Hemitra Crecraft
Occupation: Educator
Age: 53 years old
Interviewed: July 6, 2001, full moon
Location: Berwyn, Pennsylvania

Didn't Even Know
One day I was lying in bed and my housemate came in and said, "I'm taking you to the hospital."  And I said, "What for?  I'm not going."  On the advise of one of our close friends who is an astrologer, she just dragged me -  put me in the car, and took me to the hospital.  

My blood pressure was very high and I was scared.  What this was telling me was that I was in a lot of denial about my health, in general, and that I needed to address my hypertension, which I didn't really know that I had, although I was well aware of my genetic predisposition since every single member of my immediate family and all my ancestors going back on both sides whose medical history was known, all had hypertension. After I was treated, I was told that I needed to go see a general practitioner to follow up on the medication that had been prescribed.  

In the course of the examination that followed, the doctor discovered a lump in my abdomen and said, "You've got a fibroid."  I didn't even know what a fibroid was.  She said, "We should do an ultrasound.  You need to have an internal examination - one of those probes that can look deeply into the uterus and see what's going on."  So, I said, "Okay."  

But I lived with it for a long time before I did anything about it.  And that's the story that I'm going to talk about now.  

Attempting to Heal
That was about 1996.  I attempted healing the tumor with many different alternative ways.  I worked with a psychic surgeon.  I began doing a lot of visualization, meditation, working with a sound healer, energy healers, acupuncture, herbs, physical therapy and what was happening was it just kept getting larger and larger and larger.  

I finally discovered a surgeon at a local hospital, in fact the very hospital where I had been born.  Very few surgeons are willing to perform myomectomies, when they are as large as mine were.  They usually just opt to do a hysterectomy.  

There are so many countless hysterectomies that are performed every single year that are totally unnecessary.  Especially with midlife women who are past reproductive years, or not really concerned about reproduction.  They say, "Well, what do you need your uterus for anyway?"  That was the mindset then.  

The Right Surgeon
Initially, I found a surgeon, when watching the Oprah Winfrey show one day. She was in San Diego and had written a best selling book called No More Hysterectomies.  I looked into the possibility of going out there and in the process, discovered that she had a controversial reputation and insurance companies would rarely accept her billing.  So, I was looking at something that was really not viable for me. 

I thought, "What am I going to do?" I became anxious. It became increasingly obvious that surgical intervention was necessary for me, because I had tried everything else --  except for a radical diet shift - I did not want to do macrobiotics! It just was not my personality.  I love my food!  I enjoy my sensuality.  I wasn't going to go that route. No. 

So, I found a surgeon through my mother, who had read an article in the Main Line Times, the headline of which said, "Local Surgeon Passionate About Saving Women's Wombs."  I read the story and thought, "Oh, this is terrific!"  So I called up right away and made an appointment with Michael Toaff, a reproductive endocrinologist who specialized in the very procedure that I needed. When I went to his office I found him to be utterly charming. A real crusader to save women’s wombs. In fact, women traveled from all over the country to work with him. Evidentally, there had been a very positive article published about him in the New York Times which had attracted widespread attention and he was smart enough to create a web site to assist in his marketing.  Toaff was very bright, funny and compassionate. After the examination he suggested that I go down to Jefferson to get an MRI for verification. 

Within a month I had the surgery.  Now, that's one layer of the story.

A Rock in My Stomach
After I had the initial diagnosis, I plunged right into a conscious healing journey.  There was no getting around that.  I had something growing in my gut.  I had been told by the Filipino healer I worked with that my body was producing about two or three times the amount of estrogen of most women.  And estrogen feeds fibroids.  

I couldn't perform certain yoga postures.  It was uncomfortable for me to lie on my stomach because I could feel this hard rock in my abdomen and it would hurt to put pressure on it.  It impacted everything from how I slept or took a bath to my sex life – I had to really work at circulating my erotic energy above my second chakra.*  And forget giving myself a pedicure – I couldn’t curl up and reach my toes. So, I found myself seriously restrained from doing a lot of normal physical activities as a result of this tumor.  
(* information on chakras, refer to Anodea Judith’s Wheels of Life, The Sevenfold Journey and Eastern Body, Western Mind, www.sacredcentres.com)

What was really thrilling for me was going deeply into the whole psychological layer of what was really underlying it.  I don't recall exactly what the first trigger was for me.  I know at some point I did look at Chris Northrop's work and she had talked about women who have fibroids often being women who have issues around having children. (Dr. Christiane Northrup: http://www.drnorthrup.com) They are women who, perhaps, have had abortions, have not had children or given up children for adoption. That is often part of the psychological profile of women who have fibroid tumors.  When I read that, I thought, "Yes, this is true for me."  

The Best Possible Mother
At that point of introspection, I thought to myself, "Well, I never really did want children."  I was an independent, free floating spirit, trying to grow up myself, making a very clear decision not to have children until I had grown up adequately and created sufficient stability in my life. Curiously, that day never came.  So, I thought, "Well, that's that!"  

There were a lot of other elements too.  In 1972 I started the practice of Transcendental Meditation and became very involved with that practice, and shortly therafter became a teacher of TM.  I spent time with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (http://www.maharishi.org), who was the spiritual head of that teaching.  And there was great wisdom that was imparted.

Part of what was guiding me not to have children at that point was a desire for personal enlightenment - So that I could be the best possible mother and be able to communicate perfectly with the child, even before it was conceived -- to attract the right soul, to communicate with it in utero, to give it the most spiritual and supportive, nurturing environment possible -- that was my motive in withholding from having children at that time.  

I remember my mom had a psychic reading a long time ago, and the psychic was talking about me and mother said, "She doesn't want to have children."  And the psychic said, "Oh, that's just a cop out."  I remember mother sharing that with me and I thought, "The nerve of her!"  And my mother said the same thing.  Believing as I did in reincarnation, I knew I had given birth to many children in the past, so I didn’t feel that it was imperative to fulfill some kind of biological or social mandate. Been there, done that.

I don't know the sequence, but I did come across some references in my writing about the fact that I had wanted children.  Truthfully, until just a few years ago, I had no memory of ever wanting children.  I was thoroughly convinced that I didn't. I was totally identified with the independent Aquarian I had become. So, it shocked me to discover that I had ever wanted children. 

Desire for A Daughter
One of the shockers was a letter that I had written to myself when I was 18,  on June 2, 1966, in Mrs. Chester's English class at Agnes Irwin.  We wrote letters to ourselves that she was going to keep until a certain time, and then send them to us, so that we could reflect on what our thinking was at the age of 18, getting ready to graduate from high school and go off into the world.  I had totally forgotten about this.  They had been in her attic and she had passed away. A relative had discovered this bundle of 38 letters to all the girls in my class and she sent them out to everybody.   

I received my letter within two weeks after my surgery. I saw the handwriting and I thought, "I recognize that handwriting!  That looks awfully familiar!" So, with great curiosity, I opened it up. 

In the letter it said, "Dear Cary, (my birthname) Right now everyone is wondering what to write and I think that I could write a book.  At the age of 18 I shall write about who I am, in hopes that one day my daughter, if I have one, will be able to read this."  Well, I burst into tears, because this was the first time that I realized that I had ever had a desire to have a child.  

Beginning the Tumor
Shortly thereafter I got pregnant and had an abortion, my freshman year in college.  The father was a guidance counselor from a nearby university.  I was a freshman at a small Midwestern women’s college and we had had an evening together which ended up in my getting pregnant.  The moment we were complete with our lovemaking I knew I was pregnant.  Biologically that was impossible, because it takes hours for insemination to occur.  But, psychically, I knew that I was pregnant.  I went home and had an abortion that winter. It was a time when abortions were illegal.  I had to go to my family for help because I wasn't going to go the "coat hanger" route and I wasn’t knowledgeable then about herbal alternatives.  So I asked my father for help and he arranged for me to have a therapeutic abortion at a small, obscure hospital in Philadelphia.  

I went through it, but received no counseling or no support afterwards. I had to keep completely mum about it.  First of all, it was illegal and at that point in time abortion was not something that was commonly discussed.  Women were not encouraged to get the support that they needed to heal the trauma of that.  So my feelings were put on hold.  And what happened, I later realized, was the tumor began to form.

Not All Out
After the myomectomy, Toaff said, "I think that had been growing a long, long time."  It was ten pounds - like a fetus.  I can't prove exactly when it started growing, but I do believe that the tumor was a surrogate baby - the aborted child from 1966. 

I remember waking up in the hospital after my abortion and saying to myself, "It's not all out."  I was quietly panicked – I just knew that they hadn’t gotten it all out. Physically, it was out.  But psychospiritually it was not. Even in my tender years of experience, I knew that.  I had no way to process the guilt, the shame, the sorrow. And so, even after my fibroid surgery, the tumor was out, and yet part of the energy was still in tact. 
I wasn't aware of that though.  Some time later, a woman was at Heart of the Goddess, which I co-owned – a lovely gift shop, teaching center and wellness center nearby. We did a little intuitive work together and she remarked “It will grow back and the reason is unresolved emotions.” This is a risk that many women take with fibroids because they do tend to grow back.  Which is why eventually many women will have hysterectomies rather than go through that over and over again.  And that's why doctors often recommend it in the first place.  

So, I said to myself, "Okay, let's deal with this.  It's time to deal with it even deeper than I have previously.” I knew what she was saying was true – I could feel its truth in my body when she spoke. And it was important for me not to deny it.  In its own time, because of my earnestness, an opportunity arose.  

Meeting my Dragon
I was at a workshop with Jeannette Samanen, a psychotherapist who specializes in work with power animals. She had been trained by Stephen Gallegos, a psychiatrist on the west coast, (Personal Totem Pole) in this work. I had been working with power animals for over 10 years and had incorporated the material in our Woman Wisdom training which my partner Sue King and I began in 1989. For some reason, we both felt drawn to take this workshop at this time with our friend, Jeannette, which focused on polarity work.  
In one of the journeys that we did, I was working with anger.  The animal that came to help me learn how to work with that energy was a dragon.  In the trance altered state of awareness, meeting this dragon was very intimidating initially.  The instruction was to go inside of the dragon - to literally go into the dragon.  I called on all my courage to do that.  

I found the dragon very, very helpful in terms of explaining to me how to channel anger.  And he showed me his whole body, and how he was an open conduit where energy could just flow from one end to the other, in and out both ends, not getting lodged anywhere in between.  

Into the Pain
Later on that weekend, I was alone because my housemate had gone out of town and I had this intense pain in my teeth in the left lower quadrant.  And I immediately flashed on the whole Freudian connection of how teeth and the vagina are very, very interconnected energetically.  I said, "Okay, there's something here, connecting to my second chakra."  I immediately knew that there was unfinished business in my womb.  

Letting Go
Rather than drug myself, I went into the pain, completely.  I called on the dragon immediately.  I said, "Dragon, help me move this energy”, because the pain was incredible.  I was able to do a lot of roaring and growling, which was great.  And also, I was able to go inside of my body and discover on the other side of the pain, a young, terrified, wild eyed woman who was dragging a dead baby and hiding behind a rock.  

I knew exactly who she was.  And I said with great tenderness, "Ooooh, we need to talk."  I spent time with this part of myself in a very non judgemental way, just in total love.  I asked for her forgiveness for not being there for her, to hold her during her loss.  She paced aimlessly at times while I talked to her – all the while dragging her dead baby on the ground beneath her. I said, "It's time to bury the child.  It's time to let go." It took time – a lot of attention to building trust, opening my heart to her and making it safe for her to just be. Finally, she willingly surrendered her baby and returned her to the Earth Mother.   

Completion
So that was a very poignant part - a powerful time in my healing process of being able to actually experience and visit that part of myself and spend time with her.  I felt it was divine providence opening up a window of opportunity for me.  I love how life unfolds that way -- the exquisite tapestry of life when you're in divine flow.  It was so perfect - immersing myself in moving through this with complete grace, attention and love.  

When I was finished with that, I really felt done.  I thought, "We're done here.  I have healed this part of myself."  This was in April of 1999.  My surgery had been in 1997.  The diagnosis had been in '96. 

A Feeling of Failure
In the beginning, I had a terrible time accepting the fact that I needed surgery.  That was hard.  I wanted to heal myself without surgery.  Afterall, I had spent over 20 years studying and teaching holistic healing. I wanted to have someone put their hands on me, or say the right prayer, or have the right moment of just being able to do enough deep psychological work, -- you know -- work through my rage, or work through my fear, or whatever.  Then I could just suddenly one day say, "It's done."  

For me, I felt that the surgery was an indication that I had failed.  That was a big one.  I did feel that I had failed and I had to overcome that.  It took some friends talking me through that to say, "Look, you’ve tried everything else, now you have to do this."  

Actually one time someone came through the Center and did a little channeling. The beings who came through said, "You will feel so much better if you have surgery and remove this thing.  You will find just the right doctors to take care of you."  That was very important in building my trust in my connection to Spirit.  

For me the biggest difficulty was in surrendering to the conventional route -- I didn't want to have to go the route of medication or surgery.  I didn’t have a lot of respect and trust in doctors. I wanted to stick strictly to the alternatives.  I was also such a great believer in the healing of the psychological - that if you thoroughly healed the whole emotional piece then the physical will follow. But it had just gone too far.

Complementary Healing
I came to appreciate the role that conventional medicine plays in healing, and that there is a time and a place for all of it.  And, being a wellness consultant, I had a first-hand opportunity to see what happened when I combined both the conventional and the alternative.  Each played a significant role in my process.  Ultimately, I had to have the surgery.  And, I also needed to visit that wild-eyed woman carrying the dead child.  A surgeon couldn't have taken me there - the dragon took me there.
 
Searching
I'll talk a little bit about my history with relationships because I think that's a part of whether one has a child, especially in my era.  Women today have total freedom and society says, "Whatever you want to do."  That was not true in the 60's and the early 70's.  

After the abortion, I finished school.  I was convinced I was going to be like my mother when I graduated from college - getting married and going on and being a housewife.  I really wasn't thinking about having a career.  I was a theatre major.  I was doing that because I had a huge ego and I loved to perform.  I needed to be up there on stage.  And it was so much fun to put on costumes and wigs and do all the make up and be on stage and entertain people.  I loved the theatre.  It was the perfect outlet for my personality.  But, did I have the "stuff" to become an actress?  Not really.  My senior year I developed atopic dermatitis all over my body because I was in terror of how I was going to live.  I'm coming out of the womb, I have no place to go.  My parents are being very modern and saying, "Out you go!"  And I'm going, "Go where?"  

Suddenly my whole bubble burst and I went off to New York City. I lived in a hotel while looking for an apartment and for a job as a secretary, because I knew how to type.  That's all I could do. I had taken a course in summer school when I was in 9th grade.  

I made my way by being a fun loving secretary.  I went from job to job to job - just looking and searching.  I worked in the film industry with Woody Allen, auction houses in New York, publishing, marketing - a lot of different things.  

Relationship Challenges
Then I fell in love with a fabulous man and went off to live on his yacht in the West Indies.  (I had been praying every day for “my cosmic soul mate” to come into my life) I'd had a dream about him before I met him.  When I saw him for the first time at a party in New York, I knew exactly who he was and I quietly said to myself, "Oh, my God! If you want us to be together, then make it happen."  At the time, he was in relationship with Ravi Shankar’s publicist and I certainly didn’t want to step in. I had just completed a nine month experience as a nanny for the children of Corinne Calvet, an obscure French film star whom I met at an ashram one weekend. She became a mentor to me – my first teacher of the metaphysical dimension of life. At 22, I really wasn't equipped emotionally to be able to process all of it.  At times I thought I was going crazy. It was very difficult to know what was what. It was an exciting time, however, and I was hanging out with a very sophisticated, artsy crowd, who opened up so many new experiences to me. But, soul mate or not, my relationship with the yachtsman, who was 11 years my senior, was entirely too challenging.  
 
Initiation
I did get married seven years later to a musician. I was emphatic about not wanting children. He wanted children and four and a half years later we were divorced.  I still wanted to be enlightened. But as time went on, I became disillusioned with the spiritual quest, thinking, "Well, it's not as easy as we thought it was.  It takes a lot longer than we had anticipated."  

For about three years after my divorce, I had no primary relationship and it was the first time in my life, ever, that that had been the case.  I was perplexed and annoyed and quite frankly, lonely.  I thought, "Why aren't I magnetizing the most fabulous men?"  I was drawing some in, but they were not good-hearted men.  

On some level I knew it was an initiation for me.  It was a time for me to be alone.  But still I thought: "What is this about?  I don't want it.  The co-dependent side of me said, "Are you kidding me?"  I really wanted to be in a relationship, but it was not being granted.  So there was a tremendous struggle.  

Denial
Right at this point, in the midst of all of this, I was lying in bed, and I touched my abdomen and found a lump, which I totally forgot about.  Years later, when the doctor asked when I first noticed the tumor, suddenly I flashed on remembering, I had felt something, but was totally unwilling to explore what it could be.  In my mind I just thought, "Oh, something's just twisted." 

Many Children
At that time I later read in my journal that I had had a sudden desire to have a child. I think, in truth, that I felt abandoned and it was my own inner child that was in pain. And all the while, the fibroid was secretly growing inside of me. 

The very next year I met Sue King at a summer solstice party in her back yard and we began a glorious journey into the Goddess and women's spirituality. Sue and I began to explore our respective backgrounds and interests by collaborating on curriculum design, most especially our Woman Wisdom training which incorporated the most magical and transformative experiences that we had each had on our journeys. Within a few years, we opened Heart of the Goddess.  It was then I discovered that I had many, many children - in the women who came to the center to study with us and the other facilitators. I exemplified an Earth Goddess energy to many – and I was always receptive to sharing warm, nurturing hugs. 

Invitation 
I had had a soul retrieval* session after the diagnosis of the fibroid.  I worked with Ayala Guy, a good friend of mine, who is a wonderful shaman.  In the soul retrieval she saw and shared with me how deeply connected the fibroid was with the abortion.  She saw the young woman, around the age that I was when I became pregnant.  She said that she is just sobbing.  She is crying and crying and crying and crying. Afterwards she said, "You probably will not need to do any mourning yourself in the physical sense because that part of you has already done it."  And I thought, "Okay, fine."  

* For more information go to http://www.shamanism.org  Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Michael Harner, Ph.D. 

Soul retrieval in the form that has been taught with Sandra Ingerman* is fascinating work.  You're lying still and with your permission, the shaman goes into your history, and meets those lost parts of yourself at your request.  "What is it that you wish to heal?"  Then she goes forth into the different realms and puts forth the call, "Whatever soul parts are connected to this issue, I invite you to come home."  These parts of the soul present themselves to the shaman and show the story of how the trauma came about in the first place.  The shaman is able to see the entire connected history, and the whole circumstances surrounding it, in the family of origin-- everything.  Then she plays that back for you in exquisite detail after the journey is complete.  All the while, you're simply lying there, just being receptive, but not necessarily engaged in the process on the conscious level. A lot of it is unconscious.  

* Sandra Ingerman, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self.  Harper San Francisco, 1991.  

Work to Be Done
So, when we completed that and she had shared with me what she had seen, it was clear to me that I needed to do further healing. And some of what I shared with you in my story is what transpired.  The work, when I went in and saw the woman dragging the baby, came a few years after that soul retrieval.  So there was clearly more work that had to be done.  

One thing that I have learned very clearly is that when you do soul retrieval it's a wonderful opportunity to become conscious of all the facets of an issue.  But then you must go in and do your own work, as the occasion arises, to create full integration and healing.  And that's a very organic process.  It can't be contrived.  It just emerges.  

The fibroid was connected to the abortion, and the shaman saw that the soul part that had left was the young woman at 18 who had been pregnant.  She had been abandoned, and I just went on with my life.  That part of me just left.  

The shamanic soul retrieval is about welcoming that soul part back.  Once the soul part comes back, then it's the individual’s responsibility to communicate with the restored soul part in an ongoing way - to build the relationship. And I didn’t always do this.  

The soul retrieval is an exquisite shortcut to be able to just cut right to the core of what's fractured, bring it back, and then the work of integration.   Otherwise it can take years and years to have that part ever come back through conventional approaches.  That's one of the reasons why I believe soul retrieval work is so powerful, because it brings that part back immediately.  However, then you must begin the integration.  You must find ways to continue to make it safe for that part to stay.

I think some people are misguided if they believe that when you go to a healer they heal you and then everything is fine and you can just go on with your life and not really process further.  Nothing is further from the truth.  This is an extremely important point.  

A Sacred Moment
That's why when the healing crisis with my teeth suddenly occurred, I realized that I had not been doing my homework, so to speak.  But I didn't make myself wrong for that.  Truthfully, when I had the pain, I had the methodology to be able to go in and to talk to the pain. This took me to the wild-eyed woman with the dead baby.  I was ecstatic to be in this sacred moment of healing.  Because this was such a deep buried part of myself -- this woman hadn't seen the light of day in a long time. 

In the Flow
I think when the concept of healing first came to me, I thought that it meant you heal something and then you move on - that there is a process that has a conclusion.  I think I was very goal directed - wanting to heal something and then its healed and moving on.  As I've gotten older, I’ve realized that healing occurs in waves and all of our “stuff” is intimately connected with each other - so where one lets off, another picks up.  There is no final destination - there is only the journey, which is un-ending.  I think many are coming to understand this and appreciate it because it's a very important trigger for allowing us to be in the flow of life.  To let go and let God, if you will.  To be in the moment.  To not judge ourselves or others and just be receptive.  To be able to open ourselves to the extraordinary abundance, the stream of well being that is flowing to us and through us at all times if only we are open to it and allow ourselves to be a conduit for it.  

Even though I've made an issue of saying that part of my life has healed, and I do believe that's true, there are other parts that have not been thoroughly addressed, like the hypertension and being overweight.  These are other areas that I'm still in process with.  With the fibroid, there was a deep, still, inner knowing that I had gotten to the root and that I was complete, at least with that.  

Unwinding
Stress, trauma, to me is in layers.  It's like a skein of yarn and you just start unwinding it.  One experience leads you to the next, and the next, and eventually you get to the end of it and you say, "Okay – it’s complete."  So, that moment, for me, when I had that final experience, signaled to me that that piece was at rest.  

I think it is unusual to get to a place that is thoroughly healed because I think for most of us our wounds can be re-opened.  We do tend to re-create according to how we've been programmed through the traumas that we've incurred.  So, it's a big, big thing to undo all of that.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because I actually feel that I was able to come to closure with it. No one wants a tumor growing out of control in their body, or to cut it out, only to have it come back.  Knowing, as I did, what the whole psychological causation was, I thought, "I really need to handle this.   

It Kept Coming
Actually, I had discovered shortly after my fibroid diagnosis that I had a large growth in the right side of my throat. The next year I had a second surgery where I had half of my thyroid taken out.  I did another soul retrieval with Ayala before the surgery, and in the midst of what was going on, a spirit energy popped out of my neck.  I didn't see it, but Ayala did and she knew somehow that it was energetically connected to the fibroid.  What had stopped growing in my womb, continued growing here (in my throat).  There was, on some level, a connection.  And I knew from all my work with chakras over the past 20 years that the second and the fifth chakras are energetically connected.  They have to do with different levels of creative manifestation, both conscious and unconscious.

I had had a special rattle made by a soft-spoken Native American artist that I asked Ayala to play during the soul retrieval. Right at the moment when the spirit lept out of my throat, a spirit flew out of the rattle, grabbed whatever it was that had come out of my throat and devoured it.  

That's a whole other piece too.  I had this notion that if I didn't get a grip on what was really going on with me that my body would have the tendency to keep growing things.  This was part of my profile that I really needed to understand.  I needed to bring it out into the open and deal with it.  

The fibroid was removed in 1997, and has not grown back.

Connections
At the same time that my health was suffering, the energy in other aspects of my life were waning. My father, whom I had been estranged from for eight years, died and Heart of the Goddess was moving into its final years of existence. I was burnt out and questioning how to restructure myself professionally – as well as creating a life style which gave me more time to explore personal interests and cultivate important relationships. 
 
Compassion
I try not to say "that was wrong" to myself because it's only experience.  You do the best you can at every moment.  I think at the time we are embroiled in the experience we might tend to beat ourselves up and say "that was wrong."  But once we're on the other side of the process and look back, hopefully we've developed compassion towards ourselves and we don't judge ourselves as having done something wrong.  We just did what we thought was best at the moment.  

I could say, "I should have acted sooner."  I could have said that when I first touched my abdomen in 1986 and felt a lump, I should have gone to the doctor right away.  That it was wrong for me not to go to the doctor.  But I did what I did.  And I created this whole journey as a result of it.  I needed to go into denial then.  I wasn't equipped to deal with it then.  

A Fear Pattern
The very beginning of this process was difficult for me, when I went to the hospital with my hypertension and had to come face to face with the fact that there was an unconscious death urge being activated that I needed to come to terms with.  The life force was just leaving me and there was a hopelessness and a "giving up" in me that I had masked.  It took someone from the outside to go, "Get her to the hospital.  She needs a wake up call.  Let's snap her out of her denial."  That was difficult, and yet it saved my life.  I think that was the hardest time.  

Once you get engaged in reclaiming your health - reclaiming your energy - your soul - reclaiming your magnificence - who you are and why you are here - then whatever happens is okay.  You're ready. You've invited it.  Once I got past that denial, I could start to identify what was happening for me.  Prior to that, I couldn’t.  I was disconnected.  I was just sort of robotically going through the paces of performing my duties. 

Growing Rapidly
Interestingly, after being confronted and then going to the hospital and getting the fibroid diagnosed, it grew rapidly after that.  When the biological clock is winding down, for women who have not had children, the whole psychological piece about their decision not to have children comes up to be looked at and worked on.  A lot of women go into tremendous despair when they go into menopause, apart from the obvious hormonal shifts.  A lot of it is due to the fact that now they'll never have children.  What have I lost?  And as they get older they start feeling the loneliness of not having offspring and then not having grandchildren and being all alone with no family caring for them in old age. Fibroids, if present, will grow rapidly just prior to the onset of menopause. 

Pivotal Understanding
The soul retrieval was extremely powerful for me as a diagnostic tool for confirming what was at the core psychologically.  It was critical for my healing to know my history and what I had done – to understand my emotions and thoughts during times of trauma and understand the collective mindset of the culture in which I grew up in - to know what would cause the fibroid, and later, the thyroid tumor, to occur.  I needed to really understand that.  That was pivotal.  

Loosening 
I did quite a few sessions with a Filipino psychic healer that was very helpful because it prepared me for being able to have the surgery and have the surgery go so well.  He was able to loosen where the fibroid was attached.

Shifts in Consciousness
When I was working with the Filipino psychic healer, it caused a shift in consciousness, intellectually.  Because of my work with Maharishi while living in Switzerland, I had seen a woman disappear.  She was performing Patanjali’s yoga sutras and had perfected the disappearing sutra.  I saw her disappear right before my eyes.  She didn't physically disappear, but she was able to move the light totally into her body rather than reflect it, so she appeared to not be there.  She was invisible.  I knew that in the hotels nearby that there were men who had been reported to be walking through walls as well. This was in 1976.

But, when I was lying there on the table years later and the psychic surgeon put his hand right through my body, and then came out with pieces of my tumor and there was no pain and no scar, then, I thought, "Okay, this causes a shift in consciousness, does it not?"  Because you come face to face with "what is the physical body anyway?"  You really know its energy and with a certain degree of skill we learn how to operate through different laws of nature. That was a wonderful opportunity for me to validate an intellectual understanding of something I really hadn't experienced at that level.  

There was a shift of consciousness throughout my experiences around the fibroid --with all that diving in and coming up and diving in and coming up again.  There were huge shifts of consciousness going on, between being in denial, seizing the moment, riding the wave, going with it, calling on divine help, flowing with the process, and empowering myself.  

I also worked intensely with a physical therapist too. She found herself doing things that she hadn't been trained to do, but was guided inwardly to do. She could feel the tumor by pressing deeply into the surface of my abdomen and then pull away the tissue where the adhesions had occurred to the tumor.  That work also was important preparation for the surgery. 

Cooperative Healing
I think that sometimes there's this notion that I, in and of myself, have no power, cannot generate healing.  I had to come to terms with asking for healing outside of myself and drawing healing from within myself and having those forces work cooperatively, knowing that nothing can be valid unless I'm fully present and willing to be in the process.  You don't go to a healer and the healer heals you.  You do your own healing.  They just help energetically to set things up.  

Helping Guides
There were many guides for me.  The dragon was a guide for me.  I had a snake guide.  A good friend of mine who is a Barbara Brennan* trained graduate, energetically came into the hospital room when I was having my surgery to ask if there was anything she could do to help.  She reported later that there was a huge snake standing in the corner of the OR, overlooking everything.  And the snake said to her, "Everything's okay.  We have everything under control."  

*To learn more about Barbara Brennan's school go to: http://www.barbarabrennan.com

More Helpers
I've been doing MAP* work for a number of years which involves working with a team of specialists from the other side, spirit healers.  I'd opened a map coning before I went into surgery so I knew that I had my MAP team with me.  That made me feel very secure.  I said a prayer silently to myself and on the occasion of my thyroid procedure, invited those in the hospital room to pray with me so that we could all be aligned spiritually.  

The night before my myomectomy, I invited several women friends to come over.  We had prepared a room downstairs for me since I wasn't going to be able to go up and down steps for several weeks.  They all came in and did a healing and prepared me and stayed with me for a few hours.  That was very sweet.  One of the women said that she saw Isis behind me with her wings enfolding me. I felt very held, loved and supported during the entire experience.

*M.A.P: The Co-Creative White Brotherhood Medical Assistance Program, Machaelle Small Wright, 1990.  Perelandra, Ltd.  http://www.perelandra-ltd.com

The Warrior Wants to Know
During the most difficult times, what I discovered inside myself that kept me moving through this process was my desire to feel whole and be at peace with myself. In order to do this, I was compelled to heal my tumors. My desire to say, "I'm done, I'm healed, I've conquered it!"  It's the warrior energy that moved me forward.  It was imperative that I come face to face with the wild-eyed part of myself.  She was so buried.  Coming face to face with her and knowing that she wasn't just a figment of my imagination, but that she was me, in fact, myself.  That weekend home alone with myself and the soul retrieval were peak experiences for me.  One was on the diagnostic level and one was on the healing level.  

Illumination and Individuation
This process started with illumination, followed by denial, individuation, more denial - then, the wake-up call -- the call to action.  The whole journey, from 1966 to 1999, was a long process.  In 1966 I knew I was pregnant.  That was the beginning of being in crisis.  I was not going to have that child.  

Then, what ensued from there was a mythic journey of individuation.  Being a young woman, continuing college and discovering myself, often through relationships - none of which provided me with adequate security and love to feel that I could nest and have a child.  I never had that. And becoming impregnated by a "guidance counselor!" (What a cosmic chuckle!)

Call to Action
So, it was illumination, followed by denial, and an individuation process where my desire for stability in a relationship never succeeded.  The call to action was that it was time to get real.  Time to focus.  Time not to be so outer directed.  Time to go inside and take care of business at home.  That was the call to internal action.  And then full engagement, very much internally, which led to the external extraction, the surgery.

A Transformative Process
After the surgery, I would work with my physical therapist from time to time and she said there were no adhesions, the wound healed well.  It was real clean.  The surgeon had done a superb job. It retained its softness. 

So, it was extraction, followed by clarity, then reunion with the young woman, then the integration, and finally, the completion.The process of being with the dragon that weekend was a transformative process.  Because I was working with the pain, I was transforming at a very deep level.  I was not going into denial or suppressing it with Tylenol. I went in completely and met with it. And what a treasure awaited me! 

Today's Healing Challenge 
The healing challenges that stand before me now have to do with morphing my body into a form that would make me happier.   I have settled into being around forty pounds overweight and I don't think my body is very happy with it.  I think the blood pressure would naturally go down if my weight were down.  I do love fun clothes and now I'm a little limited to what I can wear.   For me, having had a slender figure up until 15 years ago, I do know what it's like to be trim, so there is a longing in me to reclaim a healthier me. Geneen Roth’s books have been helpful. 

The Stream of Well Being
On a daily basis, I'm trying to fill myself with more positivity.  Several months ago I read Lynn Grabhorn's book, Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting.  It's a fun, upbeat, easy to relate to book.  I went behind what she was saying to the inspiration for it, the Abraham teachings, and began to really listen to a lot of those channeled tapes.  (www.abraham-hicks.com) I deeply resonate with these teachings.  In fact, earlier in this interview I shared a little bit of it by talking about this eternal stream of well being that is flowing towards us at all times.  For me, a technique of reminding myself to have what is naturally mine is something that was said in one of the channelings, "Are you letting it in?"  I hear the voice, and the energy of that divine coaxer, and I create it within myself, "Am I letting it in?"  And I let it in.  

More and more I am triggering that flow so I am full with that and I know that by having that flow moving more I am digesting better.  I am nurturing better, and that's really key for me.  The blood pressure is tied into the pressure that I put on myself.  It's a self-imposed kind of thing.  That was fascinating to understand about myself.  That also came up in another soul retrieval that I did specifically on the blood pressure.  Wonderful, valuable information.  

Layers of Healing
We teach who we are.  We teach our own story.  When we tell stories as analogies for what we're teaching, sharing our own stories is a great vehicle.  We teach by example.  And we often teach what we most need to master. Someone wise once told me that and I think it’s true. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to share our own healing journey, it creates a trust in our audience, and an appreciation.  They go, "Oh, wow.  If you could have this awakening, I could too."  And because I've had it, I know they can too.  So, a relationship occurs that is a very heartfelt exchange.  It's authentic because you're teaching insights based on your own life’s experiences.

As I do that, I bring another layer of healing to myself.  Another layer of appreciation for the wisdom I've gained, which creates more and more love being generated in the cells of my body.

A Pivotal Time for Women
In the last 20 years, I've spent a great deal of my professional life working with women, through my reading, my own journey, and listening to their stories. There is such a pervasive low self esteem that underlies their disempowerment, their lack of trust, their fear, their unwillingness to do what they need to do to fulfill their desires, to get in touch with their dreams and to manifest them. 
That problem has been supported through the cultural mindset that we have been exposed to, referred to as the patriarchy, for thousands of years.  It is really encoded in us and passed down ancestrally from mother to daughter.   The sons and husbands, fathers and grandfathers have all been a part of it.  

We're at a pivotal time in history right now and have been on the cusp of it for awhile, where that's all being reexamined.  Some women are at the fore and are very deeply involved in their healing and making a commitment to help heal others.  I would consider myself to be one of those.  

I haven't focused as much on men, and I think in the new Center (Spring Haven Center http://www.springhavencenter.com) we'll have more opportunities to do that because men have their own healing to do-- the awakening and embracing of their own feminine, or feeling, intuitive nature.  I really see that what we're moving into right now is a new androgyny where both sexes need to incorporate the yin and yang energies within themselves in order to come into wholeness.  

I have seen women come into our Women Wisdom* (http://womanwisdom.com) program, which is a year-long training, convinced in the beginning that they were novices, that they didn't know anything, feeling anxious about the whole experience.  A lot of performance anxiety:  "Oh, I'm not going to be able to sing.  I'm not going to be able to dance.  I'm not going to be able to drum.  I'm going to ask stupid questions.  Will I make friends?"  And I've seen a transformation.  These women discover wonderful dimensions to themselves - find their voice.  They find their spirit.  They open up creative talents they never imagined they had.  They make friends where they may have been feeling lonely.  

Many women, when they go through shifts, find themselves not able to retain their old friendships because they're moving along and their friends aren't.  So they need to find new friends.  We provided an opportunity for that, for people to make friends.  That's been really nice.  

Empowerment
I've witnessed growth all the time, with women opening up, being able to express themselves more, and providing resources for them that they can use on a daily basis.  They are able to understand themselves better, to dialog with parts of themselves, able to understand their relationship to the greater cycles of nature, relationships with one another, and getting in touch with what they're really passionate about.  

Oftentimes we get letters back where women have changed their relationships, changed their careers, made huge shifts in their lives which they attribute to the resources that they gained during that year's journey with us in Woman Wisdom.  So we know that when they come in they'll be one way, and when they leave, more than likely, there will be a huge shift.  That's what I've seen - transformation.  More and more empowerment.  That low self esteem becoming considerably healed and women simply understanding themselves much better.  Making bold moves that maybe they had been talking about for awhile but had not been able to really do before. 

Many Stages
Healing is a process that has many stages, beginning with denial, and a wake up call.  At least for me that was true.  I think that healing is about coming out of denial.  It's about becoming conscious, and then making a commitment to engage in a process that must be nurturing in order to be successful.  Staying with it and riding it out.  And coming back to it when you forget, and staying with it again.  

The intent to heal is very important.  Just being aware that healing is needed is not enough. One has to really have the intent, passionately.  Otherwise, one would continue to sabotage and run away and compound the process.  

Let It In
For someone going through an especially challenging part of his or her healing process I would say, "Are you letting it in?  Are you letting in the universal stream of healing energy that is surrounding you fully at this moment with divine guidance and love - all that you need to take you through this experience and bring you that which you truly desire?  Are you letting it in?  Do you know that you have the right to ask for help?  Ask, and it shall be given."

Choosing Wellness
I think that when we sink into low self-esteem we don't feel we are worthy of healing so we beat ourselves up and make ourselves wrong for being in crisis in the first place, which compounds it.  If someone's in the midst of a healing crisis they may go through that.  They can move through that and get passionate about their desire to heal - and it could be asked as simply as "What feels better - being sick, or being in joy and health and wellness?  What feels better?"  It's a real simple choice.  We need to actively choose wellness.  Bring in intention and then put it out to the universe that you receive the inspiration and support from the outside as needed, so you don't isolate yourself.  

There were times, as I experienced in my journey, where I needed that alone time.  Then there were times when I needed to be in the hospital, or on the healer's table, or whatever.  And I was able to engage adequately in that process so that I could invite healing from all sorts of sources.  

Maybe you just pick up the right book and turn to a chapter and something is there on that page and you go, "Wow.  That clicks for me.  That's absolutely what I'm going through right now."  Having that change in consciousness is part of the healing, relative to whatever is going on.  

Presently, I’m studying the dynamic laws of creative manifestation – at a level far more fundamental and thrilling than ever before. Engage in the wonderful process of life where you learn to be a manifestor of miracles and you can be healed, regardless of what the issue is.