Meet Your Guide... Crystal

I didn't choose this path. It chose me, the way everything meaningful in my life has. I didn't choose this path. It chose me, the way everything meaningful in my life has. For years I did everything I could to silence it. I was told I was too sensitive, too dramatic, too much. My addiction wasn't about substances, it was about trying to turn off something I had no language for yet. Gifts that came from the divine, dismissed by the very people and systems that should have recognized them, because they threatened the story everyone around me needed to believe.

My name is Crystal, and I spent years living against my own nature. Raised in an evangelical household where crystals were forbidden and tarot was evil (the irony was never lost on me, Crystal being my name) I learned early to silence my intuition. I even set down the tarot cards I'd been drawn to as a teenager because my dad gave me every reason why they were wrong.

In 2014 I got sober and learned to meditate. That was the door opening. Sobriety strips away everything you were using to stay numb, and meditation shows you what was always there underneath. My intuition, long silenced, began to stir.

In 2017 my son's father overdosed. That loss cracked something open in me that I had no framework for yet. I found myself doing work I couldn't name, helping a soul navigate its transition, staying present at the threshold between worlds. I wasn't afraid. I knew how to hold the space. That was the beginning of my psychopomp work, and it has never stopped.

From 2016 to 2019 I worked in the rehab where I got sober, as a shift supervisor, medication tech, and peer support specialist. It was the most meaningful work I had done up to that point. I knew those women because I was them. In 2019 I was hired by the county health department as a peer support specialist and raised to supervisor in 2020.

From 2018 through 2020 my body was also unraveling. Debilitating digestive issues that no test could explain. Six daily medications. Endless procedures. Answers that never came. I lost my gallbladder in 2020 and even that didn't fix what was actually wrong. Those years were my dark night of the soul. They hollowed me out in ways that had nothing to do with digestion and everything to do with years of stored grief, trauma, and a life lived out of alignment.

By 2021 I was ready to come back to myself. Every test had come back normal. The last doctor looked at me like I was a hypochondriac. I knew something was wrong even when the science said otherwise. Then one day, out of nowhere, my intuition whispered: try Reiki. I had barely heard of it. I followed it anyway. That first session left me exhausted, emotional, and strangely renewed. The next morning I woke up lighter. In that moment I knew I was going to learn and practice Reiki. Over time I came off all six medications. I began healing, not just physically, but in the places I'd been carrying weight for decades. When I trained in Reiki it didn't feel like learning. It felt like remembering.

That same year I decided to relearn tarot. I'd set it down as a teenager and never picked it back up. This time I wanted to come back to it on my own terms, without memorizing keywords, without someone else's framework imposed on mine. I looked for a game that could teach tarot intuitively, something playful, community based, accessible. It didn't exist.

So I created it. Along the way I relearned tarot. Again it felt like remembering.

Tar-O-Nocculys was born in 2021, conceived in the middle of my own transformation. A one of a kind interactive tarot game designed to help people trust their own intuition first, before tradition weighs in. No wrong answers. No memorization required. Just you, the cards, and what they genuinely stir in you.

The county job was doing what broken systems do. Zero resources. Zero support for the people doing the hardest work. During my time there we lost two peers to overdose. I sat with that grief inside a system that kept asking more from people it refused to protect. At some point I looked around and thought I didn't get sober to sit in a windowless office watching this happen. Something had to change and I was the only one who could change it for myself.

I started paying off debt. Disconnecting from the things that kept me plugged into a life that no longer fit, one piece at a time. Building quietly toward the exit.

In 2022 I founded Tranquil AF in Maryland while still inside that system, building what was next before I was able to leave.

Then they made the decision for me.

I burned out and took FMLA to protect myself. When I returned my job had been posted for three weeks. I was given 24 hours to reapply for the position I had built. The first words out of my supervisor's mouth when I walked back in were not welcome back, hope you're feeling better. They were "people have been asking if you went to rehab." I knew it wasn't true. The eleven people I supervised all said they knew I was burnt out because I had been telling everyone before I left. My supervisor was trying to hurt me with the very thing that made me good at the job. I tried to fight it. Spent a lot of money and lost.

I walked out on April 1st, exactly five years to the day from when I walked in.

What they didn't know was that the door they closed had already been replaced by something else entirely.

In late April 2024 I packed up everything and drove west. Colorado Springs received me like it had been waiting. Tranquil AF didn't start here, it's expanding. The Rockies became the backdrop for the next chapter of something that had been growing for a decade.

My gifts have kept expanding in directions I never planned. Mediumship opened. The psychopomp work deepened. I've helped guide many souls through transition, including both of my grandparents and others who came to me at the moments that mattered most. I volunteered with Hospice and worked as a caregiver. I've sat with people in their final hours and their darkest seasons. I've been guided by my intuition each step of the way.

None of it was in the plan. All of it was exactly right.

In the two years since moving to Colorado, I’ve been building slowly and intentionally. Hosting monthly Tar-O-Nocculys game nights. Deepening my own healing. Connecting with extraordinary souls who find their way to the table at exactly the right time. The land here has helped reset my nervous system in ways I didn’t know I needed. The mountains don’t rush. They don’t perform. They just stand. And something in me finally learned how to do the same.

Whatever you believe, whoever you believe in, you are welcome at this table. All paths rooted in love are welcome here. I believe our differences can bring us together when everyone feels safe enough to show up authentically. When we feel safe, we listen differently. We soften. We expand.

Tranquil AF was built to hold that kind of space. Tar-O-Nocculys was designed to create it. A community where your path is honored, your intuition is trusted, and there is room for all of us.

I am not here to tell you what the cards mean. I am here to help you remember that you already know.

Connect for Tar-O-Nocculys, Reiki and Readings

Experience balance, clarity, and transformation through community game nights, Reiki sessions, and tarot readings with Tranquil Ascending Flow. Connect with me in person, online, or over the phone for guidance and support.