Not long ago, I traveled to Sedona, Arizona, with a couple of friends. I`d heard that it was a really beautiful place with natural healing energy, and since I`d decided to name my new counselling centre, the Sedona Counselling Centre of Montreal, I thought I`d better go and see what it`s all about.
Sedona is a special place. Most of the people you meet are from somewhere else and they`ve come to the town on a healing journey. The outcome of that is that whomever you come in contact with wants to talk with you about what they`ve learned about life. So the waiter, Raymond, shared his life wisdom, as did the shoe sales person, named Shadow, who talked about only surrounding herself with people who have a positive vibe.
But the highpoint of my trip was my massage with Chris. Chris comes from New York, like me, and speaks with a strong Brooklyn accent - what I jokingly describe as English the way it was intended to be spoken. As soon as she opened her mouth, it felt like home. Usually, I don`t like to talk when I get a massage, but with Chris, talking came easily and we quickly started to share our life journeys.
I told her about the sudden and unexpected end to my
marriage four years earlier when my husband left what I believed to be a happy marriage. She asked if I was over it. I said,
Yes, in many ways, but I still can`t get over the anger when I think about how he treated me. Chris knows a few things about being hurt and she started to talk about
forgiveness. I told her that it sounded good in theory but, as yet, I couldn`t get there.
She started kneading the tight muscles in my back with a lot of vigor and then half-shouted, Throw love at him! C`mon, Vikki! It`s kindergarten! People in the next room must have wondered what was going on, because I laughed so loudly and she started laughing, and the massage became more therapeutic than just relaxing sore muscles. She made what had seemed to be such a big deal into something as easy as A, B, C!
Women who have been abandoned often ask me about forgiveness. Is it necessary to forgive to completely heal and how to go about that? I've not known how to answer them, not feeling the need to forgive what my husband did to me, or maybe not wanting to. But laughing with Chris that day in Sedona, I realized that I need to make a choice to be emotionally free and walking around with residual anger is not freeing.
So I started to toy with the idea of doing what Chris suggested - throwing love at him - and it seemed to make sense. I remembered Shadow saying that she chooses to surround herself only with people who bring her good things and maybe, swept along by the mood of Sedona, the thought of projecting love suddenly started to be possible. Not that I'm there yet - but it's possible.
