MY STORY…
I sat on the edge of the curb, my head buried in my lap to hide the huge sobs escaping from my mouth. My body curled around itself, trying to stop its heaving still apparent in the dark parking lot. A passerby stopped, alarmed, and asked, “Are you okay? Can I help you with something?”
I peeked out from beneath my crossed arms that hugged my legs tight and cried, “Can you give me a new life?” I lay my head back down in resignation and continued to let out big, ugly nasty tears.
Flashback to 2014. I was a school teacher living in Silicon Valley and married to a school teacher. I taught at the same exact elementary school I attended as a child and my husband was my first boyfriend I had from high school. My life revolved around our three children and my job, both of which required huge amounts of selfless giving. I thought that it was normal that both home and work involved deep sacrifice, and I poured all of my energy into each of those roles. Although my life was safe and predictable, I was sick, tired and stressed all the time.
When my youngest child turned four, however, he began to teach me. His way of teaching me was through violent unpredictable tantrums. It would happen at the grocery store, at the mall, usually around wanting a toy or not wanting to get into his car seat. He refused to go to preschool and would kick and scream at me through the classroom door if I managed to drag him in there. I couldn’t figure out how all of the effort I had put into creating a stable family life did not work for him.
So the universe decided to put me on a different course. One night my family and I were in a bookstore waiting for our pizza order next door. My youngest was having a tantrum in the aisle and somehow or another between dealing with him, a book caught my eye. It was a book about mindfulness and education, not anything well known, but I picked it up and bought it.
Pretty soon I found classes to take, started meditating and going on silent retreats. I relaxed into my life, and my little guy stopped having tantrums because the grownup he depended on the most started taking care of herself. It was a revelation how simple it was. He demanded and deserved presence whenever I was with him. It didn’t matter the quantity of time we had, but rather the high quality, focused time I could give him.
I soon became a Certified Mindful Schools Instructor, and brought the practice to my students and school. My job and life had more meaning, although I was essentially working two jobs for the price of one as a mindfulness coach and a classroom teacher. Twenty minutes of meditation in the wee hours of the morning, down a green smoothie, then dash off to work. I thought adding meditation and also teaching it made my life more peaceful, but I wasn’t paying attention to the incredible amount of doing it involved. I was still sick, my marriage a chronic disappointment, and I was depleted. I wasn’t listening to my life, just managing it.
After much effort, counseling and therapy I found the courage to leave my unfixable marriage. I was terrified. We lived on a street where most people had tech jobs and no one could afford to be divorced. Our house sold to someone who worked at Facebook and I moved into a tiny overpriced apartment in the heart of the city. That summer I went on a meditation retreat and on the last night there was a big bonfire where we were to write something on a slip of paper we wanted to let go of. I carefully wrote my husband’s name and tossed it into the flames. Next to the fire was a table of rocks and markers, and our task was to write what we wanted to now invite into our lives. I picked up a smooth white stone, wrote “Big Love” on it and drew a heart around the words in red.
The next week I met the love of my life.
Now, this part of my story is really worthy of a novel or made into a movie, with Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon playing the starring role. The condensed version is that there was such a careful alignment of events in order for us to meet, that our coming together was nothing less than divine synchronicity. He was what I call a hippie cowboy from Montana who had lived all over the world and was an intuitive healer by trade. He began to teach me that I was perfect, beautiful, and had spiritual gifts that would heal me and that the world needed. The way he taught me was by igniting my own awakening with an unconditional love that I had never felt before and didn’t think possible on this Earth. I didn’t believe in love anymore and this was another revelation to find that it existed better than I had imagined, pure and boundless.
Our time together was unbelievably short, as my cowboy was diagnosed with terminal cancer six months into our relationship. So I swiftly left all of my mindfulness work and teaching in the middle of the school year to be his full time caregiver. We somehow seemed to pack a lifetime of love into those fleeting two years we shared together, even through the horrific and lonely moments that surround someone who is dying. A few months before he passed we escaped to the Redwoods and honored each other with the most exquisite wedding vows, promises that honored our connection that was clearly beyond just this life we were living. And when he looked at my long future without him, his blue eyes faraway as his time grew close, his advice to me was, “Neena, you must become fearless love.”
After my dear cowboy passed, it felt like a big responsibility he had left me with to “become fearless love” while my heart was so beautifully broken. In a very brief amount of time, I was divorced, widowed, and had let go of a career and life that was all that I had ever known. All I could do next was to listen to what my soul yearned for, which was to grieve, rest and heal in a different environment. So I decided to start afresh in a new place that was green and a bit wild and rustic at the foothills of a mountain range in Southern Oregon.
My country home proved to be the perfect place to spend weeks weeping on the couch and nights howling at the sky with only the stars blinking back at me, until I couldn’t do that anymore. One day I rose up and I knew I had to do something else. A thought sparked through my mind, and I suddenly remembered the QHHT session I had experienced a year prior, how healing it had been, and that it might be interesting to learn how to do that. I studied all that I could and eventually found myself on the path of becoming a QHHT practitioner. It felt completely natural doing this work, and each session brought profound insight for both my client and myself. It was effortless and easy like breathing. But could I do this for a living? I still had my old teaching job and the crowded apartment waiting for me if I wanted to just slip back into my safe comfy life.
So now we are back to the moment in the parking lot where I was bawling. You see, I had a glimpse of a new life, but didn’t know if I could really do it, go for it, completely follow my heart and my life’s purpose. It felt like I would have to give up everything to follow this path laid out for me. Although I was divorced, my ex still affected my life through his general unwillingness to cooperate with me and my life changes. I couldn’t understand why I was still being held back when we had physically separated. I wanted to move forward and claim that brilliant heart-centered life for myself, but didn’t fully believe it to be possible.
The next day I had a QHHT session and I thought deeply about the questions I wanted answered. I decided to ask what it was I still needed to learn from my ex husband, and at the end of the session the answer my higher self gave me was Forgiveness. This was something I sort of knew already, but this time I felt it, like on a cellular level. I laughed at the revelation that he had been my teacher all along. His way of teaching me was through causing me emotional turmoil that forged me into the person that I am now. And I was to forgive him for playing this part in my life, proving that I am no better than him. In that session I looked into his eyes and saw the fear and the tenderness he still had for me and I forgave his sweet soul.
The next day I got a call that he was ready to allow me what I wanted. And so, magically, I did get the new life I had cried out for in the dark just a few days prior. I was actually already living it but just didn’t understand that I deserved it or that it was truly mine. Now I get to live in a gorgeous place where I can easily immerse myself in nature or connect with the conscious community around me. I am a QHHT practitioner, a job that makes my soul sing and is needed to raise the vibration of this planet. My children are by my side as much as they would like to be, my partners watching me expand into who I never dreamed I could be. Through QHHT I have rewritten my tragic past to one that is glittering with teachers and lessons that have transformed into revelations at the exact time needed for my soul’s journey.