There’s a personal story I was considering telling on the anniversary of the event last week. Having opted not to share it at the time, it became evident that it could be helpful when several friends and students consulted me dealing with the same theme: they were all tied-up in knots over their otherwise hugely successful self-healing process simply because other people were projecting their limited ideas about dietetics and healing onto them, causing them to question the choices they were making.
It’s hard to imagine how other people’s opinions can have an impact on us at all when our life-generating results are so self-evident. Why would we ever accept another person’s opinionated critique of our choices over our own experience? But, it happens a lot. Until we are dead-set in our truth, there is a tendency to give a lot of power away to those we perceive to have a certain kind of authority.
Authority figures in our lives are not always the ones we’re conscious of like our parents, teachers, doctors and law enforcement officials. Without realizing it, we often grant a kind of pseudo-authority to certain friends and associates in our lives. Whenever we are swayed to change tracks because of what someone else thinks of what we are doing, we have granted them authority over us.
Now, you can learn to follow your truth the hard way by remaining open to so called authority figures’ opinions (only to revert back to the pain that drove you to your heart’s path, time and again). Or, you can grip your steering wheel with two steady hands and realize that these so-called authority figures don’t know Jack about Jack.
Thirty-six years ago last week on July 23rd, 1979, I was run over by a yellow school bus after day camp – by both sets of tires. The bus ran me over with the front wheels and then continued to run me over again with the back wheels (guess the driver thought I was a speed bump?). I was just two months shy of my 4th birthday. To lend some context: I spotted my mother in her fire-engine red El Dorado Caddy with the top down pulling into the camp parking lot to fetch me after a long day away from her and I was excited to run into her arms. I had the good sense to look both ways and by my 3.10 year-old estimation I could make it across, not seeing any on-coming cars, just a lot of yellow busses lined up picking up campers. So I made a run for it.
She emerged from the car to witness me being smacked down by the on-coming yellow bus and had to watch, screaming in horror until the crushing concluded. The bus did not stop. The driver was totally unaware of what had happened.
I remember the scene as if it were yesterday. I even remember how the hot summer asphalt felt underneath my fragile body. But I was fully conscious and present as the crowd gathered around me. Funny enough, despite the pain which I described to my mother as feeling like I was being ‘cut open with a knife,’ I was more concerned about my mother’s distress and repeated consolingly to her over and over again, “Mommy, I’m going to be alright.” I didn’t want her to be upset. Next thing, we were speeding along in the ambulance.
Flash forward to the ICU and my parents meetings with the team of doctors who were working on me. The verdict: this team of six doctors prepared my parents for the worst. I was going to die. They added that if, by some remarkable miracle I lived, I would be crippled for life. And to add further insult to injury, my shattered pelvis meant that my eggs were destroyed and I would never ever be able to conceive children.
I’ll save you the next six weeks of blood and gore in the ICU where I became a fixture. That ICU became my home – I still remember chatting with the other kids there and the syrupy pancakes. It was touch and go every day until the final day when after a series of attempts to stop the internal bleeding (that resulted in a massive allergic reaction) my parents were told to say their last goodbyes to me. What they found in that hospital bed instead (and I am not exaggerating here at all – this is 100% a true story) was a completely healed little girl ready to leave the hospital. My parents took me with my atrophied little body straight to our favourite spot in Laguna beach certain that a week playing on the sand would be the best way to strengthen my body (wise move). And it did. Despite all the authorities’ insistence to the contrary, I did not die. I was not crippled and I went on to have three healthy children. Now, to her credit, my mother never mentioned there was any concern about my eggs so that never seeded in my subconscious. I have two scars and a funky bone that sticks out on my right side (and fairly torturous labors, which I attribute to the funky way my shattered pelvis mended) that’s only visible when I wear a bikini but they’re my battle scars and I love them.
Those doctors meant well and they played a significant role in saving my life. I am so grateful to them for that. However, they didn’t have the authority over the outcome of my process just as those “authoritative” opinions that you may be putting stock in do not have either enough information nor a vast enough perspective to have any authority over your process.
I knew I was going to be alright. I told my mother this from the beginning. In fact, whilst everyone was praying (she had the whole city praying practically) and worrying, I just kind of looked on and enjoyed my hospital stay (I liked the other kids and the pancakes were yummy!). My spirits were always high those six weeks. I knew I wasn’t going to die – the thought never crossed my mind.
If your spirits are high and you’re feeling hugely attracted to your self-healing path – like a love affair (that’s what it can and should feel like actually) then you must not let anyone else dissuade you.
If you are on this path, I will remind you (with all due humility) that you know more about the way healing, cleansing and dietetics apply to the body than anyone else you may consult with. Unless this work is studied sufficiently, important contextual cruxes are lost and it won’t make sense to others why you might be dry fasting for several hours or drinking only green juice until dinner or forgoing major food groups like grains, fleshes and cow dairy.
Out of the realm of deep tissue cleansing study, it can sound like disordered extremism (I’ll grant them that). But, and I say it lovingly…they don’t know Jack about Jack.
So, do your thing, rid your gunk from your tissues, get your conductivity kickin’ and live life at a level of vitality and inspiration that blows all previous limitations out of the water. You be the authority of just how high you can fly (or, as it was in my case, whether you live or die). Healing knows no limits and none but the great All That Is truly knows where its all going. So go do what makes your heart sing and stop listening to other people.
