By
It’s February – the month of Love and Valentine’s Day. If you have lost a loved one this could evoke joy and treasured memories or a tragic sense of longing and loss. I invite you to remember that love is energy and energy cannot die. It is eternal. My personal experiences have proven to me that it is possible to continue the relationship with your beloved, even after they are gone from your sight. You “see,” they are always in your heart. Maybe the essay below will metaphorically resonate with you? It was written by Emily Perl Kingsley.
WELCOME TO HOLLAND
“I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.”
This analogy is great because the relationship you will have with your departed one, I believe, is just different. It’s not what you planned. The pain can heal. The love is eternal.
Speaking of eternal love and Italy, I am reminded of the story of St. Valentine. Oodles of variations of the story exist, which is easy to understand since he purportedly was executed on February 14th in the year 269 A.D and later canonized a saint on February 14th in 496 A.D.
One version is that “under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families. To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.”
Another interpretation suggests that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl—possibly his jailor’s daughter—who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” telling her that love is eternal.
Love is eternal is my “theme song” in helping people to heal. I have written about my personal, seemingly unbelievable, experience with the two hearts pictured above in a previous blog. If you missed it, here is the link: Seeing with your Heart & Finding Gratitude
My role is to assist people in healing by coaching them through five spiritual or consciousness steps. Most people are familiar with the esteemed work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. My five steps are: knowing, loving, forgiving, trusting, and flourishing. More information of the five steps can be found in my November 1, 2019 blog entitled, A New Way to Grieve.
I work with individuals and families as well as with the clients of: mediums, practitioners, therapists, life coaches, ministers, and energy healers. My credentials include: a Master’s Degree in Energy Medicine, authorized TIR (Traumatic Incident Reduction) facilitator, certified Life Coach, tenured teacher, and a licensed non-denominational minister. I am speaker and writer and share my personal experiences from my heart. I am not a medium or a psychic.
Lastly, I will leave you with a quote from my dear friend and long-time mentor, Dr. Ilene Cummings, “Grief expressed has a chance to heal. Unexpressed, it festers like an open wound. It oozes and drains, weeping a sadness that has no name. Unexpressed grief cannot be hidden. It’s melancholy will forever be unfinished business.”
Oops, I promised to report on the amazing course, Expand Your Innate Mediumship Skills With Soul-to-Soul Communication, which I completed last week. The primary goal of the course was to embrace Oneness Consciousness and to experience soul-to-soul communication with your Higher Self, loved ones who’ve passed, and beings from every realm to access guidance and develop trust in the flow of life. The class was a “home run” with the goals met. The program incorporated all the teachings of the 135 books I’ve read over the past three years about death, dying, and the afterlife; as well as the numerous coursed I have taken. Next month’s blog is about “the soul” and there will be more material then. I’ll also cover the Disney movie, Soul, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s definition of “soulmates” from Eat, Pray, Love. Stay tuned.
