At her first session she told me that her cancer, which had begun as ovarian, was stage-4. It had spread through her body like butter, although she staved if off for at least 10 years with strong chemotherapies and bone marrow treatments. She also explored raw foods, juicing, and wheat grass. She was terribly exhausted from this effort and enjoyed cheating with ice cream occasionally. She came for Core Energetics, an energy therapy developed by John Pierrakos, MD, that she heard might help. A latch ditch effort on her part, she had not considered trying psychotherapy before this.
I felt tremendous empathy with her. My mother had died of ovarian cancer at a similar, youthful age, 59. The work as I normally do it, designed to release stagnant, blocked energy in the muscles, organs, and tendons of the body, would have been too strong for her in her weakened state. So at first we talked and then we found gentle types of energy work that she grew to love.
Together we faced the resentment held in an out-of-awareness state about not being able to bear her own child, because her husband did not want another, even though she graciously raised his three children from a previous marriage. There was also anger at the parents who could not give her love and rage and shame in connection to the fiancee who canceled the wedding at the last moment.
She died a champion, a courageous soul. When she could no longer come to my place, I went to hers. We sat and rocked in her sunroom looking out the windows at the autumn leaves. In the winter I stood by her bedside listening to her breathe for the last time. Her family gathered around her. I stood there, guarding her passage or perhaps witnessing it until midnight, when I left. The next morning her husband called to tell me that she died in the wee hours of the morning.
DR. KARYNE WILNER ~ Energy Psychologist 