Faces and Mirrors

Christmas Eve 1973

​I am a very fortunate lady and I have been blessed to live a relatively peaceful and happy adult life.  

I say adult life because, like most of us, there are situations that occur in our lives that are life altering and typically occur during our most formative years.  


I also have been extremely fortunate with my career.

It is very true,  I found the whole psychic medium gig frightening at first and definitely wanted nothing to do with the stigma attached to being a psychic, but thankfully it grew and blossomed over many seasons of working as a massage therapist on many, many clients that eventually  became friends, huge support systems and cheerleaders for my ever evolving career in the "Healing and Up-lift-ment Department of the Universe".

It is also true not a minute goes by without me being grateful for the life I have been supported to create and the future that I am encouraged to follow, or reminded of how easily it could have turned out so differently.  

During these past 30 years, especially what I refer to as the "What the Hell is this all about?" years of my psychic development, I have been continually pushed to reveal more and more of who I am now, where I was and where I am going.  

Being called to duty from the other side has many requirements #1 being to know who you are, completely.  Loving who you are unabashedly as well as being willing to allow an evolution of the greatest you to occur organically and without judgement. 

You see, being a conduit for the other side isn't always easy and it certainly isn't for the faint at heart.

Actually, it is only for those willing to be completely eviscerated, splayed and left naked in the brutality of our own vulnerability, facing every fear, every memory, every hateful word ever spoken to us or by us and every deed good or bad beating us down like a hurricane of of biblical proportions only to eventually find balance on Mother Earths lovingly dry soil under the desert sun while desperately seeking shade and water.

"Dramatic?"

Nope.

I haven't even mentioned the waterfalls of Niagara pouring through our eyes, releasing all that we've encountered during our initiation or the epic fires in the rain forest that eventually force us to break the seed and begin forming the idea of what expression we will be and when that expression finally emerges, just when we feel we may have control, another wave pulls us into the depths of our souls so that we can once again re-move, re-new and re-form.  

"That would be dramatic."  

"I thought you would appreciate that."

Working for the Universe has its perks, but the initiation period is fucking brutal.
 
"And a necessary period of transformation in which the vessel becomes spacious and whole for our use.  It is not our intention to cause pain, merely clear you from it so that you may be of value to those who seek to cleanse."  

So here I am, years later, a spacious vessel all cleared out, open for business, ready to help and here it comes....the mirror of my childhood standing in front of me,  desperately searching for a steady hand to grab, in the form of a client.

"She is tormented today by yesterday."
 
Her spirit crushed, her heart torn to shreds, faith shattered, lost in grief searching for peace.

The exit ramp on the highway towards Peace of Heart, in which  I was able to narrowly turn onto 20 plus years ago and continue to drive daily,  she has yet to find and I am being asked to give her a map.
 
More so, to be her guiding light on that map so maybe she to will be able to find the "Peace of Heart Highway", just right of "Highway to Despair".
   

Her story began at 9 years old when her mother died leaving behind 3 young girls to be raised by an ill father, a loving family with very little money, even less time,  but generous hearts and souls.  

At that moment her identity was lost.  

Her balance and sense of trust ripped away from her at an age when loosing her favorite Barbie should have been her only trauma.  

Her life, her hopes and her dreams forever altered by a death that she couldn't really understand yet knew would devastate her.  

Siblings crying, but not understanding at that moment the magnitude of loss they were about to face and the years in which this loss would take from them.   

An age when learning to master a bike without training wheels and crossing the road without having to hold your mother's hand was the biggest obstacle she faced and never, not ever could she imagine going to sleep without a nighttime prayer and kiss from her mother.  

Never could a 9-year-old imagine such a devastating turn of events.

Neither could a 7- year old.  

Growing up a Motherless daughter is in-explainable unless you have been through it and even then, in-explainable.  
There is a hole so deep that NO THING, NO ONE, will ever fill.
 
It destroys your faith, your identity, your security, your entire childhood and many times, your adult hood.  

It destroys families and futures.
 
It eats you alive until it doesn't, and only when you are old enough to understand slightly and make that journey of allowing the pain of it all to re-enter, re-new and re-form you so that you can process it as an adult, can you even begin to be just ok with it, and being just ok is a good thing.

"A motherless daughter is forever an orphan." she spits out through tears as I nod in simple understanding, for I know this intimately.

"A motherless daughter is forever an orphan" rattles me.

 I know this to be true, yet I no longer choose this truth to be my definition of life.  

As I sit across from her,  listening carefully to her words, I beg my ego to be removed so that only Spirit speaks, but even in this altered state I know I am once again being reminded of my own despair.  

She speaks of how she will never be able to follow in her mother's footsteps, never had her mother's hand to hold after her first heart break, never had her mother to  hold the tissues at her wedding, never would see her mother's  her eyes shimmer with loving tears at the birth of her children, never have a mother to offer advice for the million obstacles life loves to toss at her and never, not ever watch her age gracefully and teach her how to as well.  
She is a true orphan in every sense of the world.  
She speaks of how the world has betrayed her.  
Spirit has left her.   


Orphans left on earth, Angels risen in Heaven.  

As I sit and look at the mirror of my life in the face of my client, I want to comfort her by saying "Yes, we are orphans, and yes, this sucks, yes, this may be our title, but it does not have to be a cross in which we carry and crucify ourselves upon."

I want to tell her that she doesn't have to live in the crater that was created in her being when her mother died.  

I want to tell her that she can recognize what she lost yet still remain in awe of all that she still has. 

I want to tell her she can hate with every ounce of her being that she is an orphan, but love just as equally her living family, friends, and acquaintances,  that nurture her soul today.  

I want her to understand that she has so much yet to accomplish,  to offer, to see and be and do.

I want her to know

She can learn to feel love again.  

She can learn to accept people into our hearts and our souls without fear that they will leave her.

She can thrive even though her roots have scars.  

She does not need the crutches of addictions to hold her up when she falls, comforts her when she feels hopeless and put her to sleep when she is tired.

I want to say that she is stable because she is her mother's daughter.  

She is her mother's daughter and death does not take that from her!  

I want to hug her so tight that she feels the love pouring into her from her mother, who stands beside her every moment of every day, offering her mothering in different ways.  

I want to help her find another route, another highway, another car, anything to pull her from the madness of sorrow that consumes her, but I know that I can't.  

I can relay messages and offer thoughts from her mother on the other side.

I can ask and receive answers and I can tell her what she wants to know, but I can't stitch that wound.

I can tell her what her mother tells me, but she must allow those words to penetrate the walls built of fear, anger, sorrow, trauma, loss.  

I can tell her so much, but she has to decided to live a dream and not a nightmare that began with death but is being continued through her own thoughts. 

I tell her to find the courage to open herself up to a life that is rich and full, loving, kind and nourishing even though a part of her altered.  

I want to tell her that her story is my story too and that there are more of us than she can imagine and we are filling ourselves with hope because that is why our mothers gave us life.

But I don't.  I hold her hand, I love her soul, I speak with Spirit, but I know my story isn't hers and my job today is to lead her to the highway and pray she takes it. 

Like so many of of who have lost mothers, we know that the only way to heal is to accept what might have been will be found in  another life.  and that this life, the life we are here to explore, to learn from, to love in, to grow and thrive in,  "To be an expression of an ever loving God"  is never going to be completely whole, but  chipped, cracked, shredded at times  and always carefully held by hands that are unseen and loved by a heart we no longer see beating yet feel beating instead.
 
It took me years to heal enough to not hate this world and the world hanging out beyond the veil.  

Years to love my children fully and completely without fear that I would leave them orphans or they would leave me childless, and years to forgive myself for not understanding then what I understand now.  


"That to love only for a moment without fear is the ultimate expression of euphoria."  

Faith, love, and life don't come easily for a motherless daughter, but it does come if we allow the pain to wash over us again and observe it as an adult.  
If we don't lock it up and use it to shield us from life, but rather as a sword of courage from the ashes of a torched childhood.    
​
We orphans, we know that we are different.  

We are molded in a different type of cast.

Maybe we are a bit broken.  

We don't trust well, we don't love completely, we are shattered and glued with bandages and putty, we are incomplete and there are deep wells that lie within us that every now and then we go back to and when we come back  we remember we are warriors and we are ok

Just ok and that is good.  

Today, I was lucky enough to spend time at home with my son. I sat in meditation early on and opened the box of pictures that I was able to hold onto after my mother died.

These are all I have left of her, of us,  that is physical and I keep them sheltered, hidden from the world which may take her away from me, even though  I know nothing can.

I took out the last picture taken of her and the last picture of me with her.  

I am  able to cry openly about my pain and when I said quietly staring at the picture of me as a child holding my doll on that last Christmas Eve,  
"this was the very last time I was truly happy"
my son, Alex, just as quietly said,
​"that isn't true, mom, you are truly happy now."  

"I love that boy"

"So do I, Mom, so do I." 

I hope that my client finds peace and understanding after our meeting.  

I hope she feels love, joy, happiness, and safety knowing that she isn't alone and I hope that when Spirit walks with her and when her mother whispers words of love she will finally be able to hear them.

I hope that everyone who lost a mother, a child, a lover, a friend will stop to hear the whispers, feel the love and choose in that moment to love them back.  

I never share my photos, but today I do.  I love you Mom and I know you love me back. 

---

Katherine Jean Voghel Bieniek Loving Mother of Kimberly, Jennifer and Damon