Mary Hamilton's story in Leaving My Father's House

I felt a connection with Mary Hamilton's story from the start. I think it was the visceral nature of her physical experience, her battle with her tortured, controlled body, but it was the lines of her Medicine Woman that really struck me. "Trust your body, trust your process, trust your old terrified flesh as she transforms into the body of the rose. The new rose body will enable you to listen to the symphony of the universe through the vibrations of her flesh." (p. 146) Struggling with much body pain and a strong intention to come to know how to no longer feel like the victim of my body, I used these words as a guide and anchor, printed out and stuck to the filing cabinet in my office, as I navigated my way from being totally incapacitated with back and lower body pain to a place where my healing of both the physical and psychological pain is evident and I am fully functional once more. I have no idea about journeying to conscious femininity and I have never lost a baby, but the emotional growth and liberating insights that occur as the pain fades into history no only make it clear how connected the mind and body are, but how they are essentially one and the same. Trust your process.