I am the Love that Heals All Wounds

This is PART FIVE of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I Am the Love that Heals all Wounds (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society) by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with Broken-Winged Angel

Me (DH): Hello little broken-winged angel. What is your name?

Angel (NDH): Grace.

(DH): Hello, Grace, tell me about you.

(NDH): I am the love that heals all wounds. Even in my own brokenness my light shines through. I am perfect in my imperfection. The imperfection is an illusion. The truth is the glow in my heart.

(DH): How do you feel, Grace?

(NDH): Open and innocent.

(DH): Why do you feel that way?

(NDH): Because it is the truth of me.

(DH): What can I do for you?

(NDH): Accept.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring to me?

(NDH): My own true self. Grace.

Again, the message was about the healing power of love and the illusion of brokenness. Something about her name, Grace, moved me. I understood grace to mean unlimited blessings without strings attached and no striving required. Grace was the generosity of God or the Universe, abundant gifts granted out of sheer love and having nothing to do with guilt or innocence or deservingness. It reminded me of the feeling I had after the Padre Pio dream, when Cameron was granted such a generous plea agreement. Grace was asking me to accept that there was a perfection beyond the appearance of things. She was helping me to reconnect to that part of me that had always known that was true.
~~

to be continued . . .


As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

I am the Wiz Kid

This is PART FOUR of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

(I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I Am the Wiz Kid (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with the Boy in Blue

Me (DH): Hello little boy in blue – who are you?

Boy (NDH): I am the Wiz Kid.

(DH): Hello, Wiz Kid. What is it you are up to?

(NDH): Magic. Alchemy. Transformation.

(DH): I see. That sounds exciting! How do you feel?

(NDH): Anticipation.

(DH): Anticipation? What is it you expect?

(NDH): Great things. Growth.

(DH): It looks to me like you are feeding something to the swimmers in the bowl. What is it?

(NDH): Wisdom in small doses. Only what can be handled at any given time.

(DH): And who are the swimmers?

(NDH): Look. There are 3.

(DH): Yes, there are 3. Is one of them me?

(NDH): At least one, yes. At least.

(DH): Are they all me, then?

(NDH): All you – all me – all one.

(DH): You are very cryptic – mysterious. What can I do for you?

(NDH): Play the game. Dance, laugh, grow.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring to me?

(NDH): Vision.

This dialogue left me puzzled and curious. Through the image of the Wiz Kid and the words he said, I felt connected to the side of Cameron that was always so curious and creative, the side of him that somehow seemed to know more than I did despite all appearances to the contrary. I felt uplifted by the idea that some powerful transformation was just around the corner for me. The three swimmers in the bowl had made me think of the karmic triangle that Cameron, David and I had always seemed to form, so I was surprised that the meaning was deeper and more mysterious than that. The dialogue reminded me that I could keep living and growing and enjoying life, and that this loss could lead to wisdom and vision if I allowed it to.
~~

to be continued . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

I am what calls out for love . . .

This is PART TWO of a series. To start from the beginning, go here.

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.)

from chapter 13: Voices from the Big Wave

Between funeral arrangements and a steady stream of visitors, some weeks passed before I got around to dialoguing with The Big Wave collage images.

The process of journaling dialogue with images involves writing with both hands. My dominant hand, the one I normally write with, speaks for my conscious self and asks questions of the images. My non-dominant hand answers the questions, speaking for the image.

It is an amazing process that works because the non-dominant hand has direct access to the right hemisphere of the brain, where intuition, emotion and spiritual connection reside. It was an awkward process at first. Once I got used to it and allowed the non-dominant hand to just write, uncensored by the critical voice or the logic of the left brain, I found that amazing insights would arise.

I sat down to dialogue with the images in the Big Wave collage toward the end of May, several weeks after Cameron’s death. I was wiped out, emotionally and physically. I was searching for answers to that unanswerable question, “Why?” It took me two days, several days apart, to dialogue with each and every image in the collage. The messages they gave me were profound and brought me much needed peace and healing.

(I am highlighting one of these dialogues in each post of this series. The questions of the dominant hand are noted (DH) and the answers of the images, transcribed by my non-dominant hand, are noted (NDH).)

I am What Calls Out for Love (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society) by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

5/24/04 Dialogue with Baby in the Galvanized Tub

Me (DH): Hello little boy being bathed – who are you?

Baby (NDH): I am what calls out for love, for nurturing. I am content with simple things. I am well loved.

(DH): Do you have a name?

(NDH): My name is Earth Child.

(DH): Earth Child, how do you feel?

(NDH): I am sad for the mother who loves me so but thinks that she hasn’t enough to give.

(DH): Why do you feel this way?

(NDH): Because love is all I have ever needed. She cries for me but doesn’t see she’s given me the greatest gift of all.

(DH): But you live in poverty. She doesn’t know how she will feed you. Your life expectancy is so short. She bathes you in gutter water. The city is full of disease. She cries for the you that could have been – that should have been. She cries for not knowing how to heal you.

(NDH): She loves me. That is all. That is enough.

(DH): What can I do for you?

(NDH): Don’t become cold. Never give up on the power of love.

(DH): What gift or wisdom do you bring me?

(NDH): I show you the power of your heart.

The grieving and broken-hearted part of me was angry with the idea the love was enough. How could it be enough when my son’s life had been cut so short, when he had faced such difficulty despite my loving him? I argued with the photo in its own terms – gutter water and Third World poverty – but what my heart was really crying out was that in the midst of plenty, in the midst of middle-class white-bread suburbia, with every opportunity and all the love I could give, my son was still dead at the age of 26. How could love be enough? But the child in the photo insisted that it was and some part of me opened up to receive that message.
~~

to be continued . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

The Big Wave

This is an excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief (copyright 2008, Claire M. Perkins. All Rights Reserved.) The book tells the story of my journey through grief into healing after the death of my son in 2004. Cameron overdosed while serving a short sentence in the county jail for parole violation. He was 26 years old and had been struggling with addiction for several years.

Dreams, art and journaling played a significant role in my healing, and I share a bit of my process here in the hope that these techniques might help someone else work through their own grief.

from chapter 9: Drowning

Five days before Cameron died, while I thought him to be safe and sound, cooling his heels in the county jail, I had a dream that grabbed me and would not let me go. The dream experience settled into my heart, leaving it heavy with foreboding. The dream was a simple vignette, yet it shook me deeply. And it carried a mystery I felt compelled to understand.

April 28, 2004 - The Big Wave
I am watching a huge wave break. The water comes all the way up into city streets. In a room, a small boy has peed himself. I think he must have seen or heard the wave crash and been frightened. He is holding a small fish in a baggie of water. There's a tiny eyeball floating in the water, too. I believe it is food for the fish.

I awoke from this dream knowing it carried a profoundly important message for me. It was an odd sort of dream in that it was very visually oriented, like I was looking at a snapshot of a scene. There was not much action, just a sense of the overwhelming power of the wave and the vulnerability of the little boy. I had a vague notion it might have something to do with Cameron and it left me feeling uneasy.

I was quite taken with the process of collaging from magazine photos, words and phrases. This dream, so visual in nature, seemed a natural fit for collage. I was anxious to dive into my magazine stash and see how the dream story might evolve through the medium of collage.

I began the collage early on the following Friday evening, April 30, 2004. I became completely engrossed in the process of selecting images, many of which seemed to be selecting me as I was not sure what they had to do with the dream story or how they would fit in. While most of the collage work I had done to date had been heavy on words and phrases, this one, like the dream, was nearly exclusively image-based.

I worked on the collage non-stop until about three in the morning when I glued the last of the pictures down. I was intrigued by the result as there was much more to it than there had been in the dream itself. It was as if the collage had grown organically from the seed of the dream, as if I’d continued dreaming in the creation of the collage.

The Big Wave (excerpt from The Deep Water Leaf Society) by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

Many kinds of water images filled the collage: skyscraper buildings superimposed over images of turbulent waves; dark, stormy, violent waters; placid still water reflecting the setting sun; a huge aquarium; a speckled trout drifting in a still green pond. There were also several images of children: a baby being washed in a galvanized tub on some Third World city street; a little girl peering around a Christmas tree, eyes filled with wonder; two little dark-haired, dark-eyed boys vaguely reminiscent of Cameron in his youth. Two women, likely representing aspects of myself, sat at the bottom right as if contemplating or experiencing the scenes above. In the top left corner, there was a surfer riding the waves and that image puzzled me the most as the action and vitality of it seemed out of place in the otherwise moody and somnolent feeling of the overall piece.

I was anxious to try a form of journaling dialogue in which I would be able to talk with the collage images and learn their secrets. But it was too late to begin. I went to bed more curious than ever about the message of the dream.

A busy weekend went by. I had no time to attempt the dialogue process. Then came that fateful Monday morning, May 3, 2004, when the jail death detectives came to my door to tell me Cameron was dead.

A few days later Mary, a dear friend of mine who has since joined Cameron on the other side, came by to offer her condolences and a home cooked meal. She noticed the collage, which I’d propped on a bookcase in my home office, and she asked me about it. I told her about the dream and the obsession I’d had to collage it. I told her that now I could see it had been a premonition, that I had seen the wave that would finally swallow my son.

Mary told me that as she had meditated that morning she had gone looking for Cameron and she had met with him.

She said to him, “Cameron, I’m worried about your mom and dad. This has been a life altering event for them.”

He reportedly replied with a grin, in true Cameron style, “Yeah, it’s been a bit life altering for me, too!” I knew she’d had a true conversation with him, because that was exactly the kind of thing he’d say, and she didn’t know him well enough to know that.

I just chuckled. A smart ass to the very end . . . and beyond!
~~

to be continued in future posts . . .

As always, I welcome your comments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com

The Deep Water Leaf Society wins Honorable Mention

I'm excited to announce that The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief, just won an honorable mention in the Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards!

I'm doin' my happy dance . . .

Meanwhile, you may have noticed I haven't posted here in a while. That's because I've been happily busy developing my newest website and blog: www.ArtfulAlchemist.com and ArtfulAlchemist.blogspot.com. If you are interested in Expressive Arts and creative expression as a pathway to healing, go on over and check it out!

I'm not abandoning the DWLS blog, though. Soon I'll be posting a whole series around using art as a pathway to healing grief. So stay tuned . . .

It's Cameron's Birthday, But the Present's for YOU!

Today is my son Cameron’s 31st birthday, or would be if he was still here. I’m not sure how old he is where he lives now, or if age is even a concept there. It’s been nearly five years since his death and rather than feeling bittersweet, today I am feeling very happy about his birthday. I’m going to celebrate by giving away 10 copies of The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief in eBook format. The book has been available since September in paperback and I’ll be officially launching the eBook release within the coming month. Here is your chance to get a free pre-release copy of the eBook, which includes full-color illustrations.

The Deep Water Leaf Society tells the story of Cameron’s death and the journey of awakening I experienced in the aftermath. While it is autobiographical, it is also a guidebook to healing for anyone experiencing grief. You will learn how to use art, journaling, dreams and synchronicity to heal and grow. Even if you are not grieving, the tools, practices and messages of the book can show you a pathway to transformation and personal growth.

Many people have asked me what the title of the book means. The name was given to me in a dream. You can read the dream in the first chapter of the book, which you can download here, or you can read about it in my very first blog entry here. Even so, many people still scratch their heads over the title, so let me tell you what I think it means.

Most of us live our lives like a leaf floating on a very deep lake. Just as winds and currents move the leaf around, we allow much of the direction of our lives to be determined by the people and events around us. We drift along like sleepwalkers living surface level lives, never finding out who we really are. I think of the “deep water leaf” as one who has had that smooth surface shattered, one who has been pulled into the depths and found that rather than drowning the experience has left him or her more alive than ever. Because it’s only in the depths that we will see the mystery, the magic, the timelessness of who we are and how we are connected. We can only find those things by diving deeper. We can wait for a tragedy to shatter the surface for us, or we can just take a deep breath and dive.

So, if you’d like to receive your own copy of The Deep Water Leaf Society in eBook format (268 pages filled with color illustrations) totally free with no strings attached, be one of the first 10 people to post a comment on this blog entry telling me about one of your own “deep water leaf” experiences:

• when have you found yourself experiencing the magic and mystery of the deep?
• what triggered that experience?
• did something shatter the surface, or did you just dive in?

To post your comment, scroll down to the bottom of this blog entry and click on the “Comments” link. In addition, please send an email to Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety that includes your name, your email address and some reference to the context of your post. I will confirm your winning status and send a link to your download within 48 hours of receiving your email and verifying your posted comment.

Now, I know Cameron’s listening, so everybody sing along with me:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you…

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Storytelling

This past Friday, March 20th, marked the Spring Equinox. Did you know it was also World Storytelling Day? The theme of storytelling seems to be weaving through my life right now, coming at me from many directions. When that happens, I know it’s time to pay attention.

We’re all storytellers, you know. That’s how we create our lives. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, which came first: the events of our lives or the stories we tell about them. They share a kind of symbiosis, feeding off of each other, evolving together. The stories we tell shape not only our present and future, but can reshape the past as well. The stories we tell change us. I know this has been true for me in the telling of my story in The Deep Water Leaf Society. My shift in perspective, which slowly unfolds during the course of the book, reframed a tragic loss as a gift beyond measure.

We tell stories about who we are at the individual level as well as at the tribal and global levels. Those tribal and global stories shape our nations and our world. They shape the evolutionary direction of our species as a whole. Many of our stories come from religion and many others come from science. Every one of those stories influences how we feel about ourselves and the world. Some stories divide and some stories unite. Some stories victimize and some stories empower.

The story of “The War on Terror,” for instance, creates fear and divides us. The story of “The Economic Meltdown” creates fear and victimhood. The story of “Landing on the Moon and Looking Back at Ourselves” empowered and created a new sense of one-world unity for a time, until we forgot that our planet has no borders except those we create in our minds and our stories.

I’ve been reading don Miguel Ruiz’s The Voice of Knowledge. He begins with a story about Adam and Eve in the Garden way back in the day. It’s a different twist on what happened and what the consequences were for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The snake in that tree was The Prince of Lies and what we swallowed, and what grows in us to this day, is knowledge polluted by lies: the lies we were told as we grew up, the lies we now tell ourselves and the lies we pass on to our children. These lies tell us there is not enough and that we are not enough. These are the lies of judgment that cause us to look at any person, place, thing or situation and judge it as “good” or “bad.” Before we ate the lies, we couldn’t make that distinction. Nothing was good or bad, it just was.

There’s an old Chinese story about a young man who lost his horse. The villagers said, “Oh, such bad news.” The lad’s father said, “Maybe bad, maybe good.” The next day the young man’s horse came home with an entire heard of wild horses following him. The villagers rejoiced, saying “Oh, such good fortune!” The lad’s father said, “Maybe good, maybe bad.” The next day, the boy tried to break one of the wild horses for riding. He was thrown and broke his leg so badly that he would be crippled for life. “Oh, such bad luck,” said the villagers. “Maybe bad, maybe good,” said the father. The next day, the Chinese army came and took every able-bodied son off to war. The crippled young man was spared.

The point is, events in our lives are not in and of themselves good or bad. It is our perception of them and the story we tell about them that makes them good or bad. It’s all a story, so why not pick a good one?

I recently watched a Barbara Marx Hubbard film called Humanity Ascending. Hubbard says, “The nature of nature is to transform. Crises precede transformation and problems are evolutionary drivers.” This film addresses at the macro, global, humanity-wide level what I experienced at the micro, personal, individual level: breakdown leads to breakthrough. Losing my son pushed me to grow into my next higher level of expression. Our current global crises—overpopulation, diminishing resources, economic meltdown, global warming—are exactly the conditions that can spark the next turn in the spiral of humanity’s ongoing evolutionary growth. We can welcome crisis as the wakeup call that will help us to shape a new story. Let’s pick a good one.

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

The Tides of Life

I've recently returned from a week at the beach in beautiful Rocky Point (Puerto Penasco) Mexico. Great time with the whole family, lovely beachfront home, 80 degree weather, good food, plenty of cerveza. In other words, a little slice of heaven.

Yet on one very still afternoon, I made the following observation:

Midafternoon Rocky Point

Today the sea is flat and smooth
Like a satin sheet
Pulled tightly over an empty bed
Black birds float
Stillness upon stillness
The raucous cries of the morning’s gulls
Silent now
No wing or feather moves the air
No boat breaks the horizon
Not a soul stirs on the beach
The tide itself seems suspended
Resting at its high water mark
Off to the hazy west
Sea blends horizonlessly into sky

I say that I crave peace
That at the core of my every prayer
Is the desire for peace, for stillness
But this stillness leaves me restless
I don’t want a life
Flat and still like this sea
I crave the motion of the waves
Their sparkling diamond light
The pull of the tides
The gentle slosh and roll
Of water greeting shore
The effervescent hiss
As thirsty sand drinks in
The delicious foamy brew
~~~

How often we resist the rise and fall of our own lives. How often we resist the changes that come. We cry out for peace, yet it is the very presence of ups and downs that lets us know we are alive.

In the past few days, I've had quite a few "ups" -- and yet, if I look at them honestly, they come directly from my biggest "down." They are all gifts that have come to me directly from my experience of loss with my son Cameron's death. Would I trade them all to have him back? Maybe. Would my life be as meaningful if I did? I don't think so. My loss has allowed me to begin to find a way to make a small contribution to this world.

I am now a Featured Writer at Open to Hope, a website that reaches 30,000 readers each month and whose mission is to offer hope to those who are grieving. You can read my first post here. I will be posting a few times each month.

I did a wonderful Internet radio interview on the Conscious Healing show with Sherry Anshara. You can listen to the archive here.

My book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, won First Place in the Self Help category and was chosen as the Best Non-Fiction Book of 2008 by Reader Views.

A new follower (see The Journey) of my blog honored me with her own "Top 10 Favs Award." I am equally honored by this award, because it means that my words are reaching real people. That makes my heart sing.

So, the next time you wish for peace and an end to your current drama, ask yourself if you are wishing your way out of living. Life comes with highs and lows. Let's make the best of all of it.

Wishing you peace on the journey...

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

News

Just a few pieces of news to blog today:

I’m excited to announce that The Deep Water Leaf Society is a finalist (Self Help category) in the 2008 Reader Views Awards!! Wish me luck – winners will be announced at the end of March.

Also wanted to let you know that I’ll be on the Conscious Healing show on AchieveRadio at 5pm MST today. I’ll be talking with my host Sherry Anshara about finding a conscious and creative pathway through grief. Just go to AchieveRadio.com, scroll down the page and click on one of the Listen Live links (some are geared for broadband and some for dial-up). If you can’t listen live today, you’ll be able to listen to the archive at your convenience later. Just go straight to the Conscious Healing page and scroll down until you see the show for March 4, 2009.

Check out the Open to Hope website for more resources on healing grief. They have invited me to be a featured writer. You can read my first Open to Hope post here.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you'll find a couple of new widgets on my blog page:

1) I'm now tweeting on Twitter - you can follow my tweets at the bottom of my blog, or better yet get your own Twitter account and follow me there.

2) I've also added a bookshelf of some of my favorite reads care of shelfari.com. I'll be adding more titles over time. Check them out. Many are great resources for healing grief and personal growth.

And finally, I came across a few interesting articles on the web. Just thought I’d share…

If the U.S. were a person, would it be an emotionally disconnected addict?

And here is a fascinating look at how creativity happens in dreams.


As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

The Changing Face of Grief

The morning after my Dad died, he came to me in a dream.

In my dream, my Dad is sitting in a chair with a large Tefla bandage on the upper right side of his head. His blue eyes are clear and twinkling and he’s wearing a sort of self-satisfied, cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. Without any words, he communicates to me that he’s been fixed up good as new. The damage from his right-hemisphere stroke and the debilitations of dementia he experienced in the last year of his life (and even longer than that, to a milder degree) have been healed. I smile and say, “Well, look at you, Dad!” I give him a hug and a kiss and tell him I love him.

I am amazed at how differently this loss is affecting me compared to Cameron’s death nearly five years ago now. Cameron visited me in dreams, too. But at first, every time he visited my grief and anger were so powerful that I ended up pushing him away. I would awaken from those dreams full of pain and sadness. My dream of Dad left me filled only with peace. It puzzles me a bit how unemotional I have been about my Dad’s death. I’m trying not to beat myself up over it, but I have been giving it a lot of thought. People offer me condolences and I feel like there’s no consoling needed.

Recently, as I was perusing other blogs on the theme of grief, I came across this post called "Good Grief," which contains some good, basic information about grieving. The post includes a list of things that can affect a person’s response to a loss. I can see how some of the ideas presented there have applied in my own experiences of grief.

Anticipatory grief, for example, happens when death is anticipated over a long period of time due to illness or other circumstances. The reaction to an expected death is very different than the reaction to a sudden, unexpected death. It doesn’t necessarily mean the grief is lessened, but the shock is lessened. There is a level of anticipation or expectation that we will outlive our parents, but we don’t expect to outlive our children. The difference in feeling about these two deaths is partly because of that, but it’s more than that, too. With my Dad, I think my grieving happened before he passed. I felt more sadness in watching his brilliant mind fade away than I did at the passing of his body, which, at the end, seemed only a shell of him anyway. I had some anticipatory grief with Cameron’s death, too. He’d been struggling with addiction for years and I kept waiting for something terrible to happen. Yet, I was not prepared for his unexpected death in the county jail. I thought that there, of all places, he’d be forcibly protected from his self-destructive addiction. When the detectives from the jail came to tell me he was dead, the shock was incredible. While there was anticipatory grief with both my Dad and my son, in the end I expected and even hoped for my Dad’s passing while I resisted the idea of Cameron’s death right up to the moment I learned of it.

Another thing that impacts the grief experience is the relationship you had with the person who died. I was certainly much closer to my son than I was to my Dad. Even though I had been a caretaker for my Dad for the last several years, it was more out of necessity than closeness. Prior to the decline of his and my Mom’s health, I really didn’t see my folks much. Even though I love my Dad, my life was very separate from his life. Cameron and I, on the other hand, were extremely entangled – probably unhealthily so. I believe it is called co-dependence. So his death left a gaping hole in my own sense of identity. There was also a lot of unresolved business with Cameron, where with my Dad I felt I had no loose ends, no grievances, nothing I felt guilty about. Cameron’s death left a lot of things unsaid and undone. Over time, since his death, we have had an opportunity to resolve all those issues and to heal our relationship so that now I can think of him with love and with peace in my heart. But in the beginning, there was only pain and guilt and anger. So I guess it’s easier to let go of my Dad because there’s no baggage there.

One more thing the post mentions is that what you’ve learned about loss in the past will inform any future experiences of grief. This certainly seems true in my case. Cameron’s death and all the amazing experiences that followed have completely transformed my understanding of and feelings about death. Where before I supposed (or at least hoped) that death was not a final ending, I now know it without any doubt at all. I have had too many amazing communications with Cameron since he passed to think of him as “dead.” His passing also taught me that the bond of love survives the apparent separation of death. It not only survives, but becomes stronger and healthier. My sense of death now is that it is a return to our true soul state, while our adventures here on Earth are temporary challenges—learning and growing experiences. Rather than grieving my Dad’s passing, I can celebrate his homecoming and know that our hearts remain connected.

Wishing you peace on the journey…

As always, I welcome your coments here or by email (Claire@DeepWaterLeafSociety.com)

Visit my website: http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/

Love Never Dies

I sat with my father for the last time on Thursday the 18th of December. His condition was not much different from the past several days; he was sleeping and unresponsive. I was scheduled to leave the next morning on a 6 am flight to Colorado to go see my daughter graduate from CSU. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be here anymore when I returned on Sunday.

After turning on one of his favorite CDs of Tahitian music, I sat by his bedside and held his hand. I sang and hummed along with the music I’d heard a million times, as he used to play that CD over and over again before he began to slip away so completely. I told him once again that he didn’t have to keep fighting. I told him not to worry about Mom – that we’d keep taking good care of her. I told him I loved him and what a good Dad he’d been, what a great family he’d created. What an extraordinary life he’d led, winding his way from Quebec, Canada all the way down here to Arizona! He really had had some adventures in his time.

My eyes wandered to a poster of a palm dotted white sandy beach and azure sea that we’d tacked to the wall by his bed. I asked him if he remembered his trip to Tahiti, his time in Hawaii, and all his years of sailing. “Wouldn’t it be nice to just drift away on a beautiful blue expanse of sea?” I asked him. “To just let go and let the wind fill your sails as you glide over the waters? It feels almost like flying, doesn’t it?”

The rest of the day was busy, getting Mom picked up from dialysis and settled back at home and then visiting with a dear friend who lives in the same retirement complex as my mother. The parking lot was strewn with golden fall leaves as I walked out to my car at the end of the day. With the sun just beginning to set, each leaf seemed to glow. It was quite beautiful. One leaf, a perfect heart, caught my eye. “Well, look at you,” I said, as I bent to pick it up. None of the other fallen leaves were heart shaped. They were more ovalish and elongated. I craned my neck and looked at every tree surrounding the parking lot. Not one of them had heart shaped leaves. I believe they were ash trees. I smiled and said an inward hello to Cameron. He’d been sending me hearts since just after he died and I felt him there with me. When I got into the car and started the engine, the radio played Michael McDonald’s version of “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.”

The next morning, as my plane lifted up off the tarmac and into the clouds, my Dad died peacefully in his sleep. I wonder now if that heart-shaped leaf was from Cameron or from my Dad – if the song on the radio was a message from Cameron or from my Dad. I suppose it doesn’t matter, really. The bottom line is that love is what matters and love never dies.

Transferred Visions

Recently I spent a week in Dream Teacher Training with Robert Moss at the beautiful and peaceful Mosswood Hollow retreat center in Duvall, Washington. It was so great to be able to step out of the pace of everyday living and immerse myself in the dreaming for a full week. To reconnect with nature. To reconnect with my deeper self. To reconnect with friends made last year and meet new friends. And to remember and remind myself how important dreaming is.

One focus of our week was to dream new ways of healing. We practiced vision transfer, a process in which one journeys via the shamanic drum and retrieves a healing vision for another. I reconnected with my friend from an earlier dream workshop who had gifted me with a powerful vision that helped me to write The Deep Water Leaf Society. Without that transferred vision, I don’t think I would have completed the book. Here’s how it happened, about a year and a half ago . . .

I had told Lisa very little about myself or my book at the time. I simply told her I wanted to write a book on grieving. I explained that I was feeling very stuck and feeling as though during any time I spent writing I was letting innumerable other more “important” things go undone. I was conflicted about several other goals and paths and I felt that time and dedication to the book would prevent me from pursuing them. She agreed to retrieve a vision that would help me to get unblocked and move forward with my project.

As the drumming began, I sat quietly, holding the intention of completing my book. Lisa rode the drumming into the place of dreams and visions. The drumming took her to a vision of a large outdoor fire around which many people sat. She saw me sitting at the place of honor, dressed in buckskin and a feather cape. A woman walked into the circle carrying a bundle in her arms. This woman, she told me, was the embodiment of Kachina Woman (a rock formation in Sedona). Kachina Woman dropped the bundle into the fire and smoke rose into the sky. Then she came and stood by me, holding out her arms. She said to me, “My arms are empty now. I can hold for you whatever you feel you might be missing while you write. It will be in my arms, ready for you to reclaim when your work is done.”

I pulled a feather from my cape and began to write words into the smoke. Then everyone around the fire was healed by the smoke rising from the bundle she had dropped into the flames and the words I wrote in it. They came forward, one by one, and dropped their own bundles into the flame. They thanked me and honored me for the healing I had brought them.

As Lisa told me what she’d seen, I was moved to tears. The feather cape I wore in her vision was a cape I had retrieved in an earlier vision that same day, when I’d traveled into space and connected with the Archangel Raphael, protector of humanity and healer of hearts. I had not told Lisa of that vision, and I was amazed that she had retrieved the same imagery. The fire and smoke also mirrored some of my earlier journeying. As she spoke of the smoke rising from the fire, I felt Cameron’s presence with me strongly. It seemed that the fire was my grief and the smoke was its transformation. It seemed the smoke was the remaining presence of Cameron and that he would be helping me to tell our story. I told Lisa all of this and explained to her that I had lost my son and that it was the grief of that loss I wanted to write about.

She said, “I didn’t want to say this before, because it seemed so odd and kind of creepy, but the bundle that Kachina Woman dropped into the fire was a baby.”

We both sat stunned and awed by the power of this vision. When I came home, I found a photo of Kachina Woman on the internet and set it as the background on my computer monitor so that she would be there, holding whatever I needed her to hold, as I wrote the book. I held in my mind the vision of all these other people finding healing from grief, of my story somehow helping them to do that. That is still my hope.

It’s easy to retrieve a healing vision for someone else. Here’s how:

1. Create a sacred and safe space in which to journey. You can do this by calling on whatever healing and protective powers you feel connected to – God, angels, the Light, your power animals, the directions or anything else that works for you. You might wish to light a candle or use some other ceremony.
2. Have the person you’ll be journeying for tell you, briefly, about a situation in their life for which they’d like to receive a healing vision. Have them paint a picture of the situation with their words so that you get a sense of their feelings about it. (In the above story, I told Lisa how frustrated I felt about all the other things that wouldn’t get done if I focused on writing the book as well as my uncertainty about the value of what I had to say.)
3. Have the person you’ll be journeying for summarize and distill what they’ve said into a simple intention they can hold in their mind while you journey for them. (Mine was, “I want help to complete my book.”)
4. Get into a comfortable position for journeying. Either lie down or sit comfortably with your eyes closed. Hold the intention that you are journeying to retrieve a healing vision for your partner.
5. Using shamanic drumming (either by drumming yourself, having someone drum for you, or playing a recording of shamanic drumming), allow yourself to ride the drum sound as you pay close attention to what you see, feel, hear or intuit. The person for whom you are journeying simply sits quietly holding their intention. Fifteen minutes of drumming should be an adequate amount of time.
6. When you return from the journey, take a few moments to write down your perceptions. If you feel like you “got nothing,” then make something up!! Your imagination has been primed by the drumming and you will be able to craft a helpful and healing story. Don’t second guess yourself.
7. Gift your vision to your partner by telling the story vividly and with conviction.
8. Ask your partner if there is any part of the vision they’d like to claim as their own. Have your partner retell as much of the story as they wish to claim in their own words. They can add into the story any personal connections they may have felt as you gave them the story. This retelling and saying the words out loud is an important step, because by doing so your partner will be claiming the power of the story as their own. (I claimed all of Lisa’s beautiful story and added to it the idea that Cameron would be in the smoke, helping me to write.)
9. Ask your partner what action they will take to honor the healing vision. Dreams and visions require action to work their magic in your life. (My action steps were to find a statue or picture of Kachina Woman that I could keep in my writing space and to call on her when I felt distracted by other things or guilty about my writing time.)

It was great to reconnect with Lisa this past week and to have an opportunity to let her know how powerfully her vision had worked in my life. Never underestimate the power of dreams to heal and transform. And never underestimate your own power as a dreamer and a storyteller. Your words can heal others and help them to find their way.

Thank you, Lisa, for helping me to find mine!

Lisa's business is called DreamSync and she offers counseling and support with dream circles, decisionmaking, tracking synchronicity, imaginal healing and dream journaling. I hope you'll check out her beautiful website at www.dreamsync.us.

Wishing you peace on the journey . . .