Regressions to Help Phobias

I'm a day late but it was a Sunday Monday yesterday and a Monday Tuesday today so that's my story and I stick to it! Here's the Monday Memoir anyway.

I am aware everyone who reads this is not going to accept there is such a thing as reincarnation. That’s okay. I do believe but even if it is just a quirk of one’s mind, going back to the past, real or imagined, can help to ease the hold of old traumas and phobias that bring you down.

I’ve had a life long fear of water and the idea of drowning. This is one I have not been able to fully resolve or even help. I say it is because the drowning in a recent past life is still too immediate and difficult for me to deal with. No, I am sure I did not go down with the Titanic or anything nearly so exotic. I may have been on a vessel sunk in war, possibly in WWI. Perhaps I can work on this one someday or resolve it before I come back around again.

Another example, I have always had a dislike for high necked shirts, choker style necklaces and the

Melinda and me in Oct 2014

like. If anyone put hands near my throat or around my neck, I freaked out. After having had a couple of professional regressions—my dear friend Melinda Rucker Haynes is licensed hypnotherapist as well as a wonderful writer—I learned how to do some brief ones myself. Some years ago I was cooking dinner and had a flash.

I used Melinda’s opening cue—what do you have on your feet? “Why jackboots, o’ course,” came the ready answer from a voice in my head. Turned out I was in England about Elizabethan times and was a wild younger son of minor nobility. I played at being a highway man and got caught. My elder brother who wanted to rid himself of an embarrassment had me hung as a horse thief. Whoa! That was a shocker. I was not totally cured but from then on the issue was much less of a serious inconvenience. I could wear turtlenecks and necklaces that did not fall to mid chest! I could even stand a gentle touch around my throat or neck.

Then from my teen years on, I was troubled with very severe menstrual cramps almost every month. I could usually force myself to carry on with my “cowboy girl” duties which normally involved several hours of strenuous riding and other heavy work but I spent many nights in tears, with a hot water bottle on my middle and as many aspirin as I dared to take. The agony continued on into my middle years and I occasionally even had to miss work because I hurt so bad I was nauseous.  My husband had learned some hands on healing or pain taking techniques from an old Manx miner he knew as a boy and he could sometimes pull some of the pain for me but I still suffered.

One evening in my early forties I was curled up in my favorite chair listening to some Celtic music, probably the Chieftains, and drifting after downing  a couple of Excedrins when I faded out for a bit. I found myself as a young girl in the Mediterranean area close to 2000 years ago. I was the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant whose home was a walled compound near a major city. I had an older brother and envied his freedom to go off with his friends. One day I sneaked out and followed them. They were drawn to a crowd to hear someone like St Paul speaking. He had harsh things to say about the sins of mother Eve and the dangers of women leading good upright men to sin. I fled, shocked and deeply troubled. Although I made it home undetected, that night my first period came and I was terrified it was punishment for my willful misbehavior and evidence of my sinfulness.  I soon came back to myself but with a vague memory that a couple of years later I was wed to an older man in an arranged marriage and died in childbirth after my first pregnancy.

Wow, that was a jolt! In this life I have borne no children, whether by some deep subconscious choice or just fate. Still, from that time on I did suffer less in the succeeding several years before I came to my end of those cycles and began my time as a Crone or older (wise?!) woman! I’d called it “Eve’s curse” or “The monthly miseries” for some thirty years or more  but after that vision I started to realize how natural female cycles are condemned and denigrated by the paterno-centric society and religious environment in which we live. We are supposed to suffer for the original sin of Eve and the flawed nature of feminine beings! What a foul lie! I weep now for my daughter and granddaughters (step-family but no less loved) who are still struggling with this burden.

While I am mostly supportive of the #metoo movement, the pink pussy hats and all the rest of today’s current women’s efforts, I feel they are really not going to the root of the issues. Until we can go back to full acceptance of a female deity, even a primary female deity, and women can openly express their devotion for a “god who looks like me,” we will continue to have conflicts, disrespect, abuse and contempt from males. True, individual men can be very supportive, respectful and understanding but they too labor under the same notion that “God” is a male and thus males are His favored and most honored, in His image and somehow vastly superior to the female version of humanity. In that view women are almost a necessary evil since man cannot produce the next generation on his own. Yet what else could they possibly be useful for? While half the human race—regardless of color, ethnicity and creed—are considered second class citizens how can we attain the highest goals?

So I hope perhaps some other regressions will eventually lead me to many more ways to work on this myself. Meanwhile all I can do is write, think, talk and pray to MY Female Deity that we can begin to make real progress in this and other related ongoing issues.