I know now that Heather was my twin soul. I see that my five years and four months with Heather were absolutely fated, fulfilling a destiny that was written in a time long ago and far away. Our entire lives prior to our union were in some way mere preparation for our meeting one another. All the issues we faced during Heather's illness and her time of death, were an extension and elaboration, however extreme, of all that was purposeful and core in our lives prior to our meeting. And the journey we underwent led us to a sacred marriage, a wedding of our life force, of the male and the female, of living and dying, of being and becoming more fully and truly ourselves.
This is my story.....
Let's go back in time to Sept. 94, Diamond Mtn Rd, Calistoga in northern Napa Valley, CA about 10:00 am as I recall, a pleasant, quiet weekday morning much like any other. The phone rings, disturbing the silence and on the other end of it is none other than Heather Childs. "Good morning Francis. It's Heather," she announces. "Do you have time to see me later today after work. I want another bodywork session. And I have something important that I have to discuss with you. Do you have any openings later today?"
"Sure," I reply, somewhat taken aback by Heather's sense of urgency. I had given her a vibrational healing session, (for more info click on vibrational healing on home page ) her first of hundreds with me, the previous night at her home at Dutch Henry Canyon just five minutes across the valley in the northern end of Napa Valley. I had just met Heather a few days prior at a birthday party at her place. She had invited me over for dinner, our first of many and we had talked long into the evening as soon became our custom. I was glad she called and glad to have the work as I had recently moved from southern California and han nothing at all scheduled for the next few days. We agreed to meet later that day, this time at my house.
Heather arrives, on time, (what else is new) and highly charged in a pleasant sort of way. We proceed to the healing room, where she sits on the bodywork table and immediately and launches into the following conversation. "Last night', she explains, 'while in a deep sleep, I heard a loud popping noise in the vertebra in my mid-back right behind the solar plexus area. This was accompanied by a surge of energy flowing up my spine into my head which woke me up completely! All that tension that I was holding in my back released and I've been feeling clear all day."
...flashback.....
Last night I had given Heather a bodywork session using an energetic healing technique to balance her solar plexus area (just below rib cage in middle of body), which in Heather's case felt deficient and imploded. Initially, Heather drifted into a deep, rhythmic breath and into a state of calm and quiet. After several minutes of this, I began sensing through my right hand which was lightly placed on her solar plexus, an arising panic and anxiety that threatened to override the softness and spaciousness she had been experiencing in her body.
After observing this for half a minute, wondering what in the world was happening, I spontaneously leaned over the table and whispered words of comfort softly in her ear, "I know where you are now...... it's okay .........I can feel what you are feeling....... I know you are surprised to be experiencing this again.... but that's okay......... Everything is okay........... I'm right here with you..... And I know how to bring you back......"
The words just fell out of my mouth, without any premeditation or forethought. I could see and feel that this had an immediate and beneficial effect. I moved my head away and I waited several seconds allowing the energy to settle down. I then placed my head directly over her solar plexus, a few inches away and began blowing a charged breath, through my cupped hands into her solar plexus clearing the entire area until the anxiety and panic subsided.
Heather's breathing once again relaxed into a deeper, rhythmic movement and she drifted into a more peaceful state. A strong current of lightness and pleasure now emanated from her solar plexus passing into my hands and arm and throughout my entire body. This current of subtle body energy translated itself into a long sustained vocal tones, ( a phenomenon known as toning that I discuss in the sound section of vibrational healing). Again, I leaned over the table this time directing the tone into her heart, solar plexus and chest area. Another tone followed after the first until a total of five vocal tones had passed my lips. I could sense, feel, see the tones penetrating deep into the core of Heather's body right through to her spine. The session came to a conclusion with a palpable silence and power pervading the room.
Afterwards Heather clearly still in an altered frame of mind talked about what had happened. She had unexpectedly re-experienced a old crises, an earlier injury or wounding ( it felt ancient to me folks!) arising in her solar plexus in the midst of an extremely pleasant state of being which completely disturbed her. "I then heard you whispering to me as if you were reading my mind, timely and comforting words...."
Heather explained to me during dinner that she had heard about my work from others in the area where I had just recently relocated. Heather was curious but uncertain about me. She wasn't sure if I was some charismatic egomaniac, hung up on myself, oblivious to the subtler dimensions of healing. She confessed later in the evening that "I'm glad we talked. You remind me of my brothers. You really don't take yourself that seriously." Truer words were never spoken.
And now back to our story....
I nod my head in understanding and amusement, thinking that that was the end of her tale. But before I could say anything, not that I had anything to say, though I thought I should say something important, Heather launched into the rest of the tale.
"I immediately fell back to sleep and had the following dream. We are both young children, close in age, and the two of us are playing in an open meadow. Spring flowers are everywhere. There's nobody else around, just the two of us and it's a beautiful, sunny day, with clear blues skies, still early in the day. And we are painting huge rainbows on a canvas that covers the entire meadow!"
She concludes by looking earnestly and curiously at me ( I swear there was steam coming out of her ears) reading my face for any sign of intelligence, waiting for my response!? I'm dumbfounded. My thinking has been altered. As the fates would have it, a few years earlier, I had recorded a meditation tape entitled Rainbow Journey. The initial jacket had a rainbow on it cover to cover! The tape is about the history and benefits of chromotherapy or color healing and has a guided meditation on the colors of the rainbow which I've used dozens of times during seminars. No way Heather could have known about it. And there was no way I was going to share this now.
A darkening fog is now rolling in blinding my sight. I have absolutely no idea what this dream means. "What does it mean to you," I ask. "We are meant to be partners', she announces confidently, 'and move together in the direction of our dreams. That's what the two of us playing together means. And the rainbow means we will do good and beautiful things together". Seeing the poker look on my face and mistaking it for a passing confusion instead of an ancient creeping terror that is threatening to unmask itself, she helpfully continues. "I believe in my dreams and I receive a lot of guidance from them. I've done a lot of counseling in dream groups too. Besides that's where my songs come from." What can I say to all that? I'm dumbfounded, awash in a vortex of energy that will soon suck my mind into another dimension altogether. "Did she say something about us being together?"
"What kind of partnerships are you thinking of?", I ask the now fully revealed dream oracle sitting on my massage table in the form and substance of Heather. "Well any kind really, there's so much we have in common," she explains slightly disappointed that I needed to ask. Not noticing that the intelligent, interested expresssion on my face is a mask shielding the inner workings of my thoughts from view, she continues talking to me, further blowing the remaining circuits in my mind. "If a personal relationship happens that's good and if not I still know we are supposed to work together," she confidently concludes.
I pause to deliberate further and then unbelievably begin speaking aloud my innermost thoughts which pop out of my mouth like popcorn from an overheated pot..... "I just moved here,..... I don't know how long I'm going to be here,....I'm moving to WA.... I'm not into a personal relationship now.... I need to focus on my professional life.... blah blah this and blah blah that'......a long and futile babble of dumb guy statements. Storm clouds are now massing on Heather's inner horizons threatening to rain over her dream and reduce her vision to a soggy, sodden, muddied disaster. She's been in an inspired mood all day long, really since last night, anticipating a more open and receptive response than the moronic one I was stuck in.
I know what she's thinking. "I'm an idiot!" And I know she knows what I am thinking. "She's coming on to me!" We are looking at each other face to face. Mexican standoff. Neither of us knows what to say or do next but we both want to move on. I swear the temperature in the room has gone up several degrees. "I'm sure it will all work itself out," I venture. "I'm not saying that your dream is wrong. It's just unusual for a woman I just met to show up on my doorstep proposing a partnership based on a dream. Maybe we should talk about it later and do the session first."
During the session I thought about Heather. For the third time in three days, I realized that I was in impossibly deep waters, every meeting bringing me closer to my fate. The party of two days ago started it all, especially when Heather sang. One of my first impressions I had of Heather was that she had a rare gift with both singing and songwriting, that I immediately respected and treasured as a great gift. Inner worlds opened and magic happened whenever Heather sang. Then last night's session, hot tub, wine and dinner and desert with a few more songs blew my socks off, my mind still blown from the previous day! Now that the rainbow dream presented itself, I began to comtemplate a relationship with Heather.
Years later, I now understand that the dream she had of us being together was a personal vision that Heather trusted in from the very start. She had a highly developed connection with her dream world. It was a source of information for her that she consulted throughout her life. I never met anybody quite like her in this regard. (Or in any regard for that matter).
Yet I had another strong first impression of Heather, that she was dying somehow, in some way. Looking back, it is easier now to admit to myself that I knew from the moment I laid my eyes on Heather that I would share an unusual fate with her. I now know that Heather was already in an advanced state of cancer when I first met her. Late one evening, after six months of eating dinners, always at her place, cooked mostly by Heather ( I did the dishes) and dozens of nighttime hot tubs and hundred hours of bodywork/ healing sessions, mostly given by me to Heather, along with Napa Valley wines and yes America Spirit cigarettes too, and hundreds of hours of ongoing nightly conversations exploring the question implicit in the rainbow dream," What kind of a partnership is this going to be? When do we start?", I said to Heather completely out of the blue as if in answer these unspoken questions, "I love you and I love being with you. And I love any chance to be involved with your music. Whatever you want to do with your music, I'm in all the way but", I said with added emphasis, "I know there is healing work to be done. And the sooner we do it the better. And if we don't do it we are going to be sorry."
Prophetic words that just flowed out of my mouth as if they had a life of their own, especially the last part about the healing. I think it surprised us both really that I had come out and stated it directly. But it did sum up everything for me all the issues I had about being with Heather, all of which had to do with the well being of her body specifically her upper back and belly. At night, I literally could not sleep next to Heather without two things occuring. First, I would become aware of the tremendous disturbance specifically in the bones of her upper back. Many were the nights that I placed my hands on Heather's back waiting for the area to calm down. Secondly, our breathing patterns became spontaneously entrained, which would establish a flow of energy between us. The problem with this is that it activated a healing response in Heather that was impossible for me to ignore. At night she offered little or no resistance. This became a nightly ritual for me. I would work on her for an hour or more until a quiet energy began to flow through her back. Her breathing would deepen and broaden. I could sense her shifting into a blissful state which would allow me to fall asleep because after all, that is how I generally fall asleep.
Heather would ask me what was going on while she slept but I didn't know what to say other than 'you have a lot of crap in your back.' A subtle reminder of my NYC background. Not very informative or helpful. After we had discussed our entire family dynamic as far back as we could, which in Heather's case, had noteworthy ancestors and in my case ended up in the recently obscured department or at (notice the forthcoming alliteration) the bottom of a bottle of booze, I changed that to 'you have your entire family in your back'. To that, she said "Oh that makes sense."
After several months went by and I had a chance to meet her friends and understand the role of counselor ond guide she played for them and for her clientele, I included them too. After a couple of years of this, I realized she carried a lot of people inside of her. To Heather this was a instinctual and natural way of relating. I would frequently joke with Heather suggesting she place a large speaker on top of her car and drive through the local neighborhoods announcing the arrival of a cosmic stress buster equally adept at cleaning house, dream interpretation, massage, listening as well as singing a song or two. 'Oh Frankie' she say, rolling her eyes around in her head, laughing at the ludicrousness of it all, "What am I going to do with you?'
But this always remained a stumblng block during our once a week sessions during the day. Whenever I placed my hands on her back during a session, listening intently to what activity was occuring, a great deal of commotion and agitation would arise in her back that would drive her crazy. Whenever I placed my hands on her back during a session, listening intently to what activity was occuring, a great deal of commotion and agitation would arise in her back that would drive her crazy. Where there should have been a smooth flow of energy, it felt as if muffled explosions were going off in her bones. In tears, at times mixed with anger she would accuse me of picking on spots in her back and of working too hard in those areas. I would assure her that all I was doing was following the energy that I feel in my hands when deep healing is occuring. I had never remotely experienced anything like this in several years of private practice in healing and/or bodywork. Whatever it was, it was way beyond my ability to decipher.
By the end of a year and numerous nightly sessions, my initial impressions of Heather dying faded but not exactly. They just changed form. I became convinced that one day she was going to end up flat on her back in bed for at least a few months and if her digestion went, she would really be in trouble. I spoke of this to Heather and a handful of friends at Diamond Mtn house, mostly out of frustration and concern, a lone wolf crying in the distance. This was the only part of our relationship where we never came to resolution until years later when Heather was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast to bone cancer! No one could have been more shocked than me.
Pax Vobiscum
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