One of the best ways to understand how energy healing can transform your life is through hearing someone share their personal story. But since my clients’ sessions are all bound by confidentiality, I can’t tell you their stories. So instead, I’ve decided to share a story about my own healing journey. This is the tale of a simple recent event that rocked me deeply and invoked a disproportionately emotional response. It explains how current events can have their tentacles in past issues that need to be healed – and how I worked with my own energy healer to soothe and repair it. Oh, and it involves a turtle (random, I know).
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In a few years’ time, I probably won’t remember that there was once a turtle in my backyard, nor how much it upset me. The strangeness of the incident is only just eclipsed by the stinging shame I bore for several days afterwards, even though I knew it was not mine to carry. I’m sharing what happened not so that I can remember it later, but so that you can see how long-buried emotions can suddenly become raging torrents inside. The things that provoke us are often connected to deep, tightly held wounds in ways that often aren’t immediately evident. Until they are. And sometimes it’s hard to know where to go for relief.
(Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash)
It happened like this. After several days of unseasonal heavy rain, a turtle turned up in our (very securely fenced) backyard. Its weathered shell might have disguised it in the muddy soil, were it not for my curious terriers sniffing it out. Once the dogs were safely locked inside, I studied the turtle from a respectful distance, both of us bewildered. ‘Where did you come from?’ I wondered, as it poked its long scaly neck out and eyed me warily.
Given our home’s distance from rivers and creeks, I concluded this must be a lost pet, and started to panic about how to take care of my shelled refugee until I could locate its owner. I posted a picture on a series of community pages, including a ‘lost and found pets’ group for my region. That was a mistake. Within 10 minutes I was pilloried on the page, mocked for my stupidity in failing to recognise – what turned out to be – a wild turtle washed up by heavy rainfall. Being new to the area, and not having grown up here (this particular turtle species is endemic to Australia, I later learned), I had assumed incorrectly. The comments were savage and cruel, and feeling utterly humiliated, I deleted the post and retreated offline to lick my wounds. It was only a lengthy period of crying with shame and self-loathing that I realised there must be a reason I was having such a strong reaction.
When you’re sitting right in your stuff, it can be hard to unpack the wounding. It’s like playing that board game Operation – the slightest movement will trigger a siren and lit-up nose (fellow ‘80s kids will understand that reference). So I mentally bookmarked it to unpack with my energy healer later, and the learnings that came out of that session might help you understand how traumas and limiting beliefs can reverberate throughout our lives. Here goes…
As we explored that experience of shame, I traced that searing feeling of degradation back to when I was bullied at school from ages 11 to 13 – an experience that’s left all sorts of trauma imprinted on me at a deep level. When your peers exclude and belittle you, you tend to walk away thinking ‘I’m not the sort of person who people want to spend time with’ and, more heartbreakingly, ‘there’s something fundamentally wrong with me’. These are unconscious beliefs I did not remember having taken on board until they emerged in that session.
(Photo by Naomi August on Unsplash)
As we talked more, I remembered that I had often thought that every other kid must had received some sort of instruction manual for life that I’d missed out on. They knew how to dress, speak and act. I was a sensitive, uncoordinated bookworm from a noticeably not-rich family, making me an endlessly appealing target for cruelty, ridicule and harassment. I seemed to be missing some genetic coding that made me hopelessly inadequate, and definitely not someone who anyone would want to be friends with. I’ve felt that way in many other settings throughout my life, too.
It’s not hard to see how this informed my response to the turtle incident. When everyone in that FB group seemed to know something I didn’t know, all of those feelings of exclusion and brokenness come bubbling to the surface painfully. Emotionally, I was right back there at that shitty school, without even realising it. And it’s not the first time this has happened, I realised in my session. During my 20s and early-30s, I often had this feeling that, because I had been single so long, there must be something deeply deficient about me that made me undesirable and undateable. I was burdened by this belief of my own inadequacy for such a long time – a belief that went beyond my conscious mind and was seared into every cell in my body, so that no logical argument could touch it. It affected my friendships and social interactions, too – making me desperate to appear normal, mimicking others and often, attaching myself to anyone who I deemed cool who was willing to give me attention, yearning for their approval.
(Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash)
Although I can trace so much of my experiences back to these schoolroom incidents, it’s likely they go back much further – probably to past lives. So much of what we bring through in this lifetime has been with us for many lifetimes, and part of what we come here for is to finally let that go. Experiences such as the turtle incident may have come up to highlight where healing was needed, rather than being the origin of my emotional baggage. Thankfully, energy healing does clear through all lifetimes.
That healing session helped me understand why I was so provoked, which, in turn, helped me feel more in control of my response. When you know why you’re being jerked around by weighty emotions, that awareness takes away some of the bewildering lack of control. But having that awareness alone isn’t enough to heal the trauma.
This is why energy healing – a modality that reaches those otherwise-out-of-reach limiting beliefs, traumas and pain then releases it – continues to be so transformative for me (and why I became an energy-healing practitioner myself). It really helped me let go. That doesn’t mean to say I won’t be provoked by future experiences of being shamed and excluded, but it likely means I won’t be affected so deeply nor suffering by carrying that emotional load for so long. We might never be able to release everything we’re carrying, but energy healing facilitates a palpable lessening of the burden. And that feels a lot like freedom to me.
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By the way, and if you’re worried about the turtle, it’s fine (as far as I know). I rang a wildlife rescue service which assured me the turtle would make its own way home. Because our yard is so secure, we left a gate open, kept our dogs indoors, and our reptile friend waddled off a few hours later. We still have no idea how it came to be in our yard, and our neighbours have confirmed that this is not something that’s happened before. I can only assume the turtle was divinely sent.
If you’d like to talk to me about how energy healing can help you release pain and emotional blocks, reach out here. Sessions are done over Zoom, no matter where you live.