Tales for Our Times-How Deer Helped Heather Save her Relationship

Gifts of Intuition are messages from our Divine Nature.  These messages are most eloquently expressed through images.  As we interact with these images, we discover the wisdom of our Divine Nature and its power to transform.

In Tales for Our Times I offer you narratives drawn from my imagery work and the work of my clients in the hope that you will find the universal wisdom in these Tales both inspiring and beneficial.

How Deer Helped Heather Save her Relationship

Heather really cared for Peter.  He was loving and supportive, a great listener and an excellent companion.  Heather just had difficulty expressing her love in the ways Peter longed for.  The vicious circle this created threatened to wreck their relationship.

An emotionally expressive man, Peter needed words of love and tender touches. Whenever he asked for these signs of affection Heather panicked.  At these moments Peter seemed unbearably needy to Heather and she withdrew.  Feeling unloved, Peter became all the more insistent, which only intensified the problem.

We turned to Heather’s Divine Nature to help her get to the root of the problem so she could transform this negative pattern and save the relationship.

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A Deer emerges, timid and standoffish.  Deer remains just beyond arm’s length.  Heather recognizes herself in Deer’s shyness.

Deer shows Heather how her fear of expressing emotion stands between her and the love she could share with Peter.

Heather agrees that doing more of that ‘kissy huggy stuff’ would be of value, not just to please Peter, but because underneath she longs for that closeness herself.  She recognizes the value of changing, but she has no idea how she can possibly do so.

Deer offers to take Heather back to her childhood so she can get to the root of the problem and resolve it. Heather agrees.

Heather immediately finds herself in her childhood home, observing how her parents frowned on any expression of feelings.  She feels the little girl’s confusion and upset at having to stifle her anger, her sadness, her love – all the feelings that made her who she really was.

This little girl had learned very early that she must never express her feelings.  Only in this way could she be sure that her parents would feel comfortable and she would be acceptable and safe.

Deer moves closer to Heather as she explains, “It was really important for you to have the love and affection that you didn’t get.  You wanted your parents’ hugs and their warmth. You didn’t want to feel that was wrong.  That little girl needs to know that it’s normal to have emotions and okay to express them.”

Deer urges Heather to give the little girl the warmth and affection she longs for. Heather becomes highly anxious at this suggestion, but Deer encourages her, saying, “You need to stop feeling bad when you express what you feel.”

Heather shares this with the little girl and then hugs her.  This feels really good to both of them.

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Once Heather saw how she had learned to stifle loving expression as a child, she freed herself to give and receive love.  She no longer saw her reluctance to express emotion as a part of her that Peter should learn to accept.  Instead, she knew that she would be happier and the relationship much more satisfying if she allowed that little girl to do what she’d always longed to do – openly give and receive love.

Heather could see that what she’d originally taken as upset over Peter’s neediness was actually much more complex than that.  In asking for love, Peter was doing the forbidden – the very thing the little girl longed to do but didn’t dare.

He was expressing the needs that the little girl had long repressed in order to gain her parents’ approval.  He was asking Heather to do the forbidden things she had learned to avoid.

The nerve!  Yet how enticing!  No wonder his demands stirred up such powerful feelings of conflict and confusion in Heather!

Heather recognized that the part of herself that longed to give and receive love had been stunted by her early conditioning.  She could see that by giving Peter the love he needed, she was creating the healing warmth and loving expression the little girl had longed for all of these years.  As she gave Peter what he wanted, she would come into greater wholeness while experiencing the joy of giving and receiving love at last.

Things didn’t change overnight.  At first the process of openly expressing her feelings did not come easily to Heather.  As she became more comfortable, however, she came to enjoy the benefits of the ‘kissy huggy stuff’ and her relationship grew.  Heather and Peter went on to marry and start a family of their own.

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