The Healer Within. Mariena Foley
he had me laughing nonstop.
We had only known each other for eleven months when we were married. No one said to me, “Are you sure? You don’t think it’s all a bit fast?” Years later, when I asked my father about it, he said, “When I saw the two of you together, there was no doubt it was meant to be.”
Looking back, I should have added a disclaimer on the marriage certificate. Andrew entered an existence that was, in a word, big. My life: never dull and often exhausting. Kryon, in the book The End Times, refers to certain karmic groups, rated according to the nature of karmic activity. He numbered these groups from high to low: 1-3, 4-7 and 8-10. I was clearly in group 1-3, with a massive amount of fairly brutal lessons thrown at me constantly, in linear time, always overlapping, causing me to appear to others as the perpetual victim. Life just kept happening around and to me, and friends would say, “How can so much happen in one person’s life?”
I am not, now and have never been a victim. Not in my mind. Not in my heart. That is probably the sole reason I still survive.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”.
Only a couple of months after the stalker got away with raping me and while I was still at school, he raped another girl. After he attacked me, I could not bear to be touched by anyone for days. Desperately trying to rid myself of the filth I felt upon me, I had scrubbed, bleached and scorched all physical evidence away. (Give me a break! I was only 17!) When I found out that he had done it again, I went to the girl he had assaulted and encouraged her to lay charges against him.
She whimpered, in a wash of tears, “He’s ruined me. Ruined me!”
I moved in close, looking her in the eye. She met my gaze. “Did he touch your heart?” She shook her head, no. “Has he reached your spirit?” Again she shook her head. I responded, “That jerk had no hope of ruining you. He didn’t reach the real you. He never could.”
Early on in my life, amid the constant battle between the Indigo that would not conform and the people that could only cope if I did conform, I learnt that people could only hurt me if I let them. The only person who can make a victim of you is you.
We had been married only ten months and had just moved back from the Whitsunday Islands in Northern Queensland to Melbourne when I received a phonecall from one of the major hospitals. My husband, whilst at work with an engineering company, had been crushed while working inside an elevator shaft by the elevator that they had been assured was disabled. He had been dragged up the shaft by the elevator, crushed at the top and was again taken down with it. A horrific trauma. His injuries were incredible, as you can imagine. They explained on the phone that he was fighting for life, and as it turned out, limbs. Both legs were shattered, amongst other injuries. It was a long and colourful debate as to whether to amputate them. The decision to embrace the challenge to save them entailed years of rehabilitation and multiple surgeries.
It was an incident that truly demonstrated how life can completely shift in a single moment and just how challenging the commitment of marriage can be. Our path certainly altered that day. He shocked everyone with his determination, recovering incredibly, pushing himself and walking unaided within months…
And throughout this challenge Life lurched forward, shifting again. It was another big turning point, where the battle became extrinsic for me. There is a great period in your life when you are unencumbered by the responsibility of anyone other than yourself. It is a brilliant, unshackled adventure in time. But now I had to go to bat for my family (consisting of a husband at the time), and the extrinsic lessons began. The fight was and is no less passionate, but it was no longer just me.
Writing about one’s life is hard! I was told, “People need to know who you are, Melissa!” Looking back upon what I have shared with you, I see that it is but a fragment of a huge and complex life. As I go on through this journey I have chosen to fulfil, the unfolding is no less intense, but this a journey of purpose, and the “powerful play” goes on. If what I have shared appears obnoxious, or negative or self-pitying, my deepest apology; for that was not my intent. I assure you that writing about myself is the hardest and most uncomfortable part of this book.
Yet it is written for You. With purpose. With intent. What I hope so much that you will recognise through reading this is that I recognise and know your heart, through my own experiences. Know that I can empathise with all of the rubbish that you have gone through to get to this point; and I respect you for it, fellow warrior and potential healer that you are.
If you are, right now, in a place of despair, desperation or loneliness, then I invite you to take to heart the immortal words of Sir Winston Churchill (which I found on my friend Helen’s refrigerator magnet. Wisdom comes from the strangest places!).
“If you are going through Hell, keep going.”
You are making the right decisions.
Right now you are exactly where you need to be.
You are in the right place. It only gets better from here.
The Initiation
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” –Carl Jung
“It’s a beautiful little boy!”
My history with cancer dictated a certain infertility, which was utterly contradicted by the beautiful baby they now placed on my abdomen. My exquisitely wonderful, healthy little boy: Johnathon Andrew.
Jack.
He didn’t cry. He just looked straight into my heart with those deep pool eyes, peacefully, contentedly, but somehow determinedly. It was as if he knew, as he does now, because he still knows.
You go through a pregnancy feeling that baby moving, relishing each kick, shuffle and roll from deep within your body, knowing that child. Yet that moment when they actually arrive…the moment they take their first breath on this planet and you meet them for the first time is truly, truly majestic.
There really is nothing like it.
Oh, the unfathomed beauty of my boy.
Jack went straight to the breast and had just finished feeding when there was a knock at the delivery room door. My father had come to the hospital to see if I was alright, not realizing that Jack had in fact arrived. Something magic occurred when these two met. Jack was twenty minutes old and his Pop, a tall mountain of a man, was cradling his little namesake with the gentleness only real love knows. As those old eyes looked up, staring into the misty eyes of an overwhelmed grandfather, a bond, unspoken and pure, was formed. A certain line was expanding; a certain contract coming into play.
There were congratulations all around as they wheeled us back to the ward. As everyone does, we showed off our small precious boy as if no-one had ever had a baby before. We were embarrassingly blissful. The next few hours were filled with wonderful friends and family arriving to celebrate, and in flooded an abundance of balloons, flowers and gifts. You could feel the relief of those closest to me, for this body of mine was tired. Illness, which had evolved into disease, had left my body battle weary and it had struggled under the weight of creation. Pregnancy had always been considered impossible for me and it had been difficult. Toward the end I had started to waste away, losing weight as the baby had flourished and seemed to just eat me alive. I loved being pregnant but it was clear my body didn’t, and the concern of those nearest to me was evident. This day relief came in the shape of a divine baby, an enormous individual.
Finally there was a lull in the visiting traffic and I was able to simply cherish my boy. He was fussing so I fed him, and went to change his diaper when I noticed his breathing…
His diaphragm seemed to be going into spasm. His breathing was a little wet. Was this normal newborn behaviour? His breathing was normal after delivery. I turned to my husband and asked him to drag out the baby books. No answers there. So I buzzed the nurse and asked to see a paediatrician.
The