truth

27. IMPATIENCE

Last minute doesn’t work for me. I am most like the goddess when all my bowls are spinning gracefully in the air. For me, last minute feels as if I’m a clown juggling too many balls knowing they’ll soon come tumbling down upon me.

I pack a week ahead. Just be sure I have everything and everything fits. I like to plan ahead for events, ready when the day comes. One of my dearest friends is a Last Minute Lizzie. Every Easter, she would invite us over and twenty more family and friends to celebrate. We would arrive early to help, and find that they were in the midst of a remodeling project (she liked to take advantage of the gathering to get her husband to fix up the house) and she would still need to shop! So off I would go with her while Steve stayed to help him and frantically we would get it together…rarely before the guests arrived…

My sisters like to fly by the seat of their pants too, waiting to shop when we arrive a day or two before the holiday. That can drive me crazy! I need to plan and be ready. After our parents divorced, my home became the gathering place for my three sisters, their spouses and all their children. It was stressful since there was so much to do before they arrived. I wanted to be able to spend time with them, but was usually so wound up by the preparations and wanting everything to be perfect that their visits became more and more of a burden.

No matter how well I was doing at controlling my eating disorder, the stress of the holidays would bring Bulimic Deb out of her cage. I yearned for quiet holidays. The more stressed I got, the more I would find myself counseling patients with the same Superwoman Syndrome. I would tell them—just say No!—yet could not take my own advice. Finally, after ten years of this holiday madness, I told one of my sisters I couldn’t do it anymore. It was their turn to play Mom.

Yet it wasn’t where we met that made me so anxious. It was being in their energy. I could tolerate my friend’s frenetic energy, but not my sisters. We were too close and would fall into the roles we always played from the drama of our childhood. The more I found peace in my own life, the more frenetic their energy felt. I couldn’t seem to stay centered when I was in their midst.

Every gathering there would be blow up. I was always looking for their souls and they were hiding behind our roles.

Nov 28th, 2004 Finally a breakthrough with my sisters! Always I have dreaded our family gatherings. Early in my adult life, I fretted over the work related to the holidays, then feelings of unworthiness as I worried about the outcome. Was everything good enough? Was I? Lately dealing with deep seated emotion that threatens to boil over, I have not shared my life with my sisters fearing that we could not find common grounds to safely communicate. Still there are gaps but we are closer after this weekend’s tumultuous confrontation, all four of us crying in the bathroom. We needed a red tent and had to create our own chamam experience. Our passion brought on spooky weather. Bitter rain, harsh winds targeted the house. Our husbands took the kids to the mall where the weather was nicer. My sisters claimed that I did not share all with them and I replied that I feared to reveal to them the true fullness of my emotion—my power can be overwhelming. They pushed, then got blown away, then came back for more. My sisters are hardier than I thought. I do feel loved by them but do not believe I appreciate them fully. My sisters are aspects of the divine. They say I feel superior, but I see their unhappiness, their fear, their unwillingness, it seems, to progress. Yet I realize that just because I have leapt so far away from what was our mutual starting point does not mean that they have not also moved. Steve has kept pace, and in their own way, so have they.

As a point being I am supported by their effort, faith, and love. Without them would I be where I am in this moment? I am buoyed up by their being, my own being reflected in the stillness of theirs, in the wake of their progress, exponential reflections of our conscious evolution. Why must we name our faults and weaknesses to equalize the interaction? Yet I do it when I counsel with patients, admitting my humanness, and we grow together.

Over the years I’ve learned to flow more easily when things don’t always fall into place. Now I graciously step into my friend’s house and just lend a hand. And she too has learned to get it together earlier and enjoy her guests.

For my 50th birthday, my sisters treated me to a weekend away. I prefer being in nature so we took a boat trip out to Anacapa Island. No drama just pleasant memories of picnicking on the bluff in the midst of nesting seagulls. My sisters still want to know where I am coming from…I have changed so much. On a beach walk, one expressed concern that she thought I felt our family was dysfunctional. I smiled…three of us had eating disorders, all of us grew up with disordered body images, our mother still struggled with self-esteem and our father lived like a hermit… “I guess every family is somewhat dysfunctional,” I replied.

Then the conversation became confrontational and for the first time in six months, I felt that need to purge. I placed my hand on my stomach and watched as my sister expanded into warrior pose, then I was cast back into our childhood dining room feeling the fear bubbling up as she argued vehemently with our father—always fighting another’s battle—and ending up in trouble herself. And I came back to the present and spoke my truth.

“Thank you for embodying the warrior in our family. But I am not the enemy. I am your sister and I love you.” And since then, there has been peace.

It took me 50 years to flow even with my family. How strange it feels to not care about the outcome, but to be fully in the moment with them. I can get used to this. ☺

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

14. FOUR FACES OF THE ONE

As I waited for Genesis Gold® to be manufactured I sat down to write my opus—Hormones in Harmony®—what I was known for, all my healing secrets. Yet it wasn’t coming easily. In spite of all the case studies and stories, I could not seem to get it down. And I am a prolific writer. I have a whole cedar chest filled with my handwritten journals, poetry, short stories, novelettes…yet what I do best was not coming…

2-1-03 Finally I sat in meditation, awakening early by the light of the day while my animal charges continued to slumber. Upon my couch I sat still and quiet and within moments and lasting what seemed an eternity I was visited. The Father, the Mother, the Son and the Daughter came unto me. I envisioned their form through closed eyes, yet felt them intimately interacting with my physical being, touching my aura within and without.

The Father held the space balancing the energy confirming the wisdom of the Mother and Son. The Daughter was beautiful to behold and when I asked who she was I was told Shekhina and I saw that she was a huge version of Me! Full voluptuous body, moving gracefully through space and time, glowing with a golden love light dancing sensuously to the vibration of the moment. She had my face, my hair, my eyes, she was me lovely to behold.

The Mother gave me her wisdom through counsel and vibration. When I asked what I was to do, she said I had done enough that all was progressing as it should, that Genesis Gold® would come in its own time as divinely planned. I was to write, only write. I asked which books to begin with and she said there is one book, all the stories are part of the one. My story, all of it. Not Hormones in Harmony® separately, but inclusive as is my understanding. The Son concurred stating that unlike Christ my true story would come out while I was still alive and the work would unfold from the telling of it.

I was told that I was to use my gift in energy healing to minister to a patient- Eddie- whose cancer was based in his fear, that I would be guided as to what physical support systems he would need and that yes, Genesis Gold® was necessary, but would come too late. I know that people come into my life for a purpose, some to stay and some for just fractions of eternity. All part of the web of love connected with the white gold filaments of alchemized truth.

The Mother guided me to understand that like a teenage girl, I needed many mirrors to assure myself of my truth and confirm what I perceived as blemishes, as imperfections. Those I call my mentors have been these mirrors for me. They guide me with such finesse, because I am witnessing myself. It is my connectedness that makes their counsel, their channeling, their energy healing so profound. It is me.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Available on Amazon

7. BY ANY OTHER NAME…

I was born Deborah Lee Perry. An unusual name for an Italian-American girl. Most of the first born girls in my mother’s family were name Marie, but my mother, Maria, insisted that I be named Deborah. She remembered getting a lot of flack for wanting to christen her daughter with a Jewish name. My father remembers that it was the closest female name to his given name. Although my mother always called me Deborah, I quickly got nicknamed, Debbie.

So I entered Honby elementary school as Debbie Perry. That’s when I met my first friend.

We met in second grade. She was the youngest of four girls; I was the oldest. Her sisters were all grown up; mine were just starting school. We lived in two different neighborhoods separated by a four lane highway. We had little in common, but seven year olds don’t care. We both loved our teacher, Mrs Groves, who smelled like oranges and liked to take naps under the art table while we were at recess. We both loved books. What a great day it was when she got her first pair of glasses and we got to be in the same reading group.

After reconnecting, we reminisced over lunch. She laughed remembering me wagging my finger at the class bully at recess. I had researched the word that he used so cruelly and taught him and the rest of the kids who gathered around us the true meaning of the F-word. I got called into the principle’s office. Since I had never been in trouble before I was scared but argued my point until Mom arrived. The principle asked what she had been teaching me. The truth, Mom said. Even the principle was not aware of the naval origin of the word.

With her sisters out of the house, my friend was treated like an only child. I, on the other hand, had to share everything with my three little sisters. She had cool lunches—a Wonder bread sandwich, a miniature bag of Fritos and a shiny silver wrapped DingDong. While I had leftovers on wheat bread, chips in a baggy and a piece of fruit. She had her own bedroom with pretty curtains that matched her bedspread and lots of toys. I shared a bunk bed with my little sister, the twins in matching bunks in the same room until my aunt and my two cousins moved out.

Although we had precious little time to catch up, I bared my soul to my oldest friend.
Starting kindergarten worried me. Who would watch after my sisters while I was gone? The white light! I remembered that I called the white light around me whenever I felt lost, worried or frightened and was instantly protected. Sometimes the white light was so bright that I felt invisible, no one seemed to notice me. I would surround my sisters with the white light of protection. They would be perfectly safe until I returned from school.

She remarked that I always seemed more mature than the rest of our class. Perhaps that was being the eldest child. Perhaps it’s just being an old soul.

From the moment we reconnected, she called me Deborah…not Debbie as everyone else from my past still does. I asked her why. She said that I am no longer little Debbie…She perceived my transformation. Perhaps someday, my family of origin will too.

She wrote afterwards: “I didn’t realize how much I was missing you in my life. We’ve both grown tremendously in our years apart and have so much to share. I think about some of the things you shared with me, and it makes me sad that I didn’t know your burdens and wasn’t more supportive. How well did we really know each other? All I knew was you were my friend and I loved you”

And I responded: “Please do not worry about the past. I did not even remember much of my childhood drama until after I gave birth. I do remember how much I loved you! It did not matter that we didn’t know each other intimately, we knew each other’s souls…and that was enough to become best friends. Love you still!”

Friends are gifts. Love them as much as you can.

Excerpt from My LoveDance. Get your copy Now!  

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 

Who Are You?

Sometime during our life, we wonder… Who Am I?

In our adolescence, we discover our place in the world, but not yet who we are in the grand scheme of things.

Throughout our adulthood, we may revisit this question, often coming to the conclusion that we are the roles we play—mother, wife, healer, dancer—yet the truth is…we are so much more.

Do you know who you are as part of the One?
Do you know all the Me’s that make up the I AM?
Who shall you be once in Sacred Unity?
Be true to your Self in Harmony with Love

From Part One of LoveDance: Awakening the Divine Daughter.

May you know your truth.

Blessings of love and light,

Deborah

9 Remembering Mary Magdalen: Searching for Self

 Nov 10th, 2003 What am I searching for? Steve suspects I have a hidden agenda in our intimacy. We talked about the change in me in the past two months. He wants something concrete in this book process, a publisher, an agent, an outline (cannot understand the mystical flow of creativity—it is strange). I asked if he would be happier without so much drama and he said no life is without it’s ups and downs, with connections and reconnections. He reminded me that if I was connected all the time then I wouldn’t still be here. My fears made manifest through his lips! I cried for he is correct, I seek a connection that I fear will draw me away from all that I love. I asked him to have faith. He says he has perseverance, loyalty, integrity and love, but not faith in that which he cannot perceive through his five senses.  He wants to know what to do, wishing to be relieved of the burden of responsibility. I expressed my appreciation for his support in this endeavor but with the financial issues weighing on him he wants me to shed some light. I cannot see the end of the tunnel either and while he spoke my right arm ached—my masculine sword arm. I can DO nothing, I can only BE.

 Nov 11th, 2003 Do all novelists struggle between two worlds? An awful hectic morning of desperate patients who want me but can’t afford me. I try to spark a fire under Mom who manages my businesses but just get burned. Steve wants me to share in his worry, but if I do not hold out some hope, how will we survive? We cannot all be mired down by worry. I feel great relief in writing the book, perhaps an escape from the reality of my life. The writing has replaced the bulimia, but am I cured? Some of the remembrance brings up my fears about not being good enough, unworthiness as a justification for abandonment. I’m not the only one who has this soul issue, it is at the root of many problems. Too much pressure and no outlet. My body quakes, I’m losing weight, I can barely breathe. At least the One came when I meditated this morning reassuring me that the abundance will come, but I am challenged today with lack, with survival issues. I will hold up my faith, even if they do not see me as realistic. I’m doing the best I can just being. Should I peruse other books about Mary Magdalen channeled or not? Or just go from my memories of this past life in which I am not the only one, but an aspect of an entity that embodied the Divine Daughter.  I know I am love, I am joy, but today I feel less than. Certainly I have yet to embody my truth.