Love is Never Wasted

Have you noticed it’s a “thing” to choose a word for the year? I haven’t been drawn to do it in the past (usually having many special words), but this year I chose LOVE. In a relaxed way, I pay attention to information and experiences about love.

This month, I love to tell you, I celebrate 22 years of practicing Healing Touch. Wow! My practice has waxed and waned over the years, and then 3 years ago I returned to my roots of working as an occupational therapist and as an employee with someone else providing the clients. I’ve been lucky to work in places where I am welcome to incorporate energy healing into OT sessions when it supports OT goals. In home care, I worked with an 85-year-old woman who began having panic attacks after her fall and fracture. I taught her energy techniques to drain her anxiety out through her feet.  If they continued, the panic attacks may have prevented her from living independently. Not only did she learn to manage her anxiety, but one day she announced she’d taught her elementary-school-aged relatives how to let go of anxious energy. In my most recent work in dementia care, I occasionally do hands-on Healing Touch but mostly I set my intention to be a healing presence for all, that people would receive what they need the most. As with any healing work, intentionally aligned with the Divine, there is a blessed flow of energy, intuitive solutions present themselves, and the right helpers show up at the right time.

My capacity for love has grown in this work. I find that a big wide-open heart lets in doses of indescribable sweetness and tenderness. As dementia progresses, the recent past is lost, then more of the long-ago past becomes inaccessible, until the present moment becomes more and more all that there is. Wow, right? So how I choose to connect with a person in this moment becomes everything. Arranging my body to meet them at their eye level, letting my face show my warmth toward them, touching their arm with love, keeping my words simple. “I am glad you are here, Patty.” If I am tense with hurry and an ambitious job description, I take a deep breath before connecting with them so my body language doesn’t contradict my words. Because body language makes sense longer than words do.

But what else about a big wide-open heart? Ouch! When a hurting family member comes charging in with concerns, assuming the worst about staff, bullying the people who showed up for work in a chronically understaffed field. Ouch! How, then, to protect the heart?

Well, I don’t think it’s about protection necessarily. More about thoughtful care. So how do I care for this big heart of mine? Resting. Getting to the doctor, the dentist, the chiropractor, the healing touch practitioner. Connecting with friends, those special people who see and bring out the best in me.

What else? Loving this body of mine, sewing for this body of mine, to fit my post-breast cancer dimensions, an act of love after my proportions got smaller where society says bigger is better and got bigger where society says smaller is better.

And? I see a pattern in my life that pops up every so often. It’s the whole “don’t cast your pearls before swine” theme. I grew up on a farm. Nothing wrong with swine. But if you have a hot date, you want to do the clean-up and self-decorating after and not before feeding the pigs and cleaning out their stall, right? It’s a matter of using your finery appropriately–and smelling your best! So periodically I need to evaluate: the gifts I have, the gifts I share, am I sharing them in a place where it is most beneficial to the recipients and to me? Is my environment the right one for the jewels I bring?

Just some thoughts as I focus on my word LOVE this year. I will continue to be an employee serving the needs of older adults in creative ways. I will continue to work with a small number of clients on a private basis. So far this year, themes of my clients include: decreasing chronic pain, developing energy self care tools and intuition skills, and creating a beautiful next phase of life through discernment and energy alignment.

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LOVE is never wasted,

Janet