The Peaks

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. On days like that it’s best to record what happened whilst you still believe it yourself. So here I am. Wide eyed, silenced and amazed.

Last week was hard. My yoga theme of the week was Grace, allowing yourself to fall and be caught by unseen thermals, I fell alright lol. This weekly theme was within a monthly theme of Peace. I found myself learning to have peace with pain, questions, inner turmoil and deep sadness.

It all began one lovely peaceful day. I’d kept feeling inner guidance to be very still and as I did, bits that had crusted to me years ago would soften and float away. In my minds eye soaking would be cleansing, relieving, almost blissful. The reality was far messier.

The more I sat still, the more feelings from my past pain bubbled up unexpectedly, memories, not just my own but those I’d picked up from the environment around me, as far back as my childhood. Emotions arose that were raw, wild, wounded and lost. Some of them felt like my mum’s, she’d had it hard with my dad. She had a lot of wounds of her own as I grew up. I simply sat with it all. I sat through waves of fear, despair, feeling trapped, neglected, unloved, alone. Not all of them felt like my feelings but they were all past stuff that was crusted to my sides.

Reliving it was no pleasant soak. I cried a lot. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t tell anyone how I was feeling. I’d been washed away with something I didn’t fully understand but needed to trust. Fortunately I was still able to teach and received more positive feedback that week than I can ever remember. It was like my heart had cracked open.

On my final class of the week, a 1:1, I got out my crystal singing bowls for savasana and the throat chakra bowl had inexplicably cracked. It was unplayable. I knew it related to me. I was literally unable to reach out for help, unable to communicate what was happening. I knew I needed care but I felt I just couldn’t trust anyone enough to love me in the way I needed in this vulnerable state, a feeling I wasn’t used to. I just wanted care. I was scared of reaching out and being misunderstood, not responded to out of busyness or them simply not realising how broken I was feeling. I was also scared of being pulled out of this soaking that simply needed to happen.

The night before I was due to leave for holiday I was awoken from sleep by something tickling my nose. I assumed it was one of the cats and opened my eyes to no cat. Baffled, I wondered what had been moving so tangibly across my nose that felt so physical and yet now nothing was there. Suddenly a wave of energy rolled through my body. I felt like I was both deeply peaceful and hyper alert, all at once. From deeply asleep to this state. Everything suddenly felt more real. The trees out of the window moving in the breeze, the shadows and light of the middle of the night. It’s hard to describe. It’s like the old Wizard of Oz film where it goes from black and white to colour. I’d moved into the latter somehow, like I was vibrating at a higher frequency. Then I had the feeling Mum was there in spirit. That her vibration had affected mine. Marie, a medium I know and love, once told me that people often get a tickly nose when spirit is near. It’s not something I really experienced until that night. It tickled so much it literally woke me up.

I lay there for what felt like hours, both hyper aware and so peaceful that I hardly moved, bathing in the energy and occasional words that floated into my mind, like listening to Mum speaking within me. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because when I awoke in the morning I felt so good. Energy. My voice was back. I could communicate again. I felt like my heart had somehow mysteriously mended over night. I also felt like I truly wasn’t alone. I felt like wherever she was, she was healed, or healing. Her vibration felt amazing, if it was her.

As we drove to the Peak District I saw a huge road sign for Youlgreave, only someone had scratched out the L, leaving You greave. You grieve, truly. Last week I’d had the same dream I’ve had so many times before. I’m walking to my mum’s house, excited to see her. When the door opens it’s a stranger. She no longer lives there. In the dream I weep, wail, because I’m horrified that I don’t know where she lives now. I wake up crying. I think ‘her home’ represents the body she no longer inhabits. Something in me needs to know where she is now. At times like this, saying she’s in spirit is like saying she’s in England. Where?

There’s times in your life where you can truly feel how raw the human journey can be. To spend your whole life loving and needing someone, only to have them disappear in the same way you will one day. Where? Is it truly ok to not know? Are we really supposed to live with this huge black hole or is there a connection that we are missing, one we are meant to experience, one that will bridge the divide so that we can still feel their love and support, and them ours.

I phoned her partner and asked if I could visit the house, her old house, enroute to holiday. The dream still tearing me apart. He said I wasn’t allowed in the house due to covid fears. It felt like a nail in the coffin. So sad.

When we arrived at The Peak District I took Ady to a cafe Mum and I often used to love. The first song in there was Opera strangely. Then I heard the words, ‘Time to say goodbye’. You greave. No coincidence.

Flashes of a mill in Matlock came to mind. I just knew we needed to go there. The car was wierdly playing up and Ady was nervous it would break down altogether, so he didn’t want to visit the mill understandably. He just wanted to get to the holiday cottage safe and sound. Typing the directions into the sat nav I was baffled that it seemed to be taking us in the wrong direction. It took us right to that mill, a couple of towns away! He pulled up and asked it to reroute, it kept taking us past this mill, bleeping and rerouting. I told him I was sure it was mum telling us to go there. In the end he drove in the direction he thought was right until the sat nav finally gave up with the mill and took us to the cottage. He kept saying he couldn’t understand it, but I did. Mediums often say people in spirit can manipulate electronic equipment.

The next day we decided to walk the Monsall trail (images above) and ended up walking nearly 13 miles. My god did our legs know about it!

As we started the drive to the trail the car was undrivable. We had to give up and let Ady call the AA. It was bad. I took a local walk as he did that, feeling the deep peace that I’d missed on that week of soaking the crusty bits off. That week had been wild medicine, but peace no less. Sitting with the process. Feeling and healing. Shattered crystal bowls and throttled throat chakras. Crying uncried tears and feeling things that I had no idea were in there. I thanked mum and thanked god for being with me. All the love and guidance that surrounds me that I can’t see with my eyes. Then Ady called. He said the car sorted itself out. He had turned the engine on to know what to tell the AA when he called them and somehow the faults that were loud clunks and revving issues, to say the least, had disappeared. Once again he was utterly baffled. He asked if we should try the drive to the Monsall trail now, so we did.

As we were about to head off, he looked at me teary eyed and showed me a text. He’d recently changed his phone and after he’d called me he noticed a missed text with no contact name. It said ‘you and Amanda have a great time and make sure you stay safe xx’ It was dated back to last Sept. When he read earlier messsages in that thread he realised it was from his mum. It was the last message she’d ever sent him before she fell ill and very quickly died. For some mysterious reason he’d never seen that message. He could not explain this at all and the fact that it fitted with us having our first day away and feeling unsafe in a car really touched him. A car that was now working. Just as he was saying ‘I just don’t understand how a car can fix itself without me even touching it’ the radio turned itself on for a second, a singer sang something, and then it turned itself off. Neither of us had touched the radio. It literally turned itself on and off without us. We looked at each other, mouths open. I hadn’t quite caught the words of the song that was playing so I turned it back on. The words were ‘I’ll give you all you need’. Oh my god! Maybe that was why the car was running. That was what we needed that day. It took us there and back, no problems at all. My mum used to have a car sticker that said ‘Powered by prayer’ because she sometimes couldn’t afford the petrol or repairs lol. I could now relate.

The first 24 hours of our holiday has been eventful and we are both aware that spirit is near. Ady calls it spooky, lovely and baffling, depending upon what moment you catch him. It’s hard for him to process. For me it’s like nectar and I just want more.