Sister Goddess Elli shares her story...
Seven years ago I birthed my second child, a gentle green-eyed boy, little brother to a bright and beautiful 2 ½ year old sister. A son, a daughter, a loving husband, and a stay-at-home mom – life was perfect!
Nine months later and one week after September 11th, a pediatric cardiologist diagnosed our sweet son with a double heart defect. He had been born with this one-in-a-million defect. He would have a shorter and more difficult life because of it. And, there was nothing we could do about fixing it.
A mild underlying depression that had been with me throughout adulthood expanded into a sinking sadness and lack of hope. Communication in my marriage suffered. I was physically available to my children but rarely emotionally or spiritually there. Our family situation was deteriorating and putting us dangerously close to falling into the 80% of marriages that fail when presented with a very sick child.
During that time, I met a woman. We shared first names. However, Eleanor was tall and blond and I am petit and brunette. Something, maybe it was her name or maybe it was divine guidance, told me to befriend her.
I am lucky I listened to myself! My children are lucky I listened. My husband is lucky. Nearly everyone I know or meet is lucky I listened because Eleanor introduced me to Mama Gena’s
Eleanor turned me to Mama Gena’s website (www.mamagena.com) where I bought a copy of Mama Gena’s first book. I read it and started practicing the Womanly Arts.
Eleanor took a class at the
During that time, I also addressed my son’s illness with the loving support of my new group of “Sister Goddesses” (that’s what we call each other at the School of Womanly Arts, because, as Mama Gena says, as women we are all sisters and there is the divine feminine in each of us!). I sought out the world’s best pediatric heart surgeons. I requested their opinions. With loving and divine guidance, I chose to take our family down a long and winding road filled with numerous heart surgeries to repair my sweet son’s heart.
During the six and a half years it has taken to repair my sweet son’s heart, my darling daughter, who has fallen in love with the theatre, wrote her first plays: “The Woman Who Lost her Purse” and “Money Chaos”. She has written others since, but you don’t even need to see her plays to guess what kind of other stresses our family faced during those difficult years!
Half way through the eleven heart surgeries, I took my first class at Mama Gena’s
I took several classes by phone before Mama Gena closed the School momentarily to reinvent her curriculum. In the spring of 2006, she presented her Mastery of Pleasure Program to the world. My husband and I were in the midst of our deepest financial woes so, call me crazy or call me brilliant, I wanted to learn more about the Power of Pleasure, so I paid several thousand dollars and enrolled. I attended her amazing 6-month program during the fall of 2006 and again in the following spring when I served as a "Big" Sister Goddess providing leadership to one of the small groups within the Mastery program.
After two years of connecting with "Sister Goddesses" based in NYC, I decided that I required sister goddesses in Richmond in order to live! The original group had since moved on, with two moving out of state to pursue their desires. So I am now teaching what I had learned from Mama. Combined with my own experiences I am offering “Pleasure Revival Meetings” in Virginia and Maryland!
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