Healing

What is to heal? How do we know when we “got there”? My healing journey began five years ago and I am nowhere close to having the answer. Today I sat at the dentist office as my 18 year old daughter went in to get her wisdom teeth extracted. The two of us were the first ones in the office with an 8:15 appointment on a cold but beautiful morning. As this day approached I dreaded it and looked for any reason to postpone the procedure. It made no sense, I knew it, but somehow I could not shake off the reluctance I had.

In the most perfect way, this responsible teenager had laid out every medication she was to take and set a time with post it notes, down to the minutes of when each had to be taken. She woke up this morning and did exactly as she had been told. As we joke around at home, “she is not an amateur”.. My husband had breakfast and left for work like he does each morning and I felt small as he walked out the door, dreading to do this alone.

My daughter was relaxed thanks to the medication she had taken at exactly 6:45 am…. So when the door opened and the nurse called her name, she walked away peacefully. Just as peacefully as she had 18 years ago when the nurse came for us and took her from my arms as she was to undergo open heart surgery at only three months old. All I was able to see this morning, was that scene that has been saved in my soul, it was intact. I had first touched this memory three years ago when after a hysterectomy I decided I would write since I could not move. I was surprised when I did not stop for weeks, until I had written over 90 pages about my life. It was the first time I realized I had not healed or even felt what I had gone through 18 years ago.

I always believed that to be able to handle life, we cannot allow ourselves to feel too much, otherwise we are unable to move forward. Well, that is what I had done I guess.

What I saw today as I sat there waiting, was the memories of that waiting room at Lucile Packard in California. I saw the nurse coming and telling me that my blood that I had donated for Grace had been left outside the fridge and would not be used and for a moment I had to struggle with what I would do next. I did not have a choice, we had waited a month for this surgery while we had uprooted our family to California, the place we considered would deliver the best outcome. I sat there with this tiny baby in my arms, who had not been allowed to eat for the last 8-10 hours, but who miraculously was calm and asleep. My sister was beside me, that I remember. I remember a lot of feminine energy and today I think I understand why. I remember mothers going in through those doors with their young children, so positive and upbeat and coming through those same doors minutes later, in tears. There is a certain strength in the feminine, because it holds space while still loving deeply.

Family Constellations teaches that as women we need to take our mother if we are to be successful in life, we need to say in our souls, “mom, teach me how it is done”. Today I saw the power of the holy feminine and how it has tremendous strength. I wonder how many times my mom’s heart broke watching me and my brother and sister live our lives. How much strength it took to be there and hold space.

Today hopefully will just be the day my teenage daughter got her wisdom teeth extracted, like 90% of the world’s population. For me, it was a gift to see something I had missed the first time. Like watching a movie again and picking up on the details behind the scenes. Those details MAKE the scene though, they are hardly details. The love of a mother, the love of the feminine is hardly a detail. And giving myself the space to let the tears finally flow is not weak, it is to deeply love, to deeply feel and to make space for healing to continue. The receptionist was probably just trying to get organized for the day ahead of her as she saw off the corner of her eye a woman crying in the corner. We are complex beings, rarely reacting to what is in front of us, but to our past experiences. Let’s be kind to each other, we just don't know…..