I worked with Ellen about Julia. Ellen is the energy therapist, spiritual healer who I have been working with once or twice a month since last fall. I have felt shy about writing much about her and our work together. Yes, it is not the usual talk or medication related therapy, and yes, it is way out there. But Ellen is not out there. She is very much of and in this world. Down to earth. Connected. There are times when my rather traditional self doubts, but every time that we’ve worked together she has said something, at least one something and many times much more than one something that rings very true to me and that she would have absolutely no way of knowing through ordinary means. She invites my angels, spirit helpers, and all past lives to come into conversation and offer help and guidance. And I believe that she can do this. I believe that she gets in touch with something of the world that we ordinarily do not tap into, be it outside of me or inside me. I would like to believe in the helpers all around me, but I can also imagine that what Ellen is tapping into is another part of my mind/heart/spirit. Maybe it is all on the inside and she just has a clearer vision of that inside world than most of us do.
There is a theory that parents are the keepers of their children’s spirits until they are 18 or so, until they are adults. This gives parents the ability to tap into their child’s mind and spirit as well as access their spirit guides and angels, as if the child’s helpers were part of the parent’s helper. If that makes sense. This was not surprising for me to find out about biological children. As Cheshire was growing up, I felt that sort of responsibility and also that closeness with her, but I had no idea if I could have those same sorts of privileges with Julia.
And so, I asked Ellen to see if she could get in touch with Julia’s helpers so that we could find out more about Julia, how she was doing, and what might I do better for her. Ellen was able to do this.
Almost immediately and without my asking, Ellen was told that Julia feels safe. She feels loved and wanted. At the same time, Julia does not understand a mother’s love like those of us who have had a mother all of our lives. Instead, Julia’s attachment to me is that of a trusted partner. She believes that I will take care of her and will love her, but a partnership is as close as she is at this time. Maybe forever. This was interesting to me, and very fine. I am happy that she feels that attached to me and so safe. I also understand that she may never understand mother love. I can live with this partnership, after all, what is friendship and falling in love with a partner but the forming of an intimate partnership. If she can learn good partnership with me, I hope she can have friends one day and eventually a mate.
Julia is lonely. She longs for friends. This is no surprise to me, but Ellen would have no way of knowing this. Julia wants me to work on friends for her.
She said there are many lies about Julia’s life. Lies that I do not know about. Lies that hurt Julia even now, but that hurt is still too intense to go into. She said there was a deep well of hurt and anger piled on top of each other and that it will take a long time to get to all of it.
She said that Julia was very much effected by the sorrow that her birth parents, especially her birth mother, felt in giving her up. She said that they wanted her and could not keep her. My heart breaks with this. I have always felt that there was some part of her first family that wanted her and was unable to keep hold of her. The fact that I have no way to find these people and to keep in touch is a further sorrow. I could not give them their daughter back but they could be a part of our lives. Maybe we will look one day. If Julia was a wanted child, maybe they left some clues that we will find. As it is, Julia carries her mother’s sorrow and carries much sadness deep inside of her. Again, nothing surprising there.
Ellen asked about David and how his death effected Julia. The answer came back that Julia loved David and misses him, but she understands death and she understands that it is me that she must depend upon. Julia’s understanding of death comes from experiences she had in China as well as David’s death, but Ellen could not get more about her China experience.
Ellen told me how Julia was doing. Physically, she came to us very weak and malnourished. Ellen told me this and it is certainly true. Now she is stronger and there are no worries there. She is on track and improving all the time.
Julia’s mind has not fared as well. Ellen told me of a cognitive delay, an inability to take in quickly what is around her and react appropriately, that will always be with her. It was not a diagnosis but a description of a circumstance.
She told me that Julia would learn, at her own pace and what she needed and wanted to know. Here was no surprise. She said that art was a constant in her life, and although she might stop doing it for short periods of time, she would always have that as a way of expressing herself. She said that Julia was not amenable to being taught about art right now. Maybe never, but now definitely not. She said that art was deeply imbedded in her heart and soul. That there are people in her first family who do art and that Julia has done art for more than one lifetime. She confirmed that Julia had no tools for art in China, no pencils, no crayons, but that finding them with us was like coming home.
Art was her first way of communicating and is that communication is always open to her. She is grateful to me for giving her what she needed to communicate.
Ellen went into Julia’s trauma and the first thing she found was the trauma of adoption and leaving China. She talked of Julia’s anger that was so volatile and her intense pain of leaving China. At the same time, she told me how people were very unkind to her and that Julia hated them for what she endured. Ellen told me that, and she is not sure if this is a actual event for a metaphoric, but that Julia perceives that she was shut in a very small space, like a closet, and screamed and cried. She was put there in the dark and left all alone to calm down. She had the image of Julia raging in this space and later of lying in a heap on the floor, looking at light coming in from cracks around the door. She said this was the start of Julia’s disassociation, her going away from her real world into a world of her own.
Ellen also said that Julia and I were together for at least two lifetimes. One in which I was her grandmother and very close to her. I promised to always love and take care of her. In the other lifetime, we were master and apprentice doing some art or hand craft together. She was no sure which of us was the master and which the apprentice. And I feel that this is not so different from our present relationship. Who is the master and who the apprentice?
When I asked if there was anything that I could do that I am not doing, the answer was that I need to trust myself more. That my instincts were right and that I know Julia well. I only need to trust and do what my heart tells me.
I had to ask about dinosaurs, and the answer came back that dinosaurs are wonderful animals. They are kind and loving, and Julia has worked out anger and confusion using her dinosaurs. Of course, this is true.
Then we did a healing of a bit of trauma. I was sure that we could not do all of it, only a layer, and probably a very superficial layer. I know that and Ellen told me that same thing. We asked the spirit world to work on the trauma they felt able to and what it was Julia’s trauma from the adoption. From being ripped away from her country with its smells and experiences. With all that was familiar. Even though much was unpleasant for Julia, her world was still rocked by the transition.
1 comment:
Fascinating.
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