bulimia

49. COMING HOME

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

I did not leave to find myself. Although Steve may say otherwise. The Mary experience was something else. Truly I was in between the worlds. Often he would ask me where I was when we took a walk and I would fall silent. I was in Galilee during those times. He felt me slip, how could he not?

So yes, for the eight months I composed my novel, I was barely here. In body, if not in spirit. I vowed not to do it again like that. Perhaps that’s why book two took so long to write. But I think it’s more likely that I cannot write what I do not know and I am just now coming into realization of my power as a creator of my reality…that there’s nowhere to go to find the truth, but within.

Many women and men leave everything they know to seek enlightenment. It just seems too darn hard to find peace and truth in the midst of the chaos of your life. Yet I did it. Many of us have stayed and found enlightenment right at home, within our communities, serving our neighbors, raising our families, walking the dogs. There’s nowhere to go. Heaven’s right there on earth ☺

March 5, 2003
The One came and it was joyous. Beginning with laughter and ending in laughter. Lightness as a child. I felt free and happy and maintain that joyousness even now. I shared it with another right away so I could say the meditation to ground it into my being. After nearly two hours the most significant piece surfaced back into my memory. God’s strategic plan for life is within the DNA.

I began my meditation with questions of truth and untruth. What are my misconceptions? The One came in a bubble of glee, laughing at my seriousness for it is not my nature. You are the funny one, the one that laughs freely, you are my joy. This meditation is not your way. It is for those serious sages that seek to commune with me. The One was all joy, all bliss.

Do you come to those serious ones who meditate with this same delight? Of course. I come to all who ask, as I am them and they are me.

I come to them in the form they can appreciate, stifling my laughter as not to offend. With you, I can laugh freely for you are lightness and joy. But you came to me when I began this serious meditation? Because I had to laugh at you. I am always with you. You recognize me through the glasses of your choosing. You, my dear, are choosing laughter and delight. Within your delight, your joy, your wonder, I exist. I am the joy, the light, the laughter, the bliss. And I am you.

The One came and I said are you the mother or the brother? It claimed to be all of them and everything and nothing. It is me and the world, the universe. It explained that life is like a spiral of events, all of history spirals upon itself. The One collapses the spiral into the dimension where it chooses to exist and there is no time nor space. All is at once. Life is a spiral of events unfolding existing without time and space. As you awaken into your sovereignty you will see that it is nothing to collapse the spiral and enjoy the view at your leisure.

Why then does all the human frailty come up? Why was I so bulimic just the night before, while editing my website pieces with apparent clarity. You must be more gentle with yourself. It’s silly really and lucky that you have a good sense of humor. All the issues of ego and self-delusion are like scum at the bottom of the pond which get swirled up to the surface of the heart chakra to be blown away by the winds of change. All the birthing anxiety you feel before the process is the human effort to maintain balance in the roiling waters.

I asked about my vision of reflection in the bowl of water that is my heart chakra. Must I be still in order to allow others to see themselves? Yes and no. Won’t the waters become stagnant if not flowing? The waters are living, flowing in and out of the heart chakra. According to the level of awakening of the being is the depth of clarity. What appears to be still is moving and alive, an organic, interactive process.

I asked about sovereignty, the levels of awakening. You are imagining awakening as a hierarchy with steps or levels like a ladder. That is the third dimensional view, part of the old paradigm. The fourth dimensional view is one of deepening. The deeper you become, the closer to the One. The depths exist within the bowl you call the heart chakra. I just wanted to dive in! It was like some of my dolphin dreams when I dive in deeply and can breathe, swimming with absolute freedom.

The grand finale unveiled the truth that I have always known. I was delighted.

Thinking about my corporate advisor’s bugging me about a strategic plan, I asked, “Did You have a strategic plan?”

The One laughed, “Of course, it’s in the DNA. The DNA is the strategic plan for all life.” I guess you have to ground it into reality for it to manifest. Even the One continues to change through the evolutionary process.

Of course it is the DNA. I have always known it. I have expressed it in my countless works, lectures, interactions, dreams. Yet this is much more simple. We all need a strategic plan to base our life upon to refer to in times of trouble, so that the flow is directed, understood. The strategic plan is encoded in our DNA. All creatures have DNA, all are part of life. We have never been abandoned on this earth plane. We were given a perpetual strategic plan for existence, for enlightenment. It has been within all the while.

5. DANCING WITH MY SHADOW

MY LOVEDANCE -EBOOK IS FREE ON AMAZON FROM DECEMBER 8-13, 2016

On my son’s 26th birthday….I released my shadow self. No longer do I feel the obsessive urges, the anxiety that can only be quelled through binging and purging. It’s over. In the past I have been in recovery…during my two pregnancies and until my babies were weaned. Yet I struggled every day, became obsessive over every nutrient I consumed…not really free, only a temporary vacation from bulimia. And again when I wrote LoveDance. For exactly eight months I obsessively wrote—420,000 words—yet as soon as the muse left me, bulimia found me.

At my women’s retreat, I created a mask of my shadow self—Bulimic Deb—then danced with her before casting her into the flames…such a difficult thing to do. I mourned her death for weeks. I felt so profoundly afterwards. Every emotion I had not let myself feel—came in profound waves. Yet I was amazed at the underlying peace. I rode the waves of my emotions with a new found ease. I was at peace for the first time since I was 14. After 35 years on and off the bulimic wagon, I was free.

What does that mean? To be free of bulimia. Well, I no longer obsess about food. I feel hunger and then I eat and for the first time enjoy each bite. . I have my former trigger foods in my pantry. Not because I’m testing myself, but because I could not use all the chocolate chips I bought from Costco for my holiday baking. And I forget about them until the next time I feel like baking and am surprised to find a pound of chocolate chips…silent, no longer tempting me. Just me and chocolate happily co-existing. Not that I don’t crave dark chocolate every moon cycle and I do indulge, gratefully consuming each luscious piece feeling my serotonin raising with each bite.

I’ve always associated eating disorders with addictions. Such a horrible addiction because you cannot abstain from food, like you can from alcohol or drugs. And when I was bulimic, I had to abstain especially from my trigger foods. Over the past few years I desensitized myself by ritualizing my trigger foods. I started with dark chocolate. I ate it ceremoniously on fine china with a glass of red wine on a table set with lace under candle light while watching a feel good movie. All my senses were engaged in pleasure and from then on (that was in 2008) I have been able to consume dark chocolate in moderation without it triggering a binge. Not so milk chocolate…so that’s why forgetting about having chocolate chips in the house amazes me.

I do have one regret. When I cast my mask into the flames (and I was the last to do it…reluctant to let Bulimic Deb go) I felt the smoke was carried elsewhere. So two months later at Thanksgiving, I was not surprised to see one of my nieces bone thin and stuffing her face…the family curse, my sister calls it. An unresolved karmic imprint, I believe.

I do not feel guilt or shame related to food or my body. In fact I love my body. I am so grateful for this beautiful healthy body that has taught me my greatest lessons, protected me from my greatest fears, blessed me by being the most perfect vehicle for my transformation. After seven years in a cocoon of my making, I am emerging as a butterfly.

And I no longer feel like purging my emotions. Now I feel them, really sit within my heart to be with my emotions. And I have found a profound gratitude for my rich passionate emotions. So powerful they seem to control the weather. Or at least the climate of my relationships. And with this awareness, I have learned to ride the wave of my emotions…and let them go into the ocean of feeling that makes me human and connects me to all that is.

 

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Now available on Amazon.

4. SEVEN YEAR CYCLES

MY LOVEDANCE -EBOOK IS FREE ON AMAZON FROM DECEMBER 8-13, 2016

I am multi-sensory. We all are. Yet rarely admit it. Being clairsentient, clairvoyant, clairaudient is our nature, a soulful means of interpreting reality. When I was a little girl, I thought everyone felt the plants, heard the animals, saw the energies hovering over the earth and around people. I thought everyone had lucid dreams, knew the answers on tests, could tell what their parents were feeling in spite of their words. I still think we all have this capability. Yet most of us are taught that the world of the imaginal is just that…imagination. Not real.

I have a curious mind. My left brain is extremely active. I need to organize what I know. Bridge the gap between feeling and logic. I love numbers, math, patterns. There is a flow to life. Six months before my 50th birthday, I consulted with an astrologer who charted my life in 29 year lunar cycles. I was fascinated with the accuracy of interpretation. I was born under a tiny crescent moon on the Spring Equinox of 1961. My life has unfolded beautifully in seven year cycles…and it’s happening again.

In 2003, I birthed my nutraceutical Genesis Gold and my book LoveDance. Both have changed my life dramatically. A week before Genesis Gold was finally bottled my beloved old mare died, then a week after that, the man who helped me get my creation manufactured died. Death has preceded birth every single time…My life has unfolded in seven year cycles…like the phases of the moon…

September 26, 1969. I am eight years old. A great fire is raging in the dry hills behind our neighborhood. I am holding the ladder steady so my mother will not fall as she waters down our roof to prevent our house from catching fire. My sisters are watching television…the debut of The Brady Bunch…I really want to see it. Yet I am separated from the children. I am older than them…not just in age but my soul is older. All our neighbors are packing up their cars. They’re leaving. My mother is very worried. My father is not here. In that moment as my mother’s fear and anger pours down upon me like the smoke pouring down the hillside, I feel the weight of the world. The death of innocence…preceded the year before by the first death in my life. Our Easter bunny was killed by our Samoyed. Life is precious. You have to take care of the ones you love. I have spent the past seven years taking care of my parents and sisters. The next seven years, I learn how to depend solely on me.

Summer of 1975. I am fourteen. Walking with my sisters back to the pool. Poppop just bought us ice cream. Daddy is behind us talking to Pop. He calls up to me, “Debbie, your elbows are showing.” I know exactly what he means. It is our family code for “your bathing suit has crept up your butt”. Deftly I remedy the situation, yet this time I hear in his voice a different tone and I feel strange. Daddy sees me as a young woman. I look around me…three little sisters I am responsible for, a mother who feels diminished, a grandmother here on holiday but not here to support me through this time…she fears the blood as much as Momma, as much as every adult woman I know. I look at the ice cream dripping down my hand. This is the last ice cream I will ever eat. That moment I become anorexic. By the time I start high school, I’m twenty pounds lighter. My periods and breasts are gone. And I experience the second death…I find my mare’s aborted foal and take it to school so my biology teacher can display it in a giant pickle jar. Science intrigues me. For seven years, I devote my energy to being the top in my class…fully cognizant that I am preparing for a career in health care…to legitimize my “knowing”.

December, 1982. I am twenty-one. My beloved grandparents finally come to live in California. As soon as Poppop steps off the plane, I know he’s dying. I cannot save him. Three weeks later we bury him. Only six months before I graduate from UCLA nursing school, I vow to never lose another patient. This begins a long cycle of my savior complex. It is seven years from Poppop’s death before I see him in my dreams. Seven tough years of transition, loss, growth. Graduation, first job as an RN, getting married, moving away from home to begin a new life, birthing my son prematurely, getting my masters degree, birthing my daughter. Lots of birth followed Poppop’s death. The cycle of birth and death well set now. My eating disorder has transformed from anorexia to bulimia. Only purging relieves me of the great pain of never being enough.

Spring of 1990. I am working as a family nurse practitioner at an urgent care. I pick up a chart and start to enter an exam room, but the doctor I’m working with takes the chart and hands me another. An HMO patient she doesn’t want to see. Compensation is poor and her hands are tied within managed care. I don’t want to be party to what I predict will become a managed care fiasco so I get involved with my professional nurse practitioner association and begin courting a private doctor. I spend six years under his employment making great money, increasing my skills and confidence while learning to balance motherhood, partnership, and career. Spiritually…a time of discovery… outside of the dogma I learned in the church. Still bulimia rules my days, sleep walking rules my nights, I can never do enough, be enough…

The death that preceded that birth cycle…our German Shepherd pup died suddenly in the fall of 1989. My husband was so broken hearted…Jarys consoled him on the back patio—put his little arm around his sobbing father’s shoulders—told his father that souls are like rental videos that must be returned to God….that night Poppop comes to me in a dream…the first time since he died.

September 5, 1996. I am trying to resuscitate my daughter’s puppy. Her screams fill my senses. Kyra dreamt its death. I console her with trepidation. My own dreams are so real, I act them out nearly every night. I am a sleepwalker. So thoroughly immersed in the obsessive compulsive nature of bulimia, I cannot do enough to keep from feeling so very deeply. I obsessively exercise as a competitive triathlete. My body fat is so low that I do not have periods. I am ready for change, tired of working as an employee in conventional medicine. So I create change…As a regional representative then state president of the California Coalition of Nurse Practitioners, I lead my colleagues to improve our professional status, like prescribing privileges and malpractice coverage for independent nurse practitioners. And in July of 1997, I birth my own private practice—Full Circle Family Health.

The cocoon for my greatest transformation, within Full Circle Family Health, I learn a great deal about holistic healing, the biochemistry of the neuro-immune-endocrine system, how to integrate alternative therapies with conventional medicine. I develop a holistic model of Intuitive Integrative Medicine, collect loads of empirical data, create a nutritional product—Genesis Gold—that would become the foundation of my healing practice. In fact Genesis Gold would provide my hypothalamus with the necessary nutrients to finally heal my obsessive bulimic state of mind and more so, discover the psycho-spiritual roots of this dis-ease.

July 2002. We move to the house in my dreams…a little yellow house with white shutters…with room for my family, my horses and my practice. Finally I bring Full Circle Family Health home and begin living my most authentic life. Healing energy emanates from every corner of the property. Our animals serve therapeutic roles. Even the herb garden, the fruit trees and the flowers play their part in healing me, my family, my patients and my staff. Finally I am living my dreams.

And oh, yes…since I first consumed the Sacred Seven amino acids…the formula that would become the secret sauce in Genesis Gold… my sleep walking ceased. I slept peacefully through the night, began having regular periods, before starting the menopausal shift 5 years after my younger sisters. My bulimia abated as my obsessive compulsive nature mellowed. More so, my soul growth has been profound…and unlike so many of the spiritual gurus I have treated over the years who suffered physically while seeking enlightenment, I have experienced optimal health physically, emotionally and mentally.

By the Spring Equinox 2011, I had completed seven – seven year cycles. Death filled the year before my 50th birthday—first Steve’s Gran then two days later a beloved patient, and then Hope, our beloved Great Dane died on September 5th—fourteen years after Kyra’s puppy. The last death was Bulimic Deb….

 

Excerpt from My LoveDance 

THE DIVINE DAUGHTER’S BACK!

I envisioned this blog to be one of Remembrance. Remembering the Divine Daughter—Mary Magdalen, the original Divine Daughter and the heroine of my book—LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter—Yet now two years after the last post…I find myself needing to unveil…again… 

LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter helped me heal the Mother Wound…the original separation from the Divine Mother…as my heroine Mary Magdalen awakened to her truth as the Divine Daughter…so did I…and in doing so received the fullness of the Divine Mother. I reconnected to Her…embodied in the Earth…enlivened in the hearts of so many women here in Ojai…mothers and grandmothers who receive me…as if I am the Divine Daughter…and I feel it. I see the Divine Daughter energy in so many others…women young and old and even a few precious men… Time to feel the fullness of our emotions and allow the Divine Daughter to dance us into wholeness. 

Here’s what I wrote in the book, “My understanding of human consciousness is an evolution of the Mother-Father-Son-Daughter aspects of the Divine. Originally, I believe, humans worshipped the earth as the Divine Mother, her body was ours. Then we looked into the cosmos and envisioned the Divine Father as spirit. In the last two millennia, avatars teaching in parables initiated a revolution of the mind, and ever since the Divine Son has been the center of religious worship. Now the time is ripe for the Divine Daughter to manifest in human consciousness. She is emotion weaving the mind, body, and soul into Sacred Unity with All That Is.” 

The Divine Daughter is alive and well…Awakened now through LoveDance. On the Earth at this time—dancing her dance—her dance of love—LoveDance. 

LoveDance became my philosophy of life. I created a whole website around it. LoveDance is my expression of Self. Love is at the center of the triad of Relationships, Soul Purpose, and Health. I include Health because as a Holistic Nurse Practitioner, Health of Body, Mind, and Soul is paramount in the Process of Enlightenment. It is not enough for me to talk…but to walk my talk…or rather…to dance my truth! 

So now in the midst of this summer of profound transformation, nearly three years after LoveDance was launched, I find myself facing another wound…the Father Wound—separation from the Divine Father. Yes, I have begun Book II…LoveDance is a trilogy…and I began the second book shortly after the first was launched…and I got 1/3 through the writing…just as my heroine Mary Magdalen confronts her father wound…I could write no more! 

Why? Because until I face it, live it, breathe it, am I able to write it. What I wrote in book one became manifest for me. I did not realize the depth of the mother wound I embodied, imprinted since prenatal time, brought into this lifetime as deep karmic imprints. I had done a regression on myself many years before. Way before LoveDance…In fact two years before I dreamt I was Mary Magdalen walking down the streets of Nazareth I brought myself back to the womb…Disentangled myself from maternal karmic imprints… from the Red Cord… 

I shared this story with the Grandmothers Council of Ojai on Mother’s Day. I was an hour late for the gathering, having driven back from a mother-daughter-grandmother weekend in San Diego. It was lovely to spend time with my daughter who was born on Mother’s day 22 years ago. My mother enjoyed herself too, but on the way home her issues with her mother surfaced… there was not much to say…so I just listened…and then dropped her off at her house some 70 miles from Ojai and headed home. I needed to be with the grandmothers. But they too were reliving their mother wounds! So I told them this story: 

THE RED CORD

Years ago, before my daughter entered puberty, I vowed to get a hold of my eating disorder. If you are a fan of this blog, you know all about it, if not…here goes… 

I was anorexic before Karen Carpenter died and the psychiatrists had named it. I was hypnotized, medicated, and psychoanalyzed. To no avail. Anorexia transformed into bulimia. Not the typical eating disorder because I did not fit their psycho-patterns. No, I had not been molested, no incest, only a father’s great expectations passed onto me of being perfect. Yes, I was the straight A student…and did great things with my life, but there was more. 

Recently eating disorder research has led from blaming the father to blaming the mother. 

Still, I had an excellent relationship with my mother. Had learned from her mistakes. And felt loved, adored by her and my father. My grandparents too, especially my grandmother. No, it wasn’t a parenting problem rooted in childhood. It was something deeper. 

I had begun research on the hypothalamus which led to my dream of Genesis Gold and had been taking the Sacred Seven amino acids for a year when I felt it was time to get to the root of my problem. 

Bulimia was a coping mechanism for me. And while I could stuff my anxieties down with food then purge them into the toilet and flush them away, many, many times, my fear was not my own. How many times had I felt driven to binge just to purge a fear that was greater than me. So what was this fear, I asked. 

I will tell you…it’s not the father, it is the mother…but it’s not about blame. It’s not what you think. 

In a dream, I regressed myself. 

Into the womb, I went. Looking down between my fetal thighs, I was surprised to see NO penis! No blade! How could I accomplish my mission in this form? I felt a pulsation deep in my belly, putrid fearful, coming not from me, but through the umbilical cord—the Red Cord. 

It was my mother’s fear. I felt her. Her world as she perceived it….the struggle with her parents, her new husband, her fear…her fear of her mother, then… 

I was in my grandmother’s womb feeling her fear through the red cord. And then in her mother’s womb feeling her mother’s fear and her mother’s and back and back in time. Like a video montage, yet I could feel the fear…yellow and acidic as bile….the pain, tears, terror…of losing children, abortions, stillborn babies. Of being raped, used as chattel, traded like beasts. Of husbands, and fathers and lovers beating us, blaming us. Of too many babies, of hunger and pain, of sending our sons off to war and our daughters into the same traps we found ourselves. Of burning at the stake, of drowning, of torture for being our truth. Of giving away our power. 

Through my mother’s womb, through hers, and unto the beginning of time. Back to Eve. All of women’s woes…that was my fear. The fear I had been purging forever. 

Time to release it. I awakened with a clear intention and pure desire to release my mothers’ fear, all of my mothers. 

Synchronistically that day, I had an appointment with an energy healer. She was working with another powerful male healer. He stood at my feet, she at my head. I didn’t tell them of my vision, but lay there fully intending to release. And I did. Like a volcanic eruption of black tar, the energy exploded from my belly into the atmosphere. I felt lighter and freer than ever. I opened my eyes and laughed. I sat up. The two healers were plastered against the walls of the healing room. “What was THAT?” 

“That was fear!”  And it’s not mine! 

Then I headed to the beach, and lay on the sand, my feet in the water, the sun on my naked skin and was held by the Great Mother. My Divine Mother loves me…I am everything she ever desired in a daughter. I no longer need to purge the fear of my sex.

 

So here we are back from the summer of 2001 to now—2010. A summer of great transformation lies before us. Today is truly the first day that it feels like summer here in Ojai. Finally hot…it’s been so mild…perhaps now we can burn the illusion away and unveil the truth. My neck aches from all this typing, but purging on paper (or rather, online) is a sweet means to a sweeter end. Yet my aching neck reminds me that it’s time to heal the Father Wound.

25 Remembering Mary Magdalen: Purging the Fear

May 25th, 2004 Bulimia is back. On the eve of my journey back east to make a connection within the publishing world, I fret, yet even in the midst of my angst, I still am connected, ever more aware of my humanness. My rabbi friend has come in strong at the beginning and now again with words of wisdom. She says there is something magnificent and horrible about being chosen.  Great responsibility/great reward. Great passion/great loss. Only Steve is the steady one—the first knight—dependable, honest, trustworthy, gracious, kind. He points out that my energy is like a magnet to which others flock, asking to be shown the way, but I am not the way. What they perceive as divine in me is their own reflection. 

Composing was regurgitation onto paper, painful but relieving, probably why during the eight moon cycles I wrote, I was not bulimic. It took me a long time to feel comfortable being Mary and then present the raw truth of who I am—the first draft tipping the scales at five pounds—over 1000 pages. Editing was like peeling off my skin with ragged fingernails, then trimming the underlying fat to get to the meat. And sharing the printed pages for feedback unearthed my insecurities. How nervous I was that it wouldn’t be perfect. Although I learned to appreciate whatever critique the universe delivered—the good, the bad and the ugly—bulimic Deb returned to unveil my fears.

12 Remembering Mary Magdalen: Digging up Skeletons

Dec 7th, 2003 Steve is most delightful as I delve into a difficult part—child abuse remembered—not of this life, but so vivid…Thankfully I have family outings like Kyra’s gymnastics meets to punctuate the writing. My sister had her surgery, never taking advantage of a healing, oh well. My visit with her today was yet another layer as she expressed verbatim what I wrote one of the characters said to Mary…and knows nothing of this writing. 

Dec 16th, 2003 Such a long haul, delving into the past. My bulimia up again, although I resisted, it nearly floors me as I am exhausted by processing the energies. It is as if I am healing a universal pain. Who I am as joy has felt distant these past 12 days. Steve has been insightful, offering wisdom. Yeshua teases that he was one of his best students.  

Dec 21st, 2003 My meditation on the solstice revealed an aspect of forgiveness forgotten. I was shown how I need not forgive but give thanks for the roles played by my partners in life. Forgiveness denotes that something was done wrong, when all is as it should be. Gratitude for the divine orchestration is all that is necessary to heal. Yeshua is still with me, but rather than him feeding me insight, it comes through me more clearly now as if my courage has torn the fabric of illusion that I am separated from the divine. In this book so many issues are dealt with—depression, poor self esteem, suffering and sacrifice—all balanced by hope, joy, peace and abundance. These books are the expression of all my work as a healer, a mother, a woman, written to illustrate the concepts presented in our life stories. Alas my patients rarely remember the scientific and philosophical concepts I teach, but they do remember the stories I share.