What We Resist Does Indeed Persist

Do you experience struggle in your life?

And how does that affect your children?

This past weekend, Oprah had clinical psychologist and conscious parenting expert Dr. Shefali Tsabary as her guest on her popular TV show, Lifeclass. In a segment on sibling rivalry, Dr. Shefali asked one of the parents who complained about the arguments between her boys what battles she had in her own life. Talk about cutting to the chase! This mother knew right away exactly what she meant. Instantly, we learned about her recent life and death battle with metastatic breast cancer. Her inner struggles were being reflected outwardly through the sibling rivalry between her children.

As Carl C. Jung says “What you resist, persists”, and those hurdles tend to show up in the lives of the people and environment closest to us.

Last December a study on the relationship between traumatic events and inheritance was reported by the BBC. “The findings provide evidence of "transgenerational epigenetic inheritance" which means that the environment can affect an individual's genetics, which can in turn be passed on.” Now science is beginning to see that our unhealed wounds may be showing up in the future generations that are born from our genetic inheritance. Now that’s an eye-opener to me!

There is another scientific phenomenon that I have recently learned about called microchimerism. Microchimerism is when two genetically distinct cell populations are found in the same individual. It happens most often from pregnancy. Scientists have found that fetal cells can linger in the uterus years after the pregnancy is over, whether by pregnancy loss or birth. These cells can be found in the mothers, twins, or even siblings born many years later.  

To apply that theory into perspective to my life, my grandmother had an abortion prior to the birth of my mother. It is very possible that the cells from the aborted pregnancy were not only in my grandmother, but also shared with my mother, her next child. I have recently learned that I may have had a missing twin in utero that miscarried early in my mother’s pregnancy with me. Do I carry cells from my lost sister in my body? The possibilities are incredible to think about. This is a different situation than transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, but both ideas raise the same questions:

• How much awareness do we have of our ancestors’ lives on a physical level?
• Is it an accident that my grandmother had an abortion and I, her grandchild, did also?
• Is there healing that I can do to minimize this possibility happening in my daughter or granddaughter or great grand-daughter's life down the road?

• Plus how much of my ancestors’ stress and trauma do I carry in my body and how much of that, plus my own, am I passing down to my own children?  

I don’t know the answer to these questions… yet. But I do know that what I take charge of and heal myself from not only helps me be a happier and aligned human being, it also has the potential to do that for my descendents as well.

Wherever our pain lies, in secrets or shame from our past, I believe the greatest hope for the future lies in healing ourselves first. And then, finally, what does not persist, cannot exist.

 

Namaste.

What I Know For Sure Too

Last week I promised you that I would reveal how Oprah is helping me to share the transformational journey that I have discovered in my healing from abortion. I am so excited to share my “aha” breakthrough with you today!

My favorite part of her magazine, O, is the last page entitled What I Know For Sure. This feature is generally about an awareness that she has personally discovered in the course of living her own life. In the August 2014 issue, she shares her revelations from the loss of her dear friend, Maya Angelou. The lessons she learned and the experiences that she has had from this tremendous loss in her life are shockingly similar to the experiences I have more recently felt over the loss of my daughter after my abortion. 

Oprah writes that although “The sense of physical loss is deep and real”…“I cannot tell you what a breakthrough it has been to open myself up to her spiritual presence. I feel her everywhere. In the breeze, in my voice, in every encounter, her spirit abides in me.”

 How stunningly beautiful!

And I know exactly how she feels. 

When I stopped denying my abortion and opened up to the possibility that my daughter (subsequently named Mary) had chosen me as her mother and knew that she would not be born at that time, I felt her presence almost immediately. I still remember being on my Project Rachel retreat, laying down a heavy rock that symbolized my deep desire to let go of the burden I was carrying from that experience. Within minutes of making the choice to lighten my load, Mary appeared to me in prayer – sweet, happy and loving with curly, dirty blond hair and deep blue eyes. I knew immediately that she was my child.


That was just the beginning of my transformation. After that day, I began to feel her presence at other retreats and quiet spaces. Even though I thought I was “done” with my abortion healing work, she made it clear that there was more to do. As time went on, her presence became more and more recognizable in my life. As I work and as I write, it is she and my grandmother who I feel so often by my side, giving me encouragement, wisdom and strength. 

Oprah writes next in that same article that “For years I’ve told people, ‘When someone you love dies, you now have an angel you can call by name.’” And she lets us into the story of her grandmother Hattie Mae, who she believes is the “head of her angel team.”

I believe we all have an angel team with us, guiding us along our path. How brave and bold of Oprah to reveal her belief in the same!

For myself, my angelic daughter Mary and my grandmother, Pauline, have helped me to transform my life from being spiritually and energetically dead to finding joy and freedom in life again. I would not have awoken from the life I was living without them. I also believe I would not be here today without them. I needed something big: "a neon sign so big and bold it couldn’t be ignored” type of deal, to be woken up from the numbness I was in and into the truth of who I could be. My angel team instigated an impressive sequence of events to bring me back to life.

In closing her lesson for this month, Oprah writes “I’ve always believed that death shows up to remind us to live more fully. Now I know it for sure.” 


As do I Oprah, as do I.

Namaste.