journal

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 

Remembering the Divine Masculine

One thing I learned in writing LoveDance is that life at least for me is about Joyous Service. My husband and I are both in helping professions—he as a police officer and me as a family nurse practitioner. The stories we share at the dinner table of our respective work day are often quite similar. As a healer, I spend a lot of time educating my patients, counseling them, guiding them with heartfelt advice. As a police officer, Steve protects and serves…truly he is more of a peace officer. There is not enough room in this blog to record all the incidences of him helping others through their issues. 

Last year, we stopped in Santa Barbara for brunch on the way up to our favorite romantic getaway in Cambria. While we were dining, a gentleman greeted Steve with such profound respect and gratitude. I asked about him and Steve said that some 20 years ago, he arrested him. Before the man was imprisoned, Steve advised him to use the experience to help him grow. “And he did!” Steve said proudly, “He paid back society and became a responsible outstanding citizen raising a fine family in our town.”   You see, we both take care of those in need. 

Last evening after an impromptu date—dinner on the pier and a stroll through a summer street fair, I was making Steve’s lunch. My daughter teases that even though she and her brother are gone, I’m still packing lunches. A dear friend of mine just reminded me how I showed her years ago how to cut the kids sandwiches into shapes. I used to put little notes in their lunches—words of encouragement, of love, of hope. 

Well, as I was making Steve’s lunch, I felt my grandmother’s presence. Nana used to do so much for Poppop, most of which he could have done for himself, yet she needed to do it. Serving him fulfilled her. And he was always extremely grateful. My mother served my father in the same fashion…yet something was missing. It was more of an expectation of how wives and husbands act. They divorced after 24 years of marriage. My grandparents were married over 40 years; unfortunately they died young. Poppop was only 62. Nana followed him to the grave twenty months later. She stayed around just long enough to hold her first great-grandchild, my son—Jarys. I have a photo of her cradling him in her arms. She was dying of lung cancer, in a wheelchair with a cannula of oxygen hanging from her nostrils. He’s only three pounds—born ten weeks premature—under the eerie glow of the neonatal intensive care unit, gazing at her intently. She died shortly after that one and only visit. I miss both my Nana and Pop. 

But last night, Nana was with me as I prepared Steve’s lunch. Holding the energy of love as I sliced the left over steak, washed and tore the baby lettuce, arranged the roma tomato. As I made vinaigrette, I felt her guiding me…a pinch of Italian herbs, a little salt, a bit of pepper sprinkled into the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

When I was done, I found Steve doing his back exercises in the bedroom. “Why do we take such care of one another?” I asked. 

“Because we love each other so much.” He smiled and gave me a kiss. 

True, but I think it’s more. You see, he takes care of me so well. He cooks for me…and he’s an amazing chef…he took care of the kids with the finesse of any mother…he spends time with me…and enjoys it! After 27 years of marriage we are still very much in love. We are best friends, each other’s truest confidantes. 

Yet we have lives outside of us….I do my things…I have a circle of dear women I meet with regularly, a very spiritual supportive group. I love horses and can be found riding far and wide on my mare all over Ojai. I meet with my three sisters once or twice a year for a girls’ weekend and regularly spend girls’ time with my daughter. I work with my mother (she’s my office manager) but we “play” well together too. 

And he does his “guy” things. A yearly backpacking trip with old friends. Lunch and golfing with new ones. Biking from Santa Barbara to Ventura with a colleague. Just the men. 

It’s as if we created virtual chamams. In LoveDance, Mary meets with the women during her monthly periods in the baths. A special time just for them, taking care of one another. 

I believe caring for one another out of love not expectation, taking joy in the service of our beloved is key to our long and happy marriage. 

Last summer, I had an amazing dream that reminded me of an aspect of the Divine Masculine that has been forgotten, yet I see it so clearly in my husband. 

The Golden Bear 

In my dream I was entering the Home Depot through the lumber department to get to the garden center. I was going to buy jasmine. The center of the Home Depot was a raised platform and as I ascended the steps to the platform, a great golden bear came through the door. It was huge, larger than life, a golden orange color, translucent, brilliantly colored like a child’s crayon, surreal. I was the only one to see it. It snuffled around the entry and I crouched down on the steps. It snuffled its way over to me. And snuffled my hair, my face, my neck. Then tapped a great claw over my right eye, then over my third eye, again and again. Then it hunkered down over me like a mother bear over a cub. Yet I knew this bear was male. I felt loved and protected like when Steve throws a leg over me, pulls me into his body—trapped by love. Trapped under the bear, I was secure, feeling the soft fur of its belly, the weight of its body, the warmth, the mass…protected in a golden cave of bear energy. Then the bear transformed into a…man. I could feel his naked body, the roughness of his hair, the shift in weight, mass, warmth from bear to man. We stood and faced each other. I was WOMAN and He was MAN…all men, naked, dark skinned and hair like a Mediterranean man. We took each others hands and then he disappeared. A woman friend of mine said… “That is the forgotten aspect of the Divine Masculine.” And I woke up. 

When I lie in Steve’s arms, his leg pressing over mine—the weight, heat and furriness comfortable, secure, I am very grateful to have found my home in his heart. 

I pray the GOLDEN BEAR ENERGY OF THE DIVINE MASCULINE becomes well known by all. 

While I hope my writing is enlightening, in essence this blog is my healing journey. I have kept a journal since my youth. The pages have always welcomed me, comforted me in times of sorrow, and gave me space to place my reflections. In writing, I learn more about me, about my life, about my world. And usually it is what I cared most to record in my precious journal that I use to comfort others. 

A weblog is so different. You lay yourself wide open and quite bare online…yet it is who I am…like the heroine of my book—Mary Magdalen—I unveil my heart and soul easily. I hope my musings serve you, my readers…for I do it in joy. 

Love and Light, 

Deborah