This email came in recently from someone doing the exercises and the work in HEALING, she agreed to have it posted on the blog.

“I saw your post regarding the book and wanting to know where people were coming into blocks and how they could get help moving past them. I really had issues with the sexual abuse section. Although I have not ever been physically abused I realized that I have some serious pain in this area that has shaped my entire life. I know it is something that runs through my lineage and am ready to clear it for all of them but aside from getting really disoriented and angry when I read the section in your book I get nervous when it comes to letting go of it. I think it is the fear that lives in my 3rd chakra that I am ready to release. My will holds on for dear life and keeps me in a tight ball because it has lied to me all these years that if I let go it will all unravel. Now, as much as I know that’s not true is as hard as it is to let go.

I wrote out the 3 most significant life events that have shaped who I am today. Maybe this can help someone else in a similar situation (or even myself)….Ready to let go and move on!!! This was all really hard to get out — and I thank you for letting me share the old ’story’.

The first memory that comes to mind is also my first déjà vu. I have déjà vu in my life in times I have deemed as make it or break it events in which I see different outcomes but don’t have a choice of which one I take. My best friend and I were about 7 yrs old taking my dog for a walk down the street from my parent’s house. We went a few houses further than we normally do toward the main street. A brown Cadillac comes to a slow roll alongside us. The driver rolls down his window to start talking to us . . . I don’t know what he says as I stiffen up with a vision of this scene having happened at another time with a different ending – me talking a walk alone, same outfit, same cloudy day, same car but am being taken away in this car. My friend and I go about our business, neither talking about the creepy man who obviously had ill intentions while looking at two innocent young girls.

A similar scene flashes in my mind of being about 11 years old riding my bike happily up and down the neighborhood hill — something I hadn’t done in a while as I thought I was getting too old for it, so proud of myself for being able to steer my bike with no hands. At the bottom of the hill I stop and prepare for the trek back up as a car slowly rolls by.  A nice looking younger gentleman in a suit and a tie in his early 30’s calls me over and asks me directions. Honestly, I am so excited that someone older would assume that I actually know directions. I was concentrating on giving him the right directions and didn’t notice what was going on…. there he is looking at me with a big grin not saying a word or acknowledging what I telling him. I look down and realize although he is in a blazer and tie, he isn’t wearing any pants. I don’t think I have to go further with that description. I hop back on my bike in fear and race back to my house, heart racing out of my skin, on the verge of tears. A rush of relief comes past me as I see my father pulling the lawnmower out of the garage and my mom watering the plants. My saviors, the ones who would never let anything bad happen to me. Just as I pull up to stop in front of my house, the car slowly drives by, the pedophile glaring at me and then racing off at the sight of my parents.

I parked my bike in the garage and quickly ran into the house. I was safe at last. Or was I? That vision haunts me to this day. Were my bike shorts inappropriate, did they call attention to my figure? Did my new womanly curves draw too much attention? I have never told my parents that story and have vowed to myself now that I might need to just to clear the air. I keep it to myself as a center of shame. As if I called that to myself. I was in pure joy, having the most fun I had in the longest time and my childhood was interrupted. I am not sure I looked at any man in the same way after that incident. The scariest part of all to me is that man was driving the same car as the man when I was 7. I shared this story with my peers years later and my friend Jackie who lived near me had a similar experience…. same story, same car. To this day I think it was all the same man. What karma am I working out from the past? Is it better that I evaded the actual physical sexual abuse or is this just as hurtful? I am not able to wrap my head around it.

One last story that happened when I was 12 is the stepping-stone for the rest of my formative years. Every year my family went camping at the beach for a week in the summertime. This was the year of my first real bikini. I had yet to start high school, might have been going into 8th grade that upcoming year even. I was innocently standing at the shoreline when I noticed a guy across the beach. He looked older, maybe 15? Too old for me, but he was surfing so I watched. A while later he came up to talk to me. I then realized that he wasn’t 15 but likely at least 19.  We talked, he quickly asked my age and I told him – twelve – he shuddered and said oh my gosh I thought you were at least 18 from across the beach, that made me nervous as I knew at that time why he wanted to talk to me. I got very nervous and he went on his way. This may seem like an innocent interaction but it was at that point that I realized the power my overt femininity had in this life. From that young age I have garnered unwanted sexual attention from men that I didn’t ask for. It has shaped my personality, my stubborn nature, my need to protect myself from what men ‘want’ me for. Oddly enough I want them to want me for who I am as a person, my inside, my heart, my brain. But if I think they miss out on the fact that I am also a woman, beautiful, sensual and sexual — I am angry. I have walked this wobbly line for all of my adult life. How do I allow my true self to shine through – not be fogged over by the ‘beauty’ of what I look like and not hidden in the box of my intellect?

These 3 stories mark the dust bunny of my sexual abuse story. They formed in my adolescence and have naturally collected more and more dust until I am who others see me as today. I am ready to clear all of this energy, dust, and karma and live the life I intend. The only question is how do I hold space for myself to clear this on my own, without reliving the experience as I try to let go of it? What is the lesson I needed to learn from all of this?”