By Lezah Young
I ask Virginia what she wants to work on in this session. Her voice deepens as she tells me she’s been stuck financially for years. “And the reasons are in me,” she says. She’s desperate to uncover these hidden secrets and change them.
I ask about her line of work.
She cares for the sick, the old, and dying people, she says. Virginia is tired of the work, the pain, and the hopelessness that has become a daily routine.
I ask her what she would rather do.
Her answer comes quickly, almost before I can finish my question. “I want to write!” she proclaims.
The pictures develop in my mind’s eye. I’m drawn to her feet, her foundation, where I see a concrete block with a steel strap tightly bolting her feet down.
I relay the image and ask her what it means. She says, without hesitation, “It means I haven’t been able to move. I can’t move.” I ask her where she grew up. “Pomona, California” flies out of her mouth and with it images of a large, gray, concrete-looking two-story building with lots of windows appear visibly before my eyes.
I ask permission to delve deeper into her private world, her personal field of energy. I’m aware of her discomfort, her trepidation, and I gently proceed with caution. I’m touching a deep, sensitive part of her.
She speaks; she reveals more of her history as I venture inside her world. She tells me about living in foster homes. She says her mother is an alcoholic, that her father gained custody.
I ask if one of the foster homes is concrete. She remembers that when she was 8, 9, and 11 that the home had a concrete floor. I sense she’s avoiding where she lived at age 10. Her avoidance tells me we’re reaching the destination, the source of events and feelings that contain hidden answers.
I ask her where she was at age 10? She describes an abandoned convent, a convent that is turned into a home for children, an awful home for orphans still operated by nuns, she explains.
I see it. I describe it. It’s gray like concrete, two stories, with windows on both stories. It has an emotionally cold ambience, a barrenness of feeling, and an absence of empathy. While it also has well-cared-for furniture, wooden stairwells polished with beeswax, it’s more like a hospital with beds all in a row and white canvas curtains surrounding each one. It’s the same image I saw earlier in the session. Virginia blocked this memory for years.
Her father left her there. I ask why. She says that World War II had erupted and he had to go. While she talks I work with her energy field so she remembers more, as that is her request. Together we are in her history, as if a movie were happening before us.
Startled, and after taking a deep breath, Virginia remembers that night. I feel her crying. She stops herself, saying, “I won’t cry now.” She wants to remember that night. “He dropped me off and I was taken to a cubicle where I heard other children crying too.
” She says she can feel the terror and anger in her body right now.
She repressed the worst night of her memories. She expressed wonder at the reason for that night being the most difficult compared to others.
Hearing her question made me dig deeper. I saw her terror. I saw her as a child facing another abandonment, this time by her father. She didn’t think she would ever see him again—that’s the reason she blocked the memory. I gave her the details of my vision. She says she remembered thinking she wouldn’t see him again and she would die.
Continuing, this time about her mother, Virginia recalled awakening in the backseat of a car at night with no one around. Her mother was inside the bar. The car doors were locked and she was too young to unlock them so she just screamed for hours until her lungs burned.
When she mentioned her lungs burning I saw cigarette smoke in them. I relayed this information to her and learned she had tried to quit smoking but could not. The smoking is her attempt to cool the “burning lungs” memory and numb the abandonment feelings in her chest.
Then I noticed a large play area outside that I asked her about. She recalled something she had done in that play area that she regretted. Then she told me the story.
Virginia busied herself outside by building an elaborate dirt hospital for the ants. She even made small cubicles and locked them in by putting dirt on top of their beds. She still felt bad about what she called her “cruel actions.”
My interpretation was different. I saw her reenacting her experience at the home that was more like a hospital. She and all the other children were like the ants imprisoned in that hospital, in little cubicles for beds that were smothering instead of nurturing. She was expressing her reality and trying to make sense of it and heal.
It was easier feeling sorry for the ants and being angry with herself for hurting them than it was being angry with the nuns or with her father for hurting her. She agreed.
I encouraged her to be gentle with herself while going through the healing of her memories. I suggested releasing the images from within her mind onto paper. I recommended that a transition from caring for the sick to writing would help her break the old patterns.
Virginia welcomed writing about her life experience. She felt grateful for the retrieval of the memories, that one in particular. She believed it had been a huge black spot, an area of darkness that she needed to avoid. She was freer now and thanked me again. Three months later Virginia called, she said she was writing, not smoking, and feeling empowered.