As I prepare to embark on the final module of my groundbreaking Breakthrough Shadow Coaching Training Program I find myself thinking a lot about wholeness, since it’s the very definition of integrity. And how we’re out of integrity as soon as we begin to separate from ourselves, disowning the parts that we can’t be with. I keep visualizing myself as a puzzle with pieces I’ve pushed out that I’m now re-integrating. And, as always, I’m deeply grateful for my dear friend and mentor Debbie Ford and for the weekend that changed my life.

I was so honored when my friend – and brilliant cranial sacral therapist – Kate Mackinnon asked me to write a poem to open her new book From My Hands and Heart . Once again I find myself in delightful company, since this is the second book  that a forward from Wayne Dyer follows one of my poems. And in this poem I got to explore wholeness…and make a commitment not to abandon myself again.

whole

while her hands navigate
the map my body makes,
it’s the radiating rhythm
of vibration and stillness
that now allows me
to receive what it hides
and translate all it has to tell.

this journey to knowing,
deep in my essence,
that i am loved.
no matter what i do or don’t do,
even if i don’t do anything i will be loved.

but to believe, i needed courage.
i found it in my body.

my body,
a treasure chest,
its cellular secrets under lock and key
until the moment they were ready to be freed.

in the body
love first develops as hunger.
these walls have cellular memory.
there is a haunting here.

tight fitting skin,
barely wrapping bones
in dehydrated desert conditions
are infused with vitality
fleshed out and expanded
nourished and recalibrated
buoyant.

sensation returning and there,
my breath still held,
i felt full for the first time.

my power is very confusing.
and although my legs just want to run
i can feel my feet begin to find their roots,
sourcing safety for my strength.

i found my grounding
and what feeds me
in asking for help
from an intuitive hand.

my body,
once a fortress,
now begs for entry
and re-entry.

the thaw begins like this,
after being frozen in place
for so long,
waves of flame and prayer
release me,
finally locating the passage
from my heart,
revealing the way to healing.

so in the softening,
i learn that love
presents in many forms:
in flames on candles carried
in kisses and wishes of peace
in snow surrounding a mountain waterfall.

my body melts
outside its lines.
my thoughts, my own
for the first time.

as pieces of me
return or arrive,
desire alone senses
the rise and fall
of what’s alive
inside.

now,
stripped of all
i once defined
myself by,
it takes only a moment
to notice
i have always been
whole.