Ann’s Blog

Generational Healing Through Deep Memory Release

The dream that had led me to Scotland (see entry June 26, 2007) had occurred several days before I had scheduled a “Deep Memory Process” session with Kathy Bornino, a counselor who lived in a community near Anna. I had contacted her on discovering she had been trained by Roger Woolger, a Jungian with whose writings and methods I was familiar.

The dream had not come up during the “deep memory” part of the “process” but later on. My discussion with her concerning the dream, together with what had played out in the session, would form my first clear understanding of how Bob and I would be working together in ways not too different than we had been used to.

The primary focus of my session had related to my knee surgery. The inquiry had been about the possibility of a genetic memory or pattern manifesting in this knee. Kathy suggested I focus on the knee and observe if someone in my family line came to mind. Right away I heard: “Great Aunt Helene.” At the same time I experienced a physical “witness,” or what is sometimes described as “a hit.” As instructed, I followed back through this ancestral line to a great (x4) grandfather. My maternal grandmother’s mother’s father had owned a brewery in Munich. Beyond that I knew nothing of my Munich ancestors. The ancestor in question would have been my grandmother’s great grandfather, at least as far as I can figure out.

Take what follows as you will, I will simply tell it as I experienced it:

On the screen of my mind I saw a battlefield. I identified the field as involving the Bavarian army in which my ancestor was serving. The time I guessed to be the early 1800s. However, none of this seemed important. What was central was my sense, my inner perception that this grandfather, as a youth, had here sustained a leg injury. But more crucial was that this scene was where an emotionally crippling trauma had unfolded with an impact sufficient to have affected future generations.

Among bodies, horses, blood and weapons, my ancestor knelt before a fallen friend who was a close and beloved comrade. He could have been a brother. I couldn’t be sure. But what was apparent was that someone he deeply loved lay mortally wounded before him. And onto my ancestor, so young himself, was falling the responsibility of putting his friend (or brother) out of his excruciating agony. So unbearably heartrending was this necessity that in carrying it out a fragmentation of my ancestor’s soul occurred. In an act of sheer survival, it was here that his capacity to feel shut down. Here his heart of flesh had turned to stone. And it was this emotional as well as physical crippling that had colored the psychic atmosphere in which my mother’s mother’s mother’s father had been raised.

Sitting in Kathy’s consulting room, I attempted to restrain my body from shaking as I was caught up in empathetic connection to this ancestor. For how long the shaking continued I’m not sure, but gradually my sense of calm returned. As it did the scene on the screen of my mind shifted. What had been more of a statuesque or “frozen in time” quality gave way to a reanimation of the figures. I saw the two—my ancestor and his friend—as having been set free and now both were trying to talk at once. My ancestor was begging forgiveness for what he had done. Attempting to interrupt him, his comrade was explaining that he had never considered the deed other than an act of compassion and love.

This, for my ancestor, was a startling revelation, and a re-perception that took a few moments to sink in. I then observed them embracing, with tears of profound release flowing freely, and from my eyes as well.

With this the matter seemed finished, nevertheless I wondered if there was something else I needed to do. But before I could think what that might be, Bob appeared on the scene and motioned to them to follow him. This they did with me observing as the three disappeared.

When I opened my eyes I was back in the ordinary reality of Kathy’s room. “You were really shaking,” she observed, and asked what at that point I had been experiencing. In other circumstances I likely would have given unrestrained expression to the intensity of the emotions that my ancestor had found it necessary to repress in order to survive. Actually, in a stifled interior way I had been giving expression to this. Simultaneously, I had been understanding that the crippling injury to his leg and a subsequent rigidity of this leg was matched by that to his soul. Was it possible that this psychic atmosphere in which my mother’s mother’s father as a child had been raised had something to do with the undiagnosed crippling of my great aunt Helene? or with the deterioration of my right knee? If so, does this suggest that an ancestral trauma of sufficient emotional impact can effect the DNA of an hereditary line, thereby passing onto future generations a particular physical tendency or vulnerability? Or who is to say but what in a hereditary line one person will bear the mark of a crippling trauma in the physical and another in the emotional body?

This was my first experience after Bob’s transition of doing “soul releasement” in partnership with him. Yet it was something that closely resembled work we previously had done together, but never so compellingly.

Kathy explained what she understood from personal experience of the advantage of the team work she saw Bob and I now able to undertake. What she explained was that the one who is in the spirit realm (Bob) has the greater advantage in seeing and knowing what needs to be accomplished. But this one no longer has access to the expression of emotion, whereas the one still in a physical body (me), is able to pick up on the emotion and, more importantly, able to give expression to it for the soul or souls of those held captive by the trauma.

A further insight for me is that negative and misperceived emotions can be as binding to the emotional body as strong ropes are to a physical body, and their removal as equally dependent on the empathetic compassion of a third party.

As my two-hour session with Kathy was concluding, I related to her my Scottish Regalia dream of several days before, (see previous entry). Out loud I wondered if its possible relevance was to my son Robert’s move to Scotland. The discussion then turned to Kathy’s interest in Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, as a place where more “witches” had been put to death than in Salem.

Besides visiting Robert and Diane in their new home base, I was wondering if there was something else on my Glasgow agenda. The answer would be “Yes,” but the nature of this would not come to light until my next Deep Memory Process session which would be shortly prior to leaving for Scotland. It would involve a visit to the Special Collections Library at the University of Glasgow where I would have the rare opportunity of pouring over a number of 16^th and 17^th century alchemical manuscripts, in particular a group of twenty images in the Rosarium collection. How or even if Generational Healing and Alchemical Symbolism are related I have yet to find out.

A Life and a House to Rebuild

In mid March 2006, our normally below-the-snowline valley had been visited by a rare and un-seasonal storm. And although awesomely beautiful it was equally devastating.

Seventeen trees had been brought down by the weight of snow on early leaves and weakened limbs, blocking the only road in. Numerous other trees had toppled within our acreage. The most consequential had been an immense oak with roots extending beneath the front portion of one of the two houses serving family and guests. Standing at the kitchen window in the lower house I had watched, as in slow motion, the mighty oak had fallen forward and downward, and in so doing lifted the foundation and the entire front section of the upper house, pulling it away from the rest of the house and leaving it suspended in mid air.

Some days later Bob would tell me that when the oak went down he knew it signaled his own impending departure. I think we all did.

Bob’s Surprise Visit

For several years I had been putting off knee surgery, waiting for a more convenient time. Once Bob’s memorial service was over, I knew what I needed to do and asked Anna to take me home with her for knee surgery. A nurse and well-connected to the medical community where she lived, I knew this was the ideal and best possible choice for the new beginning of my life. Each of the children had tirelessly been on hand to help since the onset of Bob’s health crises the previous July. Similarly, each would now under gird my physical healing and lend their emotional support as I met the challenges ahead. I knew surgery and recovery would be painful, but necessary if I wanted to regain mobility and step back into an active life. I also reasoned that the physical pain would help me bear and even offset some of the emotional pain. I understood, or perhaps intuited, this as having something to do with a transfer or a sacrifice of energy on one level for that of another. And so, a few days later I headed with Anna for what would be my home away from home for the coming year, culminating with our trip to Scotland.

Arrangement for my surgery fell into place in a remarkable way and on April 7^th, my 77^th birthday I found myself in a hospital bed behind a partially drawn curtain in the surgery staging area. Of a sudden and taking me totally by surprise, Bob was there; his presence palpable and unmistakable. I expressed or thought appreciation for the effort I assumed it would have taken for him to be so tangibly present. To this he telepathically replied that of course he would be with me. Not only for my surgery, but wasn’t it also my birthday? I was overwhelmed with gratitude at his presence, and I felt deeply at peace and confident all would be well. Again, in the operating room and just before going under the anesthetic, he was again there and just as palpable as before. With this I lost consciousness, but the memory sustained me throughout my stay in the hospital and the coming weeks.

Back at Murray Creek

In the meantime, back at Murray Creek a friend in need of a place to live moved into the lower house “to hold the space and honor the vision of the sacredness of the place.” While three hundred miles away, with Anna and her husband Jim, a building contractor, plans began to take shape for using the storm-damage insurance to rebuild the front portion of the upper house. Before Bob’s transition I could not have imagined my life at Murray Creek without him. But now I began to embrace an image of myself living out the remaining years of my life in this house on a hill overlooking creek and valley. And in my journal dialogues with Bob he insisted this was where I needed to be for what lie ahead.

Jim, with lots of help from sons, grandsons, and even neighbors, began the project of rebuilding the broken house. Moreover, with the demise of the great oak, a magnificent view of the valley and mountains opened up.