Gratitude, Intuition, and Impulse

If you listen, you will hear your calling. If you trust, you will find your way.

We sat on a public park bench where the palm trees of Hawaii swayed above us with levity. The sounds of the ocean curled upon themselves some hundred yards away.

Sharing eye contact so directly with a person who embodies the Goddess archetype is always a powerful experience.

Marta’s eyes were dark, the hair that graced her shoulder blades darker, her skin balanced between them with a maple syrup sweetness. She must have been 20 or 25 years more lived than I. We looked at one another intently. With gratitude.

“I want you to start writing ten things a day that you are grateful for. Each thing is never to be repeated. Ten different things, every day, as it goes on.” Her Polish accent rolled graciously off of her lips to dance their way into the space between us. I soaked them in with gravity; as simple as they were, her words were laying down the bricks of my path to healing.

“I want you to also find a tree, the same tree you can visit every day, and write ten things you are grateful about that tree. Ten new things, never to repeat yourself.”

I was quizzical, as I am wont to be, seeking any barriers to this simple request that may result in my failure of it. Perhaps in this habit of behavior, I was also seeking excuses to subdue a success. Getting the better of a success seems counter to all of this work and effort–counter to the purpose of pouring my resources into my healing journey–but who would I be at 24 (and let’s be honest, 34 as well) if not styled with a streak of self-sabotage?

Marta answered all of my questions with patience, dodging any explicit answers that would give away the result of this assignment while gently blowing aside any potential for a founded excuse to fail at it.

Her hands grasped an invisible rock hanging between us. “Do this, and something will open to you. A power, a magic. Something I cannot explain, only you can discover.” Her hands unfurled like a lotus emerging from thick mud. I could see the rock opening into another universe.

And oh, it did.

I met Marta just a few months prior. My father had passed away, and I moved home to Oahu, Hawai’i, to help with my Mom and to be close to home. With our family history slipping away, I wanted to be close. I wanted to touch our shared life one last time as it slipped from this earth and from any of our active storylines.

A pain had started in my left shoulder when he left us. A stabbing pain I knew had an emotional source. My spirit had a tear, and I was well aware that I needed to mend it.

I met several landlords as I sought a guest house to reside in. Marta was one of them. I didn’t choose her place to live, but I did call her back.

“I know this may sound…strange…But when I met you, I noticed something. A pull, a feeling, something…something that is a relationship that isn’t landlord and tenant. Something that is telling me to ask if I may learn from you, if I may learn something about how to heal myself, and how to go about healing this profound grief I find myself in.”

I could feel her powerful presence on the other side of the line. “It doesn’t sound strange. I felt it too, and things like this do happen to me.”

Marta asked me for $75/hour to compensate her for her guidance. We had weekly meetings at a public location for several months. She was amidst getting her Masters in Psychology at the University of Hawaii, and she had a much longer history as a healer throughout a very well-lived life. One of her healing modalities of old took place during her years in Bali. In a program she designed and led, traumatized dolphins were paired with traumatized humans to develop a bond. The bond would help to repair both beings through a mutual connection based on trust. Trust, not food. The humans did not give the dolphins any treats, and the relationship they would forge came entirely from the work they each put into trusting each other.

She came at it differently, like that—the healing.

She was magical in all of her designs. Marta approached the world with a respect that reverberated into every space I shared with her. She was wary but loving. She was stern but caring. Her boundaries were very much felt, as was her compassion.

Marta gave me many tools during that time: tools to forgive, tools to move blocked energy, tools to open myself to life anew.

My shoulder pain melted over time.

I read a lot. I didn’t smoke pot. I did a lot of Katie Byron's Judge Your Neighbor worksheets. I did a lot of specific art projects to work through specific traumas. I got to know my archetypes; I learned to choose the Artist and to avoid the Shapeshifter. I worked with flower essences. I practiced Dahn Yoga (to a point, for my use, exiting when I got what I came there for–before the culty stuff invaded the better bits). I did my daily gratitude practices, and I got to know one tree very, very well.

Healers will come to you from the most unexpected places. I am forever grateful for Marta. I am grateful for my intuition to notice her. I am grateful for following my impulse to call her.

I am grateful for this practice of gratitude, which, to be frank, I’ve set aside for too long and choose to start again today.

What are you grateful for?

A hui ho,

Julia