Strong

Amidst the earthquake of deaths, loss of home and relationship, the message of the birds (in the last post) unfolded yet further. I was about to learn an essential layer to this truth.

A lady often came to my cafe for coffee and cake. She seemed to quietly glow. I often wondered what she believed, what was her inner light. One day I asked her, in a roundabouts way. I asked what she liked to read. Her answer seemed vague and I assumed she wanted to stay private. She simply said she didn’t pick books, they often picked her, so I was none the wiser. Her light remained a mystery.

The next time she visited she brought with her a letter, a note and a book, all lovingly wrapped up with care, just for me. She had opened the door. What was inside didn’t disappoint. She was as luminous as she seemed.

We chatted over the counter as the weeks rolled on and for Christmas she offered me the gift of a massage. I readily accepted. I loved her presence and my muscles were a bundle of knots from the strain of my crumbled former life. I would often mop the floor at the end of the day and simply loose all reason to keep going. I’m not sure if it was depression. I simply had nothing left to give, even to a mop. It made my job very hard. At times I would simply take myself to the kitchen to wash the dishes, a job everyone avoided. As the, water ran my tears would follow. Crying was my only relief some days.

The day she arrived to massage me she asked if she could do reiki instead. She felt it was what I needed. I had no idea what to expect but whatever worked for her I was up for receiving. As I lay on her massage bed I shut my eyes. Immediately the trauma of the last few months ran at me full force, relentlessly, like a train. I was hammered with death after death, image after image. Fear after fear that built up until I could hardly breathe. I sobbed. I hardly knew her and I sobbed. She simply continued. Then I heard a voice. That same voice.

“This time you don’t have to be strong”. As soon as I heard it I saw hospitals, death and loss. The thing I feared the most. I know when that voice is God, or what I believe to be God force, because there are always so few words. Each one is potent. I knew, fully understood in that moment, that I had emotionally snapped because I was trying to be strong. It made me rigid and so I snapped. The voice was saying there was another way. My healing college had only taught me one way and that was to be strong. I exhaled, not knowing what it all meant but totally understanding on a deeper level. A level my brain hadn’t caught up with yet.

That afternoon, after the reiki, my phone rang. I still remember where I was, stood at the work surface, facing the wall. It’s etched forever in my mind. My mums voice spoke down the phone and said “I don’t want you to panic. I’ve been rushed to hospital”.

The voice. The voice had shown me hospitals, death and loss and said ‘this time you don’t have to be strong’. I trembled through my whole being. I now know if it hadn’t have been for that reiki this last blow could have snapped me completely.

My mum had had a blood test for a swollen knee. It turned out she had an incredibly rare autoimmune disease. Incurable. She might only live 3 months.

She was the last of my family. My best friend. My soul mate and my counsellor. Since a child I had dreaded losing her. As an only child of a single parent she was my world. I was about to lose that too, only this time I would learn how to lean.

I was about to embark upon my biggest journey yet and my first steps were from a place of already being utterly broken. How on earth was I going to make it in this state unless this time I really didn’t have to be strong xx