Where "Restitching Destiny" Actually Started

Picture it: Spartanburg, South Carolina. March 2021.

Okay, I'm not that big of a Golden Girls fan (don't judge me!) but how else do you start the story of the day your life and your perception of shelf completely shifted forever?

In the city I teach in, just under 5 minutes away from my school is the coolest metaphysical shop called The Quirky Lotus. They started as a tiny retail space on the opposite side of town before moving to a larger location in late 2020. After that they added The Wellness Center, where you can go for tarot readings, energy healing, all kinds of cool things (if you are into the "Hippie-Dippie-Woo-Woo" stuff, that is.)

One service that the awesome shop owner offers is a Past Life Regression. I have been fascinated by the idea of past lives for as long as I can remember, and I (somewhat jokingly) told my husband that a gift card for a regression session would be an amazing gift. Little did I know how seriously he would take me. (I say jokingly because it's not a small price tag; which it completely understandable. I just don't like to think about spending that much money on myself.)

Christmas of 2020 my hubs presented me with a hand made certificate for a session. He enlisted the help of my best friend of over 20 years now (Suki-chan!) to write it out, and he had it rolled up and waiting in my stocking on Christmas Morning.

When I was finally able to book a session with Tavin, the amazing owner of the Lotus, life was... well, it was life-ing hard. It was the school year after the Covid shutdown, so I was teaching elementary school music on a cart, pushing into classrooms, battling with masking issues, close contact events, and not being able to sing at all or utilize instruments without significant sanitizing procedures. I had also taken on the school yearbook that year, in an effort to make myself as useful as possible. The possibility of loosing my job due to not being able to actually produce music the way I had in years past had me finding every way possible to secure my job. This left me pretty worn out when combined with worrying about my own family.

Those worries included my Grandma, who, on her birthday at the end of March 2021, was hospitalized. My mom had loaded her up into the car to take her for an eye doctor appointment, because they both needed new glasses. Grandma's doctor had called mom as they were driving, saying that Grandma needed to be taken to the emergency room due to some concerning levels they found from her visit the day before.

We didn't know it then, but Grandma would never come home. But that's a tale for another time.

Needless to say, with everything that was going on in my life, I felt ridiculous taking time for myself, especially to have a regression session. I was fairly convinced that it wouldn't work on me, that there wasn't anything special to know, that I was magical enough to be able to connect with anything.

Boy, was I wrong.

When we went in for my session, Tavin first let me know that Spirit was already talking to her, letting her know that I didn't think it would work on me. "Loose that thought," she said, waving her arms over her head with a laugh. "I've got you!"

We went into Tavin's session room, a really magical place that had a large leather chair and matching foot rest. I had worn my glasses, anticipating that my contacts would irritate my eyes if they were closed too long. The room was warm as I sat down, a type of subliminal brown noise playing.

Tavin guided me, a lot like those guided meditations that you can find on YouTube. After several moments of deep breathing and allowing myself to somewhat detach from the here and now, I found myself surrounded by endless swirling clouds of blue-gray smoke. I could feel the cool wetness of it all when I reached my hand out, my whole body chilling as the area around me grew colder.

Tavin had me picture threads - the threads of my lives, I would imagine - and pick one to follow. It took me to a colonial street, cobble stone streets with noisy horse drawn carts moving about. When she asked me to describe myself, I was wearing black boots, a simple brown dress. "What does your hair look like?" Tavin asked me.

I made a somewhat disgusted face. "It's brown and curly."

Tavin and I laughed about that later. Apparently in that life I did not care for the dark curls. Hilarious considering that the bulk of this life has been spent with blonde hair that refuses to hold a curl.

In this strange first person experience, I walked down the street, describing what I saw to Tavin. It was hard to physically talk, something that normally would have scared me, but I was too occupied with what was happening around me.

I walked down the street. "What are you looking for?" Tavin asked me.

"My husband." My voice broke. I didn't know why.

Said husband appeared, broad shoulders, thick muscles, dark hair, and a bright smile.

Perception shifted for a moment, and I was an outsider, looking in on my past self and her husband as they embraced in the street. He kissed her and she chuckled, a smile on her lips. They were so in love with each other.

He was so in love with me.

"How do you feel seeing him?" Tavin inquired.

"Happy, but sad."

"Why is that?"

"Because we didn't grow old together."

The sorrow I felt when I whispered that statement was so deep, so cutting in my core. I truly have never felt anything like it in this life.

Tavin guided me further, helping me comb through the details of that short life. We came to the incident that had lead to my death - an accusation of witchcraft for saving an infant with CPR. Whoever I had been, I knew that my mother had done that sort of thing when I (she?) had been young. But my mother, for reasons I did not understand, had disappeared when I was still small.

The mother of the infant, a snotty, rich woman, had always held disdain for me. She cried witch and I was hauled away to a dark, dank jail cell. I felt the cool stone of the floor underneath me as I cried, sobbing, begging someone to listen to me. "I am a seamstress, not a witch!"

Tavin guided me through some breathing, the emotions from my past self causing my current meat suit to be incredibly tense. "If you see something and don't want to stay, just tell me," she advised, placing a heavy crystal in my hand. I could feel it, but it felt distant, as if my actual self was not fully connected to the hand anymore.

The last things I saw in that lifetime before all but begging Tavin to get me out were a scaffold and a noose. My husband standing at the edge of the platform, his face tense, as he watched.

Tavin, amazing woman that she is, pulled me out the second I started repeating "I don't want to be here." I haven't decided if I actually said that during that event in the past, but she took my cue and I did not have to watch my death.

We re-centered, going back to the smokey in-between space before looking at another life. I'll leave that one a mystery for now.

When Tavin brought me out of the meditation, I was uncomfortably hot, my body sweaty under my clothes. I had cried, dried tear trails down my face. I was exhausted. But so grateful to have seen just small glimpses of myself. Tavin and I discussed where and when I might have been, especially in the first life I visited. The details had been very sparse on that one.

Then I went home. Life carried on, chores, work... a few short weeks later, my Grandma passed away, and I was my mom's right hand woman for planning the funeral. All the while, I experienced waves of emotion and flashes of memories that I knew were from those past lives I had seen. Once particular incident - a flash of my colonial life's husband just before I was executed - sent me to my knees sobbing as I tried to do laundry.

Later that year, I was attending an event at the Lotus - I honestly don't remember what it was, but I was vigorously taking notes. In those notes, I came to a conclusion - I could rewrite the story for my past self. It would change it, but in some small way, I could acknowledge what should have happened to her. Should have happened to me.

And so, I started writing. It was more for therapy at first, but then the wonders of Facebook showed me an interesting advertisement. Dragonblade Publishing was hosting a contest for historical romance. "I could do that," I thought, deciding that I would submit my past life rewriting and see what happened.

I placed in the Semi-Finals my first try, then had an epic escaped trying to finish writing the first draft of the book in 11 days. (Yes, I wrote over 150 pages in ELEVEN days!) That is also a story for another time... although if you are truly interested, I did document the whole thing on Tiktok (@KateWinchAuthor).

Following the Dragonblade announcement in 2022, my colonial past life retelling sat, untouched, until January of 2024. I was connected with my amazing editor (shout out to Eliza!!) through a writing friend. Initially, she was just doing a read through as a favor of the friend who connected us. When we reconvened after her read through, however, she was REALLY excited. "This is really good," she said. "This can be so good." And so we started working together.

A month of edits later and Eliza was attempting to take the newly renamed "Restitching Destiny" out to publishers. I don't have an agend, and Eliza is freelance, so there was a lot of not hearing back, analyzing submission guidelines. I can never thank her enough for her time and energy on this story.

Fast forward to Jully 2024 when I heard about the Vellys on Kindle Vella. I had been going back and forth about possibly just self publishing the book, and (what can I say) the draw of a potentially large prize caught my attention. So I touched base with her and then I began posting it on Vella.

And here we are today, patiently waiting for the results of the Vellys. I have no grand illusions of winning anything, but you miss one hundred percent of the shots that you don't take, right?

I know this was a longer post, so props to you for sticking it out! I'd really love it if you checked out "Restitching Destiny" currently on Kindle Vella. Show it a little love before the time comes to bring it down and make it into the first of what I hope will be many, many books.

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0D9J5W8QN