Healing the Wounded Child

My time in Riversleigh has helped me get further along in my journey of healing my wounded Inner Child.  It has been one of the aids along the way: others include spiritual meditation, processing and mulling, art therapy using SoulCollage and Project Life, writing and journaling including memoir, Soul Food and Riversleigh activities, SoulCollage and Project Life.  My Wounded Child, depicted in the lower left of this SoulCollage card, has been able to transform and access into the upper right part of the card.

Writing the SoulCollage “I Am the One Who” has assisted in the verbalizing the process after much meditating and mulling.   Riversleigh has been a place of retreat for me to mull in between adventures.  It has symbolized the quiet silences in the spaces between activities.  I have stayed in Riversleigh even as others left: as a shape shifter I could adapt and blend into whatever was happening and whomever was there.

The quiet time has been necessary, but then there comes a time to be with others again, to share in each others’ lives and appreciate the growth patterns we all have undergone.

Combined Project Life & SoulCollage

This is another example of where I have combined making a SoulCollage card into a Project Life 4×6 card.  I do this frequently as I can then keep track of what I am creating and my thoughts on the “I Am the One Who” reflections about the card in one place.

First comes the making of the collage card, using either digital Pinterest images or photos or magazine pictures or a combination of all.  (See previous post for the card)  Words may or may not be included.

Then I fill in the “I Am the One Who” sheets I have on the  computer to express what the card is saying to me.  Frequently during this process, new  ideas or patterns appear from the unconscious regarding the topic.

I then print out both items to fit  into my Project Life album so I can further reflect on the collage, the writing and place it all in context of what else is happening in my life at that time.  Or I make a Project Life card reflecting the process with a synopsis of the “I Am the One who” aspects.

All comes together in appreciating the healing wholeness and holiness.

Turtle Gardens

Because of my love of turtles, and having had many as wonderful visits over the years (see posts under turtles regarding both real turtles as on April 17, 20011 and fictional turtles as on October 21, 2008), I always enjoy when one walks through the garden, as they frequently do.  As a way of letting them know the garden is a welcoming environment for them, I have many turtle garden ornamentals around. 

Turtle crowned with lilies

Combined with flowers, veggies and greens, these turtle figurines look very inviting and in their natural environment. 

Deck Garden Turtles

Plus they soothe my being with their healing presence.

Tholos Forgiveness

 

The sounds of bubbling water enhanced her awareness.  She felt serene in all aspects of herself.  This is a good space in which to live, where one is totally at peace.  And what a wonderful place in which to die—in a hammock in water—not drowning, but just floating in water in the ocean or a lake or, even a pool such as this.  She lay still, attempting to remember her dream, or was it an experience?  So wonderful, but what was wonderful?  Oh, yes.  I was told to prepare to leave at any moment.  Made total sense at the time, but what did it really mean?  That I’ll die so I need to be unattached to the world and centered, or a crisis is coming and so I’ll need to be prepared to leave the house?  The water sounds so happy…bubbling and frolicking in the pool.  Does the water carry the fumes of the oracle to me?

 

I remember reading in the American Book of Dying: Lesson in Healing Spiritual Pain where the authors Gross and Klauser talked of a medieval l’Hotel-Dieu–God’s Hotel–in Burgundy, France.  In the 15^th century A.D., this hospice served the social outcasts and was built over a river with a glass floor underneath the beds of the patients.  This way they could hear the soothing sounds of the moving water, as I am now.   I can tell this must be a special place, because I’m not aching from lying on the mossy ground.  This hospice had clean linens, also, almost unheard of in that time, even for the wealthy. 

 

Now I remember, another dream or experience, where someone in high authority asked if I wanted to go back and redo or eliminate some difficult times in my past. My parents were there, too, even though both are deceased for many years.  No, I said to all of them.  I wouldn’t change anything, as difficult as some things were at the time.  For then I wouldn’t be who I am today.  I wouldn’t have grown into the life I have, but still be stuck in the mundane, never having to be forced to have the opportunity to forgive both myself and another I deeply trusted, never having understood the great gift it is to be placed in a situation where one had to learn to forgive a deep wound.

 

The deeper the bond of trust with the person,

 the deeper the hurt and wounding,

the harder it is  to forgive,

 the more precious the gift of forgiveness

for oneself and for the other.

 

 May all  people who have been so hurt

 come to this gift of forgiveness

in the time that is right for them.

 

 

 

 (see also http://cityofladies.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/tholos-forgiveness/#comments)