Lemon Cake and Colored Blobs
I woke up that Saturday morning in Del Mar dreaming of lemon cake. For some reason, I knew this was significant. Much later in the day, my friend and I ran down the road for some Starbucks and decided to walk around the shopping center. We were in San Diego for a seminar and didn’t know if we’d ever be back; so we wanted to make the most of our time there.
On the lower level of the center, we ran across this art show. What the heck?! Let’s see what this is! We walked in and looked around. The art was fascinating, fun, a little nightmarish, but very real to me. In the back of the gallery were the snacks. I picked up a piece of pastry – it was LEMON CAKE!!
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For the sake of the story, let’s go back to ten years ago. I was in massage therapy school, newly married, and in a lot of pain in my right hip. My previous marriage was very violent and unstable. I spent many years working through all the damage that relationship caused. I was healthy, safe and happy now. But my hip hurt. Nothing seemed to help it. Our massage instructor thought that sometimes our bodies can create “emotional cysts”. These are areas in the body that hold old issues. Instead of tearing the whole body down from stress and imbalance, our extremely intelligent beings do what has to be done to help us survive and move on. Sometimes, this means walling off certain pieces of bad energy and building a cyst around it. This allows the rest of the body to grow and function with a minimal amount of interruption.
One night, my hip was particularly bad. A trusted friend and co-student offered to work with me that night. Instead of trying traditional Swedish massage techniques, she offered to try a more gentle approach of just holding it and using the heat of her hands to try to relieve the pain.
Obviously, it was helping because I fell into what felt like sleep. Instead of being completely unaware, I was journeying somewhere inside myself. All I really remember is walking down a path and coming up to a big boulder in the way. I shoved and lifted the boulder away and found him - a big, slimy, black blob. He had googly eyes and creepy scraggly teeth. He looked up at me and just matter-of-factly said, “Humph, you finally found me”. Then, he just dissolved into the path and disappeared. When I “woke” up, my hip pain was gone, never to return. I believe this guy was an emotional cyst left over from my first marriage. There was no more threat to me, so it was safe to finally let go. I just needed help to become aware of it and my body was more than happy to let it go.
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Back to the art show…
Taking another look around, I looked up and saw a number of pieces clipped to a clothes line. The second one from the left caught my eye and held it. I tried looking at the others, but this one kept me close. I recognized it, but I just couldn’t figure out from where. I walked away a couple of times, but couldn’t stop going back to it. I finally ended up buying it. My first piece of original art!
After chatting with the artist and hanging out a while longer, we walked away. I got about twenty yards away when I stopped dead in my tracks with goose bumps all over my body. The piece I just bought was him! The Blob! But this time he was brilliantly full of color and life! From blobs in my sleep and pain in my hip to lemon cake in my dreams and one of the most relaxed nights of my life, it’s been a remarkable journey of healing and growth for me. Thank you, Addison Stonestreet, for being a part of it!
