Caregivers

Having just turned 81 two days ago, I still have much to learn. Today, I listened to a free session on colds, flu and the like, and tapped along with the EFT expert invited by Jessica Ortner, who first learned about EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques's Tapping Solution) when she was deep in bed with a nasty flu. I got some insights that I want to note, although I am already free of some of the beliefs addressed on Nick and Jessica Ortner's site.

For example, I no longer believe I have to get the Christmas Cold. I haven’t had a headache worth mentioning in years, or even much of a cold - with a couple of exceptions, as when I was briefly at Friends’ House in Toronto a few years ago to take some course or other and Judith Amundsen looked after me so beautifully. Rita Woods came to my rescue on another Toronto visit. Both loving, smart homeopaths.

Now I have to remember next time I go to the Big Smoke to cloak myself with Light when diving into a large bowl of a few million beings radiating all kinds of vibes. I wish I had known about that when teaching in large high schools, but I had no idea then.

Up here in Muskoka, a place with a heritage of healing, I do not pay attention to all those tv ads that assume we are going to get sick. And there are a lot of them for me to close my eyes to. I don’t take the flu shot because after the confusion a couple of years ago it wasn’t clear how beneficial or how harmful it might be.

Patterns of Illness
The EFT expert on the Ortner recording did bring out the question of patterns of illness from childhood. When I was seriously ill, very young, I picked up on my mother’s anxiety a lot. There was something positive in the air too - probably my angels and guides and God, that brought me, and her, through.

When of school age I had chronic colds. This could have been through allergies to coal dust, milk, who knows. It got so I felt punished more than cherished because of Mom’s repressed resentment of having to look after me, as her mother had looked after her younger sister Amy, who was “always ill”. As a young widow, Grandma had a lot of anxiety because of the death of little Henry at two, of diphtheria. She didn’t want to lose any more children. Mom resented Amy, who she thought was a sissy and a spoiled brat hypochondriac.

Sadly, after her marriage Mom developed asthma, and had severe attacks. The steroids prescribed for that may have affected her heart. She died in her early sixties. Amy died younger than that of cancer, probably contracted when painting airplane dials with radioactive chemicals during WWII. Several of the women on that job gave their lives, years later, for the war effort, although it was never proved, that I know of. Mom’s and Amy’s father died young of cancer, so it was also in their background. Two of their brothers also died of cancer, perhaps the third one too.

Now that I look back at my own childhood pattern of illness, I felt partly punished, partly cared for when ill. I kept myself busy with Book of Knowledge, building with toy logs or minibricks or Orphan Annie’s student flying kit, or dolls. Tried not to be a nuisance. I eventually lost the ability to know for sure whether I was sick or not, or to tune in accurately to my body. I kind of took over my mother’s questioning attitude: “Are you really sick or are you just imagining or pretending?” It became more and more difficult to know as I grew into adulthood.

During my first year of  teaching I was living in Midland and coming back to Toronto on weekends. I still had a room in my parents’ house. One weekend it became evident that I had caught the measles - again. Mom expressed quite frankly how she felt about nursing me and bringing me my meals for a whole week. “Your home is not a place to come to when you’re sick.” Huh? I covered up the deep hurt feeling at hearing this with a hardened, cynical decision to re-wonder how welcome I was in my parents’ house. Not. Less and less over the next few years until after my marriage to Paul, when I became kind of acceptable.

Going through a session of tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) can bring out all kinds of old stuff that it is high time to address. What was I to think about the remarks Mom used to throw me while I was at university, like, “This is not a hotel”? “Everything was fine until you came home.” I heard that more than once when arriving right after classes at the university - late or early afternoon. This could have been the kind of refrain that kept me away a lot too, and reinforced the other criticism often thrown my way that “Home is not just a place to hang your hat”. In my final year, when I had to get decent marks, I had to study in the library, and came home in the evening after it closed, because otherwise I would have been yanked from my books to do household tasks regardless of essay and exam deadlines.

Now every time that sort of memory floats up to the surface like a dead body, thanks to the power of EFT, I can also use the mantra of Ho’onoponopono for healing and cleansing. I don’t know what I did to arouse all that family anger, and it doesn’t matter. I just say, “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” I’m saying that with compassion to me and everyone involved in the memory, no matter where they are now.

Before I married Paul in 1964, I was really ill with pneumonia, with repeated colds and flu and from that typhoid shot that left me feeling I was going to die. I arrived on my first visit to Europe, skin and bones. Paul took over as my care-giver. I got a lot better over the years of my marriage, but still got lots of colds and flu and migraines. I would wake up at night to find him standing over me with a remedy for coughing, which had awoken him (a light sleeper with apnea that was never diagnosed).

After Paul died in 2005 at the age of 87, I was on my own, and it was my turn to look after me. Thanks to his loving memory, I got better and better! Less worry about him, about me. Headaches disappeared. Colds and flu had less power. I could picture him coming and caring about me, and that was an enormous comfort. I no longer feared punishment if I did fall ill. I accepted myself when I did. EFT is a great help there with, “Even though .... , I love and accept myself.”

Right now I have a cold that I had put on the back burner and tried to ignore. Doesn’t make it go away, just disguises it. I realized it was interfering with my treatment for sleep apnea, recently diagnosed. Thanks to a session of EFT to point out that this a good time to face any buried resentments and fears and also to apply tried and true self-healing approaches to enhance the effect of CPAP treatment for sleep apnea.

I have tools for health: my own wise mind or higher consciousness, my guides in spirit - Sai Baba, my spirit guides, angels, archangels. I know something of EFT and can practice Ho’onoponopono, to sweep away dark, clinging junk from the past and from others, and to clear the house or temple that is my body, mind and spirit letting in more and more Light and Love.

http://www.thetappingsolution.com/
http://www.self-i-dentity-through-hooponopono.com