a voice from beyond

While clearing a stack of old mail off of my dining table this morning, in preparation for the arrival of my first “test subject” in my current healing research project, I came across a letter from my aunt. Anne, whose memorial service I just attended two days ago, had sent this to me in May, and her letter had somehow found its way, unopened, into the middle of a pile of old magazines and catalogs.

The timing of this “message from beyond the grave” was not lost on me. Today is Halloween, the day when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its thinnest, the day for honoring and petitioning our ancestors and those others who have transitioned out of this life and into the next.

Her message similarly could not have been more appropriate. She had written this letter to me several hours after a visit to her?along with my mother and sister?on Mother’s Day weekend. The four of us had spent that morning around the breakfast table, excavating and healing old rifts that had existed between us, some that had remained unresolved for years. It was a very emotional, but very necessary, couple of hours, and it left all of us feeling vulnerable, exhausted, and relieved.

In previous blog entries, I mentioned that Anne spent the remaining months of her life using her time, and her process of dying, to help others release the pain and blocks that we so frequently carry around for decades?often more out of habit and stubbornness than anything else. Even healers?especially healers?need to heal, and neither I nor my aunt is any exception. In addition to mediating our release, she opened herself to share her own process of coming to terms with the disappointments and pain in her life.

She had written to me in caring support of my own path, thanking me for having brought myself so openly to the table that morning. Anne also wrote to remind me that healing is a process, with no magic bullets, and that some days will always be better than others as we take two steps forward for the occasional one step backward. Even though my path is very different from hers, her words showed me that she had a better understanding of my work than I had realized.

This wisdom was not so much revelatory?even coming from such a master as Anne?as it was incredibly reassuring, which was the purpose of her missive. And it reached me, finally, just an hour before my first client of the day was set to arrive, as I embark upon this new phase of my own work as a healer. Anne has left an incredible legacy for the therapists and healers who follow her, and this simple note of hers?aunt to niece, healer to healer, one human being to another?let me know in a very powerful way that I am in no way alone in serving as such a catalyst, and reminded me what an honor it is to witness and be present for those who are transforming their lives through release, healing, and integration.