grieving loss

Embrace your grief, for there your soul will grow.

Jung

Have you lost a child or someone close to you? There is no comparison to this heart break. I lost my youngest son in October 2021 in a tragic drowning accident. He was 8. I took a whole year to mourn him and to give myself to the grief, to descend into the darkness and to find the stars in the night sky. But that was not the end of it, not by far.

The waves keep rolling in with the tides however I have found my way to live in this life and to tend to the brokenness so that I can be a whole person, a mother to my two older boys, a practitioner, a human being who knows the paths through the underworld and the gates we go through to get there and back.

In Scandinavia there is an old custom called Time In The Ashes and an understanding that when we are faithful to the ashes, when we fully give ourselves to the ashes, we come back to the village with medicine.

My Dao Yin practice, somatic meditation, ritual and blessed friendships have shepherded me along the way and so too has Classical Chinese Medicine and in particular the 8 Extraordinary Channels. These channels tend to the path of our life, our unfolding, our blueprint. Some of them grew in the womb and hold our destiny along with what we have brought with us from previous travels, our genetics, our purpose. Others developed after we were born and gave us our uprightness in the world and in ourselves as well as our record keeping of the past cycles which will inform our future ones.

During the last few years since Sol died I have deep dived into these Extraordinary Channels and found my heart break and my healing in them. They have washed the wounds and gently tended to my soul, breathed on the embers of my capacity to love and praise life again, mended and fortified my continued connection to all my sons, the living and dead. I have found my way to stand up again in myself and with the world, to meet the places that are still in shock and reintegrate them into the present. These channels have softened my heart and reconnected it to my soul, tethered my drifting spirit with my will to live.

When a child dies a parent may lose the shine in their eyes, the Shen or Spirit. The shock depletes the body of blood and vitality as so much is being used to process and contain the emotions and the trauma. The Complementary Channels of Classical Chinese Medicine free the blood, provide release for the emotional load, settle the spirit, reconnect the heart with the kidneys, the spirit with the soul and the will to live. They gently shepherd joy back in when the body is ready and a re-engagement with life in its new state without our beloved child.

I know these channels in my bones, in my essence, and I experience how they mend us. They do not fix it and they will not wipe clean our losses and return us to our former states of being. Would you want that? If we cannot at least grow from this loss then what is it for?

The 8 Extras will instead allow us to unfold into who we really are, who we came here to be, including the deep wisdom and depth of the terrain of grief we have and do know.

I am now ready to share the wondrous medicine of these channels with others who are walking through the desolate landscapes of grief and loss. When we are not offered the community and healing that is required in grief and loss we can be lost in the turbulent and numbing strategies of our society such as medications and addictions and we run the risk of losing ourselves and the life we have left.

The wonderful thing about these channels is that they are energetic and reach beyond time and space. They are called Pre Heavenly Channels because they came before our earthly incarnation. My teacher, Ann Cecil-Sterman, transmitted them to me and to my peers across the seas and continents and I have continued to access their healing remotely with palpable effect, perhaps more so than is possible in person. We are a mystery, as is life, as is death, as is our life after death.

I invite you to a remote healing using these 8 Extraordinary Channels (and any others with Classical Chinese Medicine that arise) via zoom. We will discuss where you are at and what you have been through and from that I will be shown which channels to use. Choose the remote treatment on the scheduling page and please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

with reverence to your unique journey,

Lila