The work of healing
Dr. Katherine Willow’s monthly diary
It’s a Sunday morning at the dining room table. I am typing with half an ear open for one of our Healing House guests who is resting in bed and needing much support. Our other guest is getting ready to go to church in high spirits and will then spend a day away.
There is a NaturYoga retreat hosted by Kaia Nightingale going on that I will join soon while Kim, one of the HH hosts that trained with us, caretakes our guests. And then grandson Felix comes home after visiting his parents over the weekend.
Life is rich and full. In trying to summarize where I’m at for this blog, I suddenly realize that the violent visions that I used to have constantly for decades are almost totally gone. They happen maybe once a week instead of several times an hour. Which is why I have so much more energy—I’m not always working to suppress my thoughts. It’s typical that I would forget this. I see the same thing with patients: when they feel well they don’t want to think about illness, to the point where they often tell me there are “no changes” after their major symptoms have disappeared!
It will be interesting to touch base with homeopath Dr Veronika Zhmurko to see where we go next now that this layer seems done. Even my chronic poor digestion is better–and it is usually worst in the summer! And I don’t feel compelled to take an afternoon nap every day (although sometimes I still do). With constitutional homeopathy, one works off layers of dysfunction/symptoms back to one’s original essence. Veronika is also helping me with the profoundly difficult symptoms of our current guest and is confident that they can be minimized.
With therapist Deb Boldt I am working on resolving relationship issues. This feels like the hardest thing yet and revolves around my not having good boundaries and trying to please others over taking care of myself—and then getting angry at the others when I feel stretched! I suspect this is related to “never feeling good enough” and unconsciously assuming that I have to overcompensate so that people will like me in spite of my deficiencies. It will be amazing to be free and clear of this old pattern and who knows what my energy will do then!
In short, I am finally growing up, a process that has been blocked by the trauma reaction. It explains why I’ve always felt so uncomfortably young–my maturation was delayed as a teen. Now I can finally move into feeling like an adult. It’s all a bit strange at times to be changing this much, but on the other hand it feels like who I’ve always been underneath the baggage.
On a totally different note, I have a cataract in my right eye. In German New Medicine this is considered a healing process and I’m developing a program to dissolve it in the year I’ve been given by the eye doctor before I need surgery. Luckily I have a holistic optometrist, Estelle Saunders, who is coaching me with gentle caring. I’ll share my program in the August newsletter.
A lot of effort is going into my healing these days, taking advantage of the issues that organically come up at midlife. I see it as an investment in my older years, so that as I clear out or rebalance the negatives, maintenance will be relatively easy and I will be able to focus more (and in a healthy way!) on people and projects outside of myself. Also, I should theoretically live longer if I am healthier and have more years to contribute back what I’ve discovered. I feel very fortunate to be able to do this work.
