Category: Memoir

What I Shared

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections2 Comments

Following up on my earlier post today, “Teach Your Children Well,” I wanted to share these two scenes from my memoir manuscript. After talking with my daughter and son about how our words can hurt others and have a lasting impression, I shared these stories with them for the first time. It was an emotional afternoon, but also a healing one. I am so grateful for the opportunity to help instill the importance of kindness and empathy.

From A Girl Named Truth (for “Sally” and “Timmy”):

There were some things I could not hide, like the food I brought for lunch in grade school when we were still vegetarians. In the cafeteria I would look around the table and watch my friends with their saran-wrapped sandwiches made with bread that reminded me of clouds, all soft, white and full of air. Between those perfect slices of bleached wheat, circles of pink baloney, or squares of pink ham floated atop squares of orange cheese. How I wanted to sink my teeth into those sandwiches!

Instead, I would open my lunchbox and pull out my waxed-paper bundle. My friends, in turn, would watch while I unwrapped thick slabs of my mother’s homemade bread. Peeking through the edges of the uneven slices, stems of alfa sprouts curled into tiny green fists.

One day, while I sat with my friends at the cafeteria table, one of them pointed at my sandwich, while wrinkling her nose. “What are those?” she asked, her fingers almost touching the sprouts that looked like they were struggling to grow out of a bed of bread.

“Sprouts,” I mumbled.

“Sprouts? What are sprouts?”

With the question, my face grew hot, as though I was suddenly standing, against my will, too close to an open fire.

“I don’t know,” I whispered looking down at my lunch, wishing by some grace of the universe, that it would disappear. “They’re kind-of like lettuce, only smaller.”

“Well they look like grass. What are you, a cow?”

The rest of the table erupted into giggles and a chant began, “Alethea’s a cow, Alethea’s a cow!”

The fire in my face flamed, while my eyes watered to quench it. My stomach, in turn, had closed to the prospect of taking another bite.

I never threw those sandwiches away.  Instead I wrapped their nibbled forms back into their waxed paper packages and handed them shamefully to my mother at the end of the day. She, in turn, would shake her head and ask, “Alethea, why didn’t you eat more of your lunch?”

 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

One spring day, when I was in the first grade, I made my first and only trip to the principal’s office. My victim was Timmy, a chubby boy with light blond hair and blue eyes hidden behind thick glasses. Timmy didn’t have any friends, and that day on the playground he sat, as usual, by himself on a bench while the rest of the school played around him.

I began recess on the swing-set with my best friend of the day, Stacy. As we soared over the ground, we giggled and made faces of disgust, pointing our fingers at Timmy, who studied the brown dirt beside his feet.

When we grew bored and hopped off the swings, Stacy whispered into my ear, “I dare you to go over to Timmy and tell him he’s fat.”

I hesitated, “Only if you go with me.”

So, together Stacy and I ran past Timmy, while crying out in nervous giggles, “Timmy, you’re fat! Timmy, why are you so fat?”

Timmy never lifted his gaze from the ground, and although he acted as though he hadn’t heard us, there was no way he could have missed our words.  Even the teacher on playground duty, whom we had failed to notice, caught our words as they skipped through the air.

“Alethea and Stacy,” she called after us, “Please come with me to the principal’s office.”

While I sat with Stacy on the bench outside the office, my stomach churred with guilt and fear. Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes as I contemplated the reprimand that awaited us. I had never before been sent to the principal’s office and all pervious reprimands at school had been for talking in class and passing notes. I felt awful for myself, and deep within my belly, I felt bad for Timmy, who was more like me than I wanted to admit.

I never teased Timmy again for being fat, instead I mostly watched, with the mixed pang of relief and guilt, when a child who wasn’t me suffered the ridicule of being different. I couldn’t, though, resist teasing Sally. It seemed no one could.

No one really liked Sally or wanted to be around her. Sally’s hair often looked unwashed and hung in stringy strands down her back. Sally wore glasses, and without them her eyes crossed. Most days, Sally looked like she needed a bath.

When we played tag, Sally was the one with cooties, and my friends and I would run away whenever she came near. If she touched us, we would have to shower under the hemlock tress until we were cleansed of her germs with an invisible cootie-wash.  The boys, in turn, loved to chase Sally with their homemade spitball guns, constructed out of lunchroom straws. Their ammunition was saliva soaked wads of paper, which they would shoot with their breath, hoping to land the dripping pulp on the skin, or even better, the glasses of Sally.

“Splat.”

“Got her,” the victorious boy would yell. My friends and I giggled nervously, while we peered over at Sally and the goo that covered the glass over her eye in dripping humiliation.

We stared and waited for Sally to wipe away the trail of slime as it slid down the side of her cheek.  Sally, though, never cried. Instead, she held tight her emotions like a seasoned soldier. It took me several years, after I had myself become a victim of almost unbearable humiliation, for me to truly regret my part in Sally’s torment.  Only then did I seek her friendship, which although was never close, lasted until we graduated high school and went our separate ways.

Teach Your Children Well

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

This morning, at the same time I was off-line erasing a page of my memoir manuscript into a poem about bringing lunches to grade school that were fodder for shame and teasing, a friend of mine was composing me a message about an unfortunate lunchroom experience regarding our daughters. It was not a joy-filled event, reading about my daughter’s unkind words and how they had hurt one of her peers. Things happen for a reason, the universe calls our attention to places where we need to focus our energies so that we can create opportunities for learning and shifting.

I sit writing this while listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Life is a circle of lessons premised on love. We learn from your children, they learn from us. Our greatest gift is to “teach them well.” This afternoon I will be sitting down with my daughter to talk about love and compassion. We’ll discuss the energy of words and how much it hurts when we are the recipient of an unkind word or action.  We’ll talk about how it’s okay to lead, as long as no one is left behind. That to be a true leader, one should lead with love that wraps and uplifts.  And we’ll talk about how it hurts ourselves, perhaps even more, when we hurt others. My daughter came home from school yesterday in a foul mood, and I knew something was bothering her from the events of the day, yet she chose not to share them with me.

When I was a child, I was shamed by my unconventional lunches. I looked at the slabs of nutrient-filled home-made bread only partially covering thick slabs of cheese and sprouts curling around the edges, and thought only about how much I wanted to throw my lunch away because my peers teased me. Yesterday, a child threw her lunch away because of my daughter. It breaks my heart. It brings me no comfort knowing that she is not the only child to do this in the lunchroom. Instead, it reinforces the need to teach my child well.

As most of us know, bullying starts from a place of fear. A child will bully to be popular. Children want to be loved and accepted by their peers (just as they want to be loved and accepted at home). I am comforted in the fact that I live in a community where many parents care enough to be involved in their children’s lives, and not to turn a blind-eye when their own child causes pain and suffering to others.

Now, I await the passing of hours until my daughter comes home off the bus, while I thank the universe for sending us this lesson and opportunity for growth. I hope that together we can shift this lunch-room atmosphere into a place of love and acceptance, that we will be joined by other parents and children who sit together and learn from each other in order to create an environment where everyone is treated with respect and compassion.

“Teach Your Children Well” — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Six Flying Geese #geese #birdmessengers #tarot

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Memoir2 Comments

DSCF2923

This morning, as I began my walk in the woods, I was greeted by six geese flying over me in a V formation. I had been thinking about Mother’s Day approaching, and what it meant in terms of my relationship with my mother. There had been, as I recall, a momentary feeling of wistfulness for a past celebration of the day spent with my mother and sister in a quaint country restaurant nestled amid gardens of flowers and herbs (and most likely an abundance of fairies).

There had also been the remembrance of a dream from the night before in which I had found myself at the dinner table with my childhood family. It was not a pleasant dream, and more than the content itself, I retained the feeling of angst and the struggle for voice and self-assertion.

The geese, I later realized as I opened Ted Andrews’ book Animal Speak, where another gift and messenger from spirit. The number six, he tells us, is symbolic of family and the home. As Rachel Pollack points out in her book Tarot Wisdom, the Rider tarot deck consistently depicts the number six as a card of “unequal relationships.” There is a hierarchy, predominantly in the form of male energy, that occurs within the suits, much like the environment in my childhood home.

Back to the goose as an animal messenger. The goose, as Andrews points out, connects us to the childhood imagination, and the magic of fairy tales (hence the story-teller “Mother Goose”). When we go back to the stories we loved as children, Andrews tells us, we rediscover our path in this life.

When I was a child, I read to escape into other worlds. My favorite books were tales of magic and the untempered imagination. Books by authors such as C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and L. M. Montgomery. Through these wonderful stories, I danced with fairies and traveled through time and space to connect with the invisible magic of the universe. I was more at home inside these pages than I was inside my house.

I also loved stories, such as the Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie series that had as their protagonists girls who not only ran wild and free, but also wrote. You could say, in part, these books that I devoured brought me to my soul’s truth.

Since the geese I saw this morning where flying as a group of six in the standard V-formation, I might also explore the symbology of the V shape. Andrews writes that it is symbolic of an opening, calling us to explore new directions and possibilities in our lives. For me, the V shape also points us to the creative feminine energies. It makes me think of the chalice and of the Queen of Cups in the Rider tarot deck, a card I have always felt closely aligned with, and which has spoken to me many times in spreads.

In the Queen of Cups card, we see a woman, a queen, sitting on a throne that appears to be partially on land and partially in water. She wears the blue of water on her dress and robe, the color of truth and the throat chakra. The robe is lined with hints of red that ties in a ball at her neck, hinting at a mastery of one’s base fears, and need for grounding. The queen holds a large (one might say, overly large) chalice in her hands as she gazes intently at its mystery. The chalice is yellow gold, like the crown on her head, the color of divine energy and personal power (the 3rd chakra). There is the sense, from the card, that once the queen learns and opens the gifts of her chalice, she will be fulfilled, she will find her power, and she will find balance. It is, I feel, a card for the creative self waiting to be discovered. A card for women with its symbol of the chalice held by the queen.

Andrews also writes in his section on the goose, that the bird and its feather can aid the writer’s quest, helping her to open her gifts within, and place them on the page. All this from six geese passing over this morning. If I had been too lost in thought, I might not have noticed them.

Ask yourself what you are not seeing throughout the day, take care to pay attention, to watch and listen to the many forms in which the universe speaks to us. You can only benefit from doing so.

How it all began

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections7 Comments
Hawk, show me my path
Hawk, show me my path

Last night, before bed, my son asked me, “Mom, do souls ever die?” Had he asked me this question six years ago, I may have given him a different answer. My own journey of spirit in this lifetime began with a childhood of doubt, and the silencing of my inner voice. Many of us begin our lives (in this incarnation) this way. Few, I suspect, have had the gifts of nurtured guidance from our caregivers, for our world has yet to fully embrace the untethered spirit.

I was born into an unhappy marriage between two young, hippie parents. The hippie lifestyle outlasted the marriage, but it was not a free, loving lifestyle. My “spiritual” edification was early and short-lived. When I was two, my mother fled with me and my sister to live on a series of Hare Krishna compounds for 6 months. Other than the comic books my mother kept, and a few other relics, nothing remains of this early life. It was a mode of escape and of hiding, a journey based on fear and not the quest to find spirit.

When I was growing up, my mother and step-father shunned organized religion, and I had almost no knowledge of biblical stories, or other religious texts. Mine was an agnostic household at best, tending toward atheism. Yet, I do recall my mother speaking about the possibility of reincarnation – a “concept” I secretly embraced, as it felt “true” to my soul.

When I prayed, I prayed silently to an unknown, untouchable God inside the muffled walls of my mind. My prayers were desperate and laced with my childhood fears of death and loss. When I thought of death, and my body and “mind” disappearing forever, my heart would leap into my throat.

This way of living went on for many years, well past the time I left my childhood home, despite the nudging of my spirit, which wanted to be heard. A spirit that struggled for the full-bodied voice of Truth. Despite fear’s best attempts to close my third eye, I was an empathic child with psychic gifts. Everywhere I went, I felt the imprint of energy. Unfortunately, I absorbed fear and and pain more than anything else.

My parents labeled me as a “moody,” “overly-sensitive” child, not realizing that I was an empath, and was absorbing and feeling their own fears, as well as the fear-energy that permeated my environment. This is not to say that I didn’t feel love and joy too, I did, and often I shared in the joy of others. Somedays, I would find my mind open to this energy. While sitting in my classroom, there were moments when I connected with a classmate’s inner joy. These were blissful, unexplainable moments for me, as my cells hummed with unexpected joy.

And, I had dreams. Prophetic visions that played out in the ensuing days that I learned to doubt. When I left home, the voice of spirit called louder, urging me to leave the path of ego I was following. In the summer before I began graduate school for a doctoral degree in the biochemical sciences, I was plagued with these visits, which I found terrifying at the time. As I drifted off to sleep, many a night (or day), I would wake suddenly to a loud voice, calling my name into the hollow of my ear. This desperate call to be heard went unheeded, I followed the path of ego for one more year.

It was a miserable year, of which I’ve written about to some degree in other posts. Had I not taken this path, though, I would not have learned its lessons. I would not, perhaps, have known how much it contrasted with my inner truth.

Yet, still I was lost. That 5-year-old girl who secretly knew she was born to write and help the world with her gifts, was still hidden in the cage of fear. It took, in fact, motherhood and IBS to bring her out into the light.

When we have our own children, we are given an opportunity to see a new perspective that extends beyond the limited view we may be used to. We also see the world through our children’s eyes. Again, the nudge of spirit came back to me with urgency.

Before my daughter was born, I knew she would be one of my big teachers in this life. About six months before her birth, she appeared to me while I slept. I saw her full round face, framed with the same brown hair as mine. My blue eyes were mirrored back at me, their shape larger and more pronounced.

My daughter learned verbal language early, and by the time she was two she was asking me some tough questions. While her father was at work, she would peer into my eyes, “If daddy is a doctor, what are you?” she would ask. “But, what are you?” she persisted when I told her I was her mommy.

Her words lingered and probed the recesses of my mind. What was I? Her questions dug under the detritus of fear.

By then, I had both of my children, who are less than a year-and-a-half apart in age. My life was consumed by the joys and stresses of motherhood, and it was laced with holes. I could not deny that I was, in many ways, miserably unfulfilled. Yes, I had always yearned for the time I would be a mother, but this was not a role that completed me. There were huge, undeniable gaps.

Still, I ignored them. After all, I had young children to raise, a busy, working husband, and the idea in my head that I would not let anyone else be the primary care-giver to my son and daughter.

Welcome in a new night-time messenger, this time in the form of IBS, which began suddenly and in painful earnest. Let me take a moment to talk about IBS and how it relates to fear and empathic tendencies. When we spend a great deal of our time feeling and absorbing energy from our surroundings, this energy often gets trapped inside of us, lingering and growing into a dark mass of fear that blocks our inner-light, and creates an energetic imbalance inside of us. The result is often a disease or dis-ease of some sort.

I was a child plagued by stomach ailments, so it should have been no surprise that I developed IBS (a common dis-ease of empaths). My mother (who is in the medical profession) was the first person to suggest this was what was causing my adult ailments – episodes of such intense intestinal discomfort, that I would be up for 3-5 hours during nights when it flared.

I shunned this diagnosis, which I found both embarrassing and unsatisfactory in its inability to be medically “cured.” Two years passed, during which I made trips to doctor’s offices, tried various antacids, had tubes shoved down my throat and blood tests, and passed many a day feeling completely depleted of energy, which made me unable to properly care for my children.

Then, on Mother’s Day of 2008, I had my last episode. You can read the story someday in my memoir (when it’s published), but for now, let’s just say, I had had enough. I was ready to heal. Healing from a dis-ease such as IBS, or any energetic imbalance, comes from a deep-soul-level desire for health. The mind, body and soul must sync in this desire and embrace the truth that we each, inside of us, hold the capacity to be healthy and balanced – that, in fact, this is our natural, steady-state. For more on this, you might want to read Deepak Chopra’s book Quantum Healing.

I may have not known, intellectually, why I was ready and able to heal then, but I knew I had made that determined choice. A change inside of me had occurred – I had decided to heal, and in the process, to finally, heed the desperate, loud calling of my inner voice.

Within a matter of weeks, I was looking at graduate schools with creative writing programs. And, painfully, for it was a struggle, I began to write – really write. That voice that was so deeply buried was starting to emerge. At the turn of the New Year, I packed my suitcase with a week’s worth of clothing, snacks and various other necessities, left my two young children in the primary care of their father, and headed two hours north to a small town in Vermont.

Goddard College, was, in so many ways, the doorway to my voice. Here, for the first time, I was in an environment that felt like home. I quickly found 5 soul-sisters, and a setting where my spiritual and creative voice could sing without fear. Those two years, filled with the challenges of balancing motherhood and being a full-time, low-residency student, were the happiest, to-date, years of my life. There was no turning back. I had embarked, finally, with eager and unwavering feet, along the path of my soul’s truth.

When we find the bliss of our soul’s truth, how can we turn back? I can’t say that after I left Goddard, and the structure of regular deadlines, which “forced” me to write, that I have maintained a steady forward trek. Everyday life has a way of taking over when we let it. Now, though, I stop to listen, take inventory, and find a way to get back on the path.

When I look back at what where I have been in the last five years, I can hardly say I’ve been sitting still, or going “back-wards.” I have not only written many lines, I have nurtured and grown my spiritual calling and path. To help heal others, I have learned, we must heal ourselves. This isn’t to say that we have to be completely “healed” of fears, for this takes most of us many lifetimes, but we need to have an understanding and acceptance of the fears that have a tendency to make a home inside us, and we need to work at healing and letting them go.

Along with Goddard, and the many individuals and gifts I encountered by being there, I have met, and continue to meet wonderful healers, teachers and fellow soul-travelers. This part of my journey began with conversations with a friend, whom I met while our daughters were in preschool together, and gradually grew to include various energy healers, gifted intuitives/psychics and teachers of spirit, and soul-travelers who have merged into my life. When we open ourselves up to our spirit’s truth, doors open to the teachers and companions we need and seek. The world, suddenly, becomes unbounded and filled with the magic of discovery and joy. There is no looking back, except for remembering how far we have come, and the lessons we learned to get here.

May you, if you have not, find your own way to travel your soul’s truth, for it is the only, “true” path, to bliss.

The Muse

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

While I form the narrative of a young adult novel, I find myself pondering the muse in its varied, colorful forms. Realizing, as I do, that the muse extends to life itself. Let me first take you back to the night. In the realm of dreams we set the scene for our days. During sleep our mind strays to far-off places, playing with scenes like a mad artist. Or, at least mine does.

I’m not going to dwell on the metaphysics of dreams in this blog (I’ve dabbled in this area in previous posts), I simply want to relate how one’s dreams set the stage for one’s day. When we wake in the morning we carry the residue of our dreams like a sticky syrup, which never fully washes away. Because of our dreams we start our days feeling grumpy, groggy, out-of-sorts, content or in a state of eager joy, ready to embrace the day’s gifts.

Here is where our day begins, with the sap of the dream-muse. Sometimes it’s delightfully sweet and we savor its taste for as long as we can, and sometimes it’s bitter and bothersome. I spend many a morning wishing I had experienced more joy in my dreams, yet some mornings I have greater success removing their sticky residue. On these days I remember that I am, after all, the writer of my own script.

Which, brings me back to writing. So, I’m writing my first Y/A novel, and I have found I am not a writer who works by scripting, in advance, the entire plot, from beginning, to middle, to end. I didn’t even do this with my memoir. Writing, for me, is an adventure of trust. It’s about taking the risk of not knowing what will come next, yet trusting that the next will appear at some point. On a good day, on a day when I open myself up to the muse of life (and writing), I find what I am looking for and what I need. The muse is always waiting to be let in when I quiet my mind and open the door.

Yet, the muse is not always what we might expect, or think we want. We writers know how it can take us to unexpected places, some of which are quite shocking and uncomfortable. Our muses can lead us to our darkest secrets, or the darkest secrets of our characters. And, they can also lead us to limitless joy or help us find the next leg in our journey or narrative. So, while it behooves us to allow the muse to enter into our minds and into our daily activities, it also behooves us to remember who writes the final draft.

Perhaps we’re not quite ready to look under that boulder we’ve stubbornly placed in our path for so long, perhaps we only want to nudge it a couple of inches. Or, likewise, perhaps we don’t want our characters to morph into unruly and wild creatures who will scare readers away. Then, we simply take the reins back, draw in the slack and tighten our grips a little. The muse, after all, knows no limits. It’s free and without restraint. When we allow it to ramble it can skip and dance us all over the place.

I’ll confess there are days when I want to follow the muse deep into the forest (both literal and metaphoric) until I lose myself in its mysteries, but there’s always the mundane (joys) of life waiting to be attended to. There are meals to cook, children to feed, clothes to be washed. And, there’s that idea of a book tame enough to be shared.

Love

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections4 Comments

It’s one of those words that is as complex as it is simple. Love. Last night, in the moments before sleep, I thought about love, and what it has meant to me in this lifetime. Overcome by a sudden wave of emotion, I realized my soul was asking me to release still more of the dense energy that I have accumulated as a barrier to allowing a complete, unobstructed flow of love energy.

Although I work with the energy of love to heal others, I am also still healing myself. Even though love is the ultimate state and expression of the free soul, many of us carry with us the energy of fear. We are, quite simply, afraid to open up completely into what our egos tell us is the vulnerable state of love. We fear rejection. We fear that we will give love unconditionally and it will not be returned, or worse, we fear we will be betrayed by our love. Our fear creates patterns that are hard to break.

As a child I accepted that love was something that must be earned, even at the sacrifice of my inner truth. I wanted, like all children do, to be loved at all costs. To whom I gave my love to was a choice that I thought was not my own. As a result, love turned into a concept that was muddy and confusing. Love, for me, was complex and dangerous, and it often resulted in pain.

I traded love in for loyalty. I traded love to survive. Yet, still I loved in my desperate and silent way, sacrificing my inner-self along the way. I found myself loving the “wrong” family members, the “wrong” pet, the “wrong” friends and the “wrong” boys, and as a result I welcomed in the greedy energy of betrayal and pain. I was an easy target. When we consistently send out the message of, “I love you, but I must not deserve your love in return,” or “I want to love you, but I am afraid to,” we cannot fully receive the pure energy of love without the trappings of fear.

Through fear we impose a complexity to love that does not exist when love is in its pure, unconditional form. Although love is the highest, purest frequency of energy that exists, it often takes great courage to live in it fully. We, as humans, have complicated our world with fear and all its restraints and conditions. Breaking away from them can make us feel vulnerable, when, in reality, it opens up our inner strengths. It frees our trapped voices. It leads us to our pure, divine, essence.

When we embrace the truth that love is our truth; that love is our divine right to give and receive in pure form, we open ourselves to all of its gifts. Through the family I have created I have learned (and am still learning) this lesson. Love ripples back. It attracts to equal frequency. Pure, unconditional love, frees the soul’s truth. When we get there, we realize there are no constraints. We realize that there is no rejection or pain. We realize that it does not matter that our love cannot always be “returned” to match our frequency, not because we are unlovable, but because a fear exists that may not be our own.

Love, in reality, opens doors, it breaks barriers. When we live in the frequency of love, we free not only ourselves, but raise the collective energy of the world, helping to release the sticky web of fear.

Toxic Energy

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections6 Comments

 

 

Sometimes in life we encounter energy that is so wonderful, it transforms us into a state of pure joy. While in that energy, and hopefully for sometime after, our own energetic vibration is raised to match the frequency of the being that is emanating this bliss. This could be a person, a group of people, an animal, or even a place in nature. I need only to walk into the woods with an uncluttered heart, and I feel lighter and happier than I was when I left my house. The energy of love is always nearby, we just need to allow ourselves to tune into it.

Sadly, some people are so consumed by their lower vibrating emotions that they rarely, if ever, allow themselves to harmonize with the frequency of joy, or, what I like to call, pure love. The lower vibrating energies of anger, fear, hate and pain weigh our bodies down, and they leave their shadows behind, even when their source as moved elsewhere. Have you ever walked into a place, even if it is devoid of people, and felt an over-whelming sadness, or maybe even a flash of anger? I remember years ago, walking along the trail of an old battlefield and feeling consumed with despair, even though it was a bright sunny day. I was having a nice outing with my husband and young children, and had no logical reason to be suddenly sad. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was feeling the energy of grief and despair left by people who had lost their lives at that site, lingering, still, centuries later.

For those of us particularly sensitive to energies, we easily reap the rewards of being around high vibrations, but also suffer more from energy that is dense. In some cases this energy is even toxic to our beings. This has been a tough lesson for me to learn, and I am, to this day, still dealing with how to know when to remove myself from energy that feels toxic to my body and soul. And, then, there is the question of how to cut the cords.

As I suspect is true of most empaths, I could safely say I started feeling and absorbing the energies around me even before birth. Studies have show that an emotionally and/or physically stressed pregnant mother is more likely to have a baby that is colicky, under-weight, and/or will suffer from emotional dis-ease in life.

 

If a child is brought into the world knowing the energies of fear, and then finds that her world outside the womb is filled with the same, she will need to figure out, instinctively, how to survive inside an environment that is in many ways toxic to her health. I use the world health in the broadest sense possible.

Those of us who know, too well, what it is like to live in energies derived predominately from fear, are likely to have a more difficult time cutting their toxic cords. Until we learn that these energies cannot have a hold on us, unless we allow them to, we will continue to encounter their desperate grasp.

I find this idea complicated by having a family and being in circumstances where I need to recognize how a situation, or an individual(s), is affecting no only me, but my young children, and sometimes, my husband. I find myself asking the questions: Is this person or situation only toxic to me? How are my children reacting when they are around this energy? Is there a benefit to being around this person or in this situation, and, if so, does it out-weigh the cost(s)?

Here is where it gets particularly tricking, because I truly believe that underneath all that heavy energy, there is pure love. If I allow myself to enter a meditative state and align with the soul energies of people who appear toxic in my life, I am able to see them in their true essence, and always their higher-selves vibrate in the energy of pure love. Yet, this alone does not solve the dilemma of what to do in this life with the dominate energies we allow ourselves to receive from these people and circumstances.

I have learned to wear stones and crystals, to seal the holes in my energy field, and, if need be, to clear the imprints of dense energies, yet I have to admit, I would prefer not to. I’d love to life in a world where I only encounter (and, I should add, send out), the frequency of love. Sadly, this world, on Earth, does not yet exist.

As I write this, I long for an easy, or at least a clear-cut answer. Perhaps it is there and I have yet to find it. For me the answer is complex, as there is always a loss. Someone will often suffer from whatever decision I make (at least in my mind), and I suspect it’s that nagging guilt that I so easily align to, that keeps me from making a clean separation.

 

The Number 5

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir1 Comment

When the number 5 comes into my life, whether in dreams, a memory, or as a number that appears throughout a particular day, I think of self-empowerment, independence and the “free soul” (as Denise Linn refers to the number in her book, The Hidden Power of Dreams). When I think of the number 5, the color blue comes to mind: the color of the throat chakra, self-expresison and inner truth.

The number 5, of course, also represents a physical age. When we are 5, we are, ideally, just coming into the expression of our independence and personal truths. By the age of 5, most of us are able to feed ourselves, tie our own shoes, go to school, and express our minds with clarity and conviction. A 5 yr. old child is still close enough to the world of spirit to remember, to believe and to see.

When one wishes to heal and reclaim his or her Inner Truth, it is often beneficial, if not essential, to reclaim the inner child. I have found that the age of 5 is a good place to start. There have been many events, and numbers in the form of ages, that have been essential to my own life journey, and for the healing of my inner truth, but I can think of none more important than 5. Let me share a snapshot of this child who still lives inside of me.

Picture, if you will, a pretty little girl with deep blue eyes and wavy hair the color of ripened wheat resting past her shoulders. She has the round cheeks of a baby and a dimple on her chin, and, sometimes, she has a smile that lights up her face. The little girl, Alethea, has just moved to Henniker, NH with her  mother, older sister, and a man who is trying to replace the father she has left behind in Oregon.

Alethea loves playing with her dolls and her two cats. She loves her best friend in kindergarten with the soft brown eyes and curls, her sister and her mother, but she’s not sure she loves her new father. Alethea misses her small white house in Portland with its TV and indoor toilet. She misses her friends and her grandparents, but she knows she is not supposed to miss the father they left behind.

The little girl knows inside her heart that fairies play under the clusters of star flowers, but she has already forgotten how to see them. The magic of her world is fading quickly, being replaced by fear, secrets and doubt. By the time she turns 6, Alethea forgets she has her own voice.

This 5 year old child, in many ways, shaped the woman I became. She is the little girl I see when I need to heal my inner child. The more I heal, the more radiant she becomes. Now, instead of a  small child hovering inside the shadows of doubt and fear, I see a magnificent little girl full of joy and love. She sparkles with possiblity. She sings with the clear voice of her truth.

Reclaiming the “free soul,” is a journey of many steps. Sometimes when one aspect is healed, another appears to take its place, reaching with desperate hands for light. Healing can come in many forms. Writing is one of them. If you want to learn who you are, a good place to start is by rediscovering who you were at 5.  Write down everything your remember. Write what you loved. Write what you feared. Write your sorrows. Your joys. Write what you believed in. Write your truth.

I was a Gypsy

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir3 Comments

This post was inspired by Karen Kubicko, who will soon publish a book on past lives called, Life is Just a Another Class: One Soul’s Journey through Past Life Regression. Visit her blog at: http://karenkubicko.wordpress.com/

When I was in the process of writing my memoir, I discovered a manilla folder stashed away in a pile of memorabilia my mother had kept from my childhood. It was like opening the heart of the five year old girl named Alethea (for Truth) Eamon (for the boy her father wanted her to be). Here, were crayoned drawings of the life I once tried to manifest. A brown shed-like building with black framed windows became a warm home with smoke curling out of the chimney, with over-sized tulips and irises in the yard. In another drawing, a platform of rainbow wood became the play-set my step-father had promised to build me, but never did. 

My will to manifest my perfect world at five failed me, I realized as I flipped through the drawings. Already, at five, I was a child wrapped tightly in the arms of fear and secrets. My reality was the reality my parents were creating. We had just moved three thousand miles away from the extended family I was being asked to forget, and the father I was told never wanted me. I started kindergarten that year, shyly befriending the girl with soft brown eyes and Shirley Temple curls, and coveting the perfect life I know she led inside her department store clothes. For the first several months, my new home in New Hampshire was a teepee, my bathroom a hole in the ground, and then an outhouse made of pine.

I won’t tell you about the plants that looked like tomatoes. I won’t tell you about the man I was learning to call “Dad.” Those stories are part of the larger story of The Girl Named Truth. Instead, I’ll tell you about the five year old child with the deep blue eyes that couldn’t hide her sadness. I’ll tell you about the life she held onto.

There is one picture in the folder saved from my mother that fills me with joy. A picture that became a piece of a puzzle that is helping me to remember one of my favorite, empowered past lives. When we are young children, before we completely absorb ourselves in our new life, we often retain memories of our past lives. In the picture I drew, there appears a happy child with pigtails, wearing a wide red smile over a dress bursting with color. Above my crayoned-self, I wrote the words, “Alethea I was a Gypsy.”

I used to have a bright red fabric hat inlaid with embroidered mirrors threaded in the colors of the rainbow. Some days, when I found myself alone, I would don that magical hat and dance inside another world. A world where I was happy and free.

Thankfully, this life has never left me. Growing up I would cling to memories that were like beautifully painted landscapes vivid in their colors and the peace they remembered. As I grew older, so did that gypsy girl. She became a woman with rippling waves of hair secured loosely with a silk scarf. The dresses she wore lengthened and filled the space around her legs as she danced in her world of beauty and light. Always she would appear, a brief flash of brilliance, filling me with joy, in a moment of need. Reminding me that she was still there, living inside of me.

Only recently I realized I was her. A few months ago I did a past life regression during a psychic class. Before I regressed, I pleaded with sprit to bring me a happy life. I didn’t want another life of repression mirrored back to me, even though I knew those were the ones needing to be healed. When I closed my eyes and breathed into meditation, I found myself inside a temple shaped like a pyramid. I was, I realized with gratitude, a woman (many of my painful past lives have been as a man). And, I was a gypsy. On top of my long hair appeared a white scarf, and my body was draped with a flowing dress.  I was dancing, as a part of a circle of women. Feelings of joy and love filled my heart. I didn’t want to leave.

The House as a Metaphor in Dreams

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Memoir, ReflectionsLeave a comment

I often dream of houses, I always have. Sometimes I wake in awe of the beauty of the architecture of my dream-world homes, wishing at these moments that I was painter. Wondering, at other times, which homes I am remembering from a past life.

Metaphorically, though, there is always something to take away from a dream house or building. When I find myself in a home rich with architecture and vivd colors, I am reminded of the rich tapestry of the soul’s truth. I am bounded only by imagination. We are all bounded only by our inner truths.

And, sometimes, we are inhibited only by our own fears. My fears manifest in houses that become mazes of rooms without exits, bathrooms without walls, and crumbled architecture. Last night, I found myself in a farmhouse with ample room, yet I yearned for one more room where I could entertain. I walked out of the kitchen (the heart of the home/soul) and found myself in the perfect room. It was large. It was empty. There were four walls joined into a rectangle.

As I contemplated my room I realized what was missing. The floor was not a floor, but rather the bare ground covered in grass. The ceiling, an open sky. The door and windows, merely frames. How, I wondered, was I going to fix my room? What would be the cost? Was it something I could afford?

I agonized in my dream-state, grabbling with this obstacle, not letting myself see how simple the solution was. With little effort though, the walls could come down. A “gentle” reminder that sometimes I/we get caught up in the superficial aspects of life, neglecting the true essence of our beings. Sometimes it is hard to let go. Even in my dream, I wanted both. I imagined large skylights in the ceiling, once I found a way to put one in.