In my eyes, the Monarch butterfly now represents my mom’s fearless spirit, and her ability to transform completely, read on to learn why…
We carry the energy of our mothers within us, in our spirit, our essence (Jing) and in our cells. There seems to be an ancestral chain of energy that connects us, our emotions, ways of being, speech, posture, and the way we walk and carry ourselves to our parents. Whether we like it or not, we are an echo of our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and beyond and as we evolve generation to generation, it is our birthright to advance on that which our foremothers brought into being during their lifetime. It is our duty to carry the torch of courage and to continue to increase awareness and compassion for self and others and for healing our family lineage through this learning. Each generation has an opportunity to take all the hard work that our foremothers did and to advance upon this so we can continue to achieve healing in all directions, in the present, through the past, and into the future for generations to come. This in essence is how we as individuals can bring healing that spans far beyond our personal efforts to this planet.
As we age, we watch ourselves, our siblings and even sometimes our friends as they transform into their parents. I now often catch myself in the mirror or glance at a photo and can’t help but see what a strong resemblance I have to my mother. Growing up, my mother had a very commanding personality. She was unapologetic in her parenting methods, and her emotions often scared me. When her anger would emerge, it struck my empathic heart with fear. In balance with this, my mother has also always expressed herself with great joy and laughter and I have received that gift as well. All energies have their balancing factors, but the important thing to remember is that we must acknowledge emotions that are triggered and emerge, and learn from them, so we can release and heal them. Whether they are from this lifetime, a past lifetime, or from our ancestral lineage. A very important piece of information I have learned throughout the years of holistic studies is that emotions buried alive will get passed on generationally and often if not addressed, manifest into dis-ease in the body, mind and spirit. So how do we identify these ancestral energetic themes and start to clear them before they wreak havoc on our bodies, emotions? And how does this relate to the story with my mother?
I am so grateful this year as Mother’s Day approaches and I am preparing to embark on a trip to Cancun for my mother’s 5-year follow-up at the Hope4Cancer clinic. For me, Mother’s Day has always been extra special, not only because I get to celebrate my mother and all of the wonderful female role models in my life, but also because it is right around the time of my mother’s birthday, which is May 10. Five years ago, I wasn’t sure if I would have my mom around for another year. With her new diagnosis of Stage 4 kidney cancer, suddenly Mother’s Day became a very significant occasion. All I could think is that this might be the last time I will get to celebrate my mother in person. Or maybe she’ll be alive, but too sick to enjoy being celebrated. Everything related to our time together became extremely valuable to me and everything I chose to do in my life became more impactful because I realized – the time we have here is effervescent. We have the opportunity to shine brightly and to live the life we have always dreamed… why not do it now. Because if not now, when?
I want to share a very special and impactful part of my mom’s healing journey to help you understand the gifts of releasing buried emotions and how allowing one’s soul and inner voice to be heard, can begin an amazing healing process! Upon finding the cancer, I immediately talked to my mom about the fact that one of the first things she needed to do was quit smoking. She agreed and was now, for the first time in her life, READY to work with a hypnotherapist. I knew that we needed to find a highly skilled hypnotherapist to help her because 45 years of this habit – which defined her self-image and directed all of her daily choices, wasn’t going to leave easily… or at least I thought.
For most of my young life I held onto the fear that smoking cigarettes would cause cancer in her body and kill her. As a child, every year I would plead with her to quit smoking, requesting that my birthday and Christmas gift be her quitting smoking. Eventually, in my early 20’s when I was studying to become a holistic practitioner, I learned that holding onto this fear and nagging her to quit was not in any way supporting her health. Eventually I allowed myself to let it go and shift my perspective. Soon after accepting this, I had a dream that my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was told she only had a couple of months to live. She showed up at my door with her suitcase (in my dream) saying, “well, we better start traveling!” I perceived this as meaning “we’ve only got so much time, so we better make the best of it!” I woke sobbing and feeling a deep sensation of grief. My dreams are often very vivid and feel so real, the thought of my mother only being in my life for a couple of more months really impacted me. Ever since this dream, I feared this exact scenario would come true AND IT DID… however, if I had known how the dream would end… I wouldn’t have feared it at all, I would have welcomed it thoroughly.
It was maybe a week following her initial diagnosis and we were in Philadelphia for a series of scans. We only had a small window of time for me to find a qualified hypnotherapist whose personality would be a match for her and I knew it was a tall order. This called for serious prayer! So I prayed to God and all of the universe to provide us with an amazing practitioner to help her clear this lifelong addiction of tobacco from her body and mind. I joke now that I enacted – Eat, Pray, Google… and, within 12 hours, a practitioner was gifted to us who miraculously just had a cancellation during the exact small window of time that we had available before we were heading back home from Philly. What was fascinating to me is that when this practitioner worked with my mom, rather than putting her into a deep state of hypnosis, he taught her how to communicate with her subconscious mind. He taught her how to communicate with her higher self, which I believe is the part of us that is in direct connection with the divine. One of this practitioner’s main methods was clearing emotions from the past. He brought her back to her first memory of being angry. It was when she was just a baby and something that maybe we wouldn’t think a child would remember, but my mother did. He helped her to bring up that root emotion from this lifetime and clear it from her system. He then brought her to her first experience with a cigarette and connected in with her emotions that she was experiencing at the time of smoking that first cigarette.
After the first session, my mom dropped from 12 cigarettes a day (Which she had grumpily achieved by sheer will) to 1 cigarette a day. She was still crabby and disgruntled during this time from the nicotine withdrawal, but to our amazement she was able to smoke only 1 cigarette a day for the first time in 45 years.
During the second visit, which was 2 weeks later on Valentine’s Day… I will never forget this day… he brought her back to her childhood, to a place where she remembered the magic of being a child. One of the most beautiful memories she had that came up was that of spending time with caterpillars that were going to be turning into butterflies. When he asked her what she loved about these caterpillars so much, she said “their ability to transform.” I realized at that moment that my mother’s life was filled with a lot of hard work and growth but was overcast with fear and stagnation. Change was never her favorite pastime. I always was in awe of the fact that her hair was the same length, style, and hair color since she was 5 years old. Coming from the daughter who dyed her hair and explored all kinds of styles every couple of months – I realized I exist in a state of constant transition and transformation comparatively. I saw that I embodied that which she loved so much. I realized one of the greatest gifts that she had given me – represented through this fascination, love, and admiration of the butterfly – was the love of change and the ability to live a life filled with adventure and flexibility. From my mother I received the gift of transformation in my life as a theme. Butterflies not only start out in a completely different form, but once they hatch from their chrysalis, they fly for thousands of miles migrating and reaching unseen heights. I know now that I received the gift of fearlessness when it comes to transformation from my mother, and because of that gift I have been able to transform in many ways that I feel are helping to heal the wounds of our ancestral lineage
After that second hypnosis session, my mom never had another cigarette. She completely transformed from a lifelong smoker, starting at age 14, to a non-smoker at age 62 in a matter of moments. With a snap of the hypnotherapist’s fingers, she would never return to being who she was. She had entered the chrysalis and the most beautiful transformation was yet to come. This was the beginning of her complete transformation and the beginning of her healing. That day, she became everything that she admired most in the butterfly, an organism with all the potential in the world to completely change shape and form. 5 years later, it’s impossible to even express in words how grateful I am to be with my mother as we return to Hope4Cancer. Her fearlessness in following the path of holistic healing from Stage 4 Kidney Cancer to complete remission is so inspiring. Her self-discipline has been relentless and beyond belief.
This year, Mother’s Day and her birthday have even greater celebratory meaning as it has been 5 years since completing her 3 weeks of treatments at the Hope4Cancer clinic. Five years is the Western Medical world defines the time at which the patient goes from being “in remission” to being fully cancer-free. Of course cancer can always return, even after 5 years, but the percentage drops significantly after this time. We are about to head to Cancun in a week to review her MRI, do a thermography, ultrasound, and do a full case review.
My mother’s journey of transformation led to a beautiful new life for her. The silver lining of a cancer diagnosis shining brightly that reverberated in all directions to those in her life whom she knows and loves as well as complete strangers. As her daughter, being her companion on this journey, her optimism and determination taught me how to and gave me permission to truly follow my heart and make hard decisions so I could step into true alignment in my life. I want to be the healthiest person I can and I want to live my best life. I want to achieve all that God and my higher self has planned and aligned, and I know this cannot and will not be achieved, behind a fog of denial and fear.
Because of my mom’s courage to clear one of her life-long addictions in the face of cancer, I was able to learn how to release and heal deep seated emotions and how to listen to the voice of my higher self. I believe the healing we did together and separately echoed through our ancestry and maybe helped heal some of the past wounds of those who preceded us. This year on Mother’s Day, I invite you to reflect on the beautiful gifts that your mother has given you, whatever they may be. That you offer gratitude to them, whether your mother is living in this realm or in another. That you offer gratitude to your whole lineage of mothers and mothers of mothers that connect you – tethered through blood, genetics, and energy – and that you embrace all of the beautiful gifts from these women, and take that which was given to you from them and grow just a little bit more. Your healing doesn’t just affect you – it affects future generations and past generations. May this Mother’s Day be a celebration for you of all of the loving energy you have received in your lifetime, past, present, and future.
I believe my mom has become the butterfly that was hatching from its chrysalis as a completely new organism, fresh in the world, ready to take on life’s challenges from a place of clarity, rather than existing in a fog. A new lease on life, ready to fly! I hope this visit brings more good news! And I wonder where we’ll travel to next. Life is full of possibilities, we just have to listen, trust, and act with fearlessness and love just like the butterfly.