On February 13th, I wrote about learning a new language and reclaiming both physical and metaphorical roots. What an interesting and transformative few weeks I’ve had! Things continue to progress and refine, so I thought I’d share a little update. It all kind of spirals around roots and my medical intuitive book on healing Lyme disease. That project has now reached 70,000+ words, with many multi-disciplinary contributors and my own synthesizing of how that all relates to Lyme disease.
In and around my writing, research and contacting other contributors, I did the first 3-day So Easy Colon Cleanse that I’ve done since 2014, followed by a Scram! parasite cleanse. On the physical level, I prefer to do a cleanse at least once per year, but with my business expansion to the Blue House in 2015, my dad’s March 2016 death, orchestrating my mom’s move and new life, and my recovery from supporting all that in 2016, then our Winter Solstice 2016 marriage, and finishing my permaculture design certificate (PDC), looking for a house and relocating in Summer 2017, the holidays and a new job for David, mid-February 2018 was really my first window of opportunity for a cleanse.
I’ll spare you the details, since I did this as much for metaphysical reasons as the physical, but some interesting things shifted after the cleanse. For one, my urge to learn Welsh underwent a complete metamorphosis. Long story short, I got to the “root” of why I felt led to learn Welsh in the first place, and I realized the current course did not support that why. Listening to Cymraeg (kum-RIGE — the Welsh word for Welsh) reconnected dormant synapses, but I found myself frustrated with purely auditory lessons. Written Welsh features very different letter combinations than English and I primarily wanted to learn old lore. Therefore, hearing Welsh without seeing the visual correspondence to be able to read Welsh felt like trying to read with my eyes closed. In short, it felt like the years after my 1998 traumatic brain injury when I could no longer read print.
I suspended my Welsh studies during and after the cleanse, yet I still felt this urge to learn a new language. Something kept nagging at me. This feeling of being able to hear and speak something but really wanting/needing to read the language dogged me, because “Excuse me, what language if not Welsh have I been dying to read?!” As soon as I dropped the pressure to learn Welsh, Dr. Sharon Blackie announced her year-long Celtic Studies Course: Myth and Tradition. I promptly registered, because the syllabus satisfies the exact craving behind my Welsh nibbles. Around the same time, I also saw and registered for an online course from the Lorian Association— this one about the Sidhe. Bingo again. Both courses came to me with that release and address my real craving for lore.
Meanwhile, the Lyme book continued to grow and morph. I found experts for all the fields I needed, except one — astrology. I have two amazing astrologers contributing relevant; however, despite contacting another six astrologers, I could not find anyone able to or willing to address the specific astrological transits and aspects I’ve noticed again and again in fourteen years of working with Lyme clients. After awhile I gave up trying to find articles online or to trying to find someone else to write these chapters, because hello, brick wall. I can take a hint. I realized it would be much faster for this armchair astrology student to become fluent in reading astrology charts than for an astrologer to become fluent in medical intuitive speaking and reading. Like face-palm-why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-sooner-duh easier.
I began studying astrology in 2006 while researching my first novel, “Schizandra and the Gates of Mu.” Timothy Glenn provided detailed analysis of character Schizandra’s chart, based on the birth date, time and place I “selected” for her. Amazed by how bang on the reading described the character, I dabbled, had readings done on me, dabbled some more, read books and blogs, befriended numerous astrologers, and got to the point where I recognize specific transits in clients just by their energy signature. The only readings I have done on myself are astrology readings, because my own intuition gives me so much information all the time. If I don’t “get” it, then my left brain wants something more concrete than someone else’s intuition.
I might be the only person who turns to astrology for its significantly more left-brained outlook on life than my usual perspective! In any case, I’ve reached a place where I can speak and hear astrology well enough to converse and make sense. I wouldn’t call myself fluent, but writing this Lyme book made me realize I long to and really need to take those language skills to the next level. For both my fiction and non-fiction, as well as to help clients even more, I need to learn to read the charts. Yesterday, I emailed my friend, the amazing permaculturist, astrologer and scholar Ann Kreilkamp, to see if she could recommend any astrology courses. I wanted something flexible, since I need to honor the writing inspiration when it hits, but I also want to immerse myself in this language. Full on fluency ASAP.
To my honor and delight, she offered to mentor me! Since I already speak the language of the soul from seventeen years as a professional medical intuitive and have studied astrology on my own for nearly twelve years, she’ll design a curriculum that gets me up to speed in thorough but efficient ways. This clicks in so many things for me that it would take many lengthy blog posts to explain the how’s and why’s. Suffice to say, 2018 marks a year of language, learning and Lyme, all related to reclaiming roots — both my own and those of people undergoing major initiations whether through Lyme or other soul challenges.
May 19, 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the traumatic brain injury that forced me out of academia and into a career in the healing arts. Although conflicted about some parts of academia, I had intended to become an English professor and a writer, but the injury left me unable to read without horrific “migraine” (but way worse) headaches and vertigo. No fluorescent light tolerance, impaired short-term memory and constant overwhelm obliterated graduate school as an option, even with disability accommodations.
Instead, I got thrown into the “gifts” I ran from as a child — the ability to “read” the mental, emotional, spiritual and other energies affecting physical health. Indeed, I could not do anything else. After three and a half years of total disability, I finally agreed to become a professional medical intuitive. Not because I wanted to, but because it became clear life would brook no other choice. I surrendered, dove in, and the career grew by referrals and repeat clients. I still don’t advertise, and I have no social media accounts. Clients just find continue to me.
It’s very right brain work, and I feel grateful to have helped so many people over the past seventeen years. Truly, I feel honored to walk this path with so many people in deep transitions and crises. Nonetheless, my left brain healed, and now the writing wants out. Becoming fluent in the language of astrology feels like the integration my soul has craved since birth. I can finally give my left brain something to chomp on, while the code-cracker in me translates body to soul language, but also soul to body and beyond. My right brain dream interpreting, vision receiving, telepathic, storytelling self can still thrive, but she’ll have company from her left brain mate that’s felt home bound all these years.
As a Gemini with Virgo Rising and an Aquarius Moon — a person with four planets in Gemini, two ruled by Mercury, and nine planets in Air, you could say I had an overly developed mind pre-TBI. Um, OK, let’s call that a cosmic understatement! I’ve always said my TBI is the best thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but what a fabulous chance to rewire me back to soulful living. That injury mercifully and ruthlessly destroyed my mind, forcing me into the Underworld of subconscious, Shadow, and deep initiation. It prepared me to guide others through their own Plutonian depths.
Yet now — to the delight and relief of my deepest soul longing — I realize my TBI did not remove that mind forever. It did not kick my left brain permanently to the netherworld of house husband while my right brain gets all the glory. My life changing injury destroyed neither the scholar nor the storyteller. It just detoured me so that I could heal and gather wisdom from within and beyond. It gave me something to write about, and it made me appreciate the journey instead of only striving for the destination. It softened and diversified me to love the dots and the pointillist paintings they create — to look at meta-pictures, tiny moments and the scope of individual lives across millenia.
In short, my injury let me be me, and for that I feel unending gratitude.
source https://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/2018-language-learning-and-lyme/
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