So, What's the Deep Water Leaf Society?

On May 3, 2004, I lost my oldest son in the most heartbreaking way I could imagine. He died in the county jail of a drug overdose. It was my worst nightmare come true. He'd struggled for years with addiction and for a lifetime with ADHD. Since his adolescence, I'd found it hard to expect anything but more trouble for him in his life. He just couldn't seem to function the way the world expected him to. As much as I believed in and understood the Law of Attraction, it seemed I could not keep my thoughts positive when it came to his future. When he finally died in the worst way I could imagine, I felt tremendous guilt. And I felt the most overwhelming pain and sadness. I could not imagine how a friendly Universe or a benevolent God could allow such a thing to happen - not only the tragedy of his death, but the tragedy of his life. It just seemed so senseless to me.

So, imagine my surprise to discover, over time (a LOT of time), that his death - the most painful thing I'd ever experienced - was also the greatest gift I'd ever received. Somehow, his death opened up a door for me. Always a dreamer, I suddenly found my life taking on the quality of a waking dream. Magical coincidences (aka: synchronicities) became an almost daily occurrence. I began to walk with one foot in the waking world and one foot in the dreaming.

Almost from the very beginning, I began to receive messages from my son. At first they came in dreams, and then through my artwork and journaling, and then in songs on the radio. Occasionally, they even came in very physical form - like the heart-shaped shells and stones I began to find everywhere. I doubted the messages at first. I felt it might be just wishful thinking.

An incredibly powerful (and accurate) session with a medium (jamieclark.net) about a year after my son's death set me straight on that. My son was talking to me. He was talking to me all the time. All I had to do was listen - and trust.

So I started listening in earnest. And I did a lot of work. I journaled. I expressed myself through art. I explored past lives. I did body and energy work. I did a lot of dreamwork and continued to study ways to explore dreams. I did hypnotherapy. I practiced forgiveness. I allowed myself to feel everything I was feeling and I explored those feelings in depth. I even went to Egypt, where amazing healing took place. And every step of the way, something or someone was laying the path out before me. All I had to do was continue to take the next step as it appeared.

Through all of it, there was a single, simple, powerful message that kept coming through: love is all that matters - and it never dies.

My son and I are still connected by love and always will be. He is not really gone at all. We are closer than breath - no more than a dream away from each other. Life is meant to be lived with love and joy, not fear and worry. He helped me to understand that. What a gift!

Oh, so what is the Deep Water Leaf Society? It's something that came to me in a dream. A dream that I had seven years before I lost my son. A dream that told me I would lose him. A dream that held the answer to healing from that loss. The dream told me that after losing my baby, I would create the Deep Water Leaf Society and it would not only help me to heal my own grief, but would help many others as well.

So I wrote a book about my loss, but mostly about my healing journey. I called it The Deep Water Leaf Society. The writing of the book lifted the last of my guilt and sadness. It brought me closure. It left me knowing with the deepest certainty that everything is now okay and always was okay and always would be okay. "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." (Julian of Norwich)

If you want more information about the book, which will be released in the Summer of 2008, you can visit DeepWaterLeafSociety.com for release dates and other information. Beyond the book, though, my hope is to create a community of the same name. A community of hearts and souls bound by the shared human experience of grief and by the knowledge that we are so much more than just lost, lonely souls experiencing a few brief years on this planet.

We are like leaves floating on the surface of a very deep pool of mystery and magic. I invite each of you to take a deeper look.

I welcome your response, here on the blog, or via email at Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com.

Wishing You Peace on the Journey. . .