By Joan Law
Feng Shui Joan’s Way
FengshuiJoansWay@gmail.com
A very important principal of Feng Shui is surrounding yourself with helpful people. The people who support your hopes, dreams, and all the chapters of your life generate a powerful and positive energy to lift you up.
I am sharing with you a letter from a friend. Her kind words have given me the affirmation I’ve needed to embrace and continue the work that I do with a renewed energy.
She recognized that I haven’t been taking my own advice of late. And, admittedly I have been feeling my world is spinning just a bit too fast. A blog for another day.
Dear Joan,
Over the past year and a half you and I have become great friends via work we have been doing together. And, in the progression of that work and friendship, I have learned so much about how to approach life from you. Your counsel is invaluable!
Much of that new life-knowledge is centered around Feng Shui principals that I have incorporated into my world. And, my goodness, the variety of Feng Shui tweaks I have made really have transformed the trajectory of my life! The details of that transformation will most certainly be a story for another day and for an awesome google review for Feng Shui Joan’s Way at some point soon.
Today, however, the story takes a different turn. It is about feelings that have been stirred up by a few colliding factors. These include the collective grief we all feel each year on and around 9/11, recent circumstances related to late-life and end-of-life struggles in my family and chatting with you about the challenges you face communicating the importance of your new End-of-Life-Doula service.
I fully understand the connection you saw between the work you do as a Feng Shui consultant with the new End-of-Life counsel you now provide. We live – we die. In between the living and dying chapters are written and history is made.
Your work as a Feng Shui consultant helps folks manage the ebb and flow of unseen energy in their physical environments. Managing that energy can have a huge impact on how an individual lives their life.
And, indeed, we all want to live our lives to the fullest. We certainly don’t want to feel weighed down, stuck, and depressed every day.
I have learned from you that clutter is the bad guy in a perfect Feng Shui world. And, you have shared that a good many of your clients are mature and downsizing. Navigating “stuff” can be daunting especially when one is facing a new chapter of their lives.
It dawned on me that every day brings with it the opportunity to start a new chapter. Maybe that chapter is about our relationships, work, or finances. And Feng Shui principals can be applied to all.
But, what about the chapter that faces the unknown, illness, aging, loss?
I have learned from you that Feng Shui can be applied to these circumstances as well and that your new service as an End-of-Life Doula adds another layer of compassion and understanding to the work you’ve been doing right along. Our conversations about how your work has evolved is helping me chart a path for those mature people in my life.
I love the idea of participating in a Legacy project with a loved one – a topic of one of your blogs. I didn’t think to do that with a loved one who has since passed. However, I can’t think of a better thing to do for and with those important people who are in the here and now.
What a journey we will have understanding, exploring, and documenting their stories. In particular I think of my husband’s mother whose memory is beginning to fade. She lived through World War II in England. Over the years her five children recalled how she didn’t allow them to watch Hogan’s Heroes. And I remember she refused to watch the 2005 movie The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
I asked her why. In her matter-of-fact British way she replied, “Hogan’s Heroes made light of a war that was no joke.” And while she is a big fan of C.S. Lewis – she had seen trailers of the movie that hit too close to home. In particular, the bombing scenes of London and the fact that she and her sisters were separated from their parents and each other. Like the children in the story they were sent to country homes and placed in the care of strangers. This was no adventure for any of them and the scars still run deep.
While this is a painful memory, it is a memory that shaped the strong, successful, and dearly loved women my husband’s mother and aunts became. Recounting the stories happy and sad are a legacy to be treasured. And, in all the “stuff” that one doesn’t need there are those very important items that spark memories that should be treasured for all time.
You, Joan, know how to compassionately guide folks through their stuff, the life changes, and all the chapters of their lives. I, among many, so appreciate your skill and kindness.
The passage at the end of Narnia Chronicle, The Last Battle reads, “And as for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” JP
