The weekend before my lymph node dissection, I took my daughter on a women’s spiritual retreat. We had been to this PA getaway place before, so, although the theme and tone for the gathering of women changes each year, we essentially knew what to expect, and, this year, I had plans. There’s a spiritual aphorism or joke that goes: If you want to hear God(dess) laugh, make plans. Well, the Most High was chuckling at me from behind the clouds all weekend.
My intention was to be attentive to my daughter. I feared that I had been self consumed for the past five months with all the medical and healing stuff, and so I was going to devote the time before my surgery to her. I intended to go to whatever workshops piqued her interest, or not, since she doesn’t really like workshops, I do; and, because swimming is her idea of bliss, I was prepared to spend long hours at the lake even though I loath being cold & wet. Whatever, I was committed and really looking forward to paying attention to my girl as I find her immensely interesting and thoroughly enjoyable and, besides, I had an agenda. I hoped that she’d open up to me.
The rustic environment + the time without tv or cellphones or internet + the spiritual timbre + the feminine immersion = intimacy. Intimacy: in to me see.
And, I so wanted to know what was going on inside of her, plus I felt spiritually fortified enough to hold the space for whatever fear, anger, grief she needed to release. What I was not prepared for, however, was that she would only want to be with her friends.
As I write this now, I slap myself up side the head (gently). What was I thinking? Acadia was 11 and 11/12ths, it was weeks before her 12th birthday, and, like most tweens – she was/is all about her friends all the time. (See below. Notice the matching bows. I rest my case. ps: my girl is holding the Aeropostale bag.)
So, why would this weekend be any different? As soon as we arrived at the camp site, Acadia ran off to punch the tether ball and romp in the meadow and swim in the lake with her buddies, and, lo and behold, I got to play with my friends too.
Wow, was that ever healing.
On the morning of the first day, I played at a workshop on Flower Essences given by the amazing Rachel Ginter from the Garden of One. The Garden of One is an organic farm/retreat center where Rachel offers “tools to transform” and creates magical elixirs infused with the energetic essences of flowers or herbs or plants or crystals or sunlight or moonlight or dragonflies or whatever essence calls. 
As she explained, essences are different than essential oils in that oils are the physical essence of a plant and effect the physical; essences are energetic and work on unconscious mental or emotional patterns. My experience was quite conscious though. One little spritz of Rachel’s All Clear myst made me feel instantly lighter and fresher, as if I’d emptied all the pockets in my aura. The energetic shifts were so palpable that my friend, Dalia, and I went directly to Rachel’s booth in the market place and bought each other best seller assortments of mysts as our birthday presents for each other. Neither of us were born in June, but we wanted to celebrate. Dalia was finishing grad school, about to deliver her thesis, and head back to her home in Egypt to teach. I was about to have surgery and… those mysts would prove to be essential for the way ahead.
After checking in with my daughter at lunch, a bunch of friends urged me to go with them to a Sound Yourself into Being workshop offered by the one and only Mosa. I was reluctant to go. I knew it was a popular workshop so it would probably be crowded and I’d probably have to sing and stretch outside my comfort zone and, besides, I thought, my daughter might need me. Acadia said, “Go, go,” and friends said, “Come, come,” and everyone was so insistent that I went with the flow.
The room was crowded with upwards of fifty women seated in a circle and at the center was an enchanting woman presiding over an astounding collection of instruments. Mosa had an elfin appearance with her slight body, silver pixie, and ethereal blue eyes, yet, unlike an elf, she seemed grounded in a sage wisdom that had her feet planted and her being was calm and relaxed. To begin, she instructed us to select from the treasure pile of bells, rattles, tuning forks, chimes, harps, drums and more, and to play that instrument all about the room to cleanse the space. Then, we did fun exercises like singing our signature with the vowel sounds of our names and listening to the songs in nature and then each of us singing a nature song to create a symphony of flowers, leaves, and ferns; and, throughout, Mosa imparted fascinating information with supporting tales. She taught about Kay Gardner’s pioneering work with sound healing and the correlation between vowel sounds and our chakras, she talked about cymatics and scientific findings, and explained the four principles of her work, Sounding Yourself into Being:
- Everything is vibration.
- Everything effects everything.
- Sound creates form.
- Frequency + Intention = Transformation.
And, she told the extraordinary story of Amrita Cottrell. Amrita used sound to cure her own breast cancer. My breath grew shallow and my heart quickened as Mosa told the story of Amrita and friend singing discordant notes each day for a length of time until they disintegrated the tumor in her breast. Then she demonstrated how to do this by having one woman hold a note while she sang a disagreeing note to make a harsh or dissonant sound, and had us break up into groups to give it a try. A couple of my dear friends, Gina and Lula, rushed over and offered to practice on me. I held a note and my friends sang long, strong, harsh, unharmonic notes and leaned toward me. The entire room of fifty plus women sang their disagreeing notes and the dissonance swelled through the room. Gina and Lula reloaded and sang louder and stronger and the monstrous sound from all grew and grew and grew, and my flood gates burst. Tears spilled from my eyes in a hot confluence of emotions: I cried with frustration for not having the same strength of conviction that my path was to heal through sound like Amrita, and I cried with overwhelm for having friends willing to sing love at me with such ferocity, and I cried in surrender to a divine plan that so clearly placed me in that room to hear that story and to learn how well I am loved. As loud as the music was in that moment, I could hear the cosmic giggle and so I began to take notice of the Power greater than myself that was orchestrating everything including this weekend retreat.
(to be cont.)
L.
ElleKelly's Blog 