Simply Shelly

It took awhile for me to get my groove back. My leg didn't really begin to feel better until around Sunday, but by then, I'd received some bad news.

About a year ago, I began seeing a new Reiki client. Her name was Shelly. We worked together for a few months before I made the move to Portland. After my move from Salem, I sent her distance Reiki. It became increasingly difficult to find out what was going on with her after my move.

It's hard to genuinely describe this complex, stubborn, and infectiously positive woman. Sometimes she made me crazy because I felt she needed to be more open to Western medicine in her healthcare. On the other hand, her constant positive attitude and belief in the beauty and mystery of life was deeply inspirational.

When I found out that she had passed, I discovered that underneath the sadness was the gnawing guilt that I hadn't done enough for Shelly. The last time I'd sent her a full distance Reiki treatment was two weeks before school started. Things didn't look good when I worked on her. (A side note, often when I do Reiki, whether in person or distance, I "see" things going on in the person's body or energy field). I e-mailed her. She didn't respond.

About a week into school, she e-mailed to request more distance Reiki. I continued to send it once in awhile, but I was too caught up in school to really send more than a little burst here and there. I had no idea she was getting so much worse.

Shelly passed away last week. I found out through Facebook. In one of those perfect coincidences, I was to be in Salem during her wake. I was there only long enough to talk to her brother, David. He was warm, wonderful, and seemed to intuit exactly what to say to make me feel better.

He let me know that my work with Shelly meant a lot to her--that she spoke highly of me. I told him that I wished I'd been with her at the end, to help ease her passage. He was very kind and told me that he sensed my work with her through out the year had helped her at the end. It was very comforting to hear and dissipated the gray cloud hanging over me.


I thought about how as an acupuncturist, I will probably lose patients now and then. I don't know if it gets easier, or if we learn how to let go and let God. I know this was Shelly's path, but it's still difficult for me not to argue with God, or with Shelly.

I think her spirit and her inspiration will be with me for the rest of my life. I hope that all I learned from her will help me be a better practitioner.

Right now in school, it's like we're just learning the alphabet as our teachers take us through point locations, muscles and bones, and organ systems. Later, we'll learn to write sentences, and eventually, before we graduate, I hope we'll know how to create a full story of what's going on our patients' bodies.

I've already seen glimpses of our teachers trying to prepare us for the emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. I sometimes fear that in this regard, I'll never know enough.