I don't what I believe, but I felt held

I’ve never really believed in psychics, much more of a person of academia and science but today I gave up those judgements for an hour and half and what I left with was unexpected.

I walked up to the door of the building already in tears because my day had once again taken a dark turn of pain and anxiety, I was dreading the appointment, not knowing how to mask my panic attack. Stupid, really, since counselling is the one place where you are by definition supposed to have big emotions. I willed myself together and stepped inside and was greeted with the kind eyes and immediate action of my counsellor Vicki, without so much as two words, she understood and I followed her to the white room with the fur rugs at the back of the building.

In the room was another lady named Denise, she was bare foot and dressed in a simple linen dress decorated with those rows of pom poms you used in childhood- she seemed warm. Together the pair invited me to lay down on the bed in the back corner of the room, I felt so aware of myself and the silent tears that were cascading down my cheeks. They encouraged me to cry, saying that emotions need to be released. Denise said that she would cry with me. The first step in the healing was identifying my pain, trauma and points of tension in my body. To do this, I closed my eyes and Denise worked her hands over my body, sometimes touching me; the palm of my hand or placing firm pressure on my forehead, but mostly her hands just hovered. After about 10 minutes of silence, she spoke. Denise knew everything about me. She told me there was a significant switch when I was 13, something that made me feel like the spotlight was on me but in that spotlight, I felt so alone. This of course was a poetic way of her describing the year of my life that my decade long battle with Anorexia began. She spoke of immense anxiety my mother felt when I was really young and asked if something bad happened at that age. I told her I nearly died from bronchitis before I turned 1. She said that there was the presence of my grandmother in the room, someone that is very significant in my life and whose death has caused generations of pain. She said she was there trying to help me. I lost control of my emotions at this point, I felt completely taken over with grief, as if I was transported back to the moment that my mother found out of her mother’s death when she was a mere 14. Denise spent quite a lot of time on my stomach, asking my body whether this was a physical or emotional ailment, she said that upon the mention of the word emotional, her throat grew tight, telling her clearly of the answer.

With a deep understanding of my past and present pain, Denise and Vicki began to work on somatic lines in the body, known as meridiens. Vicki traced a line from my temple to my shoulders, down across the length of my arm and off my fingertips. She then reversed the pathway. I was surprised at how much tension I felt in some of the points along this emotional wire, I was so aware of pain in my shoulders. Denise then introduced sound healing into the session, with a melody of different vibrations being placed across my body. I could feel the vibrations tingle across certain parts of my areas; the ears bringing on goosebumps. It was hard at moments to keep my mind still and focused on the moment, as it wanted to drift away and find some negative island to dock upon, though the presence of the two women focused on healing me always brought me back. This dance of pressure points and vibrations and hovering hands went on for an hour, it felt to me like 20 minutes. I was really sad when it came to end as I had genuinely started to feel calm for the first time in months.

Vicki brought me to a chair opposite hers and the pair began to debrief what they had found. Denise spoke of her own experience with chronic pain and the dark thoughts that followed her for a long time, she thinks that her and I are much more similar than one might think. She handed me a card on which the following was written in simple cursive; “I am what I am and that is okay”. A mantra written for me with the knowledge that I wasn’t going to leave the session and start chanting words of immense self-positivity, rather in the hopes that I could work towards self-acceptance. Perhaps ever so gently letting kindness forge a new pathway amidst the trenches of cruelty so well established. Denise looked at me for a while and asked, “are you really good with kids?” She said that she kept seeing images of me surrounded by children, smiling. I told her I love children and have worked in childcare for nearly a decade, with having my own children being one of my biggest ambitions in life. The three of us sat in silence for a few minutes before Denise began to cry. She said to me, through soft tears, “you’re going to be a screenwriter.” Vicki looked at me and said, “Denise only cry’s when she feels something is really true.”

I can’t say that my pain or anxieties feel suddenly lighter, but I reflect on the experience with gratitude for women and the gentle nature in which they seek to heal. Maybe I feel more belief in magic and the forces we cannot see. What I certainly feel is that I am on the right path with my writing and that someone out there believes in me.