#215 / 2011 June Oaxaca: Healers II

OAXACA HEALING TWO

#215

The time has long lapsed since I should have finished my travel reports. Here I am going to recall my second healing experience in Oaxaca.

Now for my experience in healing Energy Therapy, specifically, the Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT.

In the Oaxacan retreat where I lived there was a lovely woman from Cape Cod. Her name was Cynthia. She was important in booking events in literary circuits in Boston back in the day. She had met Ferlinghetti and knew so many other literatti.

She has permanently moved to Oaxaca. One day she offered to give me a healing session. It was far different from the one I had with Doña Queta, an old traditional healing.

Cynthia sat on a couch on one side of the room. I sat across from her. She began counseling me by helping me to remember moments in time when I had felt wonderful, complete.

I recalled when Beatlick Joe and I got hired onto a sailboat. I loved it when we would pull into a new beach. I would wear my Frida Kahlo wrap, grab ahold of the forward mast and sail into a new bay. I felt exotic, free and oh so special.

Cynthia encouraged me to recall this scene of peace and tranquility whenever I felt sad. 

She also taught me to take hold of my wrist and say "peace."

We continued on this way for a while, working on my mental visualization techniques. Then she asked me to close my eyes and she began some affirmations.

She called me brave. She endorsed me. And then she began to speak the words neither Joe nor I ever said out loud.

"It's so unfair," she said so gently. "So many dreams have been lost."

She encouraged me to embrace myself whenever I wanted to recall holding Joe. And this is when I lost it. I held onto my own self and wailed.

Joe and I never said it was unfair. We never asked why. We just accepted our fate. I knew how lucky I have been for 22 years. Now that was going to have to be enough for my lifetime. But to hear someone verbalize what I couldn't: It isn't fair, my dreams are lost. 

And with that emotional breakdown we ended my session. Cynthia said obviously I wasn't quite ready. 

Finding my yoga teacher in Oaxaca was most helpful. In my sessions I began to come back to myself again. For all the months since Joe died I truly had  no idea who I was or what I was going to stand for anymore. Slowly through the yoga my true spirit began to re-enter my body.

But as the months have gone by I have used Cynthia's visualization techniques. I often grab my wrist now and speak the word "peace."

I can still see myself pulling into exotic bays on that sailboat and God knows I try to go to that happy place. 

I dread Christmas this year without Joe. I will be in Santa Fe housesitting. I still seek solitude, I am far from being over losing the most important man in my life.

But God has given me back my son. For anyone who followed my blogs over the years, Doug and I had a rough go of it for over five years. But all of that is behind me. 

He came to see me recently and the comraderie we enjoyed filled an awfully big hole in my heart. So I have that intimacy with my boy again, and for now, that is enough.

Love you all,

Beatlick Pamela