Voices #1

​As you read Holy Wow! Volume I, you learn I have heard voices my whole Life. I didn’t find this to be anything special. It didn’t occur to me other people didn’t hear inner voices. When Scott and I first got together, he worked in the field of mental health. When I mentioned I heard voices, he said, “Dana, that’s a sign of mental illness.” I said, “It all depends on what the voices are telling you.”
My voices have always been extraordinarily helpful. Guiding insight. Good stuff to know. As a child, a female voice I heard several times would say, “Be kind to yourself, Sister. Be kind.” As an only child, I wasn’t anybody’s “sister.” But that is how she said it every time.
It’s not like I would hear her when I was upset with myself. She’d speak up at random moments in time. I wanted to see her. I remember one time, I was about 8, standing in the hall outside my bedroom door when she spoke to me. I tried so hard to see her. In a haze, I saw a side view of her face. She looked to be in her mid-teens… with brown hair.
Time went on. Scott and I offered our own Maylaigh Sunday Service in the early 2000s. In response to a question from one of our congregants… I devised “Rev. Dana’s 3 Steps To Greater Awareness.”
Step 1 – Listen to Your Thoughts
Step 2 – Self-Kindness
Step 3 – Appreciation
You can read about each of these steps in Holy Wow!
Self-Kindness is a powerful healing balm. Transformative. It was a year or more before I realized… the seeds of me being partial to the wisdom of self-kindness were planted by this gentle, loving voice I had heard so many years before.
I have never forgotten her.