2007 was one of the most incredible years of my life… Buckle up, as I try to cover the timeline, mostly in order, and share the value in all of it.
So, in February that year I began my schooling as a Hypnotherapist, which was scheduled for classes almost every weekend for the rest of the year. I also had my first official adult surgery for a deviated septum, which was a big life changer for my acute sinus infections and gratefully, a fairly minor procedure that took only about a week to recover from. However, the day before that surgery, I was informed that I also needed surgery to reconstruct my left ACL due to a karate training injury a few weeks earlier.
The ACL surgery wasn’t so minor, but the experience was amazing. You see, my hypnotherapy instructor, Zoilita Grant, had offered me the opportunity to be a demonstration client for a surgery preparation session in front of the class two days before the procedure. This entailed a series of “releases” around the many fears relating to the surgery, like pain, swelling, weight gain, money loss, care for my children, etc.… as well as a very powerful mental rehearsal of a positive surgery experience and recovery outcome.
Believe it or not, I walked (not a mile, but a few steps) the exact same day as my surgery and had very little swelling or bruising. I made a recovery to living my very full life of working multiple jobs, 24/7 single parent-dome, and preparing for a career transition with my weekend classes, all within a very short time, and all while rarely wearing the brace. I fully believe this was due to the hypnotherapy.
(Stay tuned, because later in this blog, I share about a much more minor procedure (yes, a third surgery in the same year!) that didn’t go nearly as well…)
Now, if this isn’t enough to start this very full year, I must share about my first hypnotherapy class and what Zoilita warned us about as students of this amazing work…
As we all sat in a circle, ever inquisitive and fascinated about the journey we’d come upon, she shared that she’d taught hundreds of students in this field and knew that each of us was in this training because we struggled with the healing of many of our own difficulties and wanted to help others. The warning came when she shared that while she also knew that many of us had done many forms of healing work, that if we hadn’t done work at the subconscious level, that some things may surface that we thought may have been resolved.
I remember this moment well, as I sat there with a very cocky and arrogant thought of “whatever, I’ve done some weeerrrk!”, feeling as though I was exempt from this warning. My thoughts came from over 20 years of seeing many types of therapists, working with Shaman, energy healers, working many rounds of the 12 steps and just a certainty that I was going to be fine…
It wasn’t two weeks into the training as we were beginning to learn the various protocols and practicing with one another, student to student, that the nightmares and severe anxiety I’d experienced for all my childhood and much of my early adult years, returned. The anxiety and nightmares were based on many traumatic events from my early childhood, but one in particular, that I kept reliving. Difficulties, I had honestly believed were gone for good based on so many other efforts to heal over the last many years of being so willing to face my wounds.
So, as I’m going about my very busy days, weekends with work, hypnotherapy volunteers (which was a deeply enjoyable part of the training), studying, raising my beautiful daughters, and losing sleep, in September I stepped off a curb and fall to the ground in severe knee pain in the RIGHT knee… I had now torn my meniscus due to favoring my right leg during my injury and recovery from the left knee…
This surgery was immediate and there was no hypnotherapy preparation for this one. I knew that this was a minor procedure, to simply remove the minor torn tissue in the meniscus, but I have to say how stunned I was at the severity of the pain, swelling and bruising. It was a stark difference from the more major procedure and just a deeper awareness as to the power of the mind in comparison to the first knee surgery just six months prior. A major surgery with subconscious preparation bordered on miraculous and this minor surgery without any mental preparation was just tough!
Now, emotionally, here’s where it was all so very worth it…
In October, maybe November, the months are a bit blurry in reflection, I began my advanced training in a hypnotherapy modality called Cellular Release Therapyä. This is a body of work that is specific for releasing trauma (and many other difficulties we hold).
I was in class on a Friday and the instructor asked for a demonstration client for the following day. Many of us volunteered as demonstration clients during our training as this was not only beneficial to us personally, but to the class, to really see how the different techniques worked.
This particular demo was to address a specific traumatic event, and this was my greatest struggle for the majority of this year, an event that took place when I was a small child that was haunting my dreams and causing me a tremendous amount of anxiety in my waking hours. An event that I’d worked on and worked on for years. Needless, to say, I raised my hand…
As I went home that evening and could not sleep at all, I thought about the following day and the possibility of actually healing from this event. To be honest, I didn’t think it possible based on the degree of struggle I’d had with it after such a cocky belief that I’d addressed it before I started this year, this training, and the deeper look into my own psyche. I felt a sense of doom and just fear that I’d never be over this and that I’d have to learn how to live with it, no matter my training, my other healing efforts, and my merely faint hope that perhaps just maybe, something may help.
Regardless of my fears and discouraged state, Saturday’s demonstration began. I sat in the front of our circle of students with the woman that created this amazing modality, Anne DeChenne Drucker, and I shared my story, blow by blow, of that day when I was four years old and my stepfather was very methodically planning my punishment for some bad behavior earlier that day.
I shared the entire story in the class and based on the reaction of the other students, as well as my many years of PTSD, I will refrain from sharing the story in its entirety here, with the exception of sharing that I am grateful that my step father’s much larger cousin was there to literally save my life.
And as we conducted the demonstration session to release the events of that horrific evening all those years ago, I felt a release unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I began to breath better, or even began to breath…again… And at the end of the demonstration, it was lunch time. We all did some hugging, planned to review it after lunch, and off to our break we went.
At lunch, I specifically focused on the events we’d just cleared. I attempted over and over to find the “trigger” that was so readily available for most of my life. Yet, it was gone. I could not engage the fear, the anxiety, the pure hatred, and injustice of it any longer. I smiled; I had a new kind of stunned I’d never experienced…relief. True and deep relief. And that was 14 years ago… It still has not returned, and the word grateful will never suffice.
The word that does suffice is honor.
The statement that Zoilita made in the beginning of this incredible year when she told us that we had all stepped onto this path to help others as we had been helped, was and is very profound.
I have spent the last 33 years of my life doing healing work and volunteering to help others do the same in the field of recovery. I’ve spent the last 14 years of my life doing so with professional skills and practices that have been life changing. I’ve had the honor of working with hundreds of people in over 40 countries around the globe. Many have had tremendous healing shifts, and many have returned as life has cycled and they wished for further healing. I have worked with some of the most amazing healers that I’ve ever known that are a part of my circle and we have been working together as a global network since 2012.
The title of this blog, covers it all… 2007 was incredible… It was a year that challenged me, that changed me, and most of all that set the trajectory of my life on track to live a life of purpose that has been deeply honoring and fulfilling, merely just by knowing that I’ve found my path and that I am gifted to walk it.
The deepest value that I hope you take from my sharing all of this is that some of our toughest times, days, months, years, or experiences, will offer some of our greatest glory. It was a tough time, but one of many of the incredible turning points for the better In my life.
In my next blog, I’ll share more in detail about the synchronicities that accompanied this big transition year and many other memories that writing this has conjured.
