My Long Journey to Wholeness

Reading about other’s journeys from mental illness to mental health brought to mind my journey from depression that became chronic and verged on suicidal in the late 70’s, though now I know it was massive repression taught to us descendants of Nebraska homesteaders.  What a shock when my marriage failed, for I’d excelled in all the courses about homemaking and was a good wife by farm standards, though I had no emotional life and knew nothing about how to live with an alcoholic who had psychotic breaks.

My hard-working stock would say: just move on, put it behind you and keep going, a fine recipe for repression.  I plunged myself into my work of helping open new community residential alternatives for the mentally challenged.  As long as I was achieving, I knew I was ok.

I was haunted, however, in my personal life by the shadow of multiple molestations from my toddler days to puberty (totally out of my awareness for another 15 years).  My first affair found me with the sweetest, gentlest man who awakened my body to the fullness of sexuality for the first time, setting off a search for that state of union that led to my teaching Tantra today.  Then, however, it just began an era of free sex (60’s after all) and a mostly empty heart.

Goddess has a way of bringing the support we need when we need it.  Forty years ago that was in the form of a woman I befriended at work who had successfully killed herself, for she was in a coma for 6 days after taking pills she knew had no antidote.  The only thing that got me into therapy was her promise to help me kill myself if it didn’t work.  She convinced me I could always take my life, but if I did before trying therapy, I couldn’t back up and make any other choices.

She also introduced me to the world of organic food, coaxed me off my white starch diet, and gave me alternatives to drinking which helped diminish the adrenaline-rich dramas.

I got a therapist and began a 33 year journey of therapy and other healing practices.  Soon a mutual friend opened my spiritual eyes with Tarot readings and talk of astrology, leading to long hours together searching for answers. We became allies in depression, sometimes too low to move, but having each other, sharing good music and good conversation.

My therapist sized up my many somatic complaints, got me off multiple prescriptions I had for various stress-related ills, and told me if I spent 15 minutes a day loving my inner child, I’d be much healthier and happier.  I told him he was crazy, he dared me to try it anyway.  I did it to spite him.  I continued for years and still often do inner nurturing – a sure way to come back to myself.

Like a kid in a candy store, I sopped up all the knowledge I could from the growing holistic health community in my Austin, tried most kinds of therapy, and had hundreds of hours of bodywork.  I became so intrigued with what work could change old patterns that I made healing a lifetime study.  After being fired twice for trying to provide service rather than do paperwork, I realized I could only do the service I wanted to give in a private practice.  In 1979, I applied my hard working ways on learning how to do that.  My fear of not knowing enough motivated me to take every workshop and class I could to learn more how to help others on their journey home to themselves.

So many tools have helped me build a life and a practice:  affirmations are high on my list, and my studies about how thought creates that allows me to pray into existence realities more palatable than my conscious mind can create.  Many days I would spend an hour or two meditating, journaling, or doing inner child work.  During the years of working thru incest memories, 1988-92, I spent untold hours pounding pillows and working through deeply buried emotions.  Sometimes I’d say goodbye to a client, pound pillows for a couple hours for my own emotional release, wash my face and see another client.  Thank goddess, I knew how to let Spirit work through me.

One of my first workshops introduced me to my spirit guides, the solution I sought to feeling too inadequate to be alone in a room with only my resources to help someone.  So I began asking guides to work with me and still pray for support during sessions, listening to advice and guidance as I work.  The work with guides has evolved into doing channeling.  Massage sessions I added to my early counseling practice has morphed into multidimensional healing, applying all the many tools I gained through my passion for learning.

An early lover turned mentor, helped me learn the value of meditation, and of three day meditative retreats, which I’ve taken to maintain my sanity twice yearly for 35 years.  I make myself available to Spirit, pray, surrender the illusions of my life, allow my ego to be unraveled and myself to be recreated anew.  No media or distractions, just journaling, meditating, contemplating, listening to sacred sounds.

Wholeness is not a destination, it is a process.  When I do my spiritual practices, I feel whole, though even now, having done enough personal growth work to pay for an expensive home in Marin, I sometimes feel shattered or scattered.  Yet every day I find my way back to feeling whole and integrated more often and for longer periods of time.  My goal is no longer to be done with this healing, for I suspect the journey itself is the goal, I simply seek to find a healthy now every day.

Wholeness is a lifestyle choice: for me that means a diet that is low carbohydrate, no sugar, no alcohol, no gluten or dairy, lots of water and vitamins and herbs.  It means making the choices to speak my truth, ask for what I want, honor others, and be kind – to myself especially.  Wholeness ensues from using practices to find the now, practices to circumvent my old coping mechanisms, and good communication skills to keep my relationships clear.

Staying close to these practices is my greatest joy and my greatest challenge.

Blessed Be.