Dear Sweet Traveling Whole Friend,
This is an expansive time! We have been in the peak of light in the northern hemisphere for weeks. We are shifting out of the brightest time of the year. It is an activating, visioning, exposing, desiring, revealing, and hopefully dancing time.
I had an incredible healing experience this past weekend.
My mother and I were talking on Friday and she shared a couple of things with me that have changed me forever. Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you something and you didn’t even realize how important it was to hear that or know that until it was shared?
Well that is exactly what happened. After reading my mini ebook my mother, who has always been generous with expressing her thoughts and appreciation with me, had a few insights to share. She and I, really my whole family, finds it very satisfying to communicate. So it was no surprise to me when she told me she wanted to share a few things. I took a deep breath and got comfortable so I could really listen.
First, she acknowledged the fear I had growing up and into my adulthood about getting sick. Growing up around chronic illness can make a person, especially a child, feel confused and nervous, not understanding if, “I was next.” She said, although it made so much sense, I had never shared with her that I had carried this fear for all of my conscious life, and most likely much before. Even in my consciousness, I didn’t understand it. No one in the house or family or friends understood. How does someone come home from work sick one day and then never go back? There is no comprehension that happens around that; an acceptance perhaps, insights, lessons, gifts, many other things . . . but comprehension . . . that may or may not ever arrive.
She named this experience for me, how she understood and felt for me as a little person carrying all this belly ache.
I cried and received her deep and loving ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. She acknowledged this experience. She empathized, she noted, she reflected, she cared. She named what had been a vague swirl of anxiety.
Secondly, she had a memory of dropping my sister and I off at the subway — I was probably in 6th grade, my sister in the 9th grade — to go to school in South Philly. The next memory my mom had was me calling her from school explaining that she had to go back to the Frenrock station and get my sister because she had fallen asleep on the way to school, and I put her on a train back home saying, “she’s too sick to go to school today.”
My mother told me this past weekend that I took such good care of my sister Ada, and her, and the whole family, and that she didn’t think she ever thanked me for that. I’ll have you know my mother is very good at sharing appreciation, I have received a lot of thanks in my life for many things, but this . . . this . . . this . . . was a way of life for my existence . . . and she was thanking me for that. Thanking me for my life.
She said, “Thank you. Thank you for taking such good care of us, doing all that work.”
I sat there with tears streaming down my face. It never occurred to me that this was something I would ever hear. I was healing, moment by moment, by the depth of my need for this gratitude. What kept going through my head was, “I would do it all again. I would do it all again.” What I said out loud to her was, “We all did what we could, when we could. We all gave everything we had. Not one of us held back.” My father, brother, sister, mother, me, each of us — what we had to give, we gave. I know we gave from our depths to tend each other and ourselves as best we could. “Considering all the circumstance, I think we all turned out okay,” she said. I laughed and whole heartedly agreed.
This alone is a remarkable story, and I want to share more with you. What followed in the next 24 hours was a deep unfolding of myself in response to this act of love from my mother.
I woke the next day, spent, deeply sad. Heavy and alright. I took myself to the Red Room. I sat in front of my altar, felt little, and didn’t really cry. My wife, Kim, came through. She sat in front of me — “You look so sad.” I said, “I just need some space to be uncomfortable. It will pass. I just need to be here and feel.” She mentioned how gracefully I sit with deep un-comfort and left me to my BEING.
I sat. I journaled. I stretched. I sang. Little moved. Little shifted. I decided to do some pelvic bowl focused work, which tends to get, “right to the root of it.” As soon as I started I was filled with waves, cries, real bellows of grief and fear.
Quickly I was sobbing, weeping, feeling deep wells of hurt.
I again connected to the acknowledgement and gratitude for the experience of my childhood, youth, young adult and adulthood . . . I would soften and feel deep love, and then waves of hurt and pangs of fear would rise again and move through me.
I found myself holding my belly, the bellyache my mother had referred to . . .
I held my head, oh my headaches, I had chronic daily headaches starting at 11 years old . . .
Then I placed my hands on my heart. Heartache . . .
Each place on my body, blessed with real acknowledgement of fear, grief, belly aches, heart aches, head aches, womb aches.
Blessed.
Seen.
Known.
Cared about . . .
all that me . . .
all that life force . . .
all that effort . . .
Grateful. I allowed gratitude, a powerful frequency, a vibration, an experience to fill and heal me. And heal me it did.
I want to take a moment here and honor my sisters miraculous journey. She is our phoenix and after 14 years of illness galvanizing her teen-hood and much of her twenties, I am filled with gratitude for her profound healing, her growth, and her health.
Now, did I NEED my mother to say these things . . . no. Healing doesn’t have a singular pathway — not that I have seen — it is beyond rules. But I needed acknowledgment and gratitude. That I needed.
It is one of the greatest kindnesses of the universe that I get to have those needs met and receive those blessings from my mom in the flesh. I have learned through all of our shared heartache that we have so much profound wealth. And so here I sit, truly filled with Gratitude.
Thank you Mom. Thank you Ada.
Thank You Dad. Thank you Aaron.
Thank You life. Thank you Love.
I am, this lifetime and forward — which is also backward : ) — I am who I am because of you.
Thank you for all your care and tending of me. I acknowledge your heart aches, your belly aches, your headaches from watching me wander and hurt, from your own life and struggles, and for us trying our best and having it still really suck sometimes.
I love you.
To you, precious reader. I acknowledge your fear and grief deep below the conscious level from things you couldn’t comprehend.
Thank you for your life and all the work you have spent to bring love and care into the lives of those you love and to yourself. Thank you.
