Last week I had dinner with an old friend who is here in Singapore visiting her grandchildren who by an interesting coincidence live just up the road from me. As she prepares for retirement from her role as a medical professional, she is making a commitment to being as healthy as possible so that she can enjoy it. I asked her who were the most interesting people she had met during her life and career that has spanned Europe, the Middle East and Australia with two marriages and two children.
Her reply astounded me.
Many years ago, she had met and treated a pair of twins who, as children, had been experimented on and tortured by Dr Josef Mengele in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Unlike their parents, they had been saved from the gas chambers, only to be tortured in a fate worse than death. Despite this terrible experience, they were the sweetest old ladies you could ever meet, surrounded by their loving community living full lives, and in total rejection of the darkness that they had endured.
As Neitzsche said, “When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
But, as these twins demonstrated, you don’t have to accept that abyss - you can live an amazing life despite passing through the shadows. The people that survived the camps fell into two groups; those that embraced freedom and took advantage to live the best lives that they could, and the others that remained mentally and emotionally trapped in the cage from which they had been physically liberated from.
Generations on from that horror, the grandchildren & great grandchildren of those survivors are dealing with the epigenetic inheritance. The generational impact on the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health and wellbeing continues. There are those that want to punish and those that want peace. And some that want both.
That brings me to the subject of the death of drama.
A serious health issue came up for me at the end of June, and I spent some time in India being treated in an amazing hospital - and my treatment continues until the end of November. Once I’ve completed the treatment and confirmed I’m well then I’ll be writing more.
This is why I’ve been absent from posting to this blog for a while.
What I can talk about is the shift in perspective I’ve had with turning my focus away from the writing and transformation coaching I do, onto my own health.
The most recent leg of my journey really started last November in Bali when I went to do some healing work with the incomparable Zapheria Bell. We worked on clearing the generational trauma inherited in my maternal line. My first three #1 Amazon bestselling books were written about the generational trauma on my father’s side and how it impacted the mental and emotional health of my family and myself.
And as it turns out, generational trauma impacts our physical health too.
When parents and grandparents consistently scold a child, the child doesn’t stop loving them, but it does stop loving itself.
The major realisation I had in working with Zapheria was that the generational trauma had blocked me from receiving and accepting love.
The cage that I had created for myself as a child and had been living in for fifty years was that I wasn’t worthy of love, and that love came with unacceptable surrender to emotional abuse. This realisation made me physically ill, and I spent 8 hours celebrating my birthday in a five-star hotel with Zapheria, by throwing up.
The integration of that realisation has taken me an entire year. My time in hospital in India was such a gift to myself, and it gave me plenty of time for contemplation.
And in that contemplation I realised that the reason I had ended up with my health issues is because the person that I had been most blocking myself from receiving love from, was myself.
I had neglected my own health because the cage of drama that I had created was based on a foundation of not loving myself.
The greatest gift we can give ourselves is the death of drama.
The drama that we’ve been trapped in since childhood.
I’m going to be re-launching my Ready-to-Rise program in January 2025, and later in the year I will be launching the followup to Ready-to-Rise. It is going to be called “Activation - the Death of Drama”.
I will only have capacity for four new clients, so if you’re interested in joining me then Contact Me, or head to my website.
Part of this journey of learning to love myself has opened me up to new collaborations with other amazing folks on a similar path to me, and I’ve birthed a new podcast. If you want to hear more about my journey check out my latest podcast collaboration with the amazing Nadia Ralli.