I’ve been an artist, designer, gardener/landscaper, mom, wife, daughter, obsessed cook, academic journal editor, writer, philosopher, composer, pianist, and piano teacher. My deep-seated sense that I had to prove myself in the highest possible arenas of intellect (or else–it seemed!) gave me the energy to complete a Ph.D. in music, in spite of all of me spontaneously recoiling at the specialization that entailed. Though graduate school went swimmingly for a time and I even enjoyed a period of being an “it girl” in my field, academia ended up being the last place I could belong and flourish.
All of these pursuits were energized by a passionate ontological hunger. For me, there seemed to be very little ground for feeling safe in the world, and it seemed that at the root of that lack was a God who didn’t give a darn.
I felt God’s callousness and carelessness intensely and this was painful beyond measure. To call it torture is no exaggeration. This conviction that God possibly even took pleasure in our troubles formed an inescapable undercurrent for many of my endeavors. I was always working myself silly, but the safety I so badly wished to earn for myself seemed to elude me.
As you might imagine, my parents had something to do with this intensity of feeling, though I now feel so much compassion for them. Born under Stalin in Ukraine, they suffered many of the crimes against humanity most of us have thankfully only read about. Incredibly, however, they not only survived (unlike many they knew) but, in due course upon arrival in the United States, outwardly flourished! My brilliant father completed a GED and became an electrical engineer of some note, helping to create the means of telecommunication for the first moon landing. Several decades later he participated on the team that, for better or worse (shall we say), bequeathed upon civilization the cruise missile.
Before I could string words into sentences these parents, who had spent much of their own childhoods starving and homeless, purchased a brick colonial in an idyllic township in New Jersey, as well as a capacious Rambler station wagon for easy access to inconceivably well-stocked markets. Amazing! But, underlying this American Dream life complete with two kids and a cat, there could be no denying that both parents suffered very profoundly from PTSD. Their unacknowledged suffering made for a very troubled childhood for me in spite of militantly maintained appearances. (Of course I didn’t understand the PTSD part until much, much later–nor were they permitted by their time and culture to understand the roots and origins of their behaviors.) So, in a sense, in spite of many material advantages that they took great pride and pleasure in providing for their children, I inherited what they could not process. I inherited all of their emotional denial and possibly even what was being denied (though it took me a while to grasp that last piece). Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue that this was my inheritance, but had to find that out over time.
In spite of my antipathy toward God I had a hunger for spiritual experience and threw myself into various approaches that presented themselves, hoping to escape the terrible depression, despair, and well-hidden addictive patterns that plagued much of my life. I lived in an ashram for a time, then worked very hard to believe what was required to be a fully acceptable Christian. (I failed.) I showed up nice. I read stacks of books, practiced my art forms with religious zeal, participated ardently in workshops, and experimented with psychedelics. While I found meaning and partial relief in each of these endeavors, none left me feeling “full” or even safe, and I abandoned each forthwith. It was only later that I realized that I had used each addictively, as a means to bypass the darkness that I could not allow to surface.
EFT started me in my process of daring to rub up against those dark places until I could see them from a different perspective. After finding it “by accident,” I was so impressed with its healing power for me that I pursued training under the auspices of EFT Universe. On the way to earning the program’s certification, I worked with and learned from many gifted practitioners.
Even so, something was still missing. In spite of the benefits of increased peace, calm, ability to love and to enjoy myself in community; in spite of palpable healing experiences–I hadn’t yet accessed some central, even more deeply hidden rationale my body wouldn’t release, that left patterns in place that I knew weren’t helping me.
It practically goes without saying that my parents (very much in spite of themselves) had much to do with these patterns being so deeply entrenched. But their parents, and the sets of parents before them, and so on and so on, also had a great deal to do with the deceptions I have unwittingly maintained about life. Once I had traversed the surface level of what I could remember, and through the insights of gifted colleagues, I went deeper into the ancestral realm to discover ways that I was repeating patterns relating to the deeply traumatic experiences of those people. I was repeating patterns that hearkened back to their experiences of betrayal, abandonment by God, lack, helplessness, enslavement. EFT was central to this path of healing at sources of which I wasn’t consciously aware. EFT helped me integrate a number of practices and deep insights into a state of coherence: parts work, inner child work, work with Divine guides, intuitive work rooted in the work of Edgar Cayce as well as confirmations of various renegade scientists, among whom physicist David Bohm is an absolute favorite.
Once we get beyond the assumption that “you” began at birth and end with death, and that the only personal experiences that could influence who you are right now fall within the boundaries of those two events: we can remember that time is an illusion, that the boundaries we maintain as beings living out a lifetime within a community are much more porous than we know. I recognize the implications of such factors in my practice of EFT–and yet, I recognize that healing the wrongs of this lifetime are nonetheless a major piece of pretty much anyone’s healing puzzle.
EFT is a remarkably flexible tool, applicable by a sensitive and skilled practitioner for the resolution of a wide array of problems. You will be drawn to a particular practitioner through a resonance with their experience. I hope this little summary will give you a sense of me and whether I am someone you feel drawn to work with. My greatest joy is in helping others reach ever greater states of wholeness, as I have been blessed to experience. If you are feeling curious, it would be my pleasure to gift you a 40 minute EFT experience with me.