Once Upon a Star: A Memoir at the Intersection of Desire & Destiny

By Sarah Ingmanson

After her father died suddenly during her junior year in high school, Sarah Ingmanson started to experience a string of events too uncanny to attribute to frivolous luck. This became her entry point into spiritual exploration along with its share of heart-breaking and heart-lifting earthly adventures.

Sarah always knew she was adopted, but most of what she learned about her birth parents came after the fact of her childhood. In this way, she is able to examine nature vs. nurture in a unique way.

When Sarah requested her birth papers at age 35, she was primarily interested in learning her heritage. Did her freckles mean she was Irish? Why was there so much red in her hair when she went blonde that year?

What she received answered those questions and more, including her birth name, Star. Her birth papers created a trail that would allow her to piece together her genealogy a decade later.

Taking the concept that all stars are born out of chaos, Sarah examines her life from a star perspective and encourages the reader to as well. At these intersections of desire and destiny, Once Upon a Star takes us from fairy tale beginnings to our personal earthly legends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798765241387

Sarah Ingmanson

Sarah writes self-help wrapped in memoir. Through her life story, she takes her readers on heart lifting and heartbreaking adventures with her signature soul-searching style. She has her MBA from Wharton, her MA in International Affairs from the Lauder Institute, and a BA from Tufts University, graduating Summa Cum Laude in International Relations and Quantitative Economics. This former equity research analyst and investment banker, professional figure skater, and Fulbright Scholar, is an award-winning fitness and figure skating competitor, author, financial advisor, and mother. Dream big. Desire more. Follow Sarah on her latest adventures here: sarahingmanson.com Instagram: @sarah_ingmanson Facebook: @sarah.ingmanson

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Copyright © 2023 Sarah Ingmanson.

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of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher,

and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use

of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical

problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The

intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help

you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use

any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional

right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4137-0 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4139-4 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4138-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907525

Balboa Press rev. date:  05/26/2023

Dedicated to my daughter, Desiree Star, and my birth mother — the one who named me Star.

The stories in this book reflect the author’s recollection of events. Some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. Dialogue has been re-created from memory.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     R.I.P.

Chapter 2     When Purposes Collide

Chapter 3     Under The Mask Of Control

Chapter 4     Aim For Florida, Land in Fukuoka

Chapter 5     Red, Red Wine

Chapter 6     Mrs. Smith

Chapter 7     The Little Hussy

Chapter 8     When Your Dad Looks at You Differently

Chapter 9     One-Eyed Bunny

Chapter 10   Late Bloomer

Chapter 11   My First Fiancé

Chapter 12   Never Say Never

Chapter 13   Rubella

Chapter 14   My First Husband

Chapter 15   Tadaima… Japan

Chapter 16   Sayonara Desire

Chapter 17   The Pilgrimage Back to Japan

Chapter 18   Boys II Men

Chapter 19   Aim for Goldman, Land at Morgan Stanley

Chapter 20   The Lost Decade(s)

Chapter 21   Graduation Night

Chapter 22   Aim for Union Square, Land in Times Square

Chapter 23   Fear Of Flying

Chapter 24   Baby Thoughts

Chapter 25   Waking Up To A New Reality

Chapter 26   Mind-Body Disconnect

Chapter 27   Marriage Disconnect

Chapter 28   Blonde Ambition

Chapter 29   Meeting Manny

Chapter 30   Flying Southwest

Chapter 31   Trauma & Betrayal

Chapter 32   Love Triangle

Chapter 33   North Americans

Chapter 34   Unlearning Busy as a Virtue

Chapter 35   Disappointment in Sacramento

Chapter 36   Solar Plexus

Chapter 37   What Happens in Columbus...

Chapter 38   Pro for a Day

Chapter 39   Mis-Conception

Chapter 40   Conception

Chapter 41   North Americans, Take 3

Chapter 42   My Second Was-Band

Chapter 43   The Angel Inside

Chapter 44   Meeting My Divorce Attorney

Chapter 45   The Escape Chute

Chapter 46   Thanksgiving

Chapter 47   Meatloaf Delivery

Chapter 48   Meeting Michael

Chapter 49   Uncovering Stella

Chapter 50   The Sea Is Calling

Chapter 51   Going Dark

Chapter 52   Tell Me About Competing…

Chapter 53   Okaerinasai to Japan & Competing

Chapter 54   Ode To Suffocation

Chapter 55   The Geisha Connection

Chapter 56   We Don’t Talk About…

Chapter 57   On This Side Of Eternity

Chapter 58   Mothers and Daughters… and Granddaughters

Chapter 59   A Tale of Two Adoptees

Chapter 60   A Tale of Two Mothers

Chapter 61   How I Met My Birth Mother

Chapter 62   My Pandemic Story

Chapter 63   How I Met My Birth Father

Chapter 64   March to Glide

Chapter 65   Dear Desiree

Chapter 66   The Unlikely Mother

Chapter 67   Soul Curriculum

Chapter 68   Dream Big. Desire More.

INTRODUCTION

"We need chaos in our soul to give birth to a

dancing star." ~Frederick Niezcher

All stars are born out of chaos. A supernova is a special type of star created through an explosion. Whether the star survives depends on the stellar core of the entity. In other words, it’s not a given. It’s a chosen.

The human experience closely resembles this. A stellar explosion of sorts appears to create chaos and destruction in our lives. At these junctures, we can deconstruct to construct; to not just survive, but to figure out a way to thrive as a deeply personal part of our soul’s evolution. Destiny beckons us, but free will responds. That free will determines whether we crumble or shine, but our souls are always rooting for the latter...herein, our Once Upon a Star story plot moves from a fairy tale to our personal earthly legend.

A stellar explosion creates the brightest stars. Now, that term, explosion, should be personalized to your life — death of a loved one, destruction of a marriage, tragedy, betrayal, loss, illness, disappointment, rejection, acts of aggression — or, any way, life detonates in an unexpected and life-altering way right in front of your eyes.

Our earthly selves feel wronged when things don’t go our way, but, when life is viewed from a star perspective, everything is for us — even the bad stuff — maybe especially the bad stuff. Don’t we tend to grow the most when we have no choice but to? When life forces our hand to go deep, we find the depth of light within. And, inevitably, when we are open to luminosity, luminosity finds us.

To survive these explosions in a supernova sense, we must go beyond the experience while still having a pulse. We can’t be a supernova lying around lamenting about what happened to us. We must, in some way, become more luminous from the event and living life differently because of the event. In other words, we must evolve. Then, the star within us is born... and can be rebirthed... over and over again.

STAR SAYS: When we choose to see everything as a source of intended luminosity, we can shift any circumstance into the one we need for our beautiful stellar self to evolve.

As long as we condition ourselves to be undeterred by the explosions in our lives, we can reach the luminous frontier and our personal luminosity. With experience and observation of others, we start to see the result is guaranteed to be stellar. The question is how do we transform the explosions in our lives from the level of terrifying, tragic, traumatic, and debilitating into something freeing and luminous?

I understand that in the wake of one of these stellar explosions, surviving the next day, the next week, the next trigger when you are literally or figuratively gasping for air can feel Herculean at best. Until we fully heal, we tend to self-doubt and succumb. We question our ability to survive, to withstand the pain, and to feel normal and safe again. But, we need to — to not only survive, but to feel and contend with our emotional pain. Glossing over, pushing down, or dismissing our pain simply postpones, prolongs, and exacerbates the healing process.

Through my story, maybe you see glimpses of your own. Places where life has handed you a set of cards that has thrown you off course. Or places where you’re dimming yourself down deliberately or unconsciously. Once you recognize this, you can step back into your co-creative majesty. A place where karma means less about revenge and more about response — a response to our thoughts, actions, deeds, and planned soul curriculum.

As part of our soul curriculum, I believe we pick out our parents — in my case, two sets. Not because they’re necessarily perfect in earthly terms, but because they’re perfect in our soul trajectories. My birth parents gifted me with a big smile, a hearty laugh, sturdy legs, and an aptitude toward writing and foreign languages; while my adoptive parents taught me about life through their eyes — their values, religious beliefs, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil...the Celtics vs. the Lakers, death, and figure skating. Especially figure skating. In hindsight, figure skating was the element of nurture that revealed my nature first.

Most of what I learned about my birth parents came after the fact of my childhood. As the forces of nature emerged, you could say I came to know my name before learning my name.

On July 24, 1975, you were born at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston after a full-term pregnancy at 38 weeks and an easy delivery, according to your birth mother. She named you Star…

When I requested my birth papers at age 35, I was primarily interested in learning my heritage. Did my freckles mean I was Irish? Why was there so much red in my hair when I went blonde that year?

What I received from the adoption agency answered those questions… no, not Irish, but yes, Scandinavian, German, English, and Jewish, while also revealing aspects of my nature that I had assumed were driven by nurture or happenstance. In this way, my birth papers created a trail that would allow me to piece together my genealogy a decade later.

My birth name, Star, surprised me the most. Why would my birth mother even name me when my personal slate would be wiped clean for adoption? And, why Star of all names?

Back in 2010, I wasn’t contemplating future DNA advances that would easily close the gaps in my knowledge without the need for a private investigator. Even once the technology emerged, I hesitated because I recognized this wasn’t the world my birth parents lived in when they surrendered me in the 1970s. Adoption cases were sealed so I empathized how the DNA access might feel like a breach of contract to them, allowing me to discover their identities so easily.

STAR SAYS: The Universe is always providing us cues and clues toward our soul path. The timing of the reveal is deliberate; not for suffering, but for learning and healing at the right time.

Life is an intricate blend of free will and destiny. In our daily lives and decisions, we appear to be sitting in the driver’s seat navigating the road, but life has a way of revealing our personal GPS.

Some things feel incredibly meant to be. When we speak of things as meant to be, though, we tend to hand-pick those things that please us — lovers, dream jobs, chance meetings, favorable circumstances...but what about the rest? Even the downright awful stuff? What if the worst events in your life were equally meant to be? And, not meant to be as in meant to punish you, but meant for you. Personally, I wouldn’t have believed it until I started experiencing it.

STAR SAYS: The Universe knows that the only way out is through. That is, through the experience of, and, especially, through the experience of our most jarring life events.

The event that rocked my teenage world ignited its fair share of destruction, sorrow, and fear, while, at the same time, setting into motion a string of events too uncanny to attribute to frivolous luck — fortuitous events that put me on a path like nothing else could have. Things that would have been impossible before became feasible after. Things like financial aid, my attitude toward work, and my attraction point to men. Distinct growth paths. Paths I needed to and was destined to take. Heart-lifting and heart-breaking. Yes to both. Absolutely meant to be, I feel to my stellar core.

All healing requires acknowledgement. By getting it out, we get to ourselves again. Suffering and emotion are simply the mechanisms in which life calls us out. To reach the luminous frontier, we have to trust in the possibility of a stellar core. For when we trust in it, we can strengthen it (true of stellar and our earthly cores as well). Our stellar core is strengthened by our decision and dedication. Our decision and dedication to say yes to the next breath, the next day, the next act of self-love — and, yes, eventually, to our next time of trigger… for it will come. For me, father-daughter dances at weddings and men who seek to control me.

But first, let’s start with my first stellar explosion, where my Once Upon a Star understanding surfaced.

CHAPTER 1

R.I.P.

"For a star to be born, there is one thing that must

happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.

So collapse.

Crumble.

This is not your destruction.

This is your birth." ~n.t.

Memorial Day 1992, ~8pm, Westford, Massachusetts

Sarah, come quick. Oh my God. It’s Dad.

I heard the urgency in my brother’s voice over our household intercom. Long before the time of mobile devices, my brother was frantically SOS’ing me from the kitchen.

Upstairs in my bedroom, I was doing my norm — finishing up homework and preparing for school the next day. My brother and I were both nearing the end of our Junior year in high school. I don’t remember much from earlier in the day. I suspect I skated in the afternoon because, rain or shine, holiday or not, the rink was open. I do remember going to Kimball’s, the popular ice cream stand in town, with my skating friend. I remember this because, hours later, as I stood in the driveway clutching my brother and waiting for the ambulance, I shuddered thinking:

Was Dad there when I got back from ice cream… and I didn’t even notice?

It was dusk and, of course, I had no reason to look in the garden, but what if he was there — and I could have saved him? That thought dove into my subconscious as I struggled to make sense of the here and now.

As my brother and I watched the EMTs attempt to resuscitate him, I remember thinking they were doing this more for us than for medical reason. He was gone. It was obvious. My dad, 59 years young. Massive heart attack, seemingly out of nowhere.

That evening, my mother was at a social gathering of crafters a few towns away. I vaguely recall phoning her and deciding we’d meet at the hospital. I don’t know who made the decision to call my skating friend — the one who had dropped me off a few hours prior when, potentially, my father lay dead in the garden and just a few yards from the driver’s side. Fortunately, her mother thought better and took the driver’s seat. This was no situation for a teenage chauffeur.

From my sixteen year old standpoint, this wasn’t how deaths in the family were supposed to go. My father was the healthy one with the longevity afforded from Scandinavian genetics. My mother was the sickly one from a family where no one seemed to survive their fifties. She had a near-death experience in her thirties and a host of ailments from her childhood. And yet, here we were facing what seemed like the impossible. Death of her husband and our father.

Our Father which art in heaven...

A week later, on the grounds of Harvard Elementary School

Tears stained my face. In a feeble attempt to hide my red splotchy skin, I wore oversized sunglasses to my father’s memorial service and an equally oversized floral sundress. For the first time in my awkward teenage life, I didn’t care how unsightly I looked; I just couldn’t let anyone see my eyes. The pain in them was too deep to share. Life had betrayed me. God had betrayed me. At the time, I had no idea why. My thinking went like this:

I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. How could You (God) allow that to happen? A goodbye would be fair. I am, after all, pretty good with death. You know this. I have experienced many more deaths than most by this age — grandparents, an aunt, a classmate, and dozens of pets. (Yes, dozens plural…)

With all of these personal encounters with the other side and my intrinsic fascination with death and near-death experiences, I had been able to rationalize the why in my grandparents’ and aunt’s cases, and truly feel a sense of gratitude that the dearly departed were no longer suffering or in any pain. But this — my dad... a massive heart attack...here one morning and poof, gone before bedtime — made no sense to my teenage brain. I wasn’t sure I could forgive God for this. Well, at least not immediately.

Those early weeks were a heart-wrenching roller coaster ride. My emotions were unpredictable — in natural response to the event I could not have predicted. It elicited a kind of pain I had not experienced before. I felt as if I were in a nightmare from which I could not awaken. Emotionally, I could feel myself free-falling into a new unexplored depth of humanity — the horrible abyss of grief.

My only moments of normalcy were when I first woke up — because I had forgotten. Then the realization would strike. He was gone. He was actually gone. An ache permeated my heart. I would never see this man again. How could that be? Why him? And, tangentially, why me?

I personally guaranteed that I could never feel better, that things would never get back to normal because that incredible hole in my life simply could not be filled. However, as my stellar core kicked in, things gradually did get better. It wasn’t obvious or apparent when exactly, but, one day, I noticed the pain wasn’t so excruciating. I was laughing without guilt — that guilt for being happy. And, I noticed, many souls appeared out of seemingly nowhere to assist me and fill in the gap. In my case, the fatherly gap. And, this is where I started to see for myself — and for all of us, the star within emerges — not out of socioeconomic status or Hollywood fame, but out of the chaos and destruction, we emerge even brighter — as we are all born to do.

STAR SAYS: Trust that even, and I dare say, especially, those things that make zero sense in the moment will start to make sense once you commit to your stellar core work of processing, healing, evolving, and shining again.

After someone dies, you micro-analyze, at some level, were there signs? Did he know it? Yes and yes. I believed my dad knew it at some level. It felt almost contractual, which was why, years later, when I stumbled across the term, Soul Contract, I nodded to myself emphatically. I started to look at all of my relationships through the guise of soul assignment and evolution. Where I had seen discord and misalignment before, I began to see perfection. Not that everyone was perfect for me in the context of the human relationship or my emotional needs, but perfect for what I needed to discover and heal within myself.

When anyone near and dear departs, the positive memories tend to be preserved disproportionately vis-a-vis the negative associations. When it is a parent, the surviving parent has to bear the brunt of this slanted view and she (or he) is graded more harshly in comparison. A father-daughter relationship also forges certain internal beliefs about how the opposite sex relates to us and what we unconsciously seek out in a partner. I see how I sought the exalted traits of my dad in future relationships. My perception of the loss and any ensuing beliefs created competing forces for attraction. And, lastly, we all carry certain traits and triggers from other relationships, in our DNA, and from past lives (if that suits your belief system).

In my case, the exalted trait was my