When Alisa Messeroff was three years old, she had her first spirit visitation—a presence at the foot of her bed that she found magical, but which terrified her overprotective mother, who told her she was making it up.
For the next two decades, Alisa silenced the thing that made her different and performed the version of “normal” she was handed: high school, college, a corporate job in New York City.
In her corporate, she was promised a promotion two years in a row, and denied both times. The last was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Alisa looked her director dead in the eyes, said "F You", slammed his sliding glass door, and walked out.
Within weeks, she and her husband, Mike, had given up their Manhattan apartment, sold most of what they owned, and moved to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Alisa threw herself onto a catamaran crew, worked as a guide, and taught herself photography on a camera she bought with her own money.
Then, on the last day of their time in St. John, the hives started.
She was covered from head to toe. Her tongue swelled. She took prednisone and ended up with moon face. A parade of American doctors couldn’t name what she had, and one of whom told her she would likely have to live on steroids for the rest of her life. She was terrified that she was going to die.
Out of money and out of options, Alisa and Mike decided to continue their journey around the world, from Hawaii to Australia. Alisa said, “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die doing what I love.”
A woman in a caravan park in Broome, Australia, whom Alisa now calls her angel, booked her an appointment with a naturopath. Four days after starting a protocol of Chinese herbs, the hives subsided. Alisa would not find out until years later, back in Costa Rica, that what she actually had was alpha-gal syndrome—a tick-borne illness that makes your immune system attack mammal products. Diagnosis finally came after a decade of symptoms.
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