Grief and the Yellow Door ❤️

Finding Grace in the pain

I don’t even remember how I ended up at this yellow door in Brooklyn, NY. Behind it was a lovely healing center called Maha Rose, created by an equally lovely young woman named Lisa Levine.

Somehow, as serendipity would have it, I received an email from Lisa telling me that Dr. Mei Jen Weng, an acupuncturist and oriental medicine doctor from California, would be having a group acupuncture session at her center.

I was actually able to find the blurb that drew me in:

Dr. Weng is not only a highly skilled master, she is a powerful intuitive and energetic healer. Patients who have received treatment say she is particularly gifted in facilitaing the rapid release of buried emotional blocks and past traumas which made them depressed, sad, or chronically ill.

That time in my life was busy with studying all kinds of modalities. Nutrition, energy healing, and Ayurveda, to name a few. I had survived and healed from eight long years of chronic pain, and that’s what led me down the path of holistic health.

I saw Dr. Weng a total of two times, and my memory of the first visit is a little vague. I took two pictures of that yellow door. One is dated January 2011, and the other July 2012.

My partner at the time passed away suddenly in May of 2011. He was only 49 years old.

I remember so consciously being aware of having a sad but really healthy experience of grieving his death. At least, I thought I did.

And so, when I took the train to the northern tip of Brooklyn on that July day in 2012, I wondered why I was going. I was in a really good place, both physically and emotionally.

I came up the subway stairs, glanced around, and all of a sudden, I felt a whoosh kind of energetic memory of my deceased mother. She was Polish, and Greenpoint is filled with Polish bakeries and grocery stores.

In fact, its nickname is “Little Poland.”

It was odd because I rarely dreamed of my mother or had these kinds of experiences about her. She died in January 2001.

The memory was momentary but very real. I continued on to the yellow door on Green St. It was a beautiful summer day.

There were several people already in attendance, and I was lucky enough to snag a massage table instead of a mat on the floor.

I remember Dr. Weng coming up to me. I hadn’t said a word to her about what had just happened or that my partner had died the previous year. I was feeling really centered and well.

And then it happened.

Dr. Weng put her hands on my heart and said, “my dear, you have so much grief, it’s buried in your bones.”

I was shocked.

Then she placed an acupuncture needle in my heart center. I cannot tell you the magnitude of this experience.

That needle and whatever else Dr. Weng was doing unleashed a tsunami of heaving sobbing tears that I could not stop, no matter how hard I tried. I lost all sense of the other people in the room. I have no idea how long I cried or why it was even happening. It seemed like an eternity.

Dr. Weng eventually came back to me, and all I remember her saying was something about my mother. She told me to say the Ho’oponopono mantra:

“I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you, I love you.”

And then she said, “Wear pink. Pink will heal your heart.”

I kind of scoffed at the last suggestion with a “yeah…I don’t really like pink.”

As I was putting my jacket on, I reached inside the sleeve for the dusty pink scarf that I often wore. I looked up and locked eyes with Dr. Weng. We both laughed.

There’s a whole other story that I’ll share one day about pink. But I will say this:

Pink is the color of the High Heart.

I also feel that it’s a sign of Hope.

Detail from “Pink Is Everything!”

What led me to share this experience was the recent death of my friend’s mother. They were very close, and my friend had been suffering greatly along with her mother during her illness.

My friend mentioned that she was so angry and how foreign that felt to her. Because she always goes right into grief.

I know that feeling because I do the same. I am more likely to go into anxiety or grief than anger.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not buried deep. Maybe even unreachable.

I silently applauded my friend for expressing her anger, foreign though it must have felt.

If we don’t get these stuck emotions out of our bodies, chances are our bodies will get our attention by expressing them in another way.

An energy healer can see these emotions not just in our physical bodies but in our energy field or aura, as well.

My energy healing teacher would always say that it’s much easier to fix something if it’s still in the energy field. Once it’s in the body, it’s more problematic.

When I became a practitioner myself, I would sometimes have a client experience what I had with Dr. Weng. No needles were involved, but just my hands on their heart center would often bring on tears.

One young man came to see me once. Energy healing was a totally foreign experience for him, and he didn’t tell me anything about what was happening in his life.

He texted me later to tell me that he barely made it into the elevator before starting to cry. He said he walked around the city weeping. Turns out he’d had a broken heart from a recent breakup.

Grief is tricky. It can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

When my clients would leave, I would usually tell them to place their own hands on their hearts or wherever they felt healing was necessary.

When 2020 rolled around, and all the nonsense started, I would often wake up in the morning with a feeling of grief or dread, but it didn’t feel like mine.

For those of us who are energetically very sensitive, it helps to be aware and be able to discern what feels like yours or what feels like it belongs to the collective.

It is still happening, as the state of our world seems so tenuous. If I wake up and feel that dread, I get up and get moving. I dance. I sing. I turn my face to the mountains and the trees and the sunshine.

You are your own healer.

I want my friend to know, and all of you, as well, just how much Grace can be found when you are able to experience and move through the pain of grief.

I had already endured many experiences of deep grief by the time I was lying on that table in Brooklyn. I felt that I had survived them and experienced a state of Grace.

Those are stories for another time. Maybe.

But, of course, there are layers to grief and its processing.

Some people can go into a dark depression rooted in grief. I have been blessed in this lifetime to have somehow escaped the clutches of depression.

From an Ayurvedic point of view, it is more likely to happen to someone who has a Kapha constitution or a Kapha imbalance, which can happen to any one of us.

But, whether we’re aware that we’re grieving or not, as was the case when I was lying on that table behind the yellow door, it’s wise to remember to regularly care for not just your physical body but your energetic and emotional body, as well.

Salt baths, sound baths, music, Nature, yoga, Qigong, self-love, and self-healing practices., to name a few.

Screaming in a safe space is a great way to get the anger out if it’s there.

A few years after seeing Dr. Weng, I was in an Ayurveda class when the teacher said to me, “You have a lot of old grief in your lungs. It’s like stale air.”

Again, I was blindsided by this, but I felt the truth in it.

One fall, I spent three months with what the Chinese call the hundred-day cough. Allopathic medicine calls it whooping cough or pertussis.

I was working with a Chinese medicine practitioner. He was a master herbalist and also an energy healer.

I nearly died from that illness, but here I am. Dr. Lu said that it would take a year for my lungs to fully recover.

We all have different weaknesses in our bodies. And in our energy fields.

Maybe they came with us from past lives. Often there’s a connection with our birth or the state of our health at birth, as well as our mother’s health.

You don’t need to study energy healing to recognize this.

I was born with blood issues and spent about a week or so in critical care in the hospital.

Fast forward fifty-some years later, and the same Chinese medical doctor picked up on this!

I know that I have to give extra nurturance to my heart and my lungs. My fourth chakra.

For many decades it was my second chakra that was problematic. Infertility and every gynecological problem in the book.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this while I was going through it. My education came later, and luckily, I had been able to resolve some of these issues.

Energy healing has helped me to work on getting to the root of the problems and releasing stuck energy.

Pranayama breathwork is a wonderful self-healing technique you can use to help clear out stuck emotions and repair shallow breathing.

Our breath doesn’t just affect our lungs but every part of our body.

You may have completely different physical weaknesses than I do.

Maybe your gut (3rd chakra) has challenged you for most of your life.

Or your bones - always breaking something.

I am really big on believing that each of us has the capability to heal ourselves.

Sometimes it’s nice to seek help from an outside healer. I did that myself for many years with great success.

I have seen people who were in talk therapy for years resolve emotional issues after doing one shamanic journey.

But, like anything else, be wary when you seek outside help. Make sure the energy of the person you’re working with feels good to you.

There is no diploma needed to be able to sense energy.

You know when someone walks in the room how their energy feels. Start paying attention.

And always, always maintain good boundaries.

Boundaries are everything in the world of energy.

When I say I can feel the grief of the world, I need to add that I have strict boundaries.

This goes for friends and family, as well. We can love someone and try to help them without letting their issues/problems into our energy field, where we can be harmed.

One very important lesson I learned from shamanic practitioner, Sandra Ingerman, was that pitying someone is a very low form of energy. It helps no one.

It’s easy, especially for an empath who really feels the energy of those around them, to fall into this trap.

I feel myself going off on tangents here, so I’m going to reign my Vata self back in. :)

I read somewhere that Sagittarius is the most optimistic sign in the Zodiac but that we are good at hiding our problems from others. I’m guilty of it to this day.

But I’m pretty good at not hiding them from myself anymore. It’s taken many years of self-reflection and self-love to achieve this.

Grief hurts and will visit us all in our lifetimes. But, so will Grace if you open that door to let it in. And, trust me, it will change you. For the better.

I don’t know about you, but music is able to shift my state of mind and mood more than anything. I just happened upon this song recently and can’t stop listening to it. So, I’m sharing it with you. I think it’s pretty appropriate for my story today about the yellow door.

In case you want to sing along, here are the lyrics:

Here's a wishing well
Here's a penny for
Any thought it is
That makes you smile
Every diamond dream
Everything that brings
Love and happiness
To your life

Here's a rabbit's foot
Take it when you go
So you'll always know
You're safe from harm
Wear your ruby shoes
When you're far away
So you'll always stay
Home in your heart

You will always have a lucky star
That shines because of what you are
Even in the deepest dark
Because your aim is true
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you

Here's a spinning wheel
Use it once you've learned
There's a way to turn
The straw to gold
Here's a rosary
Count on every bead
With a prayer to keep
The hope you hold

You will always have a lucky star
That shines because of what you are
Even in the deepest dark
Because your aim is true
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you — Mark Knopfler with Emmylou Harris

So Much Love,
Barbara