The Inside Story

I was born in 1942 into one of the most glorious settings on the planet: Vancouver, Canada, between the mountains and the sea. My first word, I am told, was "Why?" - and I went on asking "why" throughout my childhood, driving my parents and teachers to distraction with unanswerable questions. "Yes, but WHY does 2 +2 = 4?" "WHY does the sun rise every morning?" "WHY do people smile when they are happy?" I was driven to understand - to understand how the universe works, who I am, why I am here.

At age six and a half I suddenly learned to read. On a Friday afternoon in January during the half-hour free reading period, I "got" the principles of phonics -- not taught in my school - and a whole world of answers opened to me. The following week I persuaded my mother to help me acquire a library card, and proceeded to devour my weekly limit of 10 books every week, along with any other reading material in the house. My mother's chief job became encouraging me to go out and play! (I often took a book along anyway.) I would read fiction and nonfiction, encyclopedias, novels, textbooks, technical manuals, biographies, always driven to find out more, more, more....

Yet I actually learned very little about the questions I really wanted answered. I wanted to know, to experience, who I REALLY was. I instinctively knew that I wasn't just a body, and I also sensed that there was much more to the universe than what I could see or touch. I attended church, but felt little connection to the distant God of my fathers. I was looking for something, someone, who would unveil THE TRUTH to me. I could not dedicate my life to less than the Truth.

Perhaps if my own Protestant religion and culture wouldn't supply the answers, another would. So at age 15 I broadened the search, over the next several years studying foreign language and linguistics in college (University of British Columbia) and graduate school (Yale), trying out Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox teachings, and finally diving into comparative religions. I resonated with certain Hindu and Buddhist teachings, but in the early 1960s there were no gurus, no lamas in the West to teach by example. I read, I pondered. And I still felt depressed, isolated, and unsure why I was here. Finally I found someone else who loved philosophy and had as curious a mind, married him, and went South with him to teach foreign languages and philosophy in Louisiana, then California, then back to Louisiana again.

Back in Northern Louisiana, we lived in a trailer on 15 acres of uncleared pine forest, which we laboriously began to clear. Perhaps the answers lay in healthy, natural living. Delving into the back-to-the-land movement, we raised our own organic food and looked into home-schooling our two small children. I became a school librarian, the only white face at the local all-black high school. My attempts to create an extracurricular activities program thrilled the teachers and students - and prompted a midnight visit from the local Klan members, who engaged in target practice in the road in front of our isolated trailer. My husband was gone on business; I cowered in the bathroom with my two toddlers until they left.

Still in search of my True Self, by age 30 I had tried out two cults and an intentional community. Many beautiful principles, but I saw few people living their truth. Now a single mom, I moved to Colorado and taught in high school and college for several years, tending to turn my upper-level language classes into year-long searches for The Deeper Meaning in Life. Why not? The authorities didn't care what you discussed as long as you did it in French, Spanish or German. However, I was still looking for answers, and was now suffering recurring bouts of depression. What was I really here to do? By the half-century mark I had become a fullblown workaholic, pouring myself unstintingly into whatever I felt would support me in becoming my True Self -- and I still hadn't a clue who I was.

Help came, as it so often does, in deep disguise. I had left the school district to become a management development consultant, pouring my considerable capacity for self-sacrifice into my work. Jetting all over the country, writing speeches for CEOs and generals, giving classes to upper-level managers; it sounded glamorous but was really just an endless series of airports and hotel rooms. I felt I was helping some people, some of the time, but it wasn't enough. I put out a deep prayer to the universe to show me what came next.

What came next was an enormous betrayal and upheaval in the company I had helped found. I found myself out on the sidewalk and deeply mourning the loss of a twenty-year-old friendship. Shaken, depressed, physically depleted and at the end of my resources, I simply gave up. My busy, inquiring mind ground to a halt. And in that surrender, I opened up to answers beyond my mind's grasp. Listening deeply to the Unseen around me, I "heard" that it was time for me to become a healer. I accompanied a friend to a hypnotherapy session and realized that I myself had instinctively been using almost all the therapist's techniques in counseling friends for many years. I enrolled in an intensive hypnotherapy course and re-instated my academic studies, ending up with a Ph.D. in Metaphysics (Jungian emphasis) and certification as a clinical hypnotherapist. "Aha!" said I. "I'm a healer, that's who I am."

This partial answer satisfied me, more or less, for many years. Professionally, I was happy helping people broken by trauma to become functioning human beings again. However, in my private life I still felt much less than whole, less than free, a very tentative citizen of the universe.

I loved my psychotherapy practice, but after a decade of doing hypnotherapy and EMDR I needed more. I was helping people broken by trauma to heal mentally and emotionally so that they could lead "normal" lives -- but where was the deeper dimension of healing that would open them - and me - up to the fullness of their own soul? How could they - and I - not only be "normal," but be truly whole and free?

In May of 2003, a client to whom I shall be forever grateful handed me a book called The Journey . "Here," she said, "read this, and then I want you to do the processes in the back of the book with me." I read the book and was enormously drawn to the work and the story of a woman who had founding healing on so many levels. But when I handed the book back I told my client, "I was tremendously impressed by these processes but I feel I need to get some training before using them on someone else. Do you know of any workshops on this work?" "No," she said, "I just got the book from the bookstore." Ah, well, I thought; if the universe really wants me to do this, sometime the opportunity will come around again.

Two days later, I was talking with another client when she mentioned the Journey book. "Do you know anything about a workshop?" I asked. 'Yes - as a matter of fact, the first Journey Intensive seminar ever held this side of the Mississippi is being held in Boulder (an hour away from me) in 10 days' time." "Great!" I said. "Give me the number to call!" "I don't know any numbers," she said. "I just know it's going to happen." Hmm, I thought, strike two....

Not being very computer-savvy, it never occurred to me to search online - but as it turned out I didn't have to. In reading The Journey , I had taken one step towards Truth, and now Truth was seeking me out. Three days later, I was at a potluck for my community chorus at a local events center. As I was tackling my salad, a woman walked by leading a group on a tour of the center. "Oh, yes, we have lots of talks here, " she said as she passed my chair. "Why just the other day we had Skip Lackey from The Journey giving a pre-talk for his upcoming Intensive next weekend in Boulder...." I dropped my salad (thank God for paper plates), surged up out of my chair and almost grabbed the poor woman by the shoulders: "Give me their phone number!" And the rest is history.

By the time I left that weekend workshop, I knew Who I REALLY am. And that awareness has never left me. In the days and weeks that followed, I felt my life being picked up and carried by an intelligence far greater than that of my thinking mind - yet still definitely my own awareness, not a deity from some far-off heaven. I experienced astonishing physical healing - that's another story, one you'll have to come see me to hear! And as I became trained in practicing Journeywork, I have watched client after client move into the same wholeness at all levels, guided by the Infinite Intelligence inside them. It is my great joy to offer this extraordinary healing to my clients -- healing directed not by my mind, nor by theirs, but by their own Core Self. At last, I have found out Who I am - and that awareness is available to all who want it. Will you join me in wholeness and freedom?

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