16 Months (don’t believe it)

My Healing Cabin in Canada.

REBIRTH

Every step was just plain sacred, a foot into the future, into the mystic, as Van Morrison might say. The Canadian woods and lakes nurturing me, the Healed Healer, the dreamer, the body in search of a miracle. 

So much space for meditation and prayer. Green silence, area aria, depth explosions in my gratified soul.

The days count down, homesick sometimes, but never, ever wanting it to end. So slow. I’m home in my body. Rebirth.

I knew what this experience was all about. Life had risen, on a crest of Grace and Generosity, to land me at The Healing Oasis in Canada, through fundraising and advanced sales for my professional services (how to deliver professionally on these commitments? Next blog!). Here I was: the opportunity to unplug and heal in a cancer treatment center in British Columbia. Hyperthermia treatments and infusions, farm to table chef prepared meals, a private lake, a cabin in the woods.

And, right after seven days of Dr. Joe Dispenza! Welcome to your meditation retreat in the Canadian woods. Now: practice.

Listen! Can you hear me sobbing deeply, allowing some buried trauma to sing it’s song in my newly stripped down soul? Without work, internet, without comfort eating, alone so much, with God, meditation and my thoughts, and the emotions would come like lava from a Hawaiian volcano, glowing, molten and inexorable. I often couldn’t tell if it was joy or sorrow, but it felt just perfect all the same. 

Climbing a nearby mountain. Diving into lakes and rivers. The treatments were five days a week, I tolerated them well. Hiking through forests, loons and kestrels, dragonflies and bullfrogs. I’m so far from home, and so deeply home in my healing heart.

There were seven of us, healing together. Some were in more pain than others, most were over 70, and at first I was lonely for more youth (and versions of me), but the loneliness was a sublime healing factor, my soul naked as pain, deep solitude glowing from my cleansed cells. 

Am I going to die? What has my life been? What is happening now, in this moment, this fear, this courage, flashing back and forth, my life so near and dear, and please please don’t let it go, please don’t take it from me. 

I swam in the misty mornings with my nurse, and I bonded with the chickens and goats, and just gave up the outside world for a bit. 

RE-BERTH

After three weeks, I had lost 20 pounds, and felt pristine. Yes, there was still pain in my bones, but I said this to myself: that pain was my body healing! Healing often evolves through pain to dissolve disease. The doctor at the Oasis told me for a few months my tests might be elevated, but they would go down. 

Comfortable with uncertainty? You better be. 

I wasn’t prepared for my entry back into LA. I grabbed comfort food again, I didn’t know how not to, and to begin doing work that was waiting for me (a smiling, sleeping bear). I started “going fast” again (no Shannon no!) as I tried to conquer challenges that only seemed to have grown while I was away. OK Shannon, remember what you learned, slow down. Put it all into place in the great reality hologram, and feel what’s real, and not that distracting void - a void that called to be filled with food, with media, with _______. 

Listen: I also received from unexpected places. A fundraiser was the highlight of everything. All of my teachers, clients and coach mentors came together to raise money for me. When I saw the event banner Aila Coats designed: these kind, wise faces - I felt so honored and loved. 

I began preparing the healthy food, doing the meditations, and integrating the lifestyle I learned into my SoCal existence. I loved my life so much. 

Life, Love & God: won’t you give me the time, more time more time, to create this mysterious new Shannon?

Inspired by the inner gatefold photo of the Joni Mitchell album "For The Roses"