The rain is hammering down on the skylight roof hatch as the dark thundercloud manifests in the claustrophobic skies overhead. I am in the warm healing room of the Finnish angel. On the couch – physically, figuratively, and metaphorically – listening attentively to the wisdoms being dispensed by the woman seated before me.
Feeling grounded to the core, feet firmly planted on the ground below, together we are weeding out the stagnant plant roots, dead heading the withered roses, and pruning the gnarly tree of life hibernating in the weathered winter garden of my mind.
The Finnish angel is, and has been for over a decade, my long-challenged therapist, confidante, and emotional scar healer.
On meeting, all those years ago, in a lonely, shadowy, high ceilinged counselling room, she had already been warned off by her employers. Mine was a car crash of a case, and she was advised to steer clear of the wreckage. My life was declared, once again, an uninsurable write-off.
But, being of ice cold and fearless Finnish blood, she said, ‘fuck it’ and carried on regardless. And this random act of kindness of this one-time stranger would save my life many times over in the darkest of hours.
This thought is conspicuous, running heavy through my mind, as the rain begins to pour down in torrential tear drops, teeming down the glass doors leading to her housing estate garden of paradise.
Together, we are once again digging up for examination the skeleton bones of deep lying trauma, that for the time being are buried under the withered red and white rose bushes. And somehow, after fifteen years in the Trenches, this trauma is beginning to reveal a crack in the portal door to better tomorrows.
The Finnish angel knows where all the bodies are buried. She is exhuming them, dusting down the bones, and holding them under my blurry short-sighted vision. To look at once again, as we revisit the crime scene of my trauma, the solitary and bleak police cell where I was nearly killed by the riot police.
A torturous cell we have visited many times in the oceans of time spent on the couch.
Her eyes twinkle, face lights up, and smile broadens as she closes shop on this dispensary of wisdom. The rain has eased up. It is time to draw a line under the session. The garden of my mind has been tended to, landscaped, and shown a bit of love. As I am shown out of the front door, greeted with the musky lingering smell of rain on pavement, I am aware of an extra spring in my step.
Driving the long scenic route along the seafront, glancing out at the vast ocean panorama, my eyes lock on the rainbow in the vanishing point distance. It is pouring from a pure white cloud, a psychedelic waterfall, disappearing somewhere out at sea. And I wonder, spellbound in the moment, at higher power forces at work on the long road home.
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