Hi folks! Welcome to my Fall 2006 Newsletter.

I hope that you felt a sense of freedom and ease and had some fun times this summer. I did. With more of an ability to love and understand myself that has come from my own healing work, I could give myself more permission than ever this summer to just enjoy life. It was in life’s small and simple pleasures that I found universes of mystery and contentment.

I will always remember Marim and I effortlessly floating on inner tubes down the canal in Penticton. This image, more than any other, captures the freedom and ease I felt this summer.

A former client of mine, a highly successful businessman in his late forties, came to my Relationships: The Work Of Love seminar struggling both in his marriage and with not feeling any closeness to his now-grown children. In exploring how he had become this way, Richard came to his own realization that he did not know how to love and, moreover, was afraid of love.

In the course of the weekend workshop Richard allowed himself to feel deeply and to be instructed by his feelings. He became aware that he had not always been estranged from the experience of love. Long ago and far away, he had known love, real love. He had felt it, tasted it, rejoiced in it. It had come from his grandmother.

As a way of remembering love’s essence and taking his first steps on a healing journey to reclaim his “inheritance,” Richard wrote this tribute to her:

“The Old Grandmother, having shed the padlocks of her past, no longer shackled by the expectations of cronies and culture, holds in her warm, willing, chubby hands, the hands of her grandson. As she washes and massages the grubby fingers of the four year old boy, she lingers, prolonging this loving ritual.

She knows that soon the pain of a schoolyard bloody nose will be denied, the crying of abandonment ignored, the pre-dinner washing of hands considered unmanly, and her hugs and kisses an embarrassment. Soon the veils of judgement, unspoken feelings and role playing will drop in front of his tiny, trusting eyes.

For this brief period, her soul ascending and his soul descending the mountain of love, she pauses, touches and relates. A salty tear mingles with the warm soapy water, as she ponders the path her grandson must travel.”