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Hi everyone - I am wondering if anyone can give me a read on my younger daughter (she is 10 1/2)? She is struggling again with missing school and not doing her normal activities. It is possible that she has some seasonal depression (she already does have anxiety...I am starting her on more vitamin D) and I will be following up with her pediatrician. But I was curious to see if anyone had any particular insights for her?

I was talking to her and she put into words some of what is bothering her. I believe (from prior experiences) that she is highly empathic. She seems to be exquisitely sensitive to the changing dynamics of the friendships (we talked a bit last night and I was reassuring her that it is normal...but it seems to weigh heavily on her.) I do think she is approaching some hormonal changes...she was telling me that she feels angry a lot and wants to do things, but even when it is stuff she enjoys, she will get "confused" and not want to do it or has trouble deciding to do it. This is something that has happened off and on for several years and is what prompted us to seek therapy for her. Unfortunately, her current therapist was not the best fit for her and so we are back to square one on that. 

Hi everybody. I wanted to let you know that my ex-landlady is still hanging in there. Also I think everybody should send a healing light to The Pope.

@cc21

Hi CC21. Some of what your daughter is dealing with is beyond my ken. Nor do I have much confidence when it comes to reading a person I've never met. I did take a few moments to think about your daughter, though, and this is what I got.

For the short-term, at least, I think she might benefit from a big, long breather, at least a week in length, where not only does she not have to worry about school or extracurriculars, but where she doesn't have much access to technology. In lieu of those distraction, being outside as much as possible is recommended, at least so that she's soaking up the lengthening sunlight of the early spring. Also, highly empathic people tend to be sensitive to the therapeutic effects of the outdoors as well. The trees, the grass, the birds: all living things care about her and want to lend their support in this confusing time (maybe there's a forest therapist/shinrin-yoku practitioner near where you live?). If your daughter has a spring break coming up in the next two months, that could be a good opportunity for this sort of breather. 

Regardless, I'll be sending light to your family.

Hi, there,

Would anyone be willing to take a read of my cat Pikake? She’s an 11-year old Birman & she started limping yesterday. It was episodic and her gait seemed normal at times. Eventhough she was running during the day, tonight we noticed she can’t put any weight on her left front paw. We are wintering in Mexico so we don’t have access to her usual vets. We are hoping to take her in for a check-up/X-ray tomorrow. She did make a 7 ft jump two weeks ago & landed with a thud. Did she break something, tear something? Any insights you can share will be very much appreciated. Thank you.

@pikake

Not intuition, but my sproingy cat also likes to jump up on high things and jump straight down off them. She sprained a front paw. Get her checked for a break , though. There's nothing to be done except to eliminate big jump opportunities, unfortunately.

@laura-f Thank you for sharing your story! We hope to get an appointment with the vet tomorrow. Meanwhile I reached out to an animal communicators forum and someone ran a scan on her & thought it might be her shoulder. Since we lean towards natural remedies, I read up on homeopathics for pets for bruised ligaments and broken bones, using Arnica and Ruta Graveolens. Nothing to heal the bones yet until we know for sure. Really appreciate your thoughtful input.

@pikake I’ve had a couple dogs (and cats) respond well to products with cbd in them. Also, if infection starts or a hot spot, I give my dogs fresh chopped garlic along with any vet prescribed meds. They can take it with toast/peanut-butter. It’s anti-fungal properties help somewhat. I don’t read pets but I do prey to St. Francis of Assisi for our fur family. I’ll keep your fur baby in mind when meditating/praying today.

@vagabeau Thank you so much for your suggestions and prayers for my girl! CBD oil is a great idea. I hope also to get her to the vet today.

@cc21, I'm not confident in giving spontaneous readings, but I resonate with many of @coyote's suggestions of drawing on nature to give your daughter some comfort and sustenance.   I am also seeing some sort of creative endeavor, where she is free to discover and express those hidden parts of herself, would be helpful to her.  

I don't have children, but I believe kids have it really hard in the times we're living in; I think about that a lot.  And if you're an empathic child, it becomes even more challenging.  I wonder about the chaotic energy with our politics, climate and other external threats in our world, and how that might be creating additional stress for her.  As an empath, I'm sure she absorbs a lot in her surroundings.  Life can become one big inhale, and you forget to exhale.  That was certainly true for me growing up.  Coyote's suggestion of a "breather," whatever that looks like, feels right to me.  

I know there are some books on raising empathic children, which might be helpful to you.  Dr. Judith Orloff is a good resource, but I'm sure there are others out there.

I will be keeping your daughter and your entire family in my prayers.

@coyote @deetoo 

 

Thanks to you both for your feedback! I really appreciate it. We did get her back at school today (with much effort) and the sun is shining here so hoping the move towards spring will help. Yes, they do get a week off at the end of this month.

I will definitely do my best to get her out in nature, as you recommended. She often resists, but will keep at it! Thank you again!

@pikake @vagabeau

Please don't give garlic to cats!  It is toxic for them!   Garlic is in the Lily family, and Lillies are extremely toxic for cats.  I had to take my Ma's cat to the emergency Vet in the middle of the night, after it got into a Valentine's day bouquet and munched on the one Lilly flower that was in it.  Very traumatic, and expensive.  Never bring any into the house, if you live w cats.

  Some cats like people food, and will beg for bites, but for me, pretty much everything i eat has garlic in it (lol), so it is always a no.

@unk-p Thank you for the warning; I am aware of the dangers to cats from the allium family, but appreciate your concern. Dogs have a different disposition. We are very careful with Pikake’s diet and are leaning towards raw. That however doesn’t stop her from peering over the dining table when she smells roast chicken. 

I have to rant a bit. Today, I had a hearing test and a follow-up appointment with my neurologist at Mass General Hospital in Boston. No bad news, no changes in my hearing. But I'm still pissed off. 

For the past year at least, I've been consciously crafting a different story of my illness than the one the dominant biomedical establishment has been trying to tell me, and that process of narrative reimagining has accelerated and solidified since I started sharing my thoughts on this forum. But whenever I have to go into Boston for medical stuff, I feel that internal story coming up against quantum resistance because I''m suddenly immersed in an environment where the energetic focus is on "managing health declines" and not actual healing. When I met with my neurologist, I plied the  waters a bit and asked him a few questions about his thoughts on the long term prognoses of patients with neurofibromatosis in general. Through that questioning, I was able to tell that, in his eyes, his job is only to mitigate my own health declines, possibly with the help with other "savior doctors" who might procure some magical super drug in a laboratory somewhere, someday. 

To hell with all of that. I don't buy that story. The Latin route of the word "hospital" harkens back to the idea of hospitality and respite to travelers. The pretense that present-day hospitals or their attendant healthcare infrastructure provide respite is bullshit. Ask anyone who's hospitalized for anything other than depression what they most want, and more often than not, they will tell you they want to be discharged so that that they can finally relax (think about how twisted that is: healthcare settings for most people are antithetical to relaxation and healing). I know this firsthand from the 8 times I've been hospitalized overnight for surgical procedures. Yet even when I go to MGH just for appointments, lately I've been picking up on the ambient energy of exhaustion and disappointment that's radiated by all of the other ambulatory patent. And it's SOUL-CRUSHING. All of these people have been told in various ways that they can't truly heal, that they must constantly supplicate to the almighty "white coats" if they want to keep their bodies from completely falling apart. 

That's why I so badly want to heal myself: so that I can plant the idea of genuine physical (and emotional) healing in more people, and ultimately change our cultural perceptions about what is possible when it comes to the body's capacity for recovery. Make no mistake, I'm not talking about the US healthcare system specifically. The difference between our culture of healing compared to the Nordic fantasy lands is only one of degrees. Basically every modern health care infrastructure hews to the mechanistic, Cartesian blinders of allopathic medicine. If I could pick between undergoing a "possibly cutting edge" drug treatment in Stockholm versus spending a year as the live-in patient of a shaman healer in the foothills of Bhutan, I'd choose the latter option in a heartbeat.

I can tell that my brushes with hospitals lately are serving a purpose. They're kindling the fire energy I need to begin my healing work. Mercury goes direct next week and we reach the spring equinox not long after. I'm hoping these two events will help me catapult my energy forward.

@Coyote

We're all with you on this. Your body is younger but has significant challenges. Many of ours are older, and may or may not have severe challenges, but we all know too well the paradigm of modern medicine that prefers long term management over actual healing. I truly believe that this is why there are so few cures for cancer and no cure for autoimmune disease. The existing model favors excruciating and expensive treatments that only prolong the inevitable. Anything that comes from another model is viewed as "witchcraft" and I use that word because I believe that more of modern medicine is still steeped in the Middle Ages than we think. In the early (and frankly not so early) Christian church, healers were persecuted as heretics. It was an anti-intellectual stance that threatened consolidation of power in the hands of a few. Doesn't that sound familiar?? So it's more of the same, thousands of years later. I don't know that much about NF, but maybe you should look into a shamanic tradition somewhere that might be of benefit to you. I advise you to NOT tell your doctors though - they'll put in your record that you are difficult, non-compliant and possibly mentally ill. Try to find a holistic doctor (a D.O., integrative M.D., or chiropractor), who can offer some allopathic support but not shut you down on alternatives. Hang in there.

@coyote

I feel you.

I was all excited to see my new doctor. I was hoping to get answers. But instead of listening to me he tried to tell me I have ADD, not bipolar disorder. and that was clearly bull. He made me take two questionairres, one for bipolar disorder, which I always score high on, passing or failing depending on how you look at it...and one for ADD. 

So I answered both surveys and in big letters on the bottom of the ADD one I wrote, "I DO NOT HAVE ADD!"

and on the bottom of the Bipolar one, "I AM CERTAIN THAT I AM BIPOLAR!"

My friend commented that I was being stubborn and I laughed and said, "Yes, that one I have." It was rude of me to be so blunt, but it pissed me off. It has taken me months to accept the bipolar. I have worked with a gazillion kids with ADD. I know what it is and I do not have it. But the bipolar is a real adjustment and my time would have been better spent talking about that.

It was disappointing to say the least, that he just seemed to need me to have ADD. He told me HE has ADD. Whatever. 

I am the espert on me. I control the narrative. Just help me with my bipolar doc. Help me with this insomnia. Don't try to give me another condition!

As a result he never called me back to find out if his suggestions aided my sleep. So I went with the suggestions of my psychiatrist instead. 

This is for @Natalie who is struggling right now. I'm asking everyone to send her love and healing energy to let her know that she is valued just the way she is.

Thanks!

@Everyone

Experiencing a crisis of faith. Still estranged from my daughter, her choosing this.

Severely saddened, feeling like I am without God. Wondering how He could have allowed me to suffer so much, and still do. Therapist keeps telling me it's not what it is. but it is, what it is. 

Please tell me how you got through. My energy feels very dimmed. I am thinking I have the Covid19 because I do feel ill still.  and my anxiety lies to me.  Bipolar feeling a bit overwhelming. Thank goodness the generic ambien works. I honestly don't think I would sleep at all, feel anxious typing this. 

A few decent things happened today but the depression has weakened me.

feeling unwell.

Writing this is making me feel not as alone. Just the request for help and tapping into your energies

Please send light. Especially at 11-11:30 tonight. 

:( Ghandigirl

@ghandigirl

I don't know specifically what's the best advice to offer. I don't have any prescriptive guidance in mind that seems appropriate to what you're experiencing.

But know this. I'm drawn to your persona and the story of healing you've been sharing with all of us. I want to see you continue forward on your journey. So I'll be focusing on you at 11.

Hi @ghandigirl. Whenever you feel like this, wondering why God would cause you to suffer so, try to remove yourself from this human perspective and see it from your soul's perspective.  You, as a soul, chose this life in order to teach and inspire those around you to learn to love unconditionally.  You are actually a Hero!  The opportunities you are offering to others, like your daughter, to grow past any pain they may have experienced and to find their way back to forgiveness and love is amazing.  Even though things may seem bleak right now, know that they will get better.  Thanks to you, your daughter WILL learn what her soul signed up to learn.  For now, just try to focus on being that light and spreading that love to all around you.  You've talked about how supportive and loving your partner has been.  YOU have provided him with that opportunity and it's a wonderful thing. ❤️ 

@frank

I just gotta say Frank, I'm so glad you've joined our tribe. I'm loving the thoughts, advice, and ideas you've been sharing with us.