“I was called here.” People who live here say that a lot. Someday I, too, will live here. I am waiting for the door to open. I am waiting for my house to sell. The timing is not up to me.

I don’t remember exactly when Sedona called me. I’d never heard of it; I knew nothing about it. All I know is that the thought came to me soon after Bill died, and it wouldn’t leave. When I followed the call and came, my daughter, Michaela, came with me. I was broken. I was paralyzed. The way you are when death takes the love of your life.  A friend of Michaela’s, hearing we were going to Sedona, told her about a shaman there who had helped her let go of a heartbreaking love.

Michaela made the appointment. He lived outside of Sedona, about half an hour into desert country. When we arrived, a little early, he wasn’t there. We waited in chairs outside his front door. Before long he appeared, walking down the driveway toward us, a beautiful, stunning creature with white hair in braids leading a huge white dog. He greeted us as if he had known us for a long time.

We sat on his floor. The dog, Hanta Yo, snuggled up against me as he talked. His eyes had a light in them, and he laughed from time to time as he tried in vain to explain what it was he was about to do.  “I will dream for you,” he said, finally. “Follow where I go. I do not know where that will be. Just follow the sound of my voice.” We laid on his floor, our heads touching, eyes closed. Soon the sound of soft music filled my ears. He had chosen a plaintive Irish melody, something Bill would have loved. How did he know to do that? He knelt by my side. He placed one hand above my heart chakra, the other above my solar plexus chakra. As he touched me, I entered a trance state. I heard him, it seemed, at a great distance, as he began to wail and weep. “I miss you, I miss you, I miss you,” he wailed, over and over again. Tears spilled from my closed eyes. I could hear Michaela crying. He had found my pain and was taking it into himself. When he released it at last, I had a vision of birds rising from a field as if startled. Up and up they flew, lifting my heart with them. I remember his voice saying that I would be filled with radiant light, and then he left me and went to Michaela. Her music was different, and he reached into her heart and found something I knew was troubling her. He left us alone to recover and become fully awake. A little wobbly, we said goodbye and returned to our hotel room, fully spent, where we both dropped into a deep sleep. When I woke, my grief had not entirely gone, but its great weight was no longer there and I felt as if I could live again. Since then, I have been back every year, and Michaela and I, once even my granddaughter and I, and sometimes I alone, walk with this shaman to holy places among the rocks, above the canyons, and sit in the sacred circles he has made there. I do not know for sure, but I believe more each day that Bill sent me here to be healed.

This is a magical place, a place held sacred by the ancient Native Americans.  They sanctified the area for special spiritual ceremonies as they experienced deep spirit here in the red rocks, where energy vortexes give forth a sacred high vibrational energy to the air. The sandstone in Sedona is covered in quartz that sparkles in the rocks. It is said that wherever you walk or sit you become part of the Universal Energy Force.

Next week, I will tell you a story of the big white dog, Hanta Yo.  I am here in Sedona for the month of November. The month of gratitude.

***

Read The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney. It is available at http://www.Amazon.com and at the News Center in Easton, MD.