sacred feminine

62. BECOMING THE MATRIARCH

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

In January, I realized Mom was dying.

In July, she died in my arms.

The first half of 2015 forged my soul in the most transformative fire.

The second half tested my spiritual steel through the flames of change.

Karmic hell broke loose when Mom passed through the veils of heaven.

All of our husbands immediately faced a major health hurdle.

One is still fighting for his life.

Our father had emergency brain surgery.

All nine grandchildren had to grow up fast.

For the first time my sisters and I turned to each other for spiritual support.

There was no one else who truly understood our pain.

The moment Mom took her last breath, I became the matriarch of the family.

I should have known this was coming. I was warned just two months before.

On the Big Island of Hawaii on the Day of the Dead 2014, I dreamt of Nana.

A lava petroglyph wall towers before me. I float up the wall and go through it into a doorway which leads to a light room – the kitchen from my infancy.

My deceased aunt greets me fussing around a pink Formica table where Nana sits. Nana is the queen bee. My aunt says they cannot make much here. I tell them not to worry, I will get them whatever they need and they can make whatever they want.

Nana shows me that they are limited in their heavenly experience to what they chose to experience in life on earth. She is surprised I am there, yet also expected me. I hug her and she feels so real. I wonder why she appears as I remember her in her fifties and not as a young woman. She shows me that her afterlife appearance is that of her at the prime of her power in the life I knew her.

Nana places a shawl over my shoulders. It’s the matriarchal mantle. I wonder how with Mom still here.

Nana kisses my forehead and whispers “It’s your turn to lead”…

Hawaii, 2014

Every November I set my intentions for the next business year. I would gather all the numbers from Mom who ran all three of my corporations – Full Circle Family Health, Genesis Health Products, and my charity Divine Daughters Unite. She would remind me that the holidays were traditionally slow. But after returning from Hawaii, I took the bull by the horns and tried to figure out why I wasn’t more successful.

Granted I had a successful marriage, beautiful healthy children, great relationships with my parents, my siblings, my friends and there was always just enough to meet our needs, yet…I had planned to be able to retire with my husband. And there was never enough to save for that future.

I meditated on why money did not flow with ease… And I heard loud and clear.

“It’s me. I’m blocking the flow!”

I fell asleep that night asking to be shown how to get out of my own way.

The next morning three emails landed in my inbox.

The first was a digital course on how to use YouTube to increase your business.

The second was an invitation to join a mastermind for integrative health practitioners who wanted to increase their cash flow.

These third was a webinar on how to release blockages regarding wealth, health, and relationships.
I signed up for all three.

I got my one and only video up and optimized on YouTube and forgot about it.

The mastermind for integrative health practitioners started in January. Once Mom got sick, I realized wouldn’t be able to implement what I was learning. Trying to get vital financial information from my high, hypoxic mother was difficult. Thank goodness, Steve was retired. He helped me take care of Mom while I tried desperately to save my businesses.

The leader of the mastermind took pity on me and offered to help me figure out my business finances. Thank goodness!

But it was releasing the money block that allowed me to thrive during this crisis.

I was reminded during that webinar about the crucial brain wave states of childhood. From two to six years old we are in a theta brain wave state. The same brain waves as meditation and hypnosis. Highly suggestible. We are imprinted at a very young age and function from these limiting subconscious beliefs.

So I did a regression on myself. I got into a theta wave state by meditating with the intention to “see” myself at the age of two. And I was transported to the backseat of a 1958 sedan, sitting between my godmother and my twin baby sisters’ car bed. Mommy and Daddy were in the front seat. We were driving to California and in the pit of my tummy, I could feel a pulling sensation as if I was being torn away from my Nana back in Philadelphia.

The next scene, I’m in a toddler bed in the hallway of our new apartment in Burbank, sucking my thumb. I feel all alone and scared that there is no Nana here. And realize that I have to be the Nana now.

Disturbed by the emotion of this regression, I bring myself back. What did that have to do with my money block? I shared my vision with Mom and she confirmed it all, down to my bed in the hall since there was no room for me in the one bedroom with their double bed and the two cribs.

Before going to sleep that night, I wrote on a slip of paper: Show me what my regression had to do with money.

And I have a dream.

I’m back in the backseat of the old sedan. This time I’m an adult holding my two-year-old niece in my lap. Her mother hands her a churro. Before the baby starts to put the sticky treat in her mouth, I peel back the paper…it’s wrapped in dollar bills!

“No, baby, money’s dirty!”

And I wake up shaking from head to toe. I told Mom the dream and she said “Oh, no, money’s dirty, Nana said that to you all the time!”

That was my subconscious limiting belief!

No wonder I had trouble handling money, never kept cash on me, let Steve handle the household bills, and Mom handle the business finances. Money’s dirty!

Plus in my mother’s family, money really was dirty. Poppop was a bookie for the mafia. So much energy of dirty money.

So just before the holidays, I spent time reprogramming myself. I would get into a theta brain wave meditating with theta music. Then I would repeat this mantra over and over:

“Money’s good. Money is power. Power is good.”

Why power?

Because I truly believe that what we’re really afraid of is our power, so we either misuse it or deny it.

Time to heal my money/power wound.

Thank goodness! For just a few short weeks later, I had to face my biggest fear. Handling all the money by myself. And I did it.

In fact, in spite of taking so much time off to take care of Mom, doing virtually no online marketing, having to hire new staff, new accountants, new bookkeepers, investing in new software to become more automated, in spite of all my fears, my businesses did better in 2015 than any other year previously.
The financial advice helped me take the reins of my business.

My video on YouTube did the advertising for me.

Yet it was the release of my subconscious limiting belief about money that opened me up to receive abundance.

What are subconscious limiting beliefs are keeping you from being your best self?

55. DISENTANGLE YOUR CORDS OF ATTACHMENT – Part Two

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.

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.

48. ASCENSION

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

During a guided meditation in my women’s circle, I saw an image of my Higher Self. Emerging from the heart of the earth, I sat astride a powerful horse, my golden body in sweet repose, a heavy dampness on my back…furled wings! Feeling compelled to create Her into form, I took my joy to my Q&A journal where I converse with my Higher Self. I’m the Q, she’s the A…

Q. Your form amazed me!
A. I am your Higher Self. Well connected to the Mother with the ability to fly through the dimensions.

Q. I would love to paint you, but I have not the skill
A. Ahh. You will see that your ability to manifest is not limited to what you know but all you “remember’. Time is a spiral. There is an artist in you.

I prefer to work with my hands so I thought “maybe a sculpture”. So I called Grandmother Kathy. She’s a retired art teacher. I asked if she had clay I could come and play with. “Of course!” she said and every Monday morning for 13 weeks I went to her house.

Grandmother Kathy midwifed me as I birthed my vision. The process was amazing. I never before created anything with such ease. I would work a little and then just put it aside. Patience was also birthed from my play with clay.

My Higher-Self assured me that my hands would “remember” how to form clay. And they did…

This sculpture that I created, I call Her Ascension, is my Higher Self formed from clay. Not only feminine, but in sacred union with the masculine. That is who I am now. She is who I’ve become in my 50 years on earth. Finally balanced.

When She was ready to be taken out of the kiln I drove to Kathy’s house filled with trepidation…and remembered for the first time…the feeling of driving to UCLA to pick up Jarys from the NICU. My whole life was going to change when I brought HER home, just like it did when I brought Jarys home. Not that I hadn’t transitioned in the time it took to create HER or the time it took to gestate, birth and wait for my premature baby to be strong enough to come home. Then I was cast back to 1984… my life forever changed by Jarys’ birth…

I nearly died giving birth. I had a rare form of toxemia called HEELP syndrome in which my sky rocketing blood pressure caused seizures while my liver and kidneys started to fail. And our premature 2 ½ pound baby was born intersex. While pregnant, I dreamt of a blond baby boy, so it was no surprise when our baby’s chromosome test revealed the male XY pattern. Yet the pediatric endocrinologist advised we raise our child as a girl. Neither of our mothers understood. The doctor explained that our child would not have secondary sex characteristics. “What’s that?” Our mothers asked. So I explained. “Body and facial hair.”

They laughed. “We’re Greek and Italian. The women in our family have to shave! That’s no reason to castrate the baby!” The endocrinologist had no experience with families who did not follow her medical advice. We were told, “It’s easier to make a hole than a pole.” I was shocked, not by the bluntness, but by the total lack of consideration for the effect of “his” hormones on the developing brain. If we raised “him” as a girl what psychological trauma would “she” undergo at puberty or later in young adulthood. The experts didn’t know. So at 22 and 23 years old, Steve and I had to make a very difficult choice. We decided to follow my intuition, go against medical advice, and raise our baby as a boy.

Jarys became my impetus to learn everything about hormones. I felt intuitively that his DNA was not set in stone but could change. He could make cell receptors for male hormone. He could be anything he wanted to be. So I became a hormone expert which led to developing an Intuitive Integrative Medical model, which led to researching the hypothalamus and genetic upregulation, which led to the dreams of a formula to optimize genetic potential, which led to the manufacture of Genesis Gold® – which has changed my life.

Since bringing Ascension home, my life has changed again. My relationship has deepened even more with my beloved husband. My relationship with my mother became more refined. I have truly released my firstborn and they are blossoming. My daughter grows in leaps and bounds and no longer am I entangled with her. My relationship with my sisters is blooming – no drama at the last family gathering. And being with my father was joyous – Thank God! I am in deep gratitude to my Higher Self for helping me birth my truth.

47. MY ALTAR, MYSELF

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

Directly across from the door to our home is my altar. A lavender macramé cloth covers the small winged table. Objects sacred to me adorn the four corners with candles in the cardinal directions.

The altar changes from time to time according to my needs. Often my children ask to be put on the altar. And I make elaborate altars for them, holding the energy as they face challenges like when my eldest interviewed for their first real teaching job (and thankfully got it!), and my daughter tested for nursing school (and she got in too!) When Steve’s Gran first fell ill, he asked me to dedicate an altar for her. And after she passed, the altar reflected our love and devotion to her.

Today, items sacred to our upcoming retreat lie on the altar…The red cord I made to help us connect to our ancestors and each other. The crow’s feather bound in triple goddess colors that helped us choose the theme of our retreat. A golden frame filled with photos of men I treasure — my husband, my father, my grandfather — my beloved divine masculine.

And in the front — my Box of Me.

I made this one up… but what healing has come from creating a Box of Me. It started just after my father’s surgery, my sisters had moved him into a senior apartment complex and found a box of old photos. In it was a photo I do not recall, but looking at the black and white image of me at thirteen months old dressed in an Easter dress holding a little purse and gazing out with old soul eyes, I remembered. Showing my parents how to parent me and feeling their emotions. I took that photo and pasted it on the Box of Me. Somehow I would heal the child within. And through the Box of Me, placing me on my altar.

Inside the Box of Me, the mementos change yet each represents my dreams, my hopes, my intentions. I’ve guided many patients and some women friends in the creation of a Box of Me. How therapeutic it has been to honor ourselves, to put into this special box all that we hope for and say to the universe YES! Yes, I am. And more so to fall in love with ourselves. Because that’s where love starts. If we don’t love and honor and cherish ourselves, how can we love and honor and cherish each other?

It’s hard for most women to make a Box of Me…harder yet to place anything sacred within their Box of Me. It is start, a fresh start to healing the child within. I ask them to choose a photo of themselves that is before the time they remember the trauma of childhood. The innocent time before becoming domesticated into humanity. A time when they remember being happy. Few go back to adolescence, most go back early childhood, some all the way back to infancy.

In the center lies the golden runner embroidered by Steve’s Yia Yia…a wedding gift given to me by his father who came from Greece to witness our union 28 years ago. Upon the runner sits Ascension.

34. FEAR TRANSFORMED INTO JOY

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

So now fresh from my reconnection with my higher self, I set my intentions to see the face of my fears. The time was ripe. And the universe presented the fruits of my labors.

In late August 2008, I got an urgent call. My mother-in-law was being taken by ambulance from Santa Maria to Santa Barbara. And she wanted me. Before she allowed the doctors to do anything, she wanted me there. I am her medical agent, the one responsible for following her end of life wishes, yet she was fully cognizant, just scared.

So I drove the 45 miles to the hospital knowing this was it. I would be facing one of my fears. As a nurse practitioner, I had been called upon by the family many times over the years for medical advice. It was assumed by my elders that I would be the one to take care of them. And frankly, after decades of providing care for others I did not want to end my life as a caretaker. Plus being a caretaker is hard physically, mentally and emotionally. I have counseled many suffering from depression, insomnia, anxiety, and utter exhaustion from long spans of care-taking.

I knew that it was time to take in Steve’s grandmother while his mother recuperated. And then we would take her. And I knew my husband would agree to whatever I decided and would do everything he could to help. And I also knew it would be me doing all the work.

So I stepped into the ER and stepped into my fear. The family gratefully released all to me. My mother-in-law only signed the emergency surgery release after I counseled with her. It was clear that Steve’s grandmother was not happy being handed over to his aunt and uncle. So once his mother was taken to the operating room, we offered to take Gran. There was little resistance.

Gran came home with us. She was delight, but not safe with her rickety cane on our hard wood floors. So we got her a four wheel drive walker and at 89 years old Gran became mobile again. My mother-in-law had been living with her for the past six years and slowly Gran lost her ability to be productive…or so we thought. To me she was more than willing, so I put her to work. Gran was delighted to help and we found her much more capable than her daughters had reported.

She helped fold clothes while watching Ellen every afternoon and in the evening helped me with dinner. When Steve finally brought his mother home from the hospital, she was surprised to see Gran cutting veggies. “She can’t use a knife! She’s on Coumadin!”

I smiled. “She’s been very careful and if she cuts herself, luckily I can stitch her up.”

Shortly after she arrived, Gran said, “Since my stroke, I can’t smell very well. So you’ll have to tell me if I need a bath.” A day or two later, I sniffed her and announced it was time. She balked a bit nervous to have me help her in and out of the bath. But I had the perfect set up. Our guest bath had a tiny soaking tub with a seat inside an enclosed shower. So I warmed up the bath, and helped her in. Then she sat down, “Uh, oh!”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to be able to get me up.” The seat was too low and her arthritic knees were higher than her hips.

“It’s ok, Gran. I’m a nurse. I know how to lift you.”

She shook her head, “You’re too little.”

“I’m strong, Gran, and Steve’s here if we need help…”

“Oh, no. I don’t want Stevie to help.” Great!

Ten minutes later, all parts of Gran were sparkling clean and I was soaked. After a failed attempt to lift her from the edge of the tub. I stripped off my sodden nightgown and climbed in with her. She laughed telling me that’s how her other daughter did it. I placed one knee between hers, squatted down, “one, two, three” and lifted Gran to her feet. She held me tight as I helped her over the edge of the tub and she didn’t let me go.

“It’s so nice to hold you like this,” she whispered. It was nice. “But there’s only three breasts between us!” She had had a mastectomy thirteen years before. I almost dropped her laughing!

That was Gran always finding delight in everything. I know it’s not easy accepting help especially if your role in life is to be of service. I hope I am a gracious patient and not a burden on my loved ones. But the stress of illness and the demeaning role of incapacitation can make the best of us turn sour. Yet Gran was a delight.

My mother-in-law was another story. I have yet to meet a medical professional who is a good let alone gracious patient and my mother-in-law is a retired nurse. She also had become one of those resentful caretakers that I didn’t want to emulate. So although my care-taking load more than doubled when Steve brought her home from the hospital, I was determined not to lose myself and took time every day for me.

Shortly after they arrived I got a call from Steve’s cousin. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. When it rains it does pour. So I spent time counseling her, helping her to see the spiritual message of the dis-ease. I find that breast cancer patients are very good at taking care of others, but quite poor at self-care. Their body speaks to them through the dis-ease. “Time to nurse me please.” I think she got it. And so did I.

I was so busy during this time, that I did not record it. There is nearly a month missing in my journals yet it is burnt into my memory. And it happened again the very next year. And the second time, I took care of them both for months instead of weeks. Yet in spite of the incredible stress, I am left with such pleasant memories.

Every afternoon, after Ellen, Gran asked if I was free to have coffee with her. I was still seeing patients three days a week in my office which is on our property. My mother ran my practice and was in charge of keeping an eye on Gran while I was in with a patient. Gran would push her walker out onto the patio overlooking the herb garden and chat with the patients as they admired the flowers. And when the last one left, I would sit and have a cup of coffee with her.

And I learned how to sit and enjoy being. Gran loved the garden, the flowers, the hummingbirds that would visit us, the butterflies, even the jays that shooed the songbirds from the feeders and especially the antics of the squirrels as they scolded the cat and the crows. Gran took delight in being alive. And I took delight in being with her.

My fear of care-taking transformed into joyous service. I had written about joyous service in LoveDance® but for the first time, I got to experience it. The family thought I was a saint. My husband cannot thank me enough. Yet it was I who am ever grateful for the opportunity to serve in love and joy.

30. THE GRANDMOTHERS COUNCIL

Excerpt from “My Lovedance”

After Divine Mother was healed, Divine Daughter was Unveiled through the writing of LoveDance®. I made peace with the Divine Mother energies, received the Divine Mother within myself, learned to mother me and birthed myself as the Divine Daughter. I then published my first book in November 2007 and began 2008 ready to begin book two of the LoveDance® trilogy and was stymied…

It began with the Grandmother’s Council. Just after LoveDance® was released, a jolly lady showed up in my office wanting to buy a book. Delighted I signed it for her. She gazed at the cover and said, “The grandmothers would love to know more about the divine daughter energy.”

“The grandmothers?”

“Yes, the Grandmother’s Council of Ojai. Would you come and speak to our group?”

Of course! They met the second Sunday of every month so when my schedule freed up from marketing my book, I went to the Grandmothers Council to share the Divine Daughter with them. They received me joyously and then preceded to offer empowerments. I watched and was transported back to Mary’s time once again. These gracious older women surrounded those who came to them in a veil of love, placed healing hands upon them and blessed them. Tears poured from my eyes as I watched the ancient rites delivered with such love
in these modern times.

Then the head grandmother turned to me and asked, “Don’t you want an empowerment?”

I thought I was there to present…not to receive…yet…I nodded, “Yes, please.” And stood within their loving embrace as the grandmothers veiled me so I might just receive, placed tender hands upon me and began to sing.

“Oh, how we love you. Oh, how we love you…”

And the ancestors came in…all the matriarchal lineage in a beam of light. The spirits guided me through the great grandmother saying they are very proud of me and the work I am doing, that they are always here for me, pushing, nudging whispering encouragement. Now is not the time to stand still. Now is the time to be in the world.
It was profound. And the grandmothers have been with me in spirit and in body ever since.

What is LoveDance?

Most of you know me as an intuitive healer, a hormone expert…and that I teach through story.
Well, LoveDance is the story of a young woman coming into her Sacred Feminine power through intimate relationships. It’s the story of awakening to the truth of our being…as told by its heroine—Mary Magdalen.

“After hearing about LoveDance, I ordered it immediately and could hardly put it down while reading. It has been a wonderful journey. All my life have I felt a big connection to Maria Magdalena and this connection has been enhanced with this book. I find in myself many of the qualities of the Divine Daughter: dance, sexuality, seduction, innocence, strong connection within, inner wisdom and power and ability to see the best in people (I could go on). It is so lovely to have read your book and recognize and awake these qualities within myself.”

Marleen Renders

I meant to write a book on hormones and natural healing when I dreamt I was Mary dancing down the streets of Nazareth. In the ten years since Mary’s story came through me, I awakened to my Sacred Feminine wisdom. My relationships have healed and blossomed. I am living my LoveDance.

And so many readers have shared Mary’s journey through LoveDance and have healed as well.

“Thank you for such a beautiful book. Oh my G-D! Your book encompasses the best of everything I ever read. I absolutely adored it. Provocative, engaging, universal truths expressed through a fabulous character—so loveable and believable. “

Thank you, Gretchen Monak, La Jolla CA

Healing the body is often the focus of medicine, yet without addressing soul issues, physical healing is difficult.

“What an experience. There was a beautiful transmission and healing that happened to me in reading this book…..I met the divine embodied feminine. I didn’t read LoveDance with my mind; I read it with my body. Thank you, Deborah.”

Susan Dasch MFT PhD, San Diego CA

In LoveDance, I address relationship issues, parenting issues, letting go,
disentangling cords of attachment, the process of death and dying, the symbolism of disease– all through the eyes, voice, and heart of a woman that history mal aligned.

“My life study has been Mary Magdalene. I have followed any story known since I was about 3 years old. Even then I knew that the church was off in their statements about her. I knew she was “The Beloved” of Jesus. I have found “Love Dance” to warm my heart and feed my soul in the most loving experience of Mary I have ever danced with. I find the history and actual Jewish law to be most accurate in the story again placing a smile on my face as I read, the truth shall indeed set us free.
I love this Dance and I love Deborah for having the spirit to bring it into life.”

Thank you so very much.
Ondinnonk, Anae Campbell ND PhD New Mexico

Unveiling HerStory was difficult. What I saw in visions and dreams did not match what I was taught, yet much of what I wrote has been discovered since. Perhaps when one of us remembers, all begin to heal.

May You Embody Your LoveDance,

Deborah Maragopoulos

Deborah Maragopoulos MN FNP-BC

My Mary Magdalen Journey

My journey began with a dream…I am fourteen year old Mary dancing down the streets of Nazareth. Through LoveDance, I remembered myself as the Sacred Feminine. I became the Divine Daughter. I reconnected to the Divine Mother. It took eight months to write. And three years to publish.

In Book II, I realized that I Am The Way. I healed an ancient father wound and remembered my connection to the Divine Masculine. It took five years to write. I pray it does not take long to publish…

Each book became my life. The sensuality, the realizations, the remembrance of my gifts, the healing, the connections. Many have found healing in the pages of LoveDance. For those who have trouble connecting to the written word, I pray it becomes a movie.

I need connections to the publishing world at large, major media to really bring Mary’s Sacred Journey to Light. For her life, as I remember it, was very human, very enlightening, sensual, loving and real. She has taught me much about love, about gratitude, about commitment, about releasing fear and receiving the gift of every encounter.

Now I begin the writing of Book III. In a different vein, a more realized energy, this time even more supported by my beloved. Each book has been a deeper awakening for us. He was afraid for me when I began to write LoveDance. It is a curse and a blessing to be chosen as my rabbi friend once told me. I had a difficult time in conceiving the first book. It was hard to be Deborah while remembering Mary. I vowed to not lose myself in book II and I didn’t. Yet it took so long to write because it took so long to remember the ancient father wound and then to heal it in my own life and plant a new seed for consciousness. LoveDance is not just a women’s book. Book II is the time most known by historians and theologians yet I believe they only know the male version of the story. In LoveDance Book II, I unveil the female version for both men and women.

Ten years after beginning LoveDance, my beloved took me to the south of France for our 30th wedding anniversary. I have done little research in writing the LoveDance series. The scenes come in dreams and visions. As I dive deeper into HerStory, pieces are remembered by family and friends. Some they recognize, some they just deliver unknowing to me, usually after I meditate for an opening. It’s all good, all as it is meant to be.

I have seen scenes of Book III since the beginning. They haunted me until I had a deeper understanding and a more divine perspective. I felt drawn to the south of France…perhaps there in what was once Roman Gaul seeds of truth were buried in some of the legends. I discovered some pearls in the mud of misperception. More so, I discovered a great reverence for the Magdalen scattered throughout Provence. For that I am grateful. For Mary’s sake, for woman’s sake, for all of us.

Cycling with the Moon

As I enter the portal of menopause, I yearn for a way to release when my blood no longer flows. My cycle prefers to mimic the moon—menstruating on the dark moon, ripening with the waxing moon, experiencing the fullness of my power on the full moon, releasing with the waning moon—over and over every month, since I began Genesis Gold.

Not before. No, I had such low body fat that I did not have enough sex steroids to menstruate. Years of bulimiarexia had taken its toll. Until 2000, when I first took Genesis Gold, a botanical formula that came to me in dreams, did my body finally realize its Sacred Feminine potential and I had my first period without the aid of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

It was a miracle that I even conceived my children. Both came to me in dreams and then I would gain five pounds and conceive…without menstruating…on my own. My gynecologists were flabbergasted, but my pregnancies were healthy, although delivering the babies was difficult. It wasn’t until my daughter was eleven that I tried to turn the tide of my eating disorder which began just before I entered high school. Although my mother had educated me well throughout puberty, she was disempowered by her upbringing, so my first period was not received in joy. Without a sacred chamam of women with which I might retreat and understand my budding feminine powers, I felt the burden of becoming a woman. So I stopped eating—lost twenty pounds, my breasts, and my period.

In the fall of 1999, I was determined to make peace with my femininity and began wearing a long gypsy skirt during my menses. It was my own personal red tent. My family treated me differently, because I began to treat myself with loving kindness. I rested, drank tea, took long baths, and retreated to my garden to commune with the earth.

A few cycles of wearing my period skirt and I began to have lucid dreams. In response to my prayerful meditation during my moontime, I conceived Genesis Gold. And within two months of taking it, I gained five pounds (the same five pounds I needed to make enough hormones to conceive my children) and started menstruating without exogenous hormonal support at the age of thirty-nine. My body has been following the moon cycle ever since.

So now at the portal of my next feminine transformation, my body still tries to cycle with the moon. At this time, I am taking bio-identical hormones again, a luscious blend of botanicals, I conceived with a wonderful compounding pharmacist. I am ever grateful that my body has waited this long to go through the change. With the support of Genesis Gold, I am entering menopause 4-5 years later than my younger sisters.

So this cycle like so many before, I celebrate with a great release. Under the new moon in the presence of countless stars, I set my intention to bleed out the illusion of unworthiness. It is this not-good-enough attitude that fueled my eating disorder for so long. It is time to let it go.

Just before going to bed, I watched a you tube video of conscious men apologizing to the Sacred Feminine. I wept with joy. I accepted their apology, released our past unconsciousness and opened to receive sacred partnership with the Divine Masculine. I am blessed to be in such a relationship with my beloved husband. And more so blessed to be alive at this time of transformation as the Divine Masculine awakens to honor and co-create a new reality with the Divine Feminine. Then I fell asleep and had a dream.

In my dream, I was ministering to my youngest sister. Her beautiful tan skin was peeling off and underneath was the pale blue veined skin of a man—one that has haunted my dreams since childhood. My daughter, a nursing student, was with me and started to examine her aunt’s desquaminating leg. I shook my head and told her silently, This is a condition that affects women who give up their power and choose to live in parasitic rather than symbiotic relationships with men. Treat her with love but do not take on her dis-ease.

I woke up knowing that the fabric of illusion called unworthiness was finally ripped. I had protected my Divine Daughter with Divine Mother Wisdom. I no longer must wear my not-good-enough veil. Blessed am I to be a woman at this precious time on earth.

A powerful woman healer once sang this to me…and now I can sing it to myself.

Hail, Deborah, full of grace.

Blessed is the fruit of my womb.

And blessed is the world to receive the sweetness of my labor.

And now I sing it to you…

Hail, Sister, full of grace.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb.

And blessed are we to receive the sweetness of your labor.

Thank you, dear sisters, for doing your soul work. For cycling with the moon and dancing with the Divine.

I am honored to be in your sacred presence and look forward to celebrating your feminine transitions with love and joy.

Blessed Be and So It Is.