Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I did this same exercise while writing my first book, LoveDance®. I wrote from the perspective of the heroine and like most novelists I used those in my life to base my characters. Envisioning how “Mary” would disentangle her cords of attachment to “Teoma”, I realized I must disentangle from my husband. For three days, he refused to go to work, sick to his stomach. I didn’t have a chance, while nursing him, to do the meditation let alone write it. Finally, he returned to work and I opened myself to receive the gift of the encounter with my laptop. While writing Mary’s disentanglement from Teoma, I disentangled my violet life cord from my husband’s vibrant green. The knots of our most recent struggles all the way back to those formed when our first child was born prematurely. The older knots were so well fermented I could sip the sweet wine of their gifts easily. The more recent knots—like our struggle with our changing roles as parents and the interference writing a book brought to our daily life—were more acrid in their newness, but I took the bitter cup and using the lubrication of love, found the gifts.

Mary and I floated free, breathing easily in the river of consciousness, while Teoma struggled to cling to the bank feeling very much abandoned. The moment I pushed “save”, my husband called. He was having a horrible day and “felt abandoned.” In spite of my reassurance, it took three weeks of repetitive visualizations before he relaxed and I no longer felt the painful ache of his sense of abandonment mirrored in my heart.

Now I did this same visualization with my firstborn, disentangling my violet from their indigo. My knots of expectation in their success in school were more difficult to unravel than the original knot between us representing their difficult birth. All the challenges of their prematurity and their numerous endocrine problems became one of my most profound gifts. My first child is why I do what I do, why I became an expert in clinical neuro-immune-endocrinology. The more recent knot representing my struggle with allowing them to be on their own, trusting that they would be safe and happy in a world without my constant maternal influence was a bit more difficult. The well-hidden gift turned out to be…accepting my transformation as a mother from nurturer-protector to confidante-advisor. In accepting them, I accepted myself. Twenty-four hours after I loosened the last knot between us, my wise child called me from college in San Francisco. “What are you doing down there, Mom? I feel lighter than ever!” I explained the disentanglement and they encouraged me to continue and “let go of us all, even yourself, and see, how enlightened you can be.”

So I did. Each and every significant person in my life, I disentangled from, I felt more and more free and my relationships with each person changed, transformed by love into something finer. I even disentangled from all I believed myself to be—a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a healer, a woman, even from Deborah—and discovered my truth, which is joy.

Since disentangling from our daughter while she was a sophomore in high school, now that the time had come to let her grow up and go away to college, I am handling it better than I did with my first. With them, my body reminded me of the pain of birthing…I suffered from a sciatic condition (just like when I gave birth) that lasted from the moment I helped them fill out their college applications to the day I drove them up to the University of San Francisco. Now with my daughter, the pain is a bittersweet heartache, not physically manifested. The kind of ache that actually feels good, like watching a sad movie and crying your heart out and knowing the joy of being human is to feel passionately.

In fact, my ethereal connection with my children has been so acutely enhanced since disentangling from them, that I realize the knots of my entanglements interfered with the clarity of my perceptions. Since letting my daughter grow up, I sleep soundly, only twice bolting out of bed, feeling her panic and calmly contacting her (via the telephone, since telepathy is difficult through the veil of fear) and all was well. I’ve taught her to trust the inner knowing and realize that through trial and error she will learn to ride the wave of our ethereal connection.

Actually, when it came time to escort our daughter to college, my husband did pretty well. He cried of course, and while at first resisting disentanglement, he admitted to having worked on it and yes, he felt lighter, less fearful, more willing to let her go and trust she will be well. And we both began to receive the gift of her leaving, becoming closer than ever, falling in love all over again—just the two of us.

So how might you release the illusion of your entanglements? Envision your life color, whatever comes to you is fine, then envision the color of the other person. Your red cord and her blue cord are braided nicely for the most part, but knotted in places. Like a precious necklace entangled into the thread of a silk sweater you do not want to break either, but carefully loosen the knots using the lubrication of love.

I live near the beach and off the coast, derricks pump oil from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Often I come home with tar stuck to the soles of my feet. Only oil gets it off—like dissolving like. These knots in your cords of attachment seem like tar, but they are gifts of love and only the lubrication of love can dissolve the knots. If you look with eyes of love you can find the gift in each knot. It’s not easy, but after two or three knots, the entangled cords start unraveling, setting you free to float in the river of consciousness. You do not need to share with the person you are releasing what you have done, but your relationship WILL change.

No matter how ugly the wrapping, there is always a gift of love waiting to be discovered. So just let go. Disentangling your cords of attachment will free you to be your truth—the most precious gift of all.