Palm Reader
Actress Cortney Palm published Flights of Non Fancy last year. I get the impression that if she was to write a memoir about her career, she would tread carefully. As she writes in the disclaimer of her self-help book: “I have changed some names to protect individuals’ privacy. To maintain the anonymity of the individuals involved, I have changed some details.”
When Cortney Palm began writing the book in 2018, she was moonlighting as a nanny and a gymnastics coach. She wrote: “When I was a gymnast, I feared doing a trick that I had previously gotten hurt on, because when I simply thought of that incident, my body would sweat, and fear would consume me. It was as if I was still in that moment of the accident.”
Mind over matter is an important concept as she later wrote: “I was doing construction and I was working very long hours doing hard labor. My body ached and I wanted a break. I suddenly pulled my back out and got very upset and disappointed. I was hurt for six weeks. I decided to see the injury as a gift. I had wanted a break from construction and I received it. Maybe it wasn’t the break I had hoped for, I hadn’t been properly attracting what I wanted, but I received the break.”
Cortney is an empath: “I was shooting a movie and every time I got on set, I would have significant chest pain. I am very familiar with being on film sets and I know I wasn’t stressed out or nervous. So I started asking around and found out that the director of photography had a heart condition. I could feel it when I was around him.”
She is a survivor: “After getting rear-ended in a car accident, I experienced a neck injury and very quickly I realized my attorney and all the healthcare providers were using me with the goal to get money from the insurance company. I wracked up a bill that was thousands of dollars for several different doctors and each facility kept saying I wasn’t healed, I needed more work done, and more imaging done because of their hidden agenda - they needed to make money. To further my suspicion, I overheard staff speaking about how they were short in their monthly earnings and were told to call old clients and get them back in to make money for the company. I was supposed to get a CT scan of my neck and head, and I refused because I didn’t want to get injected with the dye. I couldn’t count how many calls I got from the neurologist’s office saying things along the lines of Well, you may die from a blood clot, so you better come in. They were basically trying to plant the fear within me so I would believe I would have a blood clot and have a stroke!”
Familial flashback: “My grandpa had PTSD from the Vietnam war and was addicted to cigarettes, but he wanted to quit. While smoking, he would drop his ashes into a tin can and close the lid. Whenever he craved a smoke, he would open up the lid and smell the ashes. It disgusted him and he eventually was able to quit.”
Cortney’s destiny: “I have met all of my power animals through meditation, hypnosis or plant medicines. They have come to me in dreams as well. Names come too in really neat ways. For example, when I met my jaguar power animal, I wanted to know her name and the first name I heard was Nefertiti, but I dismissed it thinking that Nefertiti was simply a name I wanted, but then when I came home the next day, I turned on the TV and the movie The Mummy was on and it was the scene where Nefertiti was fighting Anck-Su-Namun. The actress said “Nefertiti” and I was like Holy cr@p! That was a sign! I love it when the universe talks to me this way.”
Indie horror flick anecdote: “While filming As Certain as Death, my co-star and I engaged in a yoga session. She led the practice and I told her that I wanted to cry. She had said that crying is perfectly normal and if I feel like crying, I should. The particular movements were centered on the lower chakra system in gaining and honoring the divine feminine power. I remember finishing the session and crying but feeling very empowered and grateful.”
Another actress anecdote: “When I travel as an actress to different states, I have been put up in Air Bnbs and funny enough three of those were haunted. By the third haunted house I was in, I was better prepared, but I was also more keenly aware of the spirit that was stuck in the house. The second house I was in hated the music. My phone kept turning off. That ghost was quite a trickster!”
Speaking of horror, that’s horror movie icon Tony Todd behind her.