She had not actually known that she had been missing for so long and, funnily enough, neither had anyone else.  There were no visible signs.  She had left a body behind that had married more than once, had children, had a career, went to the supermarket, laughed with friends, cried when her children died, made curtains, decorated rooms, made love, went through psychiatry and tried to make sense of this kaleidoscope of colours, patterns and shadows that were her life.

Somewhere underneath the labels of mother, wife, therapist, etc, etc, was the searching, mostly leading to futility, for who she was.  "Who am I?"; "What am I?";  "Why am I here?" she would whisper in the midnight of her mind.  The questions echoed in a great void of silence.  The answer never came.

The body went on washing dishes, smiling to neighbours, still going to the supermarket, working, making sense of other people's lives through her work as a therapist.  Strangely enough, people seemed to get well when they crossed her path.  She knew.  They told her so.  Perhaps she worked a little too hard at this but it gave her an identity.  However, the sense of loss, of never quite fitting in, never left her.

That loss deepened when, out of the blue, she was struck down by a deadly bacterium and, as she lay critically ill in a hospital side ward without hope of recovery, a healer came.  Within half an hour of the healer putting her hands over her, the soaring temperature dropped to normal.  Her words had a much more profound effect than her touch.

"I've never felt so much love from Spirit coming through for anyone before. They love you very much. It's not your time."

Who were 'they'?  What was 'Spirit'?  From death being a real possibility she was, in moments, alive and well.  But that is another story, another track which led her into dimensions that she would never have believed possible.

A deeper loss was still to come.  The questions of  "Who am I?",  "What am I?" and "Why am I here?" had been partially answered by labels, labels that shield and protect the ego and identity and are particularly important to one who has experienced soul loss at an early age.  She had been well educated, had professional status which guaranteed respect.  Labels ensured this.

"What do you do?" "How much do you earn?" "Where do you socialize?" soon sort out the wheat from the chaff.  How else do we categorize our fellow human beings?

However, that was soon to be ripped away.  The bacteria ravaged her immune system.  She got M.E.  Unable to get out of bed and exhausted most of the time, she had to let go her career.  This was her identity, her reason for being.  Losing a substantial salary was bad but the loss of her status was worse.  "What do you do?" was now met with "Nothing, actually!"  How humiliating!

However, this was to be the gift in her adversity.  She soon noticed that people met this remark, however politely and apologetically offered, with resentment and hostility.  It soon dawned on her that it was their envy.  They wanted to do nothing too but they were not honest.  They too were workaholics to provide their shield and identity. Most of them did not actually want to go home at nights.  She recognized that one.  Her marriages had been a sham.  It was the 'looking good' syndrome of perfect wife, perfect husband and perfect children but underneath lurked the lack of intimacy, the lack of love and the slow death of the soul.  She had been courageous enough to get out of these relationships before her spirit shrivelled but the quest to find herself went on.

A new dimension helped her overcome the shame of being without socially acceptable labels.  In his book, The Teachings of Don Carlos, Victor Sanchez says:

There is nothing more menacing to the ego than dealing with a person that we cannot classify. Personal history gives us certain labels with which we define our own person, reducing ourselves to just a few characteristics. Likewise, we categorize everyone around us using similar labels that we derive from their personal history, real or imaginary.  Since we cannot deal with the mysterious, we prefer to deal with labels. Therefore, no one surprises us.  We are more sure of ourselves the more quickly we can classify people.

How can you lose your soul?  Why does it go away?  It goes away because it is too painful to stay.  It goes away for safety and will not return until we are able to protect it.

In Women Who Run With Wolves Estes says:
 

Where there is gross injury the soul flees... sometimes it drifts or bolts so far away that it takes masterful propitiation to coax it back.  A long time must pass before such a soul will trust enough to return but it can be accomplished.

My mother did not want me.  She told me so.  She wanted a boy.  She was 30 when I was born.  She had planned to have a child but not the one that she so painfully delivered.  She told me that too.  I ruined her Christmas and New Year by being born at the beginning of January.  That was made plain.  My father had an affair and they parted with great bitterness and acrimony when I was three.  My sister had just been born.  I looked exactly like my father which was to be my downfall.

She took me to fish shops to look at the cod on the slabs.  She told me that my father and I had the same cold blue eyes as the fish. Hers were brown.  My sister's were brown.  She did not like the colour of my hair either.  It was red.  Hers was brown.  My sister's was brown.  She told me that my hair looked like fungus round my face.  My sister had pretty curls, she said.  I grew up thinking and feeling that I was ugly.  I didn't really have a name being referred to as 'she' or 'her' but I did have ballet lessons and pretty clothes.  They hid the physical and emotional bruises.

My grandmother did not like me either.  She hated my father and quarrelled with my mother.  Eve, my inner child, started to drift away when I was about four.  I remember the abject terror and helplessness at that age.  My mother was living with a man.  From what I learned later, I think that she was having an affair at the same time as my father but he was found out and she wasn't.  The man did not like me because I wet the bed.  They would dress me in the middle of the night and say that they were going to take me and lock me in her shop in the darkness where the rats and bad men would get me.  That was worse than the thrashings.

Fortunately, I remember very little of my childhood.  What I can recall is not very nice. She married another man when I was twelve.  He didn't like me.  He liked my body.  I ran away.  They brought me back.  I ran away again and again and again.  Nobody asked why so I did not tell them.  They just thought that I was ungrateful because I lived in a very nice house.  But she knew.  I heard their fights from my bedroom.

"You don't love her so I will!" he bellowed.
"What you are doing isn't love!" she screamed back.

She was right.  It was lust.  I hated him. I hated his piggy eyes and his varicose veins but I still loved her and ached for her to love me, just once.  This ache never left for a long time.  She eventually threw him out.  That did not help.  She hated me more.  I didn't know it then but she saw me as her rival, the other woman.  Quite common in these situations, I learned later.

I took my quest for love further afield, mostly to the neighbourhood.  I collected more labels searching for an identity.  Slag seemed to be the most pertinent one.  In Women Who Run With Wolves, it says:

Whilst the needs of the child's soul must be balanced with her needs for safety and physical care and with carefully examined notions of about 'civilized behaviour' I always worry about those who are too well behaved;  often they have that 'faint soul' look in their eyes.  Something is not right.  A healthy soul shines through the persona on most days and blazes through on others.  Where there is gross injury, the soul flees.

Firstly, my earlier promiscuity which now causes me no shame at all was a necessity.  I beat the bastard.  He wasn't going to have my body.  I gave it away to the neighbourhood publicly.  Everybody knew.  That just killed him.  He had wanted secret, exclusive use of it.

Secondly, and far more crucial to survival was the need for human touch.  Without being touched we die, physically and emotionally die.  There is masses of research to show that babies who are neglected and untouched, even if they are adequately fed and clothed, suffer severe mental and physical symptoms.  Death can result when the cerebral cortex shrivels and fails to develop.  Babies need physical touch to survive.  Lack of love is so destructive. I think death is the easier option.  Emotional and spiritual death is a slow and painful haemorrhage of the life force.  This is serious stuff.

In his book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, Bernie Segal, MD, a physician of no mean repute, talks about the dire physical consequences of 'skin starvation'.  This, he states, is "...a separation from life, when touching stops."  In heart conditions research showed that those most likely to develop abnormal heart rhythms were the ones who answered NO to the question "Does your wife show you her love?"  Further, he says that those who are kissed by their wives as they left for work in the morning lived five years longer than those who did not receive affection.  Men suffer just as much as women.

Indiscriminate sex met my needs for survival at that time.  Although a poor substitute for real love, it prevented 'skin starvation' and, at least, I was wanted for something.  How I wish I had known this information then.  The price for my survival was shame. The only way that I can describe it was like dark, mulberry stains on pure white linen, the kind that never come out, are never quite erased.  How many girls and boys have to offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs just to feel wanted by somebody, anybody?

Next time you feel like criticizing any girl for 'throwing it about' stand up and bloody applaud her instead.  Her emotional and physical survival might just depend on it.  But men are no different.  They feel, they hurt, they ache but big boys don't cry.  They scream inwardly. In Men and Sex Dr. Zilbergeld says that lots of men experience deep-rooted feelings of insecurity and inadequacy about sex and experience a hunger to be held, kissed and touched without having to be sex machines.  They suffer from 'skin starvation' too.  Any prostitute will tell you about clients who don't want sex - they just want to talk or have their hands held or to be cuddled. But that is risky. To ask for affection exposes vulnerability.  Having sex is much easier and is often used to avoid intimacy.

In Ann Smith's book, Overcoming Perfectionism, she says: "Sex is often used to avoid intimacy. You can have my body as long as I don't have to tell you who I am... Intimacy is about sharing feelings such as sadness, fear, anger, guilt shame and joy."

If we can never find another person that we can experience that with we never become whole and experience the deep warmth and love that we need to integrate as human beings. Siegel's book, Love, Medicine and MIracles, opened my eyes.  It took away my shame. Clearing that shame helped set me free.

Dostoyevsky said: "I am convinced that the only Hell which exists is the inability to love."  Go further, Dostoyevsky!

The real Hell is in feeling that you are not worthy of love in any shape or form. That is when you become vulnerable to exploitation.  That is the dark night of the soul.  It was that belief that made my beautiful little Eve flee.  It was not safe for her to stay.  However, there is always a gift in adversity.  Robin Norwood, in her wonderful book, Why Me, Why This, Why Now? taught me how to find it.

My mother gave me a wonderful gift.  She taught me about power. She put me in a position where I had nothing left to lose.  It was destructive but I did not have to bend my neck any more.

I had been a good little girl.  I was a ballet dancer. I won the Burns poetry competition. I excelled at sports. I was artistic. I was top of the class.  I had saved all my pocket money to buy her presents.  All my efforts to get her to love me failed.  She still loathed me.  I abdicated.  I did not try to please her any more. The fear, anxiety and helplessness of infancy had gone.  As a teenager belts and buckles replaced her fists and nails but she could not make me cry.  My younger sister begged me to cry.  "Please cry, Eve," she would say.  "She'll stop quicker if you do."  How my sister must have suffered listening to it all but I did not care.  I watched the helplessness and futility in my mother's eyes and laughed.  I was only just starting. It was her public shame that was my ultimate triumph.

My mother was a business woman.  We were the 'looking good' family, socially accomplished and slightly more prosperous than our neighbours.  She was determined that I would be a doctor.  I chose my own career - whore!  I was shagged on the golf course, shagged in the fields, wagged school in the afternoons to be shagged in the back of cars, shagged under bushes, became drunk and disorderly and threw up in her clean, shiny bathroom.

I got to really like sex but I wasn't really a whore.  My social worker put me straight on that one - a gray faced woman in a gray suit who probably hadn't had a good shag in her life.  "Whores", she said in her clipped monotone, "charge for their services.  They have more respect for themselves.  You give it away for nothing."  That really hurt.  My self esteem was quite low and that, for some reason, was like a javelin through my heart.

They locked me away for being 'outwith parental control' but she had to move house and move district, driven out by shame and the wagging tongues of the neighbours.  I did not know it then but I know it now, the essence of real power is in dealing with fear.  She taught me to fight for survival.  I no longer feared her and I was prepared to go down but she was coming down
with me.  What a lesson for one so young.

How I ever became a therapist, and a successful one, I'll never know - probably destiny.  In Leo Rutherford's book, Principles of Shamanism he says:

In psychotherapy circles there is a  truism: 'Your clients come to you with your own problems'. This happens because you have had the problem, wrestled with it and defeated it then you are the ideal person to assist another with a similar problem.  You know the landscape from personal experience, not from book learning.  You know how to guide a person through this part of the underworld because you have been there.

Another one did remark that I was the most fearsome woman that she had ever known.  We were good friends and I was astonished because I spent most of my time laughing and I am only five foot and one inch tall and do not weigh much. "When you're laughing it's wonderful", she said.  "It's when you stop laughing that really bothers me because you have the capacity of a volcano."

That was my protection, my defence, my barrier.  I had developed the spirit of the tigress.  No one would savage me again.  I never had to fight.  I only had to flick my tail or bare my teeth and they backed off.

My life experience including the death of my children, taught me not only how to fight for myself but how to fight for the underdog, those with the 'faint soul' look in their eyes, those children and adults who tried so hard to please, to win approval, to be accepted, waiting to catch the crumbs from the master or mistress's table.  They deserved better.  My experience had taught me to see the pain in another's eyes and feel compassion.

My need for her love had long since gone but my need for approval, fear of rejection and deep inner pain had not.  In fact, it had increased.  The labels by which I was now identified were far more acceptable. Two degrees is quite a shield to hide behind. I had left my country of birth behind and wiped the exterior clean like disinfectant over a kitchen worktop but the drains were still blocked.  Nobody knew me but I knew me.

M.E. was devastating.  I had become a champion of lost causes and loved it.  Women who came to my groups often went on to college and some to university.  There was nothing that they could say that would shock me.  I willed them to survive and would fight their corner against anybody. I cut through red tape, flouted rules if necessary or just flouted rules for fun.  Systems meant nothing to me.  I recognized no masters or mistresses for that matter.  What could they do? Sack me!  What I felt that I had to do was make sure that my experience was not wasted.  I wanted to hack a way through the undergrowth for these parents and children, give them a new identity and help them to love themselves.  There was such potential just waiting to blossom but without a cause to serve I was lost.  I had hit a massive block.

Just prior to getting the bacterial infection and M.E., I had to go into psychotherapy myself for unresolved grief at the loss of my children.  There was so much shame to deal with. Six died in total but only three of them caused mind-crippling guilt. I was pregnant at seventeen, had beautiful twins who died from cot death when they were a few months old.  I blamed myself. I married a man I neither loved nor liked.  I chose between him and my mother.  He won. I felt that I had caused their death by not wanting them when I first realized that I was pregnant.  The others that died were anencephalic caused by a recessive gene. My last daughter, Alice, caused me enormous guilt and shame because I had left her body in the hospital.  By the time I was 26 I had had nine children. I had my tenth child later; a beautiful boy by a different partner.

I am laughing as I'm writing this, not laughing in a funny way, laughing with incredulity that my need for love was so deep and so unsatisfied..  As one child died I immediately became pregnant again. I desperately needed something of my own to love, something that could not be taken away from me and I needed them to love me.  What a negative reason to have children.  As I'm writing this it is only just beginning to sink in. Strangely enough, I do not feel any guilt or shame now.  That is how it was.  I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time.

To my children who are alive and well now I can only say 'sorry'.  I did the best that I could with what I had at the time. But my intent was good.  I wanted them to have better than I had.  I worked very hard to provide material things for them - a roof over our heads, food on the table etc.  Life was hard.  I've never had a supportive man in my life.

As Ann Smith so rightly says, "Over time you may become aware that you don't know the person that you live with or that the 'you'  who made that choice was not the real 'you' but a hurting soul looking for comfort from another hurting soul."  How glad I am that I had the courage to leave those relationships.  Many stick with them because their fear of abandonment, sustained in early childhood, is still there.  It is a slow and painful death of the soul.  An unloving parent is substituted by an unloving partner.  We deserve better.  I deserve better. I will have better.

Whilst in psychotherapy I realized that, although the guilt and grief over the death of my children had gone, I still had problems with attachment and bonding.  I had become a compulsive care giver.  I could give love but I did not trust enough to receive it.  It was all out there.  I was just too scared to open to it.  Nobody was going to get the chance to savage me again.  I hadn't yet learned to take care of myself.  Little Eve still was not safe to return.

Therapist John Bowlby describes this as compulsive self reliance: "So far from seeking the love and care of others a person who exhibits this pattern insists in keeping a stiff upper lip and doing everything for himself whatever the conditions.  These people are apt to crack under stress and to present with psychosomatic symptoms or depression... they react by inhibiting attachment feeling and behaviour, and disclaiming any desire for close relationships with anyone who might provide love and care."

For me, compulsive self reliance masqueraded as courage and tenacity.  People remarked on it.  "What a brave and courageous woman you are," is what everybody said.  Wrong, wrong and wrong again.  It was fear-based but what I had to do next puts Attilla the Hun in the shade.  Tackling and dismantling the bastions of rejection and fear of abandonment was the most courageous thing that I have ever had to do for me.  Thank goodness I did it.  Eve has come home.  I never knew that I had missed her so much.

My life experience had not been wasted.  I had always been aware of being lucky.  I was lucky that I was not disabled.  I could always run away. I couldn't have gone far in a wheelchair.  I was lucky to have been born bright and become well educated. I could earn my own living  I was lucky to be born as a woman. I like being a woman. I was lucky to be fertile.  I liked being pregnant and breastfeeding babies.  I was lucky that my early experience gave me the 'eye of the tiger' and not the 'faint soul' look.  In short, I was lucky.

I was also lucky that I could put my own pain on one side when I saw pain in the eyes of another person who wasn't as strong as me.  I was lucky to have had the ability to transmute my pain into compassion for others.  I could always reach out and touch their souls  with gentle hands.  Where I missed out was in forgetting to include myself in the equation.  That was harder to do than I had realized.

I am about to move house.  Whilst clearing out cupboards for the move I came across piles of letters, cards and commendations from parents, children and colleagues who gave thanks and praise for all that I had done for them.  Words like 'this exceptional woman', 'her care and kindness', 'I would not have survived without her' etc. etc. flowed from every page.

This is when I really felt the pain.  There was no identification, no connection.  Who were they talking about?  It was not me.  If they had known the real me they might not have liked me so much.  Another piece of paper dropped out.  On it was written, "Recognize that your giving is fuelled by insecurity, not love.  You need to acknowledge the presence of deepest fears and anxieties about being worthy and loveable."

That lacerated me.  The only thing that I could feel about all the letters and cards was that I was a fraud.  There was a body who had spoken to them, nurtured them, encouraged them, hugged them and fed them.  I did it because I couldn't bear their pain because it reflected mine.  The body was called Eve but they never knew her.  I did not know her.  M.E. had separated me from them, my identity, my labels. The piles of cards and letters were like an inscription on a gravestone - a reminder of a person who had moved amongst them and moved on - a vagrant in this universe on her own quest for healing.

I was no more than a service industry but what a service industry!  That was her legacy to me.  Having lost my inner child and not knowing who I was (only who others told me I was and who I should be and, more importantly, what I should do to earn their approval) brought into focus the root of my pain.  Fear of abandonment, fear of rejection and just plain FEAR underpinned my being but on the surface all appeared calm just like Mother Earth before a volcano erupts or a tornado hits.  There is very little warning from nature when it is about to strike.  There was little warning for me and I could not get the defences up in time.

I had learned how to please the people that I needed to please.  I valued some colleagues.  I met their needs  The others were of no consequence.  They kept out of my face.  I had learned how to please friends and meet their needs.  I had learned how to please men.  Being shit hot in the sack guaranteed that.  That avoided intimacy. (You can have my body if you don't come too close and discover who I am.  I will enjoy yours and I don't want to know who you are.)

This kept me safe to a degree but it didn't really work.  It did not solve the emptiness and ended in conflict despite boundaries being set. (I want to see you twice a week.  I don't love you and you don't love me but I'm fond of you.  Feel free to go out with other women. I don't care.  I don't own you and you will never get to own me.)

To most men this was their wildest dream - an unpossessive woman - but I soon became their worst nightmare.  (Why do you only want to see me twice a week?  Where do you go the other nights?  Who else do you see.?  Why don't you love me?)  Men are not really very different from us.  Celibacy did not help either.  I am warm, affectionate and sensual by nature, not by nurture, but it was safe.  No one would get in close enough to hurt me again.  Celibacy is 100% loss.  Part of the soul has to freeze and eventually die of cold.  See what fear does!!

From the time of my healing in hospital I was learning about unconditional love, not the kind that screams 'Don't leave me!  Please don't leave me.'  The universe has such a wonderful source of love and wisdom if we open to it. On reflection, there had been a process going on to help me deal with finding the letters and cards. Slowly I was learning about trust and love from various sources.

I met a lovely man in quite unusual circumstances but I seem to meet most of the significant people in my life in this way.  He was gentle but could I see his pain!  He had very bad eczema on his legs and because I now do aromatherapy and reflexology I asked if I could do his body with oil.  I watched the fear in his eyes as he submitted.  When I was finished he looked at me and said, "You are so very kind, Eve.  I never thought that anyone would touch this body with these scabs".  It wasn't a problem for me.  I wanted to heal his pain and the compassion just kicked in.

But the universe gave me a very valuable lesson on unconditional love.  His scabs were evidence of that love.  Every time that our skin hurts, our body makes a scab with love to protect us from further damage and when we pick or scratch it off, it patiently and lovingly makes another one.  On and on it goes until we are healed.  By touching his body with love I learned that somewhere there was a Source of Love in the universe for me if I would open to it.  Scabs, whether physical or emotional, are not ugly at all.  They are the evidence of love.  I had scabs on my spirit put there to protect the wounds, some very old wounds, until they were healed.  That is why I hadn't died.  I was being protected.  I just could not see it. Next time you look at someone with eczema or psoriasis look at it with different eyes and marvel at it.

My next teacher came in the form of a client.  Again I saw in him a beautiful spirit, badly wounded, but quite beautiful.  What dignity and courage he had and he never flinched or backed off.  At the end of the sessions there was no charge.  How can you put a price on healing another person's spirit?  He thought that I was wonderful.  He just did not know that I did not have as much courage as he had  but he taught me more about love. I could not believe just how trusting he was, given that his wounds had come at the hands of women.

Although he was a successful, professional man he had such a vulnerability and trust in me.  We became very good friends.  He called to take me out about once a month and there was, and still is, such a rapport between us.  It is a 'till death do us part' relationship.  I know him better than his wife does and he knows me better than anyone else. I know that we have known each other in previous lives.  How did he teach me about love?

I hid behind professionalism.  Albeit we had become close friends, I never phoned him.  It was up to him to tell me when he was available.  This, I said, was because I never invaded other people's lives.  It was not professional! It certainly wasn't professional.  It was lies.  I was afraid that he would say 'no' if I asked to see him or wanted to spend time with him.  Fear of rejection again.  I phoned him and told him with my heart in my mouth.  He was delighted and relieved.

The next step was harder.  We were out for a meal one night and I told him that I loved him.  I really do.  He is such a wonderful person and he is the guardian of my spirit. I would trust him with my life.  I can show him the unbeautiful side of me, expose my shadow side and he still loves me unconditionally.  He says that he loves me for my honesty but he makes it easy for me.  I know that when I have finished this he will read things about me that he never knew before and he will love and respect me just as much.  Put a price on that!

A very gifted psychic read my tarot recently.  She was so accurate about things that she could not have possibly known that she took my breath away.  She told me that a man would teach me about love if I would let him.  She told me that I was the one that could block it by putting the barriers up or running away.  The barriers were already up.  I already knew him.  He too had come into my life in very unusual circumstances.  Again he was professional, apparently successful but he didn't fool me.  When I looked in his eyes all I could see was a lost and unloved little boy.

I had been celibate for a while and certainly not looking for an affair.  When I finished doing his body I wrapped him up in a warm blanket and was going to make him a drink.  But I changed my mind.  I asked him if he fancied a shag instead. He did.  It was the first one that he had had in a while too.  It was wonderful and the beginning of a lovely affair. His spirit is quite beautiful.  He has not got it in him to knowingly hurt or wound me but I have been wounded.  I knew the risks.  If I remained celibate there was 100% loss.  If I learned to trust again there was a 50/50 chance of a hiding or a 50/50 chance of reaching the mountain tops.  I got both.  There was pain in the relationship but I couldn't track it down.

This is where I was when I found the pile of letters and cards.  One of them just floored me.  It was from this lovely woman who had written to me five years previously. She had described me as  'one of the strongest, inspiring, assertive, aggressive, faithful and, most important, HONEST women that she had ever met'. She put 'honest' in capital letters.  I had never been afraid to make some clients my friends.  I liked them and always saw them as spirits on an earth journey just the same as myself.  This caused some of my colleagues problems, probably because I liked my clients better than them anyway.

In her letter was the key to my healing and finding my inner child again.  In the letter she said that feelings kept in thought form become 'devastating and self destructive'.  She went on: 'Just enjoy talking about YOU for a change and saying these thoughts and feelings out loud... Now it's your turn to have a trusting, confidential, honest, aggressive, assertive and understanding ear and that ear could be with me'.

Thank God that I am a hoarder and kept that letter for all those years.  She could tell me why I felt so detached from the woman they all described.  I had learned never to show my vulnerable side to partners, colleagues or friends.  It was not safe. The only one who had allowed me to open up was the wonderful psychotherapist who took me through the minefield of guilt and shame at the death of some of my children.

By sheer good luck I still had her phone number in my old book.  We spoke for hours and, amazingly, she had been thinking about me for two weeks before I phoned. We were at the same stage; both struggling to be our real selves and to speak our truth.  On New Year's Eve I had actually asked what I needed for my path and was given the arrow.  The arrow means that 'truth is your only protection'.

All my life I had been in a hall of human mirrors.  As a child, negativity had been reflected back to me from adults around me.  Adulthood had increased this till I was unable to relate to those who reflected a different message.  No wonder I could not relate to the messages in the letters and cards that told me how wonderful I was.  As I was struggling for the answers I just happened to open a book by Shakti Gawain, Living in the Light.  In it she says:

I have found that when I am willing to trust and follow my energy it leads me into relationships with people from whom I have most to learn.  The stronger the attraction, the stronger the mirror.  Energy will always lead me to the most intense learning situations.

What made it worse was that I 'saw' his inner child.  I was doing something and this vision suddenly appeared.  It was the figure of a little boy sitting on a rock high up on a lonely hillside.  He was transparent like crystal and barely visible.  He was frozen and I knew that if I hugged him he would disintegrate.  A pale, primrose winter sun was above him but not warm enough to thaw the ice.  That made me shudder.  This is something that I have had all my life.  I've always been able to see visions like that.  I used to think that I was imagining things but I know better now.  Those that know about shamanism and North American Indian beliefs know it as 'soul retrieval' but that is yet another story.  It is a very real way of healing the spirit.

Because of my fear of damaging him I was being damaged myself.  I was not living with truth and being 'real'.  He only ever saw the warm, supportive loving side of me.  He never saw me angry or hurt or crying.  In truth nobody ever got to see me like that but throughout my life I have hurt, I have cried.  People got to see the anger of the tigress but never that very vulnerable side.  I thought that he was hurting me but he was not hurting me; he did not have that power. I was hurting myself by being dishonest.  I was afraid to be honest with him in case I sounded needy and vulnerable.  That had to stop.  He was about to give me the greatest gift of my life - the opportunity to heal old wounds from my childhood and clear the path for Eve to come home.
 
Shakti Gawain says:

When we communicate truthfully and directly and say everything we want to say it doesn't matter how the other person responds... If I keep being honest and vulnerable with my feelings to my lover, family and friends I won't end up with hidden needs and resentments.  When you take care of yourself this way, more often than not you will get what you want.  If not, the next step is to let go.

Our love affair is beautiful - the most beautiful thing that has happened to me in my life but there were other issues that hurt me badly.  He was afraid of getting lipstick on his shirt.  He had to watch his time.  I began to realize that I was his dirty secret.  He had raised old feelings from my childhood, the child that wet the bed, the girl on the golf course.  That I could not cope with.

I realized when I confronted him with my hurt and my pain that I wasn't a dirty anything to be ashamed of.  I was a beautiful person.  I am a beautiful person.  My love for him is beautiful. Nobody will ever feel ashamed of me.  I don't feel ashamed of myself.  I am strong.  I am assertive.  I am kind.  I am compassionate.  I am loving.  I am faithful.  I am loyal.  I am honest.  I am living with my truth. We never really lie to others. We only lie to ourselves and then our lives become a lie and that is painful.

I am no longer afraid of rejection or abandonment  and my name is Eve.

I now know who I am.  I deserve the best in the same measure that I want the best for others.  They deserve the best too.  That is why it is now safe for this beautiful child, the child of innocence and trust to come back.  I can now protect and love her. The tarot card reader was right.  He did teach me about love. Wow!

How do I now view my life?  I view it without regret.  All I have had is the experience of being human.  The light has brought me joy and the shadow has taught me about empathy, compassion for myself and others and love.  I am  a lucky lady.  The pure white linen now has different stains like stains of wine and coffee on a table cloth, the ones that you don't really want to remove because they remind you of loving people that have gathered round the table of your life.  My name is Eve and I am beautiful.
 

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