Her voice was solid and excited about life. She said, “I want to go to therapy to help me stay positive and heal my anger so I can get through this, because I know I can!”
She had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She knew what that meant, and she also knew the power of positivity.
On our first call to get her scheduled, she told me about the documentary Heal, that she had just watched. It is all about the power of the mind and energy to heal the body. She knew it would be a challenge, but she was determined to move through her illness with positivity and grace. She had a sunny personality. She has always been optimistic and helped those around her feel good, even if her life was sometimes hard. This was one of the biggest challenges she has been faced with, but she’s been through hard things before.
My mom passed from colon cancer as well. I always feel that my clients and I don’t find each other by accident. That it is all divinely ordered, and we are here to learn from and teach each other.
Some client connections hit on a deeper level though. I asked myself “can I really do this?” “will I get too triggered by her?” It had been just a couple years since my mom had passed. As a therapist, it’s so important to not let my own “stuff” interfere with any therapeutic process. I decided to move forward and take her on as a client, and that it would be healing for both of us, which it has been.
My mom never knew she had cancer. She was treated at a large and well-known HMO, who did not do a great job managing her care. They diagnosed her with blood clots and anemia, and couldn’t figure out why she kept losing so much weight. The week before she passed, she had an appointment with a hematology specialist who told her “we don’t need to go looking for cancer.” I did my own google and intuitive research when my mom was sick. It told me she had colon cancer. I told her that’s what I thought. She told me she didn’t want to push the doctors and that they know what they’re doing. She was just doing her best. She eventually became unconscious during a regularly scheduled doctor’s appointment, went on life support, and never left the hospital that day. It wasn’t until after she passed that they scanned her body and found cancer. Everywhere.
So I knew this new client was an opportunity for me to help her work through her feelings and support
her. I also knew it would help me to heal the part of me that wished that I could have been able to talk through this whole dying/end of my life in a conscious way with my mom. In energy medicine, the colon is governed by the root chakra. Issues in this area can be due to unhealed issues in the family of origin growing up. With these two ladies with colon cancer that was definitely true. My mom was more in denial about her illness, and any emotions that could have potentially contributed. My client, on the other hand wrote on her intake form that she wanted to work on releasing anger about her family so that her cancer treatment would be more effective.
These parallels continue to happen throughout our work together. My work with my client helps me to see glimpses of what could have been. Conscious conversations about death before it actually happens.
My dad died more slowly. He was better at talking about his feelings. He was able to talk about his fear and his pain, but not the death part. His catchphrase through his illness was “I’m not going anywhere.”
While I appreciated his positivity, which was for his family as much as for himself, I craved some real conversation about what was really happening.
Death is a part of life. While it is painful, and sad and devastating, it is also beautiful, transformative and magical.
The more we can have honest conversations with those we love through the process, the more connected we remain.
I believe the dying person really needs to lead the way in those conversations. No one who has not gone through that experience has any right to tell the dying person how to do it. Dying is hard enough, and it’s also ok if the dying person isn’t willing or able to talk about it. Everyone is doing the best they’re capable of doing.
My client is inspirational in this regard. She has not done things perfectly. But I so admire her ability to be positive and face everything head on. She wanted to stop treatment so that she could feel better and check things off her bucket list. Her latest adventure will be going up in a hot air balloon! She’s also trying to have conversations with those around her who are willing, about the fact that she is probably going to die soon. These are healing things for me to hear about. While I am doing my best to support her spiritually and emotionally, she, like all of my clients, is healing me as well.
I feel my parents and grandmothers all speaking through her as well, whispering “I wish I could have had those conversations too, sweetheart”. Her words are their words, reverberating through time. Vibrating healing energy to all involved. This is just one example of how connected we all are. We are all students and teachers for each other. We are all helping each other grow and evolve. We are all one.
It’s not a coincidence when these relationships come up in our lives in that beautifully resonant way. The universe is always conspiring to help us heal, speaking through everyone in our lives to help us heal, and evolve in our consciousness.
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