Stella Maris

You’re here for a reason

The world beyond our sight speaks to us if we’re willing to listen, and if you’ve been looking for a sign—this is it.

I’m Maris, proprietor of Dark Sister Shadow Work. I specialize in the things you can’t talk about at dinner parties, and maybe not even with your closest friends—grief, rage, self-sabotage, fear of death. I’m here to help you shine a light on the parts of yourself, and the world, you’ve been taught to avoid. 

I started out as an anthropologist, learning how people create meaning through rituals and symbols. Later I became a filmmaker, which taught me how to dive deep beneath the surface of the stories we tell ourselves. Those skills are the foundation I bring to my work with you. I’m not interested in bypass or platitudes. I’m here for the same reason you are—the truth.

The Numbers Add Up

Long ago I began noticing that significant moments in my life often had numbers associated with them. Little did I know what door I’d just opened—a rabbit hole that led to an ancient underground maze spanning millennia. Mystics in the great cultures of antiquity—Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, Maya, Aztec, Inca—were using numbers to decipher the unseen world in a practice nearly as old as the written word. This only confirmed what I already felt intuitively: numbers hold meaning far beyond coincidence.

From Pessimist to Past-Life Regressionist

For most of my life, I was a non-believer. Past lives seemed like excuses for pop stars to claim they were once princesses. But that changed when my father, toward the end of his life, shared a secret with me. This man who’d always been so logical and rational told me about fragments of memories he had, starting when he was a very young boy: of being a German soldier in Africa being chased through the bush by the British. Of being an English sailor frantically racing down the steps of a basement bar to rescue his Chinese girlfriend, and the two of them fleeing in a speedboat as Japanese fighter planes screamed overhead during the 1941 bombing of Singapore.

There again, numbers were significant. The bombing of Singapore began on December 8, 1941, and my father married my mother on December 8, 1971. She was a writer—an American-born native English speaker who wrote in English but in a traditional Chinese visual style by writing one word per line, so that it was read vertically instead of horizontally. Dad told me that he often thought Mom might’ve been his Chinese girlfriend who’d found him again in this life. She was the only woman he was ever with and after she died, he never dated again. She was his one and only across multiple lifetimes.

My mother and father as newlyweds

You can’t hear a story like that and not want to know more. He didn’t have any memories beyond those small fragments, so I started researching past life regressions. I’m one of only two people my father ever trusted to tell. The other was a coworker back in the 1980s who’d experienced similar memories. He never even told my mother for fear of being dismissed. I’m honored that he chose to trust me, and I’m grateful to share with you what he passed down to me.

Ayahuasca and the Shadow of Death

Dad’s secret broke open everything I thought I knew about the soul. And then I did an Ayahuasca ceremony. If you know, you know. I was shown the veil between life and death. It shimmered for just a moment, and it was so beautiful. But those who showed me told me I wasn’t ready to see beyond yet. My purpose is in the here and now, guiding people toward greater truth—but in my own way. Not by steering them into the light, but by digging down into the dirt with them.

Past life regressions and Ayahuasca ceremonies were just the beginning. My real initiation into shadow work didn’t come until I was diagnosed with cancer. Cancer didn’t just tear my life apart, it set it on fire and then pissed on the ashes. People I thought I knew turned on me. Vulnerability makes some folks turn feral, and when you’re forced to wear the Shadow of Death on your sleeve, it reveals people. It reveals yourself. I learned the cost of misplaced trust and the necessity of discernment, even when it costs you socially. And I learned to trust myself, and to trust the unseen world when it reaches out to communicate.

My Work with Animals

Throughout my descent and rebirth, my dog Osiris—Oz—has been my constant companion. Love doesn’t have to come from people to be real.

The biggest heart I’ve ever known

Animals sense the unseen world in ways we can’t. When my grandfather passed, his dogs began howling at the moment of his death even though they were over a hundred miles away. Two of my own pets have visited me after they died—one a few days later to say goodbye, and one many years later to let me know she was still waiting for me. It brings me great peace to help people grieving animals who are nearing the end of life or have already passed on.

What I Offer

• shadow work
• past life regression
• numerology
• animal and pet work
• psychic readings
• intuitive sessions
• spiritual counseling
• tarot readings

Credentials

• Shadow work practitioner specializing in grief, loss, betrayal, and identity rupture.
• Ritual and ceremonial guide, skilled in helping people navigate profound inner breakthroughs and life-altering spiritual events.
• Plant medicine integration experience, supporting the emotional and psychological processing that follows ceremony work.
• Writer and storyteller with decades of experience in mythic narrative, symbolic interpretation, and transformational work.