Heal Them

 

I'd been meditating for about five years when I enrolled in a class where I learned about journeying. I had already found that meditation, for me, held visual experiences akin to interactive films. In this class I was taught to use meditation to find what is known as a power animal and accompany that animal on a journey.  I was beginning that day with an acute need to understand what my purpose on this earth was meant to be. "Please show me what I'm here for" I requested of my animal guide as I descended deeper into meditation.

What I saw can only be described as a desolate landscape, bleak and devoid of color.  All I could see on this vast plane was what appeared to be a dead tree, empty of leaves.  I began to hear a faint melody, a haunting version of "The Sound of Silence".  Never in meditation had I come upon a place so eerie, so seemingly empty of hope. I stared ahead, not moving, confused.

After a while I glanced at the spirit animal that I had learned to trust. It tilted its head gently toward the tree.  As we walked toward it I could see that on the tree a swing hung, motionless, and on the swing was a girl of about 12. She was looking down sadly, hands cupped palms up in her lap.  

I looked at my animal guide again and it nodded.  I got close enough to the girl to see that in her palms she held a heart, broken into several jagged edged pieces. She held it up to me, a silent request.  

"Heal her heart", I heard.  

I placed my hands over her palms and, with the warm glow of faint light, the heart became whole. She held it to her chest with a small smile and began to swing gently.

I looked again at my guide, now standing behind me. "Now what?" I asked. Again the animal nodded it's head in the direction of the tree, "Look", it said quietly.  

I turned to look at the girl again, only now the landscape had shifted, and as far as the eye could see there were bare brittle trees, thousands of them, each with a swing holding a motionless child. 

My breath caught in my throat and my eyes filled with tears as the animal spoke gently to me, "Heal them, heal the broken children." 

My voice breaking with overwhelming sadness, I choked out the words "How... there are too many...how would I possibly do that?"

He answered: "You just begin".

He waited in silent encouragement as I collected myself and started to walk towards another tree.

Seconds later I awoke from the meditation sobbing.

It's been many years since that journey and the vision has haunted me. It has appeared in my mind's eye every time I've considered what to do next with my life. What job should I take? What career should I train for? Who ARE the broken children that were shown to me?

As I continued to practice meditation, began to study Mindfulness, and spoke to many other people living with PTSD and panic attacks, and the other mental health challenges that life can bring, I came to understand what I had seen that day:

We are all the broken children. 

We can all heal and be healed.

Last year I returned to Early Childhood. I found that much of what we practice in our field is unintentionally counter to mindful living.  As I consider the toddlers in my care each day, as I get to know each of them better and make choices about how to speak with them and how to interact with them, as I watch them grow into more independent, more capable preschool aged children, I think about that often. I wonder more readily with each passing month, what could happen if we as a society could get this right for this age group - if we could teach self-love and self-compassion, normalize the whole rainbow of emotions and the expression of them, and send these little ones to Kindergarten as mentally and emotionally prepared as they are academically.  I wonder if we would be giving them the capacity to begin to care for and nurture themselves as readily as they learn to read.

I wonder if the way to heal the broken children is to teach them to heal themselves before they ever have need of healing.

 Before You Burn It All Down....

In June of 1995 I got married in a beautiful Priscilla of Boston wedding gown.  I found it in the first bridal magazine I had ever bought, love at first sight. I'd have bought that gown in a heartbeat without ever even trying it on.

In 2018 my marriage ended.  Among the things that my ex-husband brought to me from our attic was the box that held my wedding gown.  My emotions were still raw then. I looked at the box holding the gown that my mother had had so carefully preserved. I thought of the care she'd taken with all things bridal for me.  I knew that people destroyed their dresses after a divorce.  I knew that "wreck the dress" was a "thing".  I knew that people gleefully burned their dresses as a symbol of a new start. 

 I also knew that none of that was me. "I could give it away", I thought, yet I didn't.

The box took up residence in my basement where I didn't have to see it all the time, where I wouldn't feel pressed to make any decisions. And there it stayed until this past November when my sump pump failed and my basement flooded.

I was already mentally and emotionally exhausted from pandemic living when the waters rose. I just stood there and looked, fighting back tears. My daughter came down to look around.  And that's when she found the box. "What's this?" Her eyes lit up at my response. Shouldn't we open it and check it she asked?  I told her yes, I supposed we should.

She brought it upstairs, tore it open, grinning with sheer delight. "Can I try it on? Please??" 

Why not baby girl. I left the room to let her change and waited for her to call me back in.

When I opened that door again I saw a luminous young lady where I'd so often in the last year seen an anxious teen. "It fits me! I thought it would be dated but it's not, it's beautiful, I love it, can I keep it?!"

Suddenly I was back in the bridal shop with my mother, my grandmothers and my best friend. My grandmothers were mock bickering as was their habit, a habit that I enjoyed thoroughly and miss dearly. I saw my best friend twirling in a parade of bridesmaids gowns, delighted with how she looked in them. I saw my mother fretting over the lowcut illusion neckline, asking the shop owner if we could have more embroidery added, wanting this dress to be absolutely perfect for me.

As my daughter beamed at herself in the mirror turning from side to side to see every angle, I saw my father at the church, happier and prouder than I'd ever seen him. I saw my Uncle Daniel walking towards me with a plate of  hors d'oeuvres, muttering that through all the picture taking someone had to make sure that his goddaughter had something to eat.  I heard my Uncle James laughing about the van he called the refrigerator, that he had rented to drive all my cousins up from Florida in. (I'd give anything to hear that laugh again.) 

I saw my family, all but my father's father, all together for what would be the last time.

My daughter started asking me questions about relationships and marriages, sharing observations and concerns.  She asked if I was sorry I'd gotten married. Without hesitation I explained that, no, I couldn't be. Marriage had made me her mother, and I'd choose that again in a thousand alternate universes were they offered to me. 

On that rainy, gloomy day in November, when I was tired to my very soul, that dress brought my joyful daughter back to me.

So yes, honey, yes you can keep that dress. That dress is love and laughter. That dress is hope and beauty. That dress is the gateway to your birth, your childhood, your bright and boundless future.

It hangs in her closet now. I see it every time I hang clean clothes up for her. I have never been more grateful for a flood in all my life.

To any woman currently worrying over a box holding a wedding dress, I send love and compassion and urge you to do what's right for you. But please, please think twice about the full gamut of memories it holds before burning them all down.