Recently, I worked with a client with whom I felt an immediate and heartfelt connection. Recognizing a soul friend, I sensed that something meaningful was already in motion.
In the midst of a soul retrieval — a shamanic approach used to support the healing of deep childhood trauma — an old wound within me unexpectedly opened. Not a personal injury, but a grief I had carried quietly for decades: the despair of being unable to help a child in need.
Years ago, while camping, my sweetie and I heard a child crying in the night.
“Don’t touch me,” echoed again and again through the mountains. We searched the forest with flashlights, moving from campsite to campsite in the cold darkness, listening, calling, hoping.
Eventually, the night fell silent.
We had failed.
We returned to our tent shaken, lying awake in anger and helplessness, aching with the desire to protect someone we could not find. Over the years, the memory would resurface, and I would send love to that child — still holding the quiet rage of impotence.
So there I was, decades later, working in an open and deeply attuned state, when joyful shrieks from neighborhood children drifted in through the window as they played with their holiday gifts. Knowing the sounds were happy did nothing to stop the old memory from flooding my awareness.
And then I heard a clear inner voice say,
“You’re helping her now.”
In that moment, I understood that it was possible our paths had crossed again — and this time, I had the knowledge and capacity to help in a different way.
For the first time in more than thirty years, I burst into tears in front of a client. There was no collapse — only truth. In that shared moment, something completed. Both of us were met. Both of us were healed.
Healing is never one-sided.
The threads that bind us carry precisely the experience required for all involved. A layer of karma released. And only love remained.
Blessing
May the wounds that reopen do so only to be met.
May what once felt unresolved find its way home.
May you trust that nothing is wasted — not even the moments of helplessness.
May the threads you carry complete themselves in their own time.
And may love be what remains when the story is done.