An early Christmas present

Yesterday I went to the appointment with what I thought was a grief counselor (she turned out to be a normal psychologist, not specializing in grief) and the appoinment became an early Christmas gift.

One of several that I have received since Monday.

I am sure it has to do with all of your prayers and my very powerful prayer buddy and the intercession of Miguel and Rafael.

How can you explain that various forms of help could come so fast and in the very best forms ever during the most hectic time of the year?

First my meeting with the counselor. As I write it I cannot belive to this moment what happened. God was there.

She was recommended to me by my local Catholic gyn to get help after my 2 miscarriages and she agreed to meet with me during her vacations. wow.

Help I badly needed. I was in such bad shape that the slightest things made me cry.

So I arrived at this very sunny and warm office (it was been quite cold for Mexico City standards the last weeks) and I was greeted by this 50 plus very kind looking woman.

She hugged me from the get go to welcome me something not that common even by our very physical culture standards. I felt completly safe and welcome.

She asked me how I was doing and why I was there and I began my story, not of the 2 miscarriages, but that it all started 3 years ago.

She listened to me with her heart. I could feel it.

And after a while she asked me to stop and breath deeply and to sense my body.

So she began to teach me some breathing excercises and to start telling her what my body was saying.

It became painfully clear after a few minutes that my body was screaming both from physical and emotional pain. Screaming.

I had not been listening to it in all of this mess.

My shoulders felt so heavy and my chest oppresed. And I began to cry , from deep deep down. She asked me to focus on the moment, on what I was feeling and to describe it in the most primal sense I could, something very, very difficult coming from a person that likes to analyse everything.

It took many efforts, but finally I was able to connect with myself and everything in me screamed that I needed care, rest and peace.

Then she asked me something that utterly surprised me. To relate to myself as a mother would. What? To take care of myself as a mother would. As if I were the child.

It broke all my barries and all my preconceived notions.

I needed to be taken care of? Me? In the myer briggs I appeared to be protector, not the other way around.

That all my mothering instincts could be directed to me first and then to others?

Immediately came to mind the image of my maternal grandmother. An amazing woman, the very best woman one could ever hope to have as a grandmother and her nickname for me: Schatzie, little treasure in German.

She called me this even if she did not speak German and I was named after her, since its the way my father has always called me and she loved it.

I was always her little treasure and felt so very loved and secure with her.

Slowly I began to feel very, very loved. I cannot explain it other than God.

I could feel my grandmother right there. I could see her very light blue eyes, her very slight frame and all her love. She loved God and could transmit it to everybody she met. She was a prayer warrior. Always with the Rosary.

So the counselor told me that my task in the next few days was to do unto me as a mother would do and that if the image of a mother was my grandmother treat myself as she would have done.

How had she treated me as a child? What had she told me time and time again? And to do this to myself the next days.

The counselor said that the way to become a mother is first to treat yourself as a mother would.

My grandmother had loved me with such a pure love that I cried, but now with tears of love.

It resonated to me on such a deep level I cannot describe it. I can truly say she was there and so was God.

I felt such peace.

I left her office so light I cannot describe it. Emotionally drained, but with peace.

This has never happened in my whole life and for the first time in many years I felt again my grandmothers presence.

I decided not to go back to the office for the rest of the day and instead took care of several things that I had been puting off that were just for myself.

I had lunch in a very simple restaurant, but took the time to eat, to enjoy each bite and sat by the sun just looking at people and life.

I bought a children´s book for learning the rosary just for myself with the most amazing pictured for the Virgin of Guadalupe that showed her as a 14 year old girl. It was a gift for me and one that I cannot stop smiling about.


Later that day I began receiving several other unexpected gifts.

But this by far was the most precious one.