When you are ready, your soul nudges you gently (or sometimes elbows you quite roughly if you don’t listen the first dozen times…) to go deep within yourself to heal and grow. We’re guided to seek out teachers, healers, and people that we feel can help us look within and work out old issues.
In the last week I had the opportunity to do some deep inner work on myself with the help of a friend.
The work itself was intense, emotional, and very, very cleansing and the “Aha!” moments have been happening ever since.
I came across a quote yesterday that spoke to me: “A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey, but a woman of strength knows it is in the journey where she will become strong.” My name, Valerie, means “woman of strength.”
My mother died in May of 1989 of alcoholism; she was 3 years older than I am today. I have been working through forgiveness, abandonment and conditional love issues over this for a long time. During this most recent session, I gained an even deeper understanding of who my mother was to me, and I to her.
I have a small ceramic heart with “Valerie; Woman of Strength” written on it, and it hangs in my bedroom. I have had it for so long that I cannot remember where I got it. I was looking at it today, and remembered that it was my mother who named me Valerie. My father had offered up a few choices, but they were names of some of his old girlfriends, so my mother nixed those, and chose my name herself. She knew that I would need to be strong. I now know that it has been in my journey, which continues every day, that I would find my strength.
Those Wake Up Moments, and the Meaning of a Name
