Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup Read Free Book Online Page B

dropped my ties to my children in the sense of holding on too tightly out of fear. I can move on now.”
    Martha realized that a full intellectual understanding of what had just happened to her was not necessary for her healing. She did not have to interpret the vision or experience of “being a Viking” as a past-life experience or anything else in order to heal. What was necessary was that she feel all of what was coming up from deep within her. After she acknowledged the act of murder, she felt freed of its burden and thus renewed. She also realized that she had to change the way she had been living. She needed to stop spending time with friends who contributed nothing to her life, in friendships that were based on habit, not mutual enrichment.
    When Martha returned to her home a week later, she still felt some residual fear and dread from the experience and wanted to be free of it. She wrote down the whole thing, then went out into the backyard un der a night sky full of stars, dug a hole, and burned her writing. She buried the ashes and stood up, and finally, after weeks of dread, she felt completely released.
    About three weeks later, she was visiting her aunt and uncle in Ohio. Her uncle Roy took her aside and said that he didn’t feel that he had much longer to live and that he had something he wanted to give her. He took her into a back room, reached up on a shelf, and handed down a bronze statue. It was a Viking with a sword.
    We share our amazement at this bit of synchronicity. (“Synchronicity is God’s way of remaining anonymous,” says Bernie Siegel.) Martha said, “I can have this statue in my house now. It is a symbol for me of healing. I know that if I had not allowed myself to experience this mem ory or dream or whatever it was, I would have developed a fatal stomach condition. I am certain of this.”
    This story illustrates profoundly that the notion that we are to blame for our illnesses in any conventional sense is irrelevant and narrow. In some mysterious way, our conscious intellect is not in control. Another part of us—our highest power, soul, or inner wisdom—is. The concept of the self needs to be expanded. Studies have documented the power of prayer to heal at a distance, instantaneously. Time and space are not absolute. We are acted upon by forces outside of our conscious control. We can be open to learning from all of life, from our inner selves, and from all that with which we are connected.
    We have the body we have because it is precisely the vehicle in which we can best do what we came to do. Stevie Wonder has said that his blindness helped him feel the love that is all around him more than he would have if he were sighted. Perhaps he couldn’t do the creative work he’s doing if he were in a “normal” body. The late Elisabeth Kübler-Ross pointed out that when our bodies are sick or nonfunctioning, our spiritual and mental capacities often expand way beyond what they would normally be. She used the example of children with leukemia who seem wise beyond their years. 23 I accept the truth of this on faith. We can’t really hope to figure it out with our logical, intellectual selves. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.
    Be open to the messages and mysteries of your body and its symp toms. Be eager to listen and slow to judge. What you learn can save your life.

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Inner Guidance

    To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
    You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
—Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
    R ight after Mary Lu was diagnosed with breast cancer, she called me to discuss her treatment options. I told her that part of her healing would be to learn how to trust herself to make her own decisions