How do you know that you’ve stumbled upon a revolutionary healing tool?
When you can actually reframe the loss of your first child as a blessing in disguise. Let me explain.
Thirteen years ago I had a stillborn baby girl after a very spiritually-centered pregnancy. I am not kidding when I tell you I did everything I could to have a health and spiritual pregnancy and childbirth. I had meditated daily, did yoga daily, had detoxed and cleansed for 2 years leading up to conception, and asked for God to allow me to be the vessel for this incarnating being of light. Then she just died when I was 9 months pregnant. The autopsy revealed no abnormalities and the cause was unknown. I sank into despair when 6 months later I was diagnosed with Hasimoto’s Thyroiditis which is an autoimmune disease essentially causing the thyroid to attack itself.
I tried every alternative method I could find including homeopathy, Chinese herbs and acupuncture, iridology, nutritional supplements, macrobiotic diet, Ayurvedic medicine, etc. to heal my thyroid condition. I desperately wanted to discontinue the synthetic hormone therapy that is the standard protocol in this country. Nothing worked. I hired and fired 3 endocrinologist. Each one had given up on my alternative pursuits and tell me, “Accept the fact that you will most likely have to take this pill for the rest of your life.”
Years later, after giving birth to two beautiful healthy children, I became a postpartum doula. I participated in several grief counseling training sessions where I “processed” the death of my first baby in great depth. The comment I heard most often when I’d tell my story was, “You really seem to have moved past this unfortunate loss”; I didn’t have any obviously lingering emotional attachment to the event. I felt on many levels that this was quite true.
During a time of immense personal growth and asking for guidance from God, I found EFT. Immediately recognizing that my loss was somehow trapped in my thyroid I felt in my bones that this would be the modality to remove it. I began by tapping on all the negative feelings I had around the death including some biggies like God abandoning me because I had done everything “right”. I also discovered some guilt I had as I ignored my intuition that things weren’t going right with the baby 2 days before her death even though I had just been to a reassuring prenatal visit at the ob/gyn.
I went on to work on the thyroid itself with affirmations and I diligently tapped on any of the tailenders such as the doctors telling me that this condition is incurable. I also made sure to check for any symptoms of hypothyroidism and tapped on those when they came up. One secondary benefit I found to be true for me (but I suspect is around with most women with hypothyroidism) is that it’s a great excuse for being overweight.
I know that one of the criticisms of EFT is that it’s all about belief. Well I’m here to tell you that after months of seeing my clients walk through my EFT practice symptom-free after one or two sessions, I couldn’t quite believe that this was really working on my own issue until I actually made myself sick!
First came insomnia, then tinnitus, and finally the feeling of being on speed or too much caffeine. It took me a few days to recognize something that had never happened to me. By continuing to take the drugs I had made myself temporarily hyperthyroid. A quick visit to my very open-minded nurse practitioner and she immediately started weaning my body off the drugs. I tell this story to my clients as a cautionary tale on the importance of working closely with their doctors when tapping for physical ailments. I have been medication free for 5 years.
I recognize now that I was destined to work within the birth community to change the status quo. The U.S. has the highest incident of postpartum depression and I can’t tell you how discouraging the numbers are for complete relief using traditional therapies. Every pregnant woman I have helped with EFT in my practice has had great results on everything from breech presentations to premature labor. My ultimate goal is to train midwives, doulas, labor/delivery hospital staff, lactation consultants, and childbirth educators in EFT. I believe in the pioneering work of Dr. Grantly Read who concluded that childbirth without fear will almost always bring about painless labors.
My little angel set me on this karmic journey 16 years ago and gave me showered me with gifts that I am still awakening to.
