I was born in San Bernardino County, California. A few weeks before I was due to arrive, the doctor told my mother to expect a stillbirth because I no longer had a heartbeat. By the time my mom told me this, which was only a few months ago, I had already written extensively about how my life has had a strong focus on death. I am fascinated with it, and consumed by it. The many years I spent as a hospice nurse, both fed and satisfied my curiosity.
But it was my near death experiences during Ayahuasca ceremonies, which reminded me that rebirth really is just the flip side of the death card.
Ayahuasca facilitated the renewing or rebirthing of my mind through the transforming power of unconditional love. During one of those ceremonies, I sold my soul to unconditional love. If ever I’ve had a salvation experience, that was it. Less than a month later, I arrived in the Tenderloin of San Francisco for a walking tour. At some point, Shavonne, the tour guide, stopped at Glide Memorial Church and pointed out the heart shaped wall mural with the word, unconditionally. Some of us posed in front of it for the picture which I posted below.
Pictured above is Shavonne and I along with two other guests of the walking tour.
Unconditional Love is Glide’s verb, theme, mantra, philosophy and logo.
I joined Glide the next day, which was a Sunday, not because of their mural, but because unconditional love was just oozing from inside that sanctuary. I flew back home to Phoenix that evening. However, I continued to attend Glide’s services (mostly online) until I moved to the Tenderloin on 7/21/2025. More than half of those 20 months in between, were filled with much haziness, fog, mirages and also, the dissolution of so many illusions. The latter months however, were focused on one question. Well, actually it was two.
Who am I and what do I really want to do?
Amidst the search for answers, I was neck deep in the throes of my approaching Chiron return. Another way to say it, is that I was in a mid-life crisis. A better way to say it, is that I was and still am in a Midlife Chrysalis. I borrowed that term from Chip Conley. It’s the title of his amazing podcast. Ultimately, my midlife situation taught me that what I really wanted was to be free to express myself. I was so tired of censoring my self expression based on whose employee I was or to which licensing board I reported.
I just wanted to represent myself first and foremost.
And I just wanted to be free to tell my story. I guess that brings me back to the part where I explain why I signed up for a Tenderloin walking tour in the first place. It goes like this. Since the age of four, I have been consumed with memories of me in another time and place. I vividly remember this other life. For many years, I had no context for my memories. And because I was born into religious fundamentalism, specifically, Independent Baptist Fundamentalism, I never heard of reincarnation until I was well into adulthood.
I have considered other explanations besides reincarnation. But we never had a television in our house. So I didn’t gain any “false” memories that way. Also, like my siblings, I never went to daycare or public school, except for driver’s Ed when I was a teenager. Essentially, us kids were sheltered from “the world.” My point is, I couldn’t have just come up with these memories through the influence of media or peer pressure.
As an adult, I began to heavily research suppressed memories, hypnosis and reincarnation. However, before I could pursue hypnosis, the missing link presented itself in the form of a text from my best friend. She sent a picture of a little hanging plaque which she had bought for me at a gift shoppe. To this day, she has yet to send the actual gift. And right at this moment, I can’t seem to find the picture in my photos. But I found a postcard online that is pretty close. It wasn’t just my name, Connie, in the picture that caught my attention. It was the street name and the #225.
I was certain I had previously been to that address. I knew Eddy Street.
But when had I been there? I was a toddler when my preacher father moved us out of California. And besides, we had lived near Los Angeles not San Francisco! I had only been back to California once and it wasn’t to there. I googled the address on the picture, 225 Eddy Street. One familiar thing led to the next. And in a manner of minutes, less than 60, I remembered. 130 Eddy street was one of the brothels from where so many of my memories originated.
I was once Diamond Jessie, “tall and elegant, a shapely redhead…”
The following quotes are from a comprehensive resource that has well documented the history of the Tenderloin. I believe the first two sentences are Curt Gentry’s. However, I can’t verify that right now because his book is currently in one of my unpacked boxes. “From 1912 until her retirement in 1917, 130 Eddy was the last of Diamond Jessie’s brothels. The first floor was leased out as a saloon, the parlors and madam’s suite were on the second floor, and the girls’ suites, dining room and kitchen were on the upper floors.”
The writer continues, “Jessie’s full story has been told with great warmth and wit by Curt Gentry in his book The Madams of San Francisco.¹ Suffice for me to say that she was strict yet fair and often generous with her girls, and her parlor houses were the most lavish and fashionable in the district. She was tall and elegant, a shapely redhead and a lover of diamonds whose charms (and prices) were legendary in her own time…”
Long before I made it to 130 Eddy Street as Jessie, I had worked my way up from a boarder (prostitute) to a madam at 225 Ellis Street.
During that 11/11-11/12 trip to the Tenderloin, I also located 225 Ellis Street.
However, my retirement from that line of work had been forced before I died in 1923. Now in 2025, my family views my past life memories as me being under the influence of familiar or demonic spirits. Reincarnation, in their opinion, isn’t in the Bible, and therefore, is not an actual thing. Only recently, have I told my mother about my past life. Of course, she already knew because years ago, my sister told her. Anyway, her response was to compare my memories to a seemingly very real dream she had as a child.
And that’s okay. My story isn’t for everyone, even family, at least for now.
Speaking of story, once upon a time, I thought I would share mine through this blog. And while I still can tell some of it here, the rest of it, some of the most important parts, are just too closely intertwined with other people’s stories. On top of that, I’ve signed way too many non-disclosure agreements. So in addition to my blog, I’m writing a fictional autobiography. Regardless, if I had to sum up the gist of my story, I would say this. I have taken a journey from extreme religious fundamentalism and fear to extreme freedom and unconditional love.
P.S. To make it simple, I reference my “past” life as Diamond Jessie in terms consistent with reincarnation and linear time. However, I am aware of the “time is a circle” theory, and I understand the concept of parallel and simultaneous lifetimes.