Beatrice (name changed) lay there thin and emaciated in a coma like state pumped full of pain killers mainly morphine and was dying of cancer. BS(initials of my colleague) and I attended her and just sat with her as she had no family.
BS and I did a Tibetan and Native American technique of 'whispering to the soul', it is done by cupping one's hand over the ear and whispering. It is said the unconscious hears it and occasionally responds. The doctors said anything was worth trying as she was on her way out.
BS and I whispered about imagery of healing, beautiful places and drawing pictures of fond memories and if one needs to forgive others and oneself.
We got a phone call to attend when we could at the hospice. I drove to BS as she lived nearer to the Hospice and did not drive and we arrived together. A nurse who was the staff nurse of palliative care looked excited, she said Bea had awoken and was asking for pencil and paper. We went in and introduced ourselves. She had drawn a figure of a women heavily clothed and almost covered from head to tail in old Victorian Clothes. She had also drawn a bowl filled with disgusting looking feces like objects and it gave us the impressing they were rife and stinking.
We asked her what prompted her to draw and why this? She said she had a vague memory of someone whispering to her about certain things and was not sure what, but this seemed meaningful.
As the days turned into weeks Bea began putting on weight and her tumors were shrinking. The drawings were getting to be more colorful and the clothing was getting more modern and the bowl became less distasteful. She still did not know why she was doing this and admitted she was good at drawing.
As the process continued the neck line plunged and the skirt shorter and the bowl almost empty. One day we arrived to find her jubilant. The drawing showed her naked and the bowl empty and her arms and leg spread wide and the the word Hallelujah as a huge headline. She said she knew what it was all about.
When she was a young women she became pregnant out of wedlock and was thrown out or her house where her strict parents told her never to return. The man who made her pregnant refused to stand by her and told her it was her fault. She went to a back street abortionist and it went wrong she got an infection and she could not have any children after that and was lucky to have not died.
She then met a man who loved her in spite of the fact she could not have children, they had a lovely marriage and he had died six years back and she developed cancer eighteen months after his demise.
She said although he understood, she wished so much she could have had children with him and his family rejected him for marrying her.
She bore the guilt all the years of her marriage and blamed herself and felt guilty and ashamed. The drawing represented her throwing off the guilt and shame and FORGIVING HERSELF. She said she had a feeling it was BS and I who prompted her with the whispering voices she heard and we celebrated as her cancer went into remission.
Bea really healed herself and given the prompts sometime the innate intelligence within us can do the healing, the body, mind and soul yearn to be healthy, joyful and well.
SHACK
I preferred to call my self a facilitator rather than a therapist.
In all cases we were given permission to tell the events by Beatrice. (SHACK)
In all cases we were given permission to tell the events by Beatrice. (SHACK)
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