Moving Beyond Life as a Checklist of Experiences
By Diana Paque
Certified Life Between Lives® Hypnotherapist, USA
Sheree contacted me in early 2020, just before the COVID lockdown began. She and I had been colleagues in our previous working lives, and while I had chosen to move on to hypnotherapy, she had retired and had been spending her time as a caretaker for her long-term partner Karen. Sheree and Karen had been together since the mid1970s, and over the past 20 years, Karen’s health and mental acuity had continued to drop, with Sheree picking up more of her support as she retired. At the point Sheree contacted me, she was aware that Karen was unable to communicate well, and Sheree wanted to understand more about Karen’s disease and her progression in this lifetime, as well as her own progression.
With COVID continuing, we postponed talking about having a session until March 2022. Karen had died in April 2021, and Sheree had been having great difficulty moving through mourning her loss. When we met for a group lunch in February, she commented that she rarely had a day that she didn’t cry extensively, and that she had yet to reach a balance and ability to think of life after Karen. She looked haggard and gray with very low energy and no lust for life.
At our first session, Sheree discussed her life, relationships, and what was bringing her to the session. She had been married twice and divorced, with regrets and shame about the second marriage especially. She had met Karen as a professional colleague and felt the connection immediately. Karen was involved with someone else, and Sheree put aside the notion that they would even be more than friends. Yet about 2 years later, Karen’s relationship ended, and Sheree and Karen had bonded, permanently. Sheree stated that she had never thought of herself as a lesbian or had any inclination towards women, yet when she met Karen, she knew that she was the soul she was waiting for who just happened to be in a woman’s body. She now believes she is bisexual.
Sheree described a verbally abusive father, close relationships with her siblings, especially her older sister Mona, and her challenges with making friends growing up. She came to this session wanting to be able to make contact with Karen, to resolve karma with her dad, and to discover her path in this life from here on.
In her first past life journey, she didn’t feel that she was in a life that was particularly cozy or loving. As a child she was a boy, Karl, living with adults but without much love or caring. He felt close to his grandmother that he knows cared about him, and felt love from her, but she doesn’t live with him. At the edge of his mind, he could feel her energy, but only a warm connection. He couldn’t sense other children, and as he grew older, he was able to see that the people who raised him were not his parents but people who had taken him in.
As he grew older, he saw himself working with tools, but working was not positive. When asked what the positives are in his life, he responds that leaving this place would be positive. He would like to go to the city because he “wouldn’t be living with dirt – streets in the city instead of muddy ruts for roads.”
By his late teens, Karl had decided to leave, and was working in a stable in a city and living there. He hangs out after work in pubs with guys, but he doesn’t develop any friendships or close relationships. He then finds himself out on the streets and feeling that something happened that caused him to be kicked out of his job and living space. And at 24 he decides that all that is open to him is to join the army.
Sheree comments that she doesn’t like this life at all and apparently that is the same feeling Karl holds. The army gives him a space to stay and some structure in his life but no joy or connection for himself. He is ultimately sent into war and dies in battle, feeling the ultimate disconnection from life and a numbness for living.
Having experienced this life without connection to others, Sheree could see that she has grown significantly since her life as Karl. She has her sister Mona throughout her entire life, so she has never faced the disconnects that Karl did.
In her next journey, she is Sally who lives in a family with sufficient resources to be comfortable and safe. Her parents are “proper people” and she is raised by a nanny, Nancy. She has the sense of a sister who feels like Mona, Sheree’s sister in the current life. Once the nanny left, she recounts engaging with a male tutor who was teaching them to read. She likes learning.
There is a change in the household when she is in her teens, and she feels that her father has died and there is less help in the household. Her house “feels empty so there is some vitality that is gone.” Her sister is still her closest companion, and mother isn’t close and caring, a bit more distant. Sheree noted that it isn’t her mother from the current life. She seems harried now, even though Sally is not feeling this stress. Sally feels that her life is about preparing to marry, as she is learning the piano. She doesn’t feel she went to school other than through tutoring at home.
Sally doesn’t have strong feelings about her future, but while marriage is expected, she doesn’t have any passions or interests that would draw her into a specific future. She likes to read Jane Austen, Little Women.
As she gets a little older, she still has her sister as her best friend, but they have friends with whom they socialize. She interacts as is expected of a young woman of her station.
Sally notices that she is being courted now by a man who Sheree notes feels like her first husband Rick. Sally fears being married and having children and fears dying in childbirth. She marries Olaf who is heavy-handed, but she chose him because he really wanted her, and she didn’t have any other suitors.
When she has her first child, Olaf jr., she adores him and feels incredible connection to him. She states that she knows she will have a second child, a girl, but Olaf Jr.is her favorite. She has a good relationship with Olaf, yet she nags him to help in the house. Olaf is a baker and runs a bakery. She has friends and takes Junior out to the park, so she has a social life. Mona is still close but in her own life and married better than Sally.
As her children are growing, Sally is teaching her daughter Sally. She wishes there were relatives around but feels somewhat isolated socially. And as Junior grows up, Olaf wanted him to take over the bakery business, but he chose to leave. Her feeling was that they live in Philadelphia and Junior went to New York. Olaf is looking now for a husband for young Sally who could then run the bakery. There is someone that works for Olaf now that would be a good match, and Sally ultimately marries Freddie, and they are now running the bakery.
As Sally reaches the end of her life, she dies peacefully in her sleep, having lost Olaf shortly before. She has a feeling that she didn’t have much depth of connection. Even though Olaf loved her, she only strongly loved her son.
As she begins her journey between lives, she gradually settles into a connection with her guide who manifests as a strong, sharp golden light that is very bright with an overlay of a male figure that is ethereal with no face – gossamer energy. Guides share that she is loved and are welcoming her home – she has a sense of love and support and that she did ok in her life as Sally – “we know you’re disappointed, but it’s ok.”
Sheree feels disappointed that she didn’t do anything profound in her last life, but her guides are reminding her there will be other opportunities to do more. She feels strongly supported, and she wants to see her friends, her soul group. She finds that everything is very white and undefined, but that her conscious mind is fighting this. We did a deepening using thera-buzzers to help deepen her again and brought in her guides again for support. She adjusted her position.
We shifted into calling on her council to be present and they told her “She needed to slow down and not be so impatient. She needs to get into just what is and be with that.” Stopping to smell the roses, not just smell them but get into what is – the felling the relationship, the situation. Embracing the feeling and get the depth of it – not just the superficial edge – but the wholeness of it. When you skim along and just get the edges, you don’t get the whole message and learning.”
They reinforced that when you do this, you really KNOW it, but not the superficial knowing on the surface. “I am in too much a hurry to get to the end, to check it off. Do you really know it? Do you have it inside of you?
I asked her, “As Sally you learned to feel with your children, but could have done more with Sally as a mother and grandmother. Is that a lesson in this current life as Sheree?”
“I brought in that I need to stay with something and experience it fully. I wouldn’t stay with Rick because I wasn’t in love with her. But I did with Karen.” Her council is reconfirming her staying with Karen
“Is there a reason Rick came in as Olaf? What is the connection between them?” I asked.
“I owed something to Rick from before but though I loved him at the beginning, we drifted apart because I loved other things more. I think I really loved him, but my council says I only superficially loved him and didn’t engage enough to feel it. I was more involved in my interests than being in full connection with him. I did it out of obligation, but I wasn’t really willing to commit to him and be there with him.”
She asks her council what energy remains to be resolved around Rick/Olaf.
“I get a sense that they are saying that 'you are making this up for you – it’s about you being ok with you and not about correcting something with them'”.
Sheree feels badly that she wasn’t there for her grandfather at the end. She sees it was her expectation of herself, of who she felt she should be. I asked: “How can your council help you with that?”
“It has to do with getting into something and sticking with something until you have it all. Don’t be so quick to have everything. I feel I let my grandfather down but they say that’s not true. I’m tired of this message, but : Sit with it! Sit with the feeling that you have that you let him down and get through it – Sit with it and let it resolve. Meditate on it, sit with it and accept it. I have a tendency to make checklists and then check them off rather than completing something. I did follow through with Olaf Jr, helped him make his own choices, and just like then, that can be enough. The piece of the wisdom is to sit with things and let them resolve.”
I asked if there is unfinished business with her dad?
“This is less clear, but I have some sense that I have handled much of this through the therapy I have done, it might be enough since it is me that is holding the belief it is unfinished.”
“Is there energy between you that needs to be resolved? With Rick, with Dad?”
“it’s mostly resolved and complete. I can leave it there, and let Rick do his own work and release it with love – that is the answer: to give back the remaining resentment.” Her council is encouraging her to do this.
Finally, I offer the suggestion that Sheree might now want to spend some time with Karen. She had been avoiding this as she was afraid that Karen would not make contact with her. Sheree had tried to communicate with Karen every day and was fearful that since she hadn’t been able to, that today would be no different.
As we called on Karen to be present, an explosion of emotion crossed Sheree’s face and body, shaking her as she wept with so much joy and sadness being released that it was several minutes before she was able to speak. She asked Karen why she hadn’t responded to her earlier pleas for connection, and Karen told her that she wanted Sheree to stop grieving and that couldn’t happen if Karen were popping in causing Sheree to miss her more. Karen explained in her boisterous voice that “Sheree, you have this! You don’t need me to be there to do what you need to do on your own! I had to leave so you could do your work without me distracting you”. And while Sheree wanted to argue, Karen reminded her of how true she had been to her task of taking care of Karen, of supporting people in Karen’s family to develop compassion, and how part of Sheree’s journey is to develop self-love, to deeply engage in her work in this lifetime.
Over the next half hour, Sheree and Karen talked about family issues and details of their lives that Sheree later explained she had talked about out loud so she would remember later. Karen reminded Sheree that she was always with her, but she would not interact if Sheree wanted to use her as a means of avoiding her own responsibility. As Sheree’s guides reiterated, this life is about living experiences fully in great depth, and the loss of Karen meant that Sheree was now to experience this grief and its resolution in her life as part of this process. Knowing this allowed her to relax and accept this role and see it as part of her path, not as a punishment.
As Sheree finished her journey, she spoke of the relief she was feeling for both the wisdom she now had and for the connection with Karen that she had been craving. She could see that her path was now visible and that supported her in moving out of her incessant grieving into choosing to be present on her journey ahead. She has a role to play in the lives of the young women in Karen’s family that began during Karen’s illness. Now Sheree has a place to support them in their growth and to also experience the loving connection with them that she hadn’t seen as an opportunity.
As Sheree left, she was visibly lighter and less bent over, having shed a heavy burden of tears, anger, and sadness that she had held inside for over a year. She could see the path in front of her, and the love surrounding her, and she was no longer alone. ♥
Diana Paque is an LBL Facilitator in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA and online worldwide