A new doorway...

                                                                   Over the Falls

Last night I was cooking dinner after work when the phone rang. I hate answering the phone while I'm making or eating dinner and a lot of the time I just let it ring. I decided to answer it though and it was my doctor calling from Montpelier Health Center. Now mind you, I had just spent the last day in a state of inner peace that I haven't experienced in a very long while. My session with Christa on Wednesday was incredible in that we worked four dreams all with big heart openings for me. My work of being in the raging river was moving me into a new place and the constant state of fear and anxiety was finally lessening....as well as the depression and despair. I felt so supported by the Animus as I surrendered to the next descent.

And then my doctor tells me that the CA 125 test for cancer that I had in early December has come up positive.  "Not to worry", she says....." these tests are not always accurate but we have scheduled you for an appointment with a gynacological oncologist up in Burlington on the 10th". "Fine", I say and go back to making my tunafish. For the next hour or so I was in a daze. One minute I was feeling like my life was entering a new phase and I was on the road to healing and the next minute I have to face the roller coaster of cancer with all its test, doctors, treatments, etc.
But God works in mysterious ways and because of my new homework I can face this and I will enter a new phase of my life and I will be transformed. It's interesting that the Health Center tried to call me on the 13th December with the results of the test but they couldn't reach me.
So they stopped trying for the holidays, I guess. At any rate I was given time....blessed time...to go into the river without a paddle and feel the fear of going into the unknown and surrender to it. And now my new homework is even more powerful. In the dream I am on a barge with a man that I love and we are trapped. The barge is heading for a huge waterfall and in the dream I scurry around trying to find a way to escape. As we head for the falls I go be with my man and I am ready to go over with him by my side. In the session as I closed my eyes I could feel so strongly being held by Him as we drifted down, down, down amongst the rushing water. In those moments there was only being held by Him....no worrying about what lay ahead, no need to do anything. Christa said the this is my medicine right now and she was so very right.

Boxing Day

                                                           Looking for that wild heart

Woke up this morning with a migraine that has lasted all day....even with two doses of Imitrex.
There's this little thing that I've been doing lately when the panic feelings come with the headaches or other physical symptoms. I get into that kayak in the wild river and welcome the ride ahead. "OK".....I say......." let's see what lies ahead if I let go and just go with the flow.....how bad can it be??" In that moment of saying "yes" to the unknown I find some peace of mind and more often then not the symptoms subside and I can go forward from this homework place.
Today there wasn't so much panic when I awoke to the pain....just anger and frustration. I took
medication because I am sick and tired of laying in bed looking at those same old four walls day after day. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day....another beautiful day that I miss because of a headache. My Ayurvedic counselor said that I should start screaming into my pillow or throw some dishes. Move that anger out of my liver. Maybe if I'm headache free tomorrow I'll go outside and do some anger releasing in the woods by myself. Look for the wild girl there.

Christmas Day

Mountain of Despair

It is Christmas Day. The snow is lightly falling and there is a silence to the world that is so
comforting. My cat Isabelle and I sat at the window for what seemed like hours just watching the snowflakes fall. It was so very beautiful.

I am on the second day of my ten day Christmas retreat and I am already feeling some of the tensions of the world drop away. I have been in a rough place this past week which I have tried to convey in the drawing above. I felt like a great heaviness weighed me down. I was so, so tired and it was a great effort to get through the day. An ache in my heart would break me open to some tears and the weight would lift for a few moments, only to come down heavily again.
The animus came in different forms in my nightly dreams and I tried to hold on to those feelings and those of my homework of being in the raging river......but there is such resistance in me to feelings of joy and lightness. It has been a battle that I have been waging for my whole life and especially these past 17 years of doing the dreamwork. I have a will of iron when it comes to hanging on to this despair. I see it, I know it but I just haven't had the will or desire to deny it.

Something is shifting in me now that my mother has died and Peter has gone away. I am alone with myself in a way that I never have been before. My body has also reached the point where it can no longer hold onto the tension and locked down feelings without some serious repercussions. I am addicted to Imitrex and other pain killers and I no longer have the strength to do even the most limited physical activity. I feel like a disabled invalid and that alone feeds the despair.

So this week of being on retreat is about waging a life or death battle with the pathology that I have let be in charge for so very long. I am going to fight to the death this part of myself that is ruining my life and has repressed this wild girl for far too long. She is in there and she is pissed.
In both my last Rooting Shen treatment and a recent Ayurvedic session there was a feeling from the practionners about this wild girl. They both sensed her wanting to come out. In diagnostic terms there is a volcano wanting to erupt in my liver and the more that I keep her in the more toxins are spilled into my system. I truly believe that my physical healing could be so very simple if I am victorious in this battle. And that is my work for these next eight days.....to behead the monster and to reclaim the girl.....

In the box....

                                                                           In the Box

I had two relatively pain free days after my last post where I could really feel the momentum of being carried down a raging river with wild abandon. It was incredible to feel the energy and power of the water! The heart racing fear of not knowing what comes next and being completely out of control....and at the same time this feeling of excitement and exuberance. I was transported back to my days of white water canoeing and how I loved being in that heart racing, pushed to the limits place!
Then the steel doors slammed shut and I was back in the prison of my headaches where movement of any kind felt like torture. There was fear here too, in this pris0n, but more of a panicky - "I've got to get out of this pain" fear. I could see how desperate I became in an attempt to figure out how to make this pain go away. Downing supplements, taking a hot bath, doing yoga, taking dose after dose of Imitrex. I now recognize these feelings of panic as being in an old trauma where I was alone, in horrible pain and helpless. If I can get out of the prison of my mind,there are places I can now go when I am in that trauma. Where I can take a breath and feel some sense of comfort and support. Old homeworks where I am laying on an acupuncture table surrounded by loved ones or with my father feeling his hand in mine. For some reason this past lockdown ....which lasted four days...moved into nihilism and despair before I could find my way back to the river. The fatigue of my body and the demands of the world left me open to that familiar pathway and I lost my way from being in the kayak on the river to vegging on the couch numbing myself with a movie. Much to my surprise though...something about the relationship of the two people in the movie cracked my heart open and I cried and cried. Then that night I had a dream about being on another wild river, trapped on a barge heading towards going over a 50 foot waterfall....but this time with my beloved. The fear gripped me....I was scared out of my wits...I tried to find a way to escape.....but I stayed with my man.
What a gift that dream was.......

The raging river...

I have a new doorway.
Last night in my session with Christa we worked a dream where I am in a kayak heading down a wild raging river with no paddle. I am afraid and try to head to shore paddling with my hands. My homework is to stay
in the river and surrender to where it wants to take me. In another dream I am also experiencing fear in a huge metal warehouse and there is a moment when the big steel doors swing shut and lock me in. These two places....the clamped shut, locked down one and the wild, raging river are where I can choose to go when my fear comes up.
There is movement and a way forward with the one and a continued stuckness in the other. I am feeling a new
sense of lightness and energy when I stay in the wild river. I can take a deep breath and feel some of the tension in my body start to ease.
I have been working with this fear for months now and and it is such an incredible relief to feel the movement of the water...to be going with the flow...and to experience exhilaration and even joy and wild abandon. I look forward to what comes next....

                                                                 The Headache

I am now alone.
Peter has gone off on his new European adventure, my nephew, Alan, has gone home to Long Island and there are no students in my apartment. So this is it...the moment that I have been waiting for. I am tired, afraid and in pain. Soon I will be finished with my commitments to work and then it will be just me, myself and I. Time to step through the doorway.

My dream work homework is to be the girl with my Dad. In the dream we are going down to White River and we stop to look at the damage from the flood. Walking hand in hand...me, the girl....he, my Dad. Me not managing to avoid scary intimacy....steering the conversation away from matters of the heart. When I can feel into this homework I cry from the sadness that he is gone and I so long for his strong supportive arms around me. In that tiny opening of feeling the door opens. I have put one foot across the threshold but it is too much. I fear being overwhelmed by the pain of grief and loss....all those years of being lost to myself.

I am a coward.....so I take the more familiar path of nihilism and opt for that head splitting physical pain instead of the sweet soft pain of loss. I go through my day in a state of numbness.
The voices inside tell me that these headaches will never end and that my life is becoming a barren wasteland. I might as well be dead.
I go to bed still in this place of despair but pray for a dream that will help me find my way out.

Painting by Susan Osmond......"The Ritual"

I have stood in front of a mirror for 58 years seeing a reflection that showed a strong, self assured woman with a successful career, a beautiful home and lots of loving family and friends. On the flip side of that reflection was a woman tortured by physical pain for more then 30 years and one who struggled daily to keep depression and despair at bay. The energy of showing one face to the world while keeping the other one hidden has led me to a breaking point.
What has been one of my salvations has been the Archetypal Dreamwork of which I have been a student of for the past 17 years. By listening to the messages and insights from my dreams I have slowly chipped away at the false face in the mirror to find my true self that lies within. I have now reached a point in my inner work where a doorway beckons. It means leaving that lie of a life behind and stepping towards the truth of myself. This blog will be a journaling and drawing of the steps that I take each moment, each day towards or away from that doorway to the other side of the looking glass.