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

One Heart Singing

The tears hit me again on my morning walk. As long as it’s been (nearly 5 years) and as healed as I feel, sometimes something still sneaks up and hits me—blindsides me out of the blue. This morning it was the music on my iPod—my “Cameron” playlist (most of these are also on my playlist here on the blog). These are all songs that I love and that normally bring a smile to my face these days. Especially “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” which always makes me feel like Cameron is near. But today the words just broke me up and broke me open. There’s a line about “the day I set you free,” and suddenly the enormity of Cameron’s sacrifice and gift to me just overwhelmed me—not with sadness, but with gratitude. Because his death did set me free. Free from drama addiction, which was just as deadly and disabling as his own addiction to crystal meth.

And then “The Reason” came on with its apologies for all the pain caused and its assertion that because of it, the singer has found a reason to change everything about himself. The first time I heard this song was New Year’s Eve 2004. Cameron had died in May of that year. It was around 11pm and I was journaling and crying my heart out when the words to the song drifted into my consciousness from the TV where they were playing the top 10 songs of the year. That first time hearing it, I felt like it was Cameron talking directly to me through the lyrics. All this time, I’ve thought that it was Cameron apologizing, Cameron telling me he left here so he could start over and become something different. As I heard the words on this morning’s walk, I suddenly felt like I was singing the words back to him. I was apologizing for all the pain I caused and I was the one changing everything about me. When I think about all that’s going on in my life right now, all the writing and the coaching and the planning of workshops and presentations, I can truly say, there’s "a reason for all that I do, and the reason is you,” Cameron. The reason is you.

And then I wondered, is it Cameron singing to me, is it me singing to Cameron, or is it just One heart singing to Itself?

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

Visit my website: 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/

Here's Your Sign. . .

Perhaps some of you are familiar with the Blue Collar Comedy crew: Jeff Foxworthy et al. One of my favorite bits is Bill Engvall’s “Here’s your sign.” It’s the punch line he uses after telling a joke about some stupid thing somebody did – a reference to his suggestion that stupid people ought to have to wear a sign so that we’d know better than to ask them for help or advice. If you’ve never seen Bill Engvall, you might want to spend the three minutes it takes to watch this YouTube clip before reading any further. My story will make a lot more sense if you do.

I’ve been working on the inaugural issue of a monthly newsletter for The Deep Water Leaf Society. (Sign up to receive your own copy here.) Along with a short article or two, I thought it would be nice each month to highlight a book or a person or some other kind of resource that could help people journey through their grief. For this first issue, I wanted to highlight Jamie Clark, the medium I write about in my book. I am so grateful for the session I had with him about a year after my son Cameron’s death and I know that he could help others to find peace as well. So I arranged to have a brief phone interview with him a few days ago.

We spoke for about 30 minutes. As I tried to ask Jamie pertinent interview questions, like when he first knew he had a gift and how long he’s been doing readings for people, Cameron kept butting in (through Jamie) with various comments and things he wanted me to know. It was nice to know Cameron was around, and it was good to hear the things he had to say. For instance, that he’d be there to help my Dad (who is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s disease) cross over when the time comes. That was something I’d been asking of him for some time. But it was kind of hard to keep the flow of the interview going smoothly as Jamie would pop up with these things from Cameron every couple of minutes.

We also talked a little about my own abilities to tune into messages from Cameron and how I tend to dismiss so much of what comes to me. I confided to Jamie that I hadn’t felt as connected to Cameron recently and that even my dream state had been changing and becoming rather more chaotic and rather less clearly helpful than usual. Jamie assured me that the connection was still there and that I just needed to get out of my own way.

Toward the end of our conversation, Jamie said, “There’s going to be a validation coming soon. It’s going to be a sign and it’s going to involve a butterfly. So watch for that.”

I made a mental note, but I kind of dismissed it because usually Cameron speaks to me through dreams or through music or through heart shaped shells and stones. Butterflies have not been, or at least have not seemed to be, one of the signs he gives me.

After our phone call, I had to get busy preparing for a book selling event coming up the next day. I needed to print some flyers and gather some props for the table I’d be setting up. I wanted to display a copy of the recent newspaper article that featured me and my book. I had a copy mounted on a piece of foam core board, but I needed an easel to prop it up.

The image of a small wooden easel that I have popped into my mind. That would work perfectly. I had just had that easel in my hands a few weeks ago. I had taken it down from the picture it held on the fireplace mantel to use it for something else. I could not for the life of me remember what that something else was.

“Think, Claire, think,” I exhorted myself. “You just had it in your hands. What did you do with it?” It drives me crazy when I can’t remember what I did with something, and it seems to be happening more and more often as I get older. “Come on, Stupid, what did you do with it?”

I remembered that I had been cleaning and reorganizing the living room when I’d taken the easel down from the mantel in the family room. I’d wanted to use it for something in the living room. But what? I went into the living room and looked all around—end tables, bookshelves, the china cabinet in the adjoining dining room. “What did I use if for?”

I didn’t see it anywhere and I had no clue what I’d wanted it for. I gave up in frustration. I decided to go to Staple’s and get the paper stock I needed for my flyers. Maybe they’d have an easel there that would work, although it galled me to think of buying a new one when I had a perfectly good one somewhere around here.

A short time later, leaving the store with my paper goods, I realized I’d forgotten to look for an easel while I was in the store. I was feeling rushed and frazzled as it was already evening and I still had to print the flyers. “Never mind,” I thought. “I’ll just find some other way to stand the stupid article up.”

Driving home, it suddenly occurred to me: I’d used the wooden easel to stand a beaded ceramic butterfly up on my bookshelves. The butterfly is so large that the easel isn’t really visible behind it. I’d looked right at it and it just hadn’t connected. Then I remembered what Jamie had said about a sign coming up with a butterfly.

I could hear Bill Engvall’s country accented voice saying, “Here’s your sign!”

I laughed all the way home, a deep belly laughter the likes of which I haven’t enjoyed in a very long time.

Thanks, Cameron. Thanks, Jamie. I needed that!

Wishing you peace on the journey. . .

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 . . .

Book News!

I have exciting news on the publishing front! My book cover design has been completed and it's gorgeous! I want to thank my designer, Kristen Ernst, who did an amazing job translating my thoughts and feelings into art. She also has a fabulous line of numerology T-shirts that you should check out at www.lifepathtees.com. Anyhow, here's the cover (drum roll please!)

More exciting news is that I've finally resolved the lyric licensing for all but one song and I should have an answer on that one any day now. That means that the book is just about ready for release. During the first week of August, I will have free preview chapters available for download on my website, www.deepwaterleafsociety.com. By the middle of August I hope to have the pre-publication ordering process in place. You will be able to order the book at a deep discount when you order and pay in advance. The book will then be shipped to you as soon as it's available, which should be by the 1st of September.

This project has been a bit like giving birth, and at this point I feel like I'm about 6 weeks overdue! I'll be so excited to finally get this baby out! So, help me breathe through these last labor pains and get ready to welcome this story from my heart. May it bring peace and healing to other grieving hearts.

As always, I wish you peace on the journey.

Looking through the Window to the Other Side

I just left the hospital where I went to visit my father, who is 84 and suffering from progressive dementia. It is such a sad thing to see his brilliant mind fading into that gray zone of confusion and disconnection. There is a different kind of grief that comes with this slow, daily losing of him that I sometimes feel is even more painful than was the sudden loss of my son. There is a constant waiting for the inevitable and the wondering each time I prepare to go see him how he'll be today - will he know me? I wonder sometimes at the tenacity of the body when the mind seems so ready to let go and move out of this life. I find myself drained and numbed after today's visit. Perhaps in a day or two, I will be ready to write more about this process of watching a loved one slowly fade, but my visit to Dad today reminded me of an essay I wrote last year when my mother was in that same hospital. I share that with you now:

~~~

At eighty-five years old, my mother is in the hospital for the second time in as many weeks. She is weak and tired and more than a little frightened. At the age of eighty, her kidneys failed. She’s been a dialysis patient for five years now, and while it’s given her new life it has also been hard on her body and spirit. Heart problems, pneumonia and now a GI bleed have required these most recent hospitalizations.

She lies in her hospital bed looking out the small window. The angle of the bed is such that what view there might be is mostly blocked by the outer wall of the building. She stares off into the small slice of sky that remains visible and asks me what I can see from my vantage point in the chair opposite her bed. I tell her it’s not much – the parking lot and some trees in the distance.

She tells me about an old TV program she’s reminded of. In the program, she says, two men share a hospital room. One man’s bed gives him a view out the window and the other’s does not. The man by the window is always telling the other man what he sees: children playing, beautiful trees, a grassy meadow filled with flowers. As the months go by, the man without the view grows extremely jealous and eventually he murders the other man in order to get his bed so he can see the view for himself. Having done so he finds that outside that window there is only a wall. All along, it seems, the other man was imagining all those beautiful things.

She goes on to recall some other hospital stay long ago where she had to do physical therapy on a treadmill and a stationary bike in front of a window that overlooked a field full of cows. She can’t recall when and where that was. How odd, she says, for a hospital to be out in the middle of nowhere like that. I have no idea what she’s talking about. It could be a fantasy, a real memory, or a combination of memories from different times and places combined into one.

My mother remembers such odd things now - things from long, long ago. But she forgets what happened yesterday, or even this morning. She’s forgotten why she’s in the hospital. Last week she told the home care nurse that she moved into the Beatitudes, an assisted living facility, right after she and my dad retired and sold the house. There were at least twenty-five years of experiences between those two events that, for the moment at least, she seems to have forgotten. Time runs in circles and folds over upon itself in the workings of her mind. She doesn’t remember this morning, but she remembers that TV show about the view from the window from decades past.

As she sleeps, I read a book by the psychic, Sylvia Browne. It’s called Life on the Other Side and it outlines what the world beyond death is like, based on Sylvia’s own near-death experience, the departed souls she’s connected with, and the stories of the many, many people she’s regressed to past lives and the lives in between. She describes a fascinating place of beauty and continued learning, a place where we understand everything we’ve experienced in all our lifetimes and where we can choose what lessons and experiences we want to undertake in our next lifetime on Earth. In this place, which she calls “Home,” we can be with everyone we’ve ever loved and every other soul we are connected to. When we are Home, we have an immediate and visceral experience of God’s love for us. There is no fear, doubt or confusion. Reading her words brings me deep peace and reaffirms the conclusions I’ve been coming to since Cameron’s death. Our real selves, our souls, never die. Love never dies. Separation between this world and the next is an illusion.

It strikes me that my mother’s memory of that TV show, apparently triggered by her limited view out the window, may in fact be signaling a deeper longing in her to know not just what’s outside her hospital room window, but what’s on the other side of this life.

We never talk of such things. In my family, the subject of death is taboo. So far, I haven’t been brave enough to be the one to open the conversation. There seems to be an unwritten law that says if you don’t speak of death it won’t happen. And there seems to be a lot of fear around the subject of death. I think this is not just true within my family, but a part of the collective consciousness. Would we fear death and dying so much if we knew, really knew in our hearts, that death is not an ending but simply a transition from one living state to another?

My parents had the idea that once you reach eighty, you start to fall apart. And, like clockwork, that’s what happened. My mother’s kidneys failed a few months after her eightieth birthday. My father is a few years younger. He turned eighty a week after Cameron died and a few months later suffered a series of small strokes that whittled away some part of his previously brilliant mind and left him struggling to find the right words for simple, every day things.

We don’t expect to outlive our children and certainly not our grandchildren. My parents have outlived one of each. My brother, their oldest child, died at the age of fifty in August 2000. A few years later when Cameron died, they lost a grandson. And since we never talk about death or dying, I have no idea how either of those events affected them. As I observe my parents now, I can only guess how much their decline has to do with aging and how much with unexpressed grief and the gnawing fear that death is an enemy to be conquered rather than an adventure to be embraced.

More than my parents’ eventual passing, I fear and resent having to watch their slow collapse. It is too reminiscent of Cameron’s years of self-destruction and seems even less fair since there is no apparent level of choice or will involved. Their deterioration seems to be happening to them through no choice of their own. Once again, I find myself asking God, “Why do you keep giving me stuff that I can’t fix?”

And perhaps the answer is, so I can learn that it is not mine to fix at all. It could be that this is the true challenge of faith: to see things as they are and not judge them as broken, but know them as perfect at the level of Divine Order.

Sylvia Browne speaks of our “chart” – the plan we make before incarnating here. Others, like Carolyne Myss have called it a contract. I can believe in such a thing. I think we do devise a plan that maps out, if not the specific experiences we will have, at least the outline of the lessons we wish to learn or the difference we wish to make while we are here. It can be hard to fathom the purpose of suffering, but perhaps it is an integral part of our journey.

It can be hard to accept that we chose to experience the pain we have in our lives. But it seems to me we may have chosen it so that our hearts can be cracked open, thereby allowing more love to flow through them into this world. We can choose to react to the painful passages in our lives from fear or from love. I’ve learned to ask myself, “What would love do? What is the loving response?” The answer isn’t always clear.

I think that in this case, love would overcome fear and break the unwritten taboo. It would speak of death and dying with gentle and hopeful words. Love would speak with passion and conviction about the children playing, the beautiful trees and the grassy meadow filled with flowers that wait on the other side even though, temporarily, there may be a wall blocking that view. Love would see through that wall to the truth beyond it. Love would tear down whatever walls fear has built and expose dying for what it really is – the soul’s heartfelt and joyful homecoming.

As always, I wish you peace on the journey.

Please visit my website, http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/ for more information on the upcoming release of my book, The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief.

Creating Meaning

I’ve been listening to a set of CDs a friend of mine loaned me. It’s a recording of Bill Harris from Centerpointe Research Institute presenting information at a retreat. Harris is the developer of Holosync® audio meditation technology—a system that promises to have you “meditating like a Zen monk” in no time at all. The technology works by delivering two different sound frequencies, one through each ear, as the listener relaxes while wearing headphones. The “binaural” signal stimulates the brain to create meditational levels of brainwaves—alpha and delta. I haven’t used the Holosync® CDs, so I cannot vouch for their effectiveness, but I am finding that Bill Harris has some very interesting and profound things to say.

While taking my morning walk earlier this week, I was listening to the Harris CDs when I suddenly heard him saying that “nothing that happens in our lives has any inherent meaning.” That really annoyed me, and for a moment I wanted to argue that if nothing has any meaning, then what’s the point? It had been a very crucial part of my healing process after my son Cameron died to search for the meaning in his life and his death and our often troubled relationship. Finding some meaning in all of that seemed to be the only way for me to make peace with my loss. If he just lived and died and there was no meaning in that, then why did he have to suffer so much in his life and why did I have to suffer so much in my relationship with him? For me, the only satisfying answers to those huge WHY questions involve meaning. I have to believe there is meaning.

Just as I was getting mentally worked up about this, in the span of just a second or two, he then said, “and so we get to create the meaning.” I had one of those “Aha!” moments. Through all my ups and downs, through all the journaling and soul searching, through all the amazing experiences I was drawn toward and into and through in the years after Cameron’s death, I had thought I was searching for meaning, but I was really creating meaning. And somehow, that’s even more powerful because there’s so much more freedom in that. If we create the meaning behind and around the things that happen in our lives, then it is our choice what meaning to create.

As I mulled that over I realized that’s exactly what I had done and exactly what my book, The Deep Water Leaf Society, is about. We often have no choice at all about the things that happen in our lives. Shit happens and we have to deal with it. But how we deal with it defines who we become. And there is always a choice in how we deal with it.

I actually think that’s the great gift in traumatic loss: we get to decide what it means; we get to decide who we are in the face of it; we get to choose whether to become a victim to loss or claim our personal power and freedom from it; we get to choose between pain and peace. We get to choose.

As always, I welcome your comments, here on the blog or via email. Please visit my website, www.DeepWaterLeafSociety.com often and watch for news on the release of the book.

Wishing you peace on the journey…

Self-Publishing Blues: The Headache of Lyric Licensing

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. I’ve been out of the country, traveling to South Africa where I saw zebras and giraffes and elephants up close. I even got to bottle feed a 6-week-old baby lion named Shamba, which was amazing!

While in Africa, I was disconnected: no cell phone service, no Internet, no email. It was kind of nice, actually, as I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on the computer lately. Most of my recent computer activity has revolved around the publishing of my book, The Deep Water Leaf Society: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Grief.

I made the decision to self-publish mostly because of my normal state of impatience. When I discovered that the traditional publishing process would mean a minimum of 18 months before my book might be in print, I decided that was far too long to wait. I wanted to get the book out yesterday!

I found a great consultant, Paul McNeese (see http://www.opaauthorservices.com/), who knows all the ins and outs of self-publishing and hired him to help me get my book out. When I hired him in March, I was thrilled with his assurance that we could have the book in print by July. And it was absolutely possible. Except for one thing. . .

While he worked on the technical aspects of layout and formatting, I got to work on a task that I thought would be simple: lyric licensing.

My story, as you may recall, is about my journey through grief after losing my son, Cameron, to substance abuse. Very shortly after his death, I began to get messages from him through music. At first it was the songs I’d played at his funeral service that I would hear playing at odd times and in odd places. Usually the songs came either when I’d been thinking about him or when I’d been doing something that was self-nurturing. After a while, I began to suspect that he was communicating with me and I started to ask him things and listen for the next song on the radio. Often, the song that played would bring a clear answer to my question. This musical conversation became a key connection between me and Cameron and made me feel he was always near me.

So, my book is littered with snippets of song lyrics in the context of my healing journey. As I wrote the book, it never really dawned on me that I would need to obtain permission for each and every lyric I had quoted. When Paul explained that I would need to contact the publishers of each song, I still figured it was a simple formality that would not be difficult.

WRONG.

Out of a dozen requests that I sent out on April 8, I have received one flat no and two easy yeses. The rest are all still in limbo. For one song the artist’s lawyer wanted me to agree that all promotional material for the book would require the artist’s 30-day advance approval. That would be a major bottleneck, so I’ve decided to remove that song’s lyrics from the book. The publisher for another artist, from whom I’d quoted three songs, requested a fee of $150 per song for the first 500 books sold, with a renegotiation required after that. Three requests are just now being reviewed, two months after my request was sent. The final two requests have not yet received a reply of any kind.

I have always been a proponent of protecting intellectual property. I believe in playing by the rules. Whether it is music, movies or software, I am opposed to pirating on principle. However, it seems to me that a simple crediting of the source should suffice when a song lyric is an integral part of a non-fiction story. After all, one can quote a small passage from a book without asking permission as long as the quote is referenced accurately, giving credit to the original author and publisher. But for lyrics, it’s a whole different ballgame.

I tried searching the Internet to find what the industry standard is for lyric fees, to no avail. My experience so far is that there is no standard. I have had everything from no fee to a free copy of the book to $150 quoted for the right to reprint lyrics. And the time it takes to get a response has been, with a few notable exceptions, ridiculously long. So long, in fact, that the publication date for the book has been pushed out to September. I am seriously considering rewriting all the sections of the book that contain lyrics, but the problem is that the lyrics carry the message and without quoting them it would be hard to convey the feeling and meaning as clearly.

When I write my next book, though, you can bet that I won’t quote a single lyric. It’s not worth the headaches and delays. You would think that the artists would appreciate the exposure, however small or large it might be, of being publicly acknowledged in print as having been a great source of healing during a time of deep despair. Maybe someone who had not heard their song before would want to hear it and buy the album. It’s not like I’m trying to pass their words off as my own. I have included them because I want to honor them for the role they played in my healing process.

The problem is, I think, that it’s not up to the artist at all. It’s up to the publishing company and their lawyers. I doubt that the artist ever sees any of the fees collected for reprint licensing. My experience so far is that it is the bigger publishing houses that want the large fees and take the longest to process the request. In the few instances where I was able to deal directly with a representative for the artist, the process was quite simple with few strings attached.

I almost wish I’d just gone ahead without asking permission and then claimed ignorance later, when and if anyone caught me out. But I’m too much of a rule follower for that. My husband tells me I’m being punished for doing the right thing. I’m beginning to think he’s right.

As always, I welcome your comments, here on the blog or via email. Please visit my website, http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/ often and watch for news on the release of the book.

Wishing you peace on the journey…

Four Years Today

Today marks the four year anniversary of my son Cameron’s death. Just a month ago, he would have turned 30. As each of these four anniversaries has passed, I’ve been struck by how different each has been. They’ve been different because I’ve been different.

On that first anniversary, I was still coming to terms with the new state of our relationship. I was still carrying a lot of sadness and guilt around the loss. I felt that I’d been getting messages from him—through music on the radio, through my journaling, and through signs in the natural world—but I wasn’t sure I could believe it was true. On May 3rd that year, I released a white balloon with a message to Cameron that I would try to let go of a little more pain and to reclaim a little more joy. Shortly after that anniversary, a powerful meeting with a psychic medium (jamieclark.net) convinced me that Cameron was, indeed, still around and still talking to me all the time.

By the second anniversary, I’d progressed from an empty longing to a certainty that Cameron and I were still bound by love and that we could still heal whatever needed healing between us. I’d done some powerful regression work in the past year and discovered that everything I saw as “broken” in him was really something that needed healing in me. I looked back on the past two years and saw that I’d come a long, long way.

After three years, I’d incorporated body work into my healing journey and released significant fear and trauma at the cellular level of my being. I’d cleared a lot of karma with Cameron and vowed that, should we be together again, it would be without all the baggage. I’d also made an amazing trip to Egypt during that year and rediscovered the truth of my being. It was an awakening in which I remembered that love is the only power. That experience allowed me to release my attachment to fear and worry.

During this past year, I have become a grandmother for the first time, and I’ve recognized once again the beauty and perfection of the cycles of life. I spent much of the past year writing The Deep Water Leaf Society, a chronicle of my healing journey. The writing of the book clarified for me the tremendous gift that the loss of Cameron carried within it. I know now that without having experienced this loss I would not be who I am today. I would very likely still be mired in drama and dysfunction, constantly worried about what might happen next.

Today, I am in the midst of self-publishing the book. Even though the release date is still a few months out, I feel like it is a kind of anniversary present to Cameron and to myself. So, in honor of Cameron and in honor of this anniversary, I’m releasing a small sneak peek from the preface and first chapter of the book here on the blog.

From the preface…

My purpose in sharing this story is to show you how grief can become the doorway to awakening. The breaking of your heart can, ultimately, lead you to greater wholeness. The Universe is constantly communicating with us and drawing us forward into better and truer expressions of ourselves. Sometimes it takes the shattering of our known way of being to open our eyes and ears to these messages of hope, healing and growth.

Imagine a leaf floating gracefully down to kiss the surface of a deep still pool, creating gentle ripples that radiate outward. The leaf may appear to be small and alone as it drifts along. But, in truth, it is supported by the vast body of water beneath it. Our lives are a little bit like that leaf. We skim the surface and are tossed about by life’s currents. We rarely take the time to look deeper. We begin to imagine the flat plain of that surface existence is all there is, when all the while we are resting upon a deep well of mystery, magic and eternity. As long as we’re living the life of a Surface Leaf, we may never tap into our deeper Truth unless something comes along and shatters the surface, pulling us down into a deeper reality. That is the initiation of the Deep Water Leaf.
~~~

And from the first chapter…

Since childhood, dreams have filled and shaped my life. Sometimes the dreamspace feels more real than waking life and often waking life feels like a dream. Or a nightmare. Where does dreaming leave off and waking begin? What does it mean to wake up, really? How often do we sleepwalk our way through life, missing the extraordinary meaning enfolded in each ordinary moment? It may be that we are more truly awake when we can sense, during our waking hours, the creative magic of the dreamspace all around us.

This is a story about dreaming and about waking up. It is a story about how thin the veil really is between waking and dreaming, between living and dying, between loving and everything else that only masquerades as love. It is a story about letting go and the fullness that comes from doing so.

This is the story of losing my son and finding myself. It begins with a dream. . .

My four-month-old baby has died. I am filled with grief, utterly devastated.
At the funeral, I come to a decision. I will create the “Deep Water Leaf Society” so that others won’t have to go through this same grief. For some reason, that comforts me.
Later, there is something to do with the number seven, and I wake wondering if numbers equal people in my dreams. Seven equals my sister because she was born in July.

At the time, I had little idea what the dream might be telling me. I only knew that it shook me to my core and left me profoundly sad and profoundly hopeful all at once.

The name, Deep Water Leaf Society, was quite clear in the dream. It puzzled me; it was such an odd phrase. What kind of a club would that be? How could creating it help me to feel better? Why had the number seven come up? And why had I assumed that numbers were people?

After recording the dream in my journal, I reread it and noted that if seven represented my sister, maybe the four-month-old baby represented my eldest son, Cameron (no longer a baby, but a young man of 19) since he was born in April. It gave me an uneasy feeling. Was I destined to lose him?

As it would turn out, the number seven was both the clue to the identity of the four-month-old and the timeframe in which the dream story would play out in my waking life.
~~~

As always, I welcome your comments, here on the blog or via email. Please visit my website, http://www.deepwaterleafsociety.com/ often and watch for news on the release of the book.

Wishing you peace on the journey…

What's the point?

Okay, so what’s the point of The Deep Water Leaf Society? Believe me, I wondered that myself nearly the whole time I was writing the book. It is a true story, of course. I had the content for it in my journals. I knew I’d had an incredible awakening in the years since my son’s death by drug overdose in 2004, but I was still fuzzy on what it all meant and how it had all unfolded. As I wrote the book of his life and death and my journey in the aftermath, it became clearer and clearer to me that my journey had been an amazing gift—that my son Cameron’s death had been an amazing gift.

Before writing the book, I felt uncomfortable saying that to people. I can see you right now rolling your eyes and wondering what kind of trip I’m on. Or how selfish and heartless I must be to say such a thing. But I’m not. At least, I hope I’m not. I leave it to you to judge.

The thing is, for Cameron’s whole life I wondered what we were doing here together. There was so much drama. So much pain. We loved each other deeply and completely, but it seemed like all we could do was hurt each other. We lived a battle of wills. The more I tried to control him, the more out of control he became. It was, certainly, a dysfunctional relationship. I’m pretty sure they call it “codependence.” But there was no shortage of love, even if it was poorly expressed.

Through it all, I couldn’t help thinking that we must be working out some major karma. I had a feeling, though, that it was more than just the balancing act of karma. I felt like we must have agreed to something – made a contract with each other to do something together. Okay, by the end of this post you’re going to think I’m a classic psychiatric case, but I was convinced we’d come here together to do something big.

So when he died in a most inglorious manner at the ripe young age of 26, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was we’d come here to do and how badly I’d screwed it up. My editor, after reading and editing my manuscript, asked me if maybe what we came here to do together was write this book. It’s true enough that it couldn’t have been written without everything unfolding just as it has. And I think that if the book helps other people through grief, if it helps other people experience transformation and awakening the way I did, then maybe we did good, despite all appearances to the contrary.

Going back to the opening question, what is the point? I think it boils down to this:

1. Grief is transformational, for better or worse, whether you want it to be or not.
2. You can let it happen TO you, or you can let it work THROUGH you for awakening and personal growth.
3. There is great power in choosing to ENGAGE the process, making choices all along the way for healing and empowerment rather than victimhood.
4. We are WAY BIGGER BEINGS than we think we are and this lifetime is just the tip of the iceberg.
5. LOVE is all that matters, LOVE is all there is, LOVE never dies.

I welcome your response, here at the blog or at my website: www.deepwaterleafsociety.com.

Wishing you peace on the journey. . .