Back To The Blitz

She was an older woman, gray-haired and distinguished, one of those Canadian imports who had never forgotten her British roots. They were as close by as her slight English accent. I had known many people in Canada just like her, who would say “I’m just an old Brit” because that is what they felt like, in the “melting pot” America was alleged at one time to be, or in rich ethnic salad of Canada.

We knew her from her singing. We sang in a “showcase” of sorts in the San Diego region. My husband’s rich and jazzy baritone, my humorous songs or French songs long before my post-menopausal “croak” set in.

She, however, sang just like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.

She honored me by choosing me to treat her depression. Some standard medication treated her depression with ease. But it was plain to see she still carried a sadness within.

The real sadness had been with her for a long time.

I could not have guessed how long. Her mother, an innocent who had been going shopping, had been a victim of “the Blitz,” when Hitler had bombed London. Every girl is closest to her Mom. The age does not matter.

I had just started using “EFT,” or “Emotional Freedom Technique” I told her about how tapping on acupuncture meridians could release people from painful emotional reactions. I explained how the acupuncture points represented an electrical potential difference across the skin. A sort of alternative system of message-transmission, an alternative to the system of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves, painstaking discovered by the oriental a long time ago, but I was convinced, completely true and real.

I realized immediately I was in trouble.

I too had lost family when Hitler had been exterminating folk across Europe. The normal protocol for emotional freedom technique involves forgiving someone for something they had done inadvertently. She surely would not be able to say “I forgive Hitler,” because I myself, as a Jew, could never be able to say “I forgive Hitler.”

Luckily I thought quickly. We could both say, while each tapping on our own acupuncture meridians, “I detach emotionally from Hitler. I will not continue to suffer from what he has done. As long as I suffer, I am a victim. I will not let him make me a victim, too. I detach from him emotionally. I refuse to suffer now, years later, because of his deeds.”

We tapped together, and I was truly touched when she told me she felt considerably relieved.

We talked about the most powerful thing that can come, positively, from death. We talked about what her mother stood for, and how she could most appropriately be memorialized.

A great deal of hugging followed. As I always say,”get all the hugging you can. Insurance hasn’t figured out how to charge for it…yet…”