Main pic: A mosaic depicting a warrior pursuing the centaur Chiron right at the Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum at Sanliurfa Urfa in south-eastern Turkey
Our perfect imperfections…
“To all Odyssey readers, I share my HeartSoul journey with you, to acknowledge my ongoing process from wounded healer with depression, i.e. healer heal thyself, to freely blossoming healer-lightworker to help self and others.” Dr Arien van der Merwe
I’ve been the classic wounded healer/Chiron archetype coping with retinopathy, depression and stroke. I’m sharing my story with readers who might be (consciously or unconsciously) hiding symptoms of depression (a.k.a. inflammation of the brain) or disease from themselves and others, to become open about their mental, emotional or physical health challenges. Healing starts with awareness. Allow the broken pieces to guide you to wholeness, finding the light within you, that never dies. It is waiting for you, always. Integrate and accept the raw vulnerability with timeless strength, creating your heart song that reminds every one of us that even in the darkest moments, the light within us, never fades. Your own HeartSong carries both pain and healing… it is not just a song, it’s a journey through loss, love and the courage to keep standing.
My work focus at the moment is holistic mind-body-soul health counselling, using Theta Healing and Photo-Light Therapy to activate innate dormant stem cells; and natural medicine, including nutrition, food supplements and plant medicine.
Theta Healing, founded by Vianna Stibal, is a powerful healing modality through which we can change limiting beliefs to receive deep emotional and physical healing. While in the theta brain wave state, we’re able to connect with the divine energy that flows through all things: The Creator of All That Is.
LifeWave phototherapy makes use of nano-crystalline (microscopic little mirrors reflecting light back into the skin) technology via skin patches. These patches are drug-free and non-transdermal. They support the body’s natural functions by reflecting specific wavelengths of infrared and bio-photonic light back into the skin, stimulating cells and pathways to promote normal cell function, cellular energy and the production of substances like the GHK copper peptide, which is linked to stem cell activity and an age-retarding, longevity effect.
The health challenges I’m currently transcending to move into complete health and wholeness as my birthright as an incarnated soul, include depression (inflammation of the brain), strokes and retinopathy (micro-inflammation of the brain and retina of the eyes). Renegade, raging inflammation being the key.
These intense health challenges enabled me to become a source of courage and empathy for others.
Brain-/neuroplasticity, which I hold in high regard and apply both for myself and teach to others, has many, very effective and practical tools of neuroscience to use.
A most important fact to emphasise, is using our ability to choose the way we manage our health. I was recently told I had a very high risk for a third stroke and dementia, due to the inflammation. I chose to focus my thoughts in this as a potential and not an inevitability, to increase my already healthy habits even more – eating trout, sardines or pilchards every second day, taking higher doses of omega 3 fish oil capsules with a higher quantity of DhA and EPA (docosahexanoic and eicosapentanoic acid), using various medicinal herbs, essential plant and flower oils and flower remedies to support my physiology even more, doing more (20min instead of only 10 minutes a day) play-dance crossover dance movements with rhythmic, harmonious music, Yoga and tai’chi for flexibility and mobility, sun gazing for vitamin D and pineal gland, morning and evening meditation and daily spiritual practice to connect with my innate drive for health as my natural state… mind work, mind training and body movement meditation. Most of us want to be healthy, but if the ‘medicine’ demands discipline, we lose interest… especially when it comes to mind training.
I could have focused on the nocebo effect of the dreaded risk diagnosis… thinking, ruminating, victim moding, manipulating others with my neediness, to only about that, only to find myself spiralling in a downward spiral of deterioration. It is not my purpose right now to transition into a higher, non-human frequency yet… I love people and to guide and teach them, too much!
MY SYMBOLIC MOSAIC. CHAINS BREAKING, FLYING /DANCING FREELY TO THE LIGHT
My experience with depression was a time of care for the caregiver, to allow others to give to – and support – me. What helped me most, were the one-on-one and group sessions with the psychologist (especially the psychospiritual approach), social worker and occupational therapists and the craft sessions. I made a highly symbolic (for me) mosaic and paint artwork of a bird flying free, escaping its chains, into the light of love and joy and being. After many books written about health and wellbeing and a children’s (aged 4-7) book on love and tolerance and activities in nature, written and illustrated, I’m embarking on a book about my own story as motivation for human beings never to give up. Following is my poem about the wounded healer.
Healer heal thyself. Time for the wounded healer to heal and release deep wounds hidden in cell memories… recharging to spread the seeds of hope and healing where they can grow freely, each in its own time and space, according to its own free will to choose.
I quote from A Course in Miracles, which is so in tune with Theta Healing, working with brain wave patterns: “Our need for words have almost come to an end. Instead of words, we need but feel His Love. Instead of prayers, we need but call His Name. Instead of judging, we need but be still and let all things be healed”..
This brings me to the brink of a new beginning…
You know, people say we all slow down after a certain age, no new neurons or awake stem cells after 30 — that the best days are behind us after 50, that you’ve done all you were meant to do…..
‘They’ are wrong!
Here I am — 68 years old — and somehow, I feel as if I’m just starting to live.
I wake up in a place that doesn’t smell like old memories. The air isn’t heavy with what was. It smells like fresh paint, warm coffee, cinnamon and possibility. I move the end of September — a new city, new neighbourhood, new neighbours, who don’t know the old version of me. They don’t know the woman who lived half a life in the shadow of fear, or comfort, or duty — or maybe all three.
They just know me. Now.
I dance.
I take long walks in the morning. My right leg complains a little, but I remind her: “We’ve got places to go.” I signed up for a mosaic group. The first time I worked with mosaics in craft class at Helderberg Clinic, I cried. Not because I was sad — but because I remembered what it felt like to be curious. To make something messy and beautiful, finding the perfect in the imperfect, with no one grading it.
And… opening my heart to new experience, even love… I thought that chapter had closed. But last week, someone asked if I wanted to stay for a day or two and I said YES! I said yes, without thinking twice. No second-guessing. No pretending I wasn’t interested. Just… yes. A simple yes. As the song by Whitney Houston says: The greatest love of all is happening inside of me.
It’s strange — this sense of freedom. It didn’t come in my 20s or 30s. It didn’t come when I had blonde hair, or smoother skin, or a five-year plan. It came now. At 68. When I stopped chasing the life I thought I was supposed to live and finally started living the one that was waiting for me all along. ‘They’ say new beginnings are for the young. I say – they’re for the courageous the persistent. And today, I am both.
The story of Chiron
Chiron, the centaur, is the namesake for the wounded healer archetype, an individual whose personal suffering, pain and vulnerability enable her to empathise with – and help – others facing similar hardships. Her inability to heal her own incurable, poisoned wound, regardless of whether or not there is immense skill in helping others to heal, embodies this concept. The archetype suggests that true healing often emerges from the depth of one’s own wounds, facilitating empathy, wisdom and the ability to guide others toward their own integration and wholeness.
The myth of Chiron
Chiron was a wise and skilled healer, teacher and half-human, half-horse centaur. He was accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow from Heracles’s bow. Despite his mastery of healing, he could not heal his own wound and suffered excruciating pain for the rest of his life. It was this personal, agonising wound that transformed him into a renowned and legendary healer. Chiron ultimately traded his immortality for the life of Prometheus, a testament to his profound compassion and connection to suffering humanity. The Archetype of the Wounded Healer… empathy and vulnerability: Chiron’s wound represents the painful experience of vulnerability that opens one to deep empathy and responsiveness to the suffering of others. The wound is not just a source of pain, but also the ‘medicine’ or the deep source of wisdom and understanding needed for genuine healing.
A wounded healer cannot ‘fix’ others but guides them to access their own innate healing abilities.
Carl Jung explored this archetype, suggesting that a therapist’s own ‘wound’ can be a conduit for understanding their patients’ suffering and facilitating their healing. By acknowledging and integrating their own wounds, individuals can transmute their pain into a gift, allowing them to support others in their journey toward wholeness.
In essence, Chiron’s myth serves as a powerful metaphor for my own healing journey, illustrating that profound empathy, wisdom and the capacity to heal others often originates from one’s own struggles and the acceptance of our deepest vulnerabilities.
Divine Timing is the language of your soul, fluent in silence, healing the cracks you didn’t see, aligning the pieces into your wholeness, tilled by tears, softened by surrender, nourished by grace.
It is not, however, necessary for healers to suffer before they can support, empathise, or be vulnerable to others’ healing journey. This is an ancient, unconscious, erroneous belief that can be surrendered now.
I am here! Right on the cusp, standing on the edge of the abyss, ready for the jump, the rebirth into soft, gentle rainbow clouds of a new beginning. Back to where I started 40 years ago, a new life beckoning, finally shedding the reptilian skin of old beliefs and old, unserving memories, retraining my mind to move out of disease-causing thought loops, into elsewheres of an open heart and an open mind, allowing my soul to soften, sigh into blooming.
As Mariette Snyman, who recently interviewed me, says: ‘I’ve known you for decades and, in South Africa, you’ve been at the forefront of combining conventional medicine with holistic wellness’.
