The following email was written to a client in response to her own continuing journey of seeking to live a life of joy, even when shit is hitting the fan. Like so many women, I believe she has been in that search for a very long time with the always-looming question, “If my life is so good, then why am I feeling so empty? If I have everything I need, then I have no right to feel the way I do. I lack for nothing, yet something is missing.” OR, my favourite, “my time is running out; I have to get on with it!”

25 years ago, I was studying advanced levels of Cranial-Sacral Therapy and Somato Emotional Release. During that time, I was gifted to see a video of Vietnam veterans both before and after individual multi-hands sessions that were intended to move the deeply stored energies in their bodies related to their horrific experiences of war. This project of multi-hands sessions, conceived by the Upledger Institute in Florida, were intended to help heal and restore these veterans to lives of joy. Several Vietnam vets and one nurse who had served there took part. These individuals had seen and experienced the worst of atrocities overseas. On their return home to the USA, they did not experience a hero’s welcome from the general populace. After years of feeling lost and dejected, out of work, addicted and hopeless, they were invited to an opportunity for hands-on healing. A life-changing experience.

I have often heard coaches and healers who are struggling with getting paid for doing the work they love say: It is never about the money (as if to rationalize the despair of unrequited reciprocity). While that statement is actually true at higher orders of thinking, even in the most practical of considerations, we could also own the truth of this: It is always about the money. We are spiritual beings expressing into a physical reality through tissue. As such, we can create anything we put our minds to, yet the conversations about money that we could be having are both avoided and denied, so deep is the abyss of our fear of feeling ostracized because we have it… or because we don’t.

It had been a very hot and humid day right up until about 6 PM, then the rain started to fall heavily in sheets. I ran to the car from my Aunt’s apartment on Charlotte Street in Ottawa so my father could drive me to St. James Anglican Church in Hull, Quebec for a 7 PM ceremony.  I was about to get married.

Only 3 days before, I had been running the underground tunnels of the Ottawa Civic Hospital looking for my friend who was working the evening shift; I was in a bit of a panic. All of a sudden, I had wondered just what I was getting myself into. I did not find my friend at work; she had already finished her shift, so I headed over to her apartment. She heard me out, assuaged my ‘fears’ (was I doing the right thing?)  and calmed me down. Now, Saturday had arrived.