I’ve always known that I was born to grow as a person and soul in this lifetime. To transform and transcend old wounds into something positive, to enter the darkness so the light could shine again.
When I came across the school I attended in Feng Shui, I knew that it was for me, because it combined my two greatest loves, our built environment and our transformation.
A Story about Healing
The day of my aunt’s funeral, we came home to find our hot water tank being replaced. Apparently there had been a leak, which of course we didn’t get the message about earlier in the day.
There didn’t seem to be any water on the ground, and nothing in our storage closet seemed to be wet, so we were a little confused as to where the leak came from. Apparently it was the neighbours below us, that complained about water coming down through their ceiling.
Around that same time, I had been struggling creatively over the past few months, and when we experienced a great loss in our family, everything came to the surface. How fitting it was that our closet area which had the leak, was is in the creativity area of our home.
I remember seeing black spots behind the hot water tank after it was replaced, but thought, oh well, it’s probably just marks on the wall from moving the new tank in. And looking back, I remember smelling something funny in our closet, and the word mold seemed to come to mind a lot. Just time to clean the bathroom, I thought.
It is said that your home reflects the emotions you feel, and a leaky pipe can be a mirror of whatever it is you are feeling or rather not fully allowing yourself to feel. That which is going on internally for you is always reflected in your environment.
But, I digress, back to the story.
The hot water tank was replaced and we went on with our lives. I kept thinking how interesting it was that everything came to ahead on the day we said goodbye to my aunt.
Emotions and grief = leaky hot water tank.
About a month later, we noticed some water pooling at the bottom of the hot water tank, and the drywall behind the tank was so wet you could almost put your finger through it. We called the emergency line at our building. They said there was nothing they could do until morning and to just turn off the valve - we would have to live without hot water for the evening.
We tried that, but the water kept spraying. Turns out, that a pipe going to the hot water tank wasn’t sealed properly, and was the reason the wall was soaking wet, AND the reason why our neighbors complained a month earlier. The hot water tank had been replaced, but the actual problem was never fixed.
As we were figuring this out, I started to look closely again at the wall behind the hot water tank. It was covered in spots of black mold. (The spots I have previously dismissed).
There was also mold visible around the rest of the hot water tank and trickling over the baseboards.
Our home was very sick.
To make a long story short, and after months of trying to get the mold properly remediated, it was finally fixed.
And I am not kidding, as soon as they put that door back on the closet and gave us the go ahead to start using it again, I felt the energy shift and something transcend in me.
For one, we had our home back, which was cluttered with the closet’s contents for months while they removed the mold.
Our space had opened up again.
But, the best part (and it wasn’t always pretty - there were some sobs), was the old beliefs and ideas of what creativity’s role in my life was, of how I was putting it last in my list of priorities, of how I stuffed it away for fear of being judged, all bubbled to the surface. And, in one week, it was all healed, transformed.
There were no more leaky pipes (emotions unfelt) and no more mold (stagnant energy). Our sick home was healed and the I also felt the healing in myself.
It’s interesting to me when I think about the relationship we have with our environment and what comes first. Does what we need to heal influence our environment or does our environment bring up stuff in us so that we can heal? The whole chicken and the egg conundrum.
The answer is, both are influencing each other at the same time and because they are so interconnected, who really knows. I like to think of our environments as something we have a relationship with and the important thing is, is that your home will always give you clues to what needs to be healed in yourself and your life.
The environment that you need to help you transform will always show up in your life.
Sometimes these things go unnoticed for a long while, until a death happens, a big life changing event, a great loss – and everything is forced to the surface so we have no choice but to see it and deal with it.
I invite you to look around your home and ask yourself, where does my home need healing? Is anything broken? Is there mold that needs taking care of? Are any of the faucets leaking? Does anything need repair?
Paying attention to what needs healing in our environment can give us clues to what we need to pay attention to in ourselves. And sometimes, just by healing our home, the healing in us happens naturally.