Meet Abigail White

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abigail White a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Abigail, so good to have you with us today. We’ve got so much planned, so let’s jump right into it. We live in such a diverse world, and in many ways the world is getting better and more understanding but it’s far from perfect. There are so many times where folks find themselves in rooms or situations where they are the only ones that look like them – that might mean being the only woman of color in the room or the only person who grew up in a certain environment etc. Can you talk to us about how you’ve managed to thrive even in situations where you were the only one in the room?

This is a great question, but it hurts my heart a bit that it even has to be asked here in 2024. Still to this day I find myself the only one or one of two black women in the room or at the table and while I am not perfect at being the only one in the room or at the table, as the case may be, I do celebrate every day that I continue to show up and that I continue to take up space, something many have told me not to do.

Let me answer your question by telling a little story. I was in 6th grade, and I was the only black kid in my English class. A class that I excelled in. However, my teacher, was a bigot and took offense to me answering questions. Over the course of one semester, I watched my grade go from an A+ to a B- and I was beyond destressed. School and good grades meant everything to me. When my report card came, I would cry, unsure how I was getting such a low grade in my favorite class when every test and quiz I took, I had the correct answers. Then, in the second semester with this teacher, we had a ‘bring your parent to class day’. My mom came with and sat behind me and watched as my teacher, who was teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird”, had no issue with using the N-word in a manner she should have been ashamed of, ignored me when I raised my hand to answer a question, and belittled me in front of the class when she allowed me to speak. After class, I felt more than disgusted.

For me, I had tried my hardest. I had tried to participate in class. I had been respectful. I had answered the questions correctly and yet, I had been scolded and the flagrant way that she had phrased questions utilizing offensive language had left me heart sore and on the verge of tears. As an empath, that was a state I found very easy to come to. My mom and I walked out of the classroom, and she pulled me aside and whispered to me. “Abigail, you did nothing wrong. That woman is a racist and she will continue to try to break you. Don’t let her. From now on, be selective when you answer questions and keep your head high. Now, dry your eyes. Don’t let them see you cry.”

I know many may see fault in that last line coming from my mom. But this was the 2000’s and the times were different then. What I will also say is, my mom knew something else, she knew ME. She knew that because of my abilities as an intuitive, I was prone to letting my feelings take over and she wanted me to learn that everything has a season, a right time and place. It was a lesson that I grew to appreciate as I continued my journey.

The story has a happy ending. Throughout that next semester in that English class, I did what my mother told me to do, and I raised my grade, a huge success for me. I also found out that that particular teacher was being let go, for more than her lack of teaching ability. My work remained the same high quality, I just didn’t participate as much. Some may say I should have gone to the school administrators and complained and gotten her fired. Maybe if it had been a different time, I would have. But I learned something very valuable in that classroom and from my mom that semester that has allowed me to be effective and successful in almost every room that I have gone into since, and that was to learn how to read a room. Understand where people are coming from and decide which hills I am willing to die on.

At 13 years old, I learned that some people aren’t worth fighting and somethings, a lot of things and people, are temporary. This gave me the freedom to become more of myself. Learn to harness the intuitive skills of reading energy and emotions, and formulate my opinions based on science and facts and learn how to voice what I know and feel in a way that can be heard and understood. I was given the opportunity to learn how to defend myself and I learned how to be a better listener. These skills have allowed me to not only stand in many rooms as an authority but in my own personal power and it has made me incredibly effective and successful in my work and my life.

I couldn’t be more grateful.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

What I do is the best thing in the world! I am an intuitive, a medical intuitive to be exact. The short of it is, I am a healer! I love what I do and how I got here is a long story, but I will try to keep it brief.

I have always been the person who could see things others couldn’t. During a near death experience, I saw my maternal grandmother and heard her tell me that everything was going to be okay. I could walk through a forest or a field and see the fairies and gnomes and I could feel the Earth speaking to me, energizing me and helping me. My mom liked to say that I saw the world not as it is, but how it could be. I always disagreed with her and told her, no, I just saw the world. The good, bad, the ugly and all the things in between.

My intuitive abilities didn’t stop there though. I knew what people were thinking before they said things. I was able to see things before they happened and without knowing how, I just knew things. Of course, as a very independent child and a very psychic one, who didn’t have the words to explain to people what I was or how I was doing it, making friends was hard. But the friends I did make, were friends that I knew I could trust.

I would be lying if I said that it was an easy way to grow up though. My mom had been like me when she was growing up in the 70’s and out of survival she turned everything off. When she recognized the same abilities in me, she told me to do the same. I was too stubborn to listen, but I was also curious and maybe a little worried. Was I schizophrenic? Bipolar? Just plain crazy? I had to know. So, I threw myself into science.

It was convenient because I had known that I wanted to be a doctor since I was 3. It only got stronger when I started watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Women and Diagnosis Murder. Through learning science, I was able to catalog my abilities and my moods. But nothing in what I was learning was matching up. Strangely, enough, I never heard terms like psychic or medium until I was a teenager and to me, they didn’t resonate with me and I dismissed them.

I continued my study, graduated at the top of my class and won a full ride scholarship to a private college on the east coast where I studied medicine and neuroscience, philosophy and writing & rhetoric. After graduation, I applied for nursing school and got into the best university for nursing in Minnesota. Caring for people, helping them heal was fun, exciting. My mind thrilled and thrived with the challenge but in my heart, something was missing.

Then things took a turn for me. I started being abused at my job and it threw me into feelings of brokenness. I started therapy and it was then, in the most divine way possible, I found my first spiritual mentor who taught me the word that changed my world forever; intuitive.

I certified as an intuitive through her program and I started Breath of Life, my medical intuitive company, and for the first time in my entire life, I felt whole. I no longer had to hide any part of me, and I finally understood why I was such a dang good nurse. Not only am I a natural healer but I am also highly claircognizant (I just know things) and clairvoyant (I see things) and clairsentient (I feel things). These abilities made me incredibly effective as a nurse. I worked offensively instead of defensively, less reactive, which in the emergency room, is a nurse’s biggest asset.

What I also felt was a powerful feeling of rightness because having my own healing company meant that I could actually heal people who weren’t in emergency situations. See, the US medical system is not designed to heal people in the truest sense of the word, and it was a fact that had started to chaff early in my medical training.
I had watched it happen with my mother and I was tired of it.

My mom and myself, were the first success stories of Breath of Life. We developed alternative healing products that utilize natural ingredients to help cleanse and stabilize our bodies. And then, I took us through the energetic work to truly heal us. In 3 months, my mom was off all her medications and feeling amazing. I was no longer in adrenal fatigue and my body was no longer holding on to weight in the same way that it had. Both of us stopped getting sick.

Today, I have read hundreds of people and helped heal them both in the physical and energetic. I teach a three-level course, teaching students the pillars of healing that, once applied, help your physical and energetic bodies to regulate, activate cellular regeneration, and DNA activation. We have expanded our alternative healing products to tap the energy medicine of indigenous peoples around the world and I work with private one on one clients and provide other practitioners with consultations on their clients.

Breath of Life is for those looking to understand the root cause of illness, both physical and energetic and it is for those that want to learn how to harness the natural abilities that we all have to heal. Our bodies are programed to heal us but some of the things we do to our bodies can make it harder for it to do its job. I am also here to teach people that for as good as your body is at doing what it does, I can make it better. The most exciting thing for me, is working with people, sick or not, and showing them just how much better it can get for them!

And, not just physically, but mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Breath of Life is the gateway, the door that will lead you to infinite possibilities when you are finally ready to explore them.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

OHHHH! Tough question. The three qualities or skills that have been the most impactful for me would be understanding my intuitive abilities, being a better listener and asking the better questions.

First, understanding my abilities, of which we all have, is essential in being able to get oneself, where you want to go. Let me explain. If you are a person who feels things intensely, but you don’t know how to honor that or you don’t know how to utilize it to your greatest advantage, you may stay in rooms that you know feel wrong, but you can’t explain why. For me, having this ability on lock is what has allowed me to have incredible success with partnerships, both business and personal and it has kept me out of places and relationships that would have hurt me or my business or family.

Second, being an excellent listener is something few people want to do these days. With all the noise, we tend to believe that if we don’t get loud, shout to be heard, we never will be heard. I used to be like that. I used to feel like no one ever listened to me, I used to feel like no one cared about what I said. What I found out by developing my listening ability, was that in the spaces I really had something of value to impart, I always had the opportunity to speak. And if that opportunity didn’t arise, it was my opportunity to turn inward, reflect on what I have heard, and make an effort to understand the perspectives that had been presented. Was there an opinion that I needed to change or reinforce? Was I being deliberately obtuse or offensive in my way of thinking? Did I truly have knowledge or was I just pretending like I did.

And third, learning how to ask the better questions gave me the ability to stand as an authority and in my power as a woman and as a way shower. Asking the better questions of myself, makes me better and by asking the better questions of others, helps them to do the same. It also helps to foster trust, respect and helps others believe in my ability to lead and provide leadership. I know that my journey leads me to large audiences and elevated rooms, it is why I was given the opportunity to learn this skill early. It is something that this world needs yes, but quite frankly it is what people deserve.

If you are just starting on your journey, I highly encourage you to develop these three things. First, by getting radically honest with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself, then I guarantee you, no matter what you do in life, you will find yourself struggling. Ask yourself, what it is that you do very well, naturally – this will lead you to the intuitive ability or abilities that you have naturally cultivated. Once you have that, ask yourself if you are willing to learn more about this ability/skill. If you aren’t, ask why and if you are, start researching and more importantly start doing. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.

Becoming a better listener is a bit harder. You have to challenge yourself with silence. Turn off the TV, music, and sit in meditation or go for a walk alone. See how long you can go before you make a sound. Once you make the sound, maybe it’s a whistle, or you start talking to yourself, or maybe you stub your toe or a bug bites you, ask why it is you felt it was necessary to make the sound. You are inevitably going to make an excuse, make it and then examine that. “The dog was going to tip over a plant so I had to tell them to stop,” okay but could you have just gotten up and touched the dog and shook your head no? Or even more scandalous, could you have just let it happen and then cleaned it up? This exercise will show you where you simply are too used to making sound and where you find it harder to listen.

And for those who are trying to learn how to ask the better questions, this takes you getting curious and challenging yourself by sitting in rooms where you know people are smarter than you. Buy a masterclass on a topic that you never thought you would take, audit a higher-level class, or invest in mentorship. These people are already good at asking the better questions and they will show you how thinking differently will teach you how to see things from a different perspective which is the basis of learning how to ask the better question. See, most people can’t ask the better questions because they are afraid of sounding stupid or being wrong, but you have to let go of that fear if you want to enhance your ability to ask the better questions.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I absolutely love books! I have read thousands and my personal library numbers in the hundreds, and I am still going.

That being said, I have to say there have been two books, one a stand-alone novel and the other a whole series of books that have impacted me and my development as a healer and as a person. They are the novel “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern and The Black Jewel Series by Ann Bishop.

The first because it talks about the power of creativity and how by making something out of love, you push yourself to be better and you push those around you to want that same thing. As a leader, healer and business owner it is my mission to want people to want better for themselves. But there is only a finite number of ways to help people achieve that. One of those ways is to inspire someone enough to want more for themselves. And being creative and putting all of your love and excitement into a thing is exactly the way to inspire others.

The second because it taught me one very important lesson, everything has a price. As a leader and healer, the price may not be obvious, for me as a healer, helping others costs me something every time I do a healing or teach a course. I give a piece of myself, my energy to everyone that I come in contact with, this was something I understood very well from working in the emergency room. Understanding this lesson, I learned that it was important to make sure my cup was full and to recognize when I was wasn’t full. The times I am full, allows the price I must pay to be easier to give. It also means that it is easier to refill. It’s that idea that it’s quicker to refill a glass that is half full than it is to fill one that is empty. After working with me, no one would probably guess that I am tired or that it was a hard one to do. This is because energy isn’t always a tangible thing. But that subtlety is something I am acutely aware of.
And then of course, there are times when the price is very obvious. Time with friends and family can be limited, a need for personal time and space has to be cultivated and enforced. This price is the one that is a double edge sword, and it truly does cut the deepest. This is the price everyone can see, and it is the one that if you don’t uphold, you will be upset with not just yourself but others too. Here it is easy to blame others when the cost is high, but in the end, only one person can pay it, you.

This series of books taught me that the price we pay isn’t good or bad, it simply is and that if we are strong in our abilities, if we stand in our power, if we are honest with ourselves, then it doesn’t matter what it is or if it’s hard, we will do what is right for us and for others every single time. This is what it is to be in integrity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.breathoflifellc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breathoflife_healer/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/breathoflifeintuitive
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-white-73019a44/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@breathoflifellc

Image Credits

Amy Neeley