Last week I came back from New York so proud that I had done two things:  made the trip at all and not gotten sick.  Pablo got sick, and so I was doubly proud of myself, since we traveled home together.  And then, after a couple of productive days, I got sick, too.
     When I get sick, I seem to take it very seriously.  I know this goes back to when I was a kid, when the doctors told my mom several times that I was going to die.  Having already lost one daughter, she would panic and extreme measures became the norm for every childhood illness I got.  
     So here I was, sick again, blowing unGodly stuff out of my head, and giving myself endless shit about how I "did this to myself" again by eating dairy products on my trip.  It was easy, cheese is in everything, I kept telling myself it was ok, that other people could do it, so could I.  But I always get sick when I eat dairy, especially when the weather is colder, which it was getting to be up there.
   So here I am, back in the warm sunny South, blowing my nose, miserable, when I remember that hello!!  I know TAT, I can do a session on this.  In case you don't know, TAT is this beautiful, loving way of investigating and healing our issues.  It is so gentle and inclusive.
    I wrote down all my thoughts, which included:  "everytime there's something going around, I get sick" (and variations on that theme) to "there's something wrong with me" to the very specific "I can't handle dairy products.  Everytime I try they make me sick."
and then I start the TAT process, which involves a specific placement of hands on the head and a series of statements.
     With the first statement, I am taken back to a night when I was seven years old.  I had gotten a bottle of milk (remember glass bottles with those crimped foil lids?) out of the fridge when it slipped out of my little hand and shattered all over the floor.  And that was, I discovered through TAT, when my world shattered.  Instead of comforting and helping me, I was yelled at.  My dad had wartime PTSD, my mom already a little afraid of his rages.  The story goes on, but no wonder I haven't been able to handle dairy!!!  Literally.
     My horoscope today:Oct 05, 2018 - You're detached from your feelings today, which makes it easier to check under the hood for forgotten memories. You can rummage through those old feelings and experiences, and reflect on where your life has taken you. You don't react to your memories with such fresh emotion anymore, which gives you a bit of objectivity. Just make sure that you let those old events go instead of putting them back into storage. It's time to close certain chapters of your life. Make way for a new version of yourself.

     Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?  If you're plagued with recurring somethings, as I have been with respiratory stuff, you might want to give TAT a try.  You can Google it and do it yourself or talk to me about a session. Message me here or on Facebook.  Love to you.

     Dr. Randolph Stone, the founder of Polarity Therapy, loved to experiment on himself.  He was an Osteopath, Neuropath and Chiropractor and traveled to the East to study Ayurveda and healing techniques native to other cultures.  When we were learning our brief intro to Polarity in massage school, our teacher told us about Dr. Stone's experiments.  He made little hats for himself with bb's in them to see what would happen when pressure was put on one part of the skull or another.  Often he would go unconscious; sometimes his assistant would find him on the floor the next day and have to take the hat off him and help him pull himself back together.  I remember thinking, "What a nut job!"
     Since I have long-held beliefs about the nature of disease and healing, maybe what I've been doing the last few months was simply experimenting, collecting data.  My main belief about illness in the physical is that it originates in the non-physical realms, so maybe I got good and sick just to see.
Now I say, "just to see" but during the FIVE TIMES I've been sick in the last five months, sometimes for weeks at a stretch, I did not for a second consider it an experiment.  What I felt, believed and intuited was an emotional/mental/spiritual cause that I just couldn't reach on my own.  I knew what it was, or at least what the superficial cause was (unrequited love and loneliness) but aside from getting other people to do what I wanted (love me and come live here) I was at a loss as to how to deal with it.
     When I asked for help, I began to heal.   I told a therapist friend that my latest congested sinus mess was unshed tears, because my childhood taught me very effectively not to cry. She suggested I curl up in bed and breathe into the place I felt the emotion.  I tried (honest) but nothing happened.  Then I watched a really sweet video on Facebook and all of a sudden I was crying to beat the band, and the pressure lessened.
The unrequited love remains unrequited, but another healer friend suggested I cut the cords that attached us one to the other.  Now this is something I have known about for at least 30 years, but had never really done, and in fact relegated to  shamanic work.  What is shamnic work but non physical, energy work?  I went inside, felt where the attachments were, and cut the cords.  If you want to know more about how to do that and how to follow up with it, just ask.  I had to.
     The relief I felt was immediate.  Even though it's only been 36 hours or so, that obsessive hook is gone.  I remember how to do this!
     Another friend who heals with massage and prayer talked to me for a long time today, and her way was to honor me and be present to what I have gone through in the last year, to validate my experience and never once suggest it was time for me to "just get over it."  Feeling her love, I breathed deeper.
     The next friend, a herbal healer studying to be a Reiki Master, told me to go out in the garden and pick mullein and make a tea.  I remembered when I did everything naturally, with herbs and clay and vegetarian food, and I reconnected.
     This is a short synopsis of today's healing journey.  I feel about 200% better, more hopeful and alive, more empowered to take care of myself.  With the help of my friends, my tribe of healers, I have been led back to connection with myself.  I had just lost my way, gotten detoured.  This is why I need a tribe, to remind me of who I really am when I lose my way.