YOUR MOTHER BIRTHS YOU TWICE
“Your Mother births you twice” she said, “Once when you are born and again when she dies.”
My friend shared these words with me two weeks after losing her beloved mother, but like giving birth, there is no way to explain the metamorphosis until one goes through it. I had no context to go off, so instead I put her words in a mental box for a day that was hopefully very far away.
It is December 28, 2019, and my mom and I are taking a quick trip to Canyon Ranch in Lenox, her favorite place. Not usually a place one would say no to, but I still remember telling my husband I wasn’t eager to go, unusual for me. Mom was alone, with an alcoholic husband returning soon from another trip to rehab, and looking for a place to find strength and peace before the viscous cycle began again.
We left a day early due to an impending ice storm and she was anxious to get home. Her appetite was off, feeling a little tired and seeking the comfort of her own bed. A few days later exhausted and with a negative flu test in hand, she flew to Antigua to participate in family counseling with her husband. She was nervous.
I had a dream the night before she left. My Grandmother and I were having a wonderful catch up and she got up to leave. “Where are you going, I asked?” “I need to be with your mom,” she said.
I told mom the next morning that Grandma is with you, don’t worry I think this will be very positive.
Then seven days later with the help of an incredible group of friends, I medically evacuated my mother from Antigua to NYC’s Sinai hospital. With all the symptoms we now know to be Covid 19 but were completely unknown at the time. My mom was beginning her journey home.
A few things about me. Virgo Sun, Sagittarius rising, I have never been called shy, timid or quiet. If you’re in jail, kidnapped or lost your voice – you give me a call.
And that is exactly what my mom did. She lost her voice and gave me the microphone.
I was an only child of a single parent, something every kid dreams of until a parent gets ill. For 47 days instead of going to work, I went to Sinai. From 9am to 5pm I was my mother’s advocate, answering emails and instructing doctors on her medical history. She was called the million-dollar woman, as every test known was given – except Covid. “Oh, we wouldn’t even know how to test for that – it’s in China.” they said.
With the free time I had, I bought any food that remotely piqued her interest. She couldn’t smell or taste a thing. When she did it tasted metallic and she only wanted nourishing food, not the poison, packaged and processed foods hospitals still give today. But a few sips of a homemade smoothie was all she could handle.
Her decline was rapid and within a week she could no longer walk. Oxygen was given to her constantly via her nostrils and I did my best to give her exposure to the light of the sun. We listened to the healing cells meditation that I used during my radiation treatment, and I brought in healing plants and crystals and my sound bowl.
Seven years ago, at the age of 45 I received a shocking diagnosis of breast cancer. Non-hereditary (only 20% of all cancers are) and non-estrogen caused, I was a poster child for a mammogram my Drs said – caught early and with 6 weeks of radiation I was “cured”. Several friends of mine in their 40s were not cured and passed away very quickly, leaving young children, and loved ones behind. I knew this was not “normal” and that journey led me to write my book “Detox Your Home” – a deep dive into all the carcinogens we are exposed to daily – no matter where we live.
During this time, I received powerful downloads that I need to use my voice to help others. I was also told by a medium that I was a healer. Yes, I know I said – but she paused and said hmm. I don’t think you quite understand yet.
Part of my healing was with sound. An incredible human and highly respected oncologist and former chief medical resident at what are now New York Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr Mitch Gaynor, recommended sound therapy to his patients. It was through a Google search I found my friend and future teacher, Tibetan Sound Bowl Practitioner, Katherine Hamer. The sound bowls have given me incredible – more than I could have ever imagined.
“Place the bowl by her stomach” Katherine instructed me, so I did. My bowl is heavy and stubborn. The first week she gifted it to me I could not get it to sing. I broke out into a sweat practicing. “Play by her head and keep her feet grounded with a heavy blanket.” I did as I was instructed and was merely the player. Katherine and the bowl’s medicine were the healers.
As weeks went by and the mysterious “virus” they said my mom had was still eluding five departments at Sinai, I called Katherine. “Please come – it will bring her happiness.”
A funny thing I noticed when my mom was admitted to the hospital. She was very much at peace. While exhaustion and lack of blood oxygen and nutrition sucked her energy – she never complained and was very serene. Under normal circumstances she would have been much more vocal and frustrated. It reminded me of my grandmother and as of writing this I have to wonder if my grandmother did indeed step in…
“Your Mom is making a choice,” Katherine said. “To stay or to go. It is in her hands right now.”
I paused, everything I knew about my mom was that she wanted to stay. She had a beloved grandson who she lived for, a grandson she wouldn’t let in the hospital, to not scare him. But did she have the strength. Did she really have a choice?
“I see angels” she texted. Oh Goddess I thought – she is not grounding. “Yes mom the clouds and birds do look like angels but they stay in the sky, you have to focus on staying here on Earth.” “Yes of course!” she said.
The days rolled into weeks and the weeks into a month. Nothing was ever found, and the frustration grew. By this point her best friends arrived from Los Angeles to provide me much need breaks. Although I honestly could not leave her side. I knew my time was precious. Holding hope that the miracle cure would appear.
Katherine left my mom a bowl. A dolphin bowl. Also, an F note like mine it corresponds with the root chakra and is deeply grounding. A dolphin bowl is unique in that it sounds like a dolphin when you play it with water and tilt it with your wrist. It is soothing, a little sad and my mom adored hers.
“Do you want me to play the bowls mom?”
“Yes!” her eyes told me.
I would play two or three times a day, lulling her into sleep. She told me she could she pictures in the bowls – a pig oddly - and that they spoke to her. As her condition worsened and she was moved into the ICU, she began to see more, pointing to her third eye and smiling. I knew she was leaving.
The thirty minutes before my mom passed, I danced and sang for her and played the bowls – hers and mine. We held her hand and when her best friend told her she would take care of me and her grandson, one tear fell from her eye, and she passed over.
“Your Mom births you twice. When you are born and when she dies.”
The next weeks were a blur. As an only child of a single parent, there is no one to care for you. The only person you want in the world right now is that parent who has died. My safety net was gone, I was free falling. I was also given the task of taking care of all of my mom’s affairs while everyone else around me was allowed to grieve.
Several months later and now locked down in my home with the entire world, I slowly began my process of healing, and my mom began sending me signs. Pottery with the letters ILY found on the beach, a piece of driftwood with her initials on it, blue jay feathers in the park. I began communicating with her in a different realm and she with me. Truly it all began from the start of her illness. Nearly every dream I had was a premonition, including the date of her death flashing before me two weeks before. I began new relationships with friends who lost a parent or a partner – a club none of them wanted to ever invite me in to. I cried in restorative yoga and danced to open my heart. I became a 3rd level reiki practitioner – drawn to this beautiful practice after experiencing its healing.
Then one day I was called to the bowls.
I have worked and been worked on by Katherine Hamer for years and never, and not once, was I called to play them. They held ancient secrets I did not find myself capable of understanding. A few years prior my friend Courtney was in the hospital with necrosis on her shin. Katherine was out of town. “Take the bowl and play it.” She said. “But it doesn’t sing for me.” “Just bang it with the mallet next to her leg.”
So, I did. And it worked. Courtney’s leg began healing the next day and she left the hospital.
Like Reiki – the energy moves through the human and into the body. It is energy. The bowls are handmade using hammers and reciting of prayers. They are intention materialized. Just like the words I wrote in my book; the sound healing is channeled through me. I do nothing but play.
It wasn’t until I went through the journey of my mom’s death that I realized - healing work does not come from the healer, a healer is a vessel. My mom was a vessel for me, she guided me and now I am the vessel for the healing she opened for me.
It is an incredible love story this life on earth and this life after earth. And it is even more incredible when the two merge.
Did my mom’s death rebirth me? How could it not. The view changes when your mother passes. It is a different lens. Their light leaves and it now shines in areas we aren’t used to looking at.
And with their light, the mortal obligations we carry when they are alive also leave. The child in us who yearns for their approval no longer has anyone they need to impress. We no longer have that adult to impress, to appease, to answer to or to care for. All obligations are gone. It is liberating and you can also find yourself very lost. But then you hear a voice, your voice and you start to listen to it, and you make a new best friend - with yourself.
Me and My Mom 1976