I love Finding Nemo. I think its core message is the key to my struggles in this life. Marlin is clearly suffering from an anxiety disorder and would definitely be medicated if he were a human. Dory, however, is my role model. Just keep swimming.Last week my yoga teacher/shaman performed an Elimination Ceremony on me. The ceremonies always begin with my picking a rock from her rock collection. We talked about recent and past traumas that have happened in my life (more details later) and she asked me to fully feel the way I did in the moments when the traumas occurred and then blow that feeling into the rock. We repeated this three times. She said that she felt like what I need to do was to find passion again in my life. Not in the romantic sense but in the life purpose sense. She said that image of a pen was coming up and she also commented that I was already like a therapist in how I process things. She said that I get the lesson from the event without having to process/experience the emotional but that leaves me with all this unprocessed garbage inside and feeling generally stuck. BTW I had not mentioned to her at this point that I had decided earlier that day that I am supposed to be a therapist and a writer. Pretty awesome, huh?She then had me lay down face up on a yoga mat on the floor. I began to breathe slowly and, with each exhale, blowing the bad into the rock while she played the drums. After a few minutes, she place one hand under my second chakra and one under my fourth chakra. We stayed like that for just a couple minutes, then she got up and returned a few seconds later and placed what felt like some kind of rock on first on my second chakra and then on my fourth. After some time, we both sat up and she shared what she saw.In almost all cultures, the soul has four chambers. When she first tried to enter one of the chambers, it was bound so tightly that she could not get in. That was she she jumped up to get her crystal. After that, she could barely get in but once she did was all dirty and dusty. This the place where I have locked up all my emotions, my demons. I have had life altering, world shattering events happen in the last year but I have stuffed them down so deep that I have become disassociated from them. They are so terrible that I can only laugh about them and have been drunk the only times that I’ve cried. Once she got in, my teacher said that she essentially vacuumed up my soul. :)She also said that she saw several images. The first was, again, a pen. The next was a manatee and the manatee was just floating in the water and telling me to “accept the situation.” She said that I was still preparing that I wasn’t ready to move forward yet. She admitted that at first she thought it was strange that the new doctor had told me to phase out drinking but now it made more sense.I was blown away. The image of the manatee immediately made me think of Dory! I mean, just keep swimming and accept the situation are pretty much the same thing! And the way my teacher was acting out the manatee was strikingly similar to Dory and, again, she had no idea my strong connection to Finding Nemo.In 2005, I was working for this stupid start up company that was not doing well and they cut our salaries to $20K per year. I was the primary bread winner in our family (married to husband #2 at the time) and we could not live on $20K per year. I was pregnant at the time and told them to just let me go and draw unemployment while I looked for another job and hung out with my oldest son – 2.5 years old at the time.Long story short, nobody wanted to hire a pregnant lady so I spent the next five months freaking out in a purple haze. Pretty much one long panic attack. I spent most days outside, wandering around our neighborhood with my little boy. We had great tans! We also watched a lot of TV once the heat started to spike. We watched The Incredibles so many times that the opening theme music still makes my skin crawl to this day. But we also watched Finding Nemo and it was there that I found solace in sweet, little Dory. Telling me to just keep swimming and that everything would be OK. The critical scene takes place when Dory has gotten herself and Marlin swallowed by a whale. Marlin is distraught and convinced they are going to be eaten by the whale. But then the water starts to drain out of the whale’s stomach and the whale tells Dory and Marlin (but only Dory speaks whale) that it is time for them to “let go.” Dory immediately trusts the whale and lets go but Marlin is scared and asks Dory, “How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?!” To which Dory replies, “I don’t!” Finally, Marlin trust Dory and lets go of the whale’s tongue and the whale blows both of then out his blowhole and straight into Sydney’s harbor where he is shortly reunited with Nemo.I love this movie and Dory’s simple and faithful approach to life. I don’t know what’s coming next for me and mine but I will just keep writing and see where we end up. I did, however, get a very powerful message from the universe while in Port A this weekend. While we were tooling around in our golf car, checking out property for sale, we happened upon this statue – a mama and baby manatee! Pretty freaking cool, right?
