The nature of healing work is often unexpected; surprising, filled with laughter, joy, tears and sorrow, but in it there is always a revelation that occurs when the perfect moment manifests. We drag our wounds and scars through life until such a time that we are able to explore the heaviness, and the numbness, that we were not ready to acknowledge before. When we reach that point of self-awareness, and we pay attention, we begin to shift, and we recognize that which no longer serves us. We knowingly take a step into murky waters and courageously allow the flow to show us the way. At that moment, as we let go, the wounds begin to heal, and as they do so, we find a new freedom in coming home to ourselves.
This is the story of my friend Maryanne. On a fall evening a bit over a year ago, at her beautiful home in Aroda, Virginia we shared an experience she describes as “long overdue, but happening at exactly the right time”. The release of pain she had held for over thirty years. I asked her if she would write her story and she graciously agreed to share it, as she says, “in order to remind others that it is never too late.”
Healing from Within - by Maryanne C.
I'm writing about a captain's chest that I have had for many years. The story is that it belonged to a sea captain. The captain's chest came with me from house to house over the years and served as a wonderful beautiful end table in my living rooms. Over the years it contained beautiful blankets, family mementos and currently in it is stored a lifetime of photos and CDs.
When working on the intake/counseling before my second session of wound healing, I sat in my living room with Amenie and that chest was between us. While we were talking I remembered that there was a photo I had been wanting to give to her so I innocently opened the lid of the chest as we continued to talk.
It didn't take long until Amenie looked at me with a troubled expression and said there's something in that box and it needs to go. I looked down into the chest innocently shuffling through its contents and as I did I unearthed a photo album that gave me chills as I reached for it.
I remembered that in that photo album there were photos of two people from my past who were the root cause of my deepest wounds. I never once thought about the significance of the photo album in the past. In fact I most certainly blocked out the acknowledgment that I was dragging this with me all these years. That photo album moved with me from house to house without a second thought.
But this time as I held the photo album I felt a heaviness, I felt darkness, I felt it in my core and I felt it in my cells. I looked up at Amenie and then looked down and as I flipped through the pages I realized what was in there. Mixed in with happy memories of others in my past were images of the two predators crossing paths in my life. On the day when those pictures were taken I didn't yet know or understand these wounds.
Amenie and I talked about the photos and my feelings. I knew at that moment the album had to go. I painfully flipped through some of the album and pulled out three happy pictures that I didn't even remember were in there. But I couldn't dig into the album any longer. It was painful. I realized that I didn't want to look at them. I couldn't look. I wouldn't look. I needed to clear it from my life.
In a cathartic moment I opened my front door and hurled the album into my front yard into a dark rainy night. At that moment we both felt it. The room lightened up. I felt that my captain's chest was somehow relieved.
We went on with that session and it was powerful. I had feelings and sensations in my body as we worked to identify and begin another layer of healing. That was a pivotal night and I truly feel that the release continues to free me and heal me from within.
On a lighter note one day later I opened the chest and I didn't feel any heaviness or chills. I found the picture that I had opened the chest for in the first place and shared it with my dear friend Amenie. And two days later I opened that chest again. This time I decided to grab one of my essential oil blends called Serenity and to infuse it into the chest to restore serenity as a symbol of the peace that this healing is bringing into my life.
Maryanne and I have known each other since 2006. We met at our Level II Healing Touch class in Richmond, Virginia and have been close friends ever since. As we reflect back on the event of that rainy night, we laugh. The photo in the album she was so sure was of me, turned out to be someone else, and then there were the countless times we had enjoyed each other’s company in her various living rooms, in the presence of the captain’s chest. It had to be the right moment in both of our lives, and the right time for the chest to release the dark memories and emotions it held. A moment of synchronicity and healing. The chest remains, joyfully now as a dear companion who has shared her life, and will continue to hold only the joy that was always intended to be hers.
