a woman.

Debi Barr 1:12:30

Yeah, it was a bit of a shock to the system. I'm not gonna lie, there was probably wine involved the first night that, you know, we realised there was more to than just friendship. And, you know, there may have been a bit of like, what's actually happening here? Because if you'd told either one of us at school that we would have ended up buying a house together and living together as partners, we would have both told you you were insane. We met on the first day of secondary school, whenever we first walked into the school that we we attended. And we met that day and we became friends immediately. We were just like drawn to each other and were friends, and we stayed friends the whole way through school. We went to the same university. I got married, she got married, she had kids first, then I had kids. Our children have always been in each other's lives. And it was just, you know, I always say she was the one who bothered to try and get behind the walls because she knew me before they went up. So she knew me from the age of 11 until my dad died when I was 14. So for the first three years of our secondary school career, she knew who I really was. And she said, I watched you close down after your dad died. She says, and I watched you be this person you weren't really. And then when her marriage broke down, I was there for her. And as mine was breaking down, she was there for me. And we just naturally gravitated towards each other. And it was, I think, the support that I'd never had, the communication I'd never had, she she pushes me to talk. She pushes me to communicate. Whereas my husband and I never did communicate. We sort of just fumbled through life, kind of go in the same direction until we didn't. There's never any let's talk about what's wrong here, you know. Whereas if there's ever any anything going on, she makes me talk. It's uncomfortable sometimes. I love her for it. You know, and she brings out the best in me and I bring out the best in her. So it it was interesting. Our kids, our kids weren't really, I don't think, that surprised. They were sort of a bit like, right, okay. And a few of our sort of friends were like, wait, what? What's happening? Because it changed the friendship dynamic a little bit because all instead of it just being a group of girls going out, it was my partners and our friends going out. And it so it changed the dynamic a little bit, but we were very blessed that our friends were very supportive. Our families actually were really supportive. My mum surprised me in her support. She she came to me and she just said, Have you been having an affair? And I said, No. I said, actually, what I haven't told you is that Remy and I split up three years ago. I hadn't told her that I'd broken up mine. I had told her that things weren't great and that actually, even though we were still living in the same house together, we were no longer real, you know. I explained to her that he was living in one bedroom and I was in another, and that we and she was like, I had no idea. Because I just didn't tell her because she wasn't in the best of health and I didn't need her judgment. And I was scared of what she would think. I was scared of the, you know, so I didn't tell her. My mum had this amazing knack of always turning it around and making any problems. She had always be a little bit more about her. So I sometimes just didn't go down that road. So once we had the conversation and it cleared the air, she was like, okay. She says, so long as you're happy. And it took her maybe a little while just to sort of adjust to it. She always called Carrie my little friend. Is your little friend coming over today? You know, so she never really sort of said too much about it. She wouldn't tell, she didn't tell anybody that I was with them. You know, there was still like a little bit of a, you know, embarrassment maybe for her. But she was in her eighties at this point, do you know what I mean? And she you know, there was never gonna change her at that point. And she was as she got older, I became her carer. So we were very close at the end of her life, but I still didn't tell her an awful lot about myself. It was only after she died that I really was able to be myself completely without having to worry about rocking the boat.

Regina Sayer 1:16:04

And after she passed away, did you have visitations from her?

Debi Barr 1:16:07

I know she's here sometimes. My cat. I think my cat she visits the cat because the cat sees her, I'm pretty sure. Um, I know she's here sometimes because I can smell her perfume sometimes, and I know she's about. My mum was always the type that found it really hard to let go. And I didn't want her hanging about this plane when she could go and be happy in peace. So as she was dying, I spent a lot of time doing, you know, Reiki and rituals around her to help her pass peacefully. And, you know, I read the Celtic prayer of the dying with her and sort of was like, let's, you know, you can let go now, it's safe for you to move on. And I did quite a lot of sort of work with her in her final moments and in her final hours of just encouraging her to pass peacefully and not hang about. That having been said, I did have a dream about her in much of the same way where she was floating about on a cloud up in heaven, loving her life and going, That's great. Are you all right, love? And she was, you know, just back there, we happy self, no pain, no, no illness. Uh, and that was nice to see. So I have no doubt that she is about from time to time. Um, I think she manifests more as I look in the mirror now. I'm getting more and more like her since she's passed, where I was always very like my daddy, and now I'm getting more like her. I hear her when I laugh. And people say when they when I come into the room, they feel she's there too. So I'm pretty sure she's around. She's just not as noisy as my father. It's when I laugh it comes out sometimes, and people are like, Oh, you're just your mother when you laugh. And I have I have started to see it. My daughter's a photographer, and she took these double exposures of me as a project she was working on. And in the double exposure, the face looking out from behind is just my mother. And I was like, Oh, that's like a ghost in the camera. I said, That's really freaky. Um, but it was it's a lovely picture to have, but it's it's definitely like my mom could see then. She said, That's like granny. I was like, Yeah.

Regina Sayer 1:17:58

So she's the one who's taking all these lovely photos of you on your website that I see on Facebook.

Debi Barr 1:18:04

Yeah, she is. She's a photographer. She's a photographer, and my son is currently in Romania teaching English to summer camp of kids. He's 24, and he's teaching English as a foreign language, anywhere he can get a job right now.

Regina Sayer 1:18:17

And you are an emergency ambulance crew volunteer. How did that come about?

Debi Barr 1:18:23

That came about for two reasons. One, my mum collapsed in the garden and I didn't know what to do, and I panicked, and I didn't know how to get her out of the seizure she was having. I didn't, I just didn't know what to do. And when the paramedics came, I was so reassured and I was so thankful for them. And I thought, oh, they're so good. I need to do a first aid course, at least. If I'm going to be looking after mom, I need to do a first aid course. So I went and did a first, I did emergency first aid at work, and I was like, oh, I like this. I like this. I like being able to know what to do. This is great. I've always been a biker and I love the Northwest 200, which is the road races here. And I always spotted the St. John ambulance people standing in the high vows in all the best places to watch the race. And I was like, I wonder if I could do that. Because then I could get to all these all these races and I could watch. I completely missed the point that if someone came off, we had to do something about it. I'd missed that point in my excitement of I could stand in a prohibited area and watch them race. So there was a recruitment drive 2018, and I thought, you know what? I would really, I think I'm gonna go and do this. And I wanted Carrie to come with me, and she wouldn't come with me, nobody else would come. I had to do it by myself, and I very nearly didn't go because I'm a bit shy sometimes when it's going into like these places where I don't know. And I was like, no, just go. And I walked in, I literally walked in, filled the form, and just ran out and left and was like, I don't know what to do. And then I got an email from the the unit leader to say, Thank you so much for your application. Are we meeting them out tonight? And blah blah blah blah. That I remember going in and I thought St. John ambulance just kind of hung about at the side of a track or hung about at a summer fair and gave out plasters or just like sort of was just really nicey nicey. And I thought this would be nice. I had no idea that they answer 999 calls, that they support the local ambulance service, that they do major trauma, they have emergency ambulance crews, so it was like and I completely fell in love with it. I completely fell in love with the volunteering aspect of community. They became the family I never really had. I just absolutely adored the unit leader. I adored the ethos. He was a teacher, so it was like the natural, it was like teacher to teacher, and we were like gelling, it was really cool. I'm still there. I did take a break this year for seven months. I actually had resigned because I had just had enough and I was done, but um, I couldn't stay away and I've I've gone back. But yeah, so I am emergency ambulance crew trained up to save your life at the side of a motorbike track to do whatever needs to be done. But it for me it's very grinding. The spirituality is something I do every day, and in my work, I'm always immersed in the spiritual aspects and the energetics and the the intangible. And then when I'm out volunteering, it's real life or death, hands in the dirt, you know, up to your neck in mud on a motocross track, helping somebody with a spinal issue or whatever it is you're doing, and you're carrying that role. And because it's voluntary as well, it feels like I'm getting something back. Yeah. So it's it's one of my favourite things. And it kind of fulfils my old dream of like as I was a kid, I always used to play with my teddy bears as a teacher, and then I would have my stethoscope in being a wee doctor. So I get to have a real stethoscope now and do all the things.

Regina Sayer 1:21:27

But when you're doing that job, do you ever sense any energies? I mean, when you know you're dealing with people who are very close to passing, probably. And how do you handle that? Because I mean, that's something you have to sort of I hate to use that word protect, but you need to conserve your energy, I guess.

Debi Barr 1:21:44

You do, although I'm very much of the opinion that if you are connected to love and connected to source, you don't need to put a protection barrier up. Um, because that's just us.

Regina Sayer 1:21:53

That's why I say I don't like the word protect.

Debi Barr 1:21:54

Yeah, it it's not the way. But for me, it's more about I've been very blessed in that yes, I've had some serious injuries to deal with, but I've never, at this point, as yet, in the seven almost eight years I've been there, I haven't had to deal with someone who has passed, thankfully, or I've been with people who've been very close, but not quite. Where I tend to feel the energy most is, or where I use my skills the most in the energetics, is when we go into someone's house or someone's home, or whenever we arrive at a scene of something that's happened, you're meeting people that they're most vulnerable. You're meeting people when they are terrified. They maybe have been waiting for quite some time for an ambulance to come because the service isn't what it used to be. There's maybe frustration, there's maybe a bit of relatives being upset. So there's all those emotions and energies in the air. And for me, it's very much about coming in as the quiet, grounding, calming force of we've got you now, it's okay. It's safe. We are here, it's gonna be okay. I naturally find that I am beaming Reiki into the room. I start to even send the minute we get the call details, I am already connecting to the Reiki flow and letting it go to where it needs to be to smooth the, to smooth the journey there, to park the traffic to do the thing. You know, I'm I'm calling on all the the angelic help or whatever to please be with us at this call and make it make it be because we don't always know what we're getting, you know. So it's managing our expectations, it's managing us getting to the event to the issue, it's managing the people at that and managing yourself. And for me, that's really where it comes out and where my energy work comes in is that if I'm driving the ambulance, then I'm very much sort of conscious or consciously aware of my crewmate in the back with the patient, and I'm filling the back of the ambulance with Reiki and also focusing on getting to where we're going. And likewise, if I'm in the back with the patient, I'm holding that patient's hand, I'm letting them know that it's okay, and I'm bringing that calming, peaceful healing energy in so that they feel safe. So that's kind of how I use it in a combined way, and it it helps me. So when I'm sitting at the side of I cover a lot of motorbike duties, so I sit at the side of a motorbike track most Sundays, and I tend to beam Reiki across the whole track all day, going, please all stay upright. He's all stay upright. Thank you for staying upright. And if you come off, at least I know you're cushioned with the angels, you know, and usually they bounce, you know, so it's usually no.

Regina Sayer 1:24:13

Yeah. I have a small question to ask you because when you say you beam Reiki, so I have always, and I've had the first two levels of Reiki, but I have always been taught, and this is one thing that's always bothered me about Reiki, is that you shouldn't give it to anybody without their consent.

Debi Barr 1:24:30

I don't give it to the person, I give it to the situation. I feel the ambulance, I feel the environment. I'm not specifically going, right, I'm giving it to this patient and giving it to the to get around that. Although I don't necessarily subscribe. There's two schools of thought on this, and I spend a lot of time with my students talking about this consent issue. I think where the consent issue comes in is where we think we know better and we think we're trying to like force healing upon someone. So it's that concept of when someone is going through a difficult time, well-meaning as we are, we go, I'll send you some healing. It's like a better question would be, would you like me to send you some healing on that? Because that then empowers them to say yes or no, because sometimes whatever they're going through is part of their path and they have to go through it. However, Reiki never does any harm. Studies and scientific tests on rice and on water and on lots of different things have proven that Reiki only ever improves the situation, never does any harm. So my opinion of it is that whilst it is best to ask permission if you can, it would be really strange if emergency ambulance career went, Can I send you some Reiki as I'm patching you up from, you know, as I'm holding you, taking your helmet off and getting your neck stabilised. Can I give you some Reiki as well? Do you know what I mean? Whereas the Reiki naturally starts to flow, and if it goes to the person, it goes to the person. But my intention is that it's for the the entire safety of the scene more than anything else, and for the energy of the scene. And it's really more for me, because if I can be calm and assured and stable in my practice, then that's going to translate for my patient.

Regina Sayer 1:26:01

That's one thing I always used to think when people would, because I've had the experience where something happened to somebody in my family and everyone was like, Oh, I'll send healing, I'll send healing, I'll send healing. I was very happy that people were generously offering to do that, but I was also very conscious of the fact that the type the different types of healing that these people worked with and that they were sending were not necessarily complementary to each other. So I kind of said, No, thank you. Oh, I think this person wouldn't want it, and you know, whatever. I kind of tried to find a way around it. But that was my feeling is that, you know, everybody's I'll send healing, I'll send healing, I'll send healing, maybe just send maybe more positive, positive thoughts, and that in itself is energy rather than whatever your modality is, because it doesn't always go with something else that somebody else is sending.

Debi Barr 1:26:47

Ultimately, if it's not, if it's not going to work for you or it's not wanted by by you, it will bounce off you harmlessly into the earth anyway. So, you know, I'm very much of the opinion that Reiki itself will do no harm, but yes, where possible, ask.

Regina Sayer 1:26:59

Yeah. I know that it wasn't Reiki I was doing, it was something else that I uh an type of angelic healing that I was doing. And you don't need permission to do it. And I was doing it on my husband, and I didn't tell him that I was doing it. And he got home and I told him that I'd done it, and he says, Were you doing it around this time? And I said, Yeah. He was on the bus coming home, and he said, I got so tired I could barely stand up. So that's what another reason why they said, do not send you know energy to somebody whether driving or because the effect might be to make them sleepy.

Debi Barr 1:27:30

It can be, and this is it. That's a very valid point. Absolutely.

Connecting with Debi and her work

Regina Sayer 1:27:34

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so talk about what exactly is it that you are doing right now. What is it that you offer and how people can connect with you?

3 Published Books

Debi Barr 1:27:43

Two main ways that you can work with me. So, from a personal and spiritual development point of view, that tends to be more aimed at those who are new to the path, who are exploring their spirituality, who want to learn Reiki, who want to learn how to do crystals or tarot, or who want a community where they're feel supported. So I have a circle, an online circle where we do that work. I teach Reiki locally in Northern Ireland, but also online for people across the world. So it doesn't have to be in person. So I work with Holy Fire Reiki, which is more conducive for an online environment. We have recently written my book to help people explore who they really are. And my my whole ethos in the personal and spiritual development space is very much about you remembering that you have the power within you. So essentially I would be a spiritual teacher or a soul mentor, whatever you want to call it. Collection of titles, insert whatever you want. On the other hand, as well, then I work with business owners and leaders and professionals in the realm of business energetics and understanding that when they understand their energy and understand the energy of their business and their offers and their sales process and their launches, they can shape their reality and manipulate the energy in a way that will give them the business success that they maybe are missing. So there's two very clear paths, but ultimately the golden thread that ties everything together is the fact that if you master your energy, you can shape your reality accordingly. And whether you know you do that, you will always need to do the deep identity work. You'll always need, even as a business leader, if more so, you need to do the deep identity work. So depending on where you are on the path, there is usually something for you. So there's either something where you're coming into the circle and you're doing that, or perhaps then you're stepping into my business coaching spaces or my deep energetics programs, and then next year there will be a business energetics mastermind on its way as well. So there's lots of shifts and lots of changes as I grow and evolve with uh the mentorship that I'm I'm with. People can connect with me on Facebook. It's Facebook and the Debi Barr. The only reason there's a "the" in front of it is because I couldn't get my actual name on its own. And so I stuck a the at the front of it. So my business name for the personal and spiritual development stuff is rocksnrituals. So you can find me at rocksnrituals.co.uk as well. And rocksnrituals is also on Facebook and Instagram. But if you want to follow me personally, you can follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn just as Debi Barr.

Regina Sayer 1:30:03

Okay. I'm just going to come back to the fact that you have published three books.

Debi Barr 1:30:10

My first one was The Reiki Solution, which was just a little tiny book based on the Reiki principles. And it was really primarily designed for my Reiki students to give them a bit more of an insight on my personal story of how I was using the principles in real life. So it's a very short, it's less than a hundred-page book of just about the principles. And then I wrote the second book, Rocksnrituals's Tarot Tales, which is a book that goes with my beginner's tarot course that helps people understand the symbolism and the stories, the tales behind the tarot, so that they can tell. Because humans are natural storytellers. So I teach tarot by way of telling stories. So that's what that one was for. And then the most recent one is my baby, The Call of the Sacred Rebel. So it is all about living unapologetically as yourself. And it's more a share of my stories and the spiritual experiences and journeys I've had along the way, along with reflective prompts and questions that make you just ask yourself, Am I really living the life that I came here to live? And is it time that I perhaps break out of the matrix? So that's the story.

Advice for Those in Restrictive Environments

Regina Sayer 1:31:12

And the wonderful thing is that Debi is going to be joining me for a mini podcast to give readings from these books and to talk about more the process of producing these books and also, no doubt, the healing process that happened as you were writing the books as well. Because I know when I talk to a lot of people who write books like this, it's always such a deep healing that happens as they're writing and rewriting and editing and rewriting. So we're gonna have a special episode that goes into that. And that way you can find out for yourself what they're like. So I just want to ask you a little bit of advice, though. For somebody who is living in a restrictive environment, be it for religious purposes or societal purposes or what, and they feel like they have this something else in them, like you did. What is some advice that you can give on how they can try to find that part of themselves and be that's what they want to be, truly?

Debi Barr 1:32:20

Ultimately begins with something as simple as your breath, because quite often when we are running through life and we're restricted or we're finding ourselves in a state not conducive to where we want to be, we tend to breeze up here really high and we kind of constrict our energy. So my invitation to people is to start with the breath because you have that with you 24-7 everywhere you go, and it is freely available to you. By simply pausing for a moment and taking a breath in, holding it for just a second, and then letting your out breath be just slightly longer than your in-breath, you will naturally start to relax your system. And as you relax your nervous system, it allows your body space and time to unwind itself and starts to give you that internal presence and that internal calm. Big, big advocate of meditation, but I am also aware that meditation is taught in so many different ways that people get confused. So for me, it's very simple about focus on your breath for just a moment. Even when you're walking down the street, you can do this, when you're sitting on the bus, when you're in your work, when you're at home, when you're in the bathroom. You know, take a moment, go to the bathroom, breathe, take three or four deep breaths. Everyone has to use a bathroom at some point in the day. Go into the bathroom, close the door, use that opportunity to breathe. Use that opportunity to just have a moment of stillness inside yourself. Maybe placing your hand on your heart and asking yourself, you know, saying, I connect to my highest source of wisdom. What do I need to know about my desk? What wisdom is there for me today? And you might not get anything the first few times you do this, or you might just get a sense of it's going to be okay, or you might just get a set maybe an image or something pops in. And as we learn to trust ourselves in our inward expression and we look inside ourselves, what that does is it stops us outsourcing, it stops us seeking for validation from other people, it stops us asking all everyone else what we should do, and we learn to look inward and trust ourselves because the way out of the matrix is in we go inside ourselves and we actually tune into our own heart and our soul's wisdom, remembering that we are sparks of divine energy. We have all that we need connected inside ourselves. We have the wisdom of the universe, we're made of the stars, we have all that inside ourselves. You just need to get quiet long enough to hear it. And that might be through a walk out in nature if you can get outside great. Sometimes when I was at my most stressed, the thing that helped me most was going outside, taking a deep breath and just looking up at the sky and remembering that it was so there was so much space. And that helped me open up. So I think sometimes when we open up, it helps us to find that space. And in that space, you make room for the magic.

Regina Sayer 1:35:03

Do you recommend any kind of essential oil or crystal that people can also use? Because I know a lot of people say like lavender puts you in a more calming state, or but you know, it depends. I know I'm very sensitive to smell, and so I can't stand very strong smells for very long, no matter what it is.

Debi Barr 1:35:22

It depends. And essential oils need careful use. Um, and they also need to be good therapeutic grade oils as well. Less is always more when it comes to essential oils. Like one drop of lavender is ample sufficiency. You do not need to dice your bed at night like holy water with this lavender for it to work. For me, it's more I tend to like use room sprays and things. Um, a friend of mine makes beautiful soul essence room sprays with essential oils and then fuse with goddess energy, and I like to use those. Um crystals, I would suggest whatever you're really drawn to. I don't ever like to sort of prescribe and say you must have this. However, if you're feeling that everything's coming at you and you want to kind of give a bit of space, um a smoky quartz crystal is very helpful for dispelling any negative energy that's around you and keeping you grounded and calm. Tourmaline, black tourmaline is also really good for getting rid of any heavy energy that's around your space. You can't go wrong with an amethyst. But the master healer of all stones is just a clear quartz. Clear quartz is a master, master healer and it does everything it needs to do. So again, whatever you're really drawn to, if you're drawn to a particular colour or particular stone, then that's that's it calling to you. So let the crystal speak to you. And again, if you sit with your breath and hold the crystal, the crystal will let you know how it wants to be used because it has consciousness all of its own.

Regina Sayer 1:36:38

I'm smiling because when I'm always doing these recordings, I'm holding on to the clear quartz crystal. Plus, I have a couple of others that I have sticking around.

Debi Barr 1:36:50

Yeah, I have crystals behind me.

Regina Sayer 1:36:52

Yeah, I see that. Okay, so thank you so much for that advice. And for listeners, please do connect with Debi Rocks n Rituals, and that's because she is a 25-year motorcycle rider who loves heavy metal.

Debi Barr 1:37:12

The name actually came because I wanted a play on R and R for rest and relaxation. And I loved crystals, which were rocks. I loved rock music as well, and I also loved magic and rituals. So it was actually Carrie, my partner, came up with the name. So Rocks n Rituals is the personal and spiritual and the wellness brand. And then, as I say, the energetic stuff is just in my own name.

Regina Sayer 1:37:34

I like it because when Debi first contacted me, I saw that name. And then in the first paragraph, she talked about dragons and cats, and I was like, that's it. She's on.

Debi Barr 1:37:43

Love a good dragon. For those that are listening, I have a dragon pendant on my necklace and my crystal.

Regina Sayer 1:37:50

That brings us to the end of our podcast. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thank you, Debi, for telling your story and sharing everything because it's very, very interesting - the different, and like you say, it's not linear. How you kind of jump around and you come back, and almost sometimes you come full circle. It's been interesting and it's been fun too.

Debi Barr 1:38:11

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Regina Sayer 1:38:13

Thank you. Until the next time, listeners, have a lovely day wherever you are. Bye.