Ever since I can remember, my life was all about animals and nature. As a child, these were the things that helped me survive through difficult times and made me believe that God, or some form of Supreme Being, really exists…
When I was 10 years old, that is when I was the most certain of what I wanted to do when I grew up: live on a farm with a huge terrain and have 37 different breeds of dogs…. I always found it funny: 37 was the number I was repetitively sure of… although I didn’t really know which 37 breeds I would wish to have…. It was quite silly, in fact… why was I so sure of 37? Why not 25, or 50? Everyone laughed at my unique “silliness” and told me not to worry, that I would eventually “grow out of it” and become a successful, responsible adult… Time passed and life made me forget all of this…. I let myself become lost in the multitude of stresses of the world that surrounds us and that of daily life, and led myself to believe that I didn’t need any of what I called my “childhood crutches” anymore… And so I trained and worked very hard to finally be able to walk without these crutches… I had achieved everything that I should have, as society dictates so well, and should have become a very successful and responsible, thus “happy”, person… But why wasn’t I happy?? Why did I feel that I was limping more and more, a deeply painful limp that sadly no one could see nor comprehend…
Yes, time passed, and deviated me from my childhood care-free happiness, and made me forget…. or almost forget…
As I was driving from my city home to the animal shelter for the volunteer work I had just begun only a few weeks ago, I was looking at the farmlands I was passing on my way: a beautiful site that filled me with peace and serenity, and I suddenly remembered that time of my life when I was 10 years old… chuckling and again asking myself humorously: “Thirty-seven different breeds of dogs, how silly can you get!! Why 37? What a strange number to choose…” and as I was thinking about all this, I looked ahead, startled to have almost missed the exit to the shelter where I was awaited by the lonely cats and dogs: I suddenly shivered as goose bumps covered my skin, and tears filled my eyes, as I saw the huge sign “Exit 37” in front of me, leading me to the Canadian Society for the Protection of Animals no-kill shelter, a beautiful huge terrain in the country…. at the end of a road called “Chemin du Vide,” which is french for “Path of Emptiness”: the road that led me to the place that would finally fill my aching void, and cure my painful stagger… I began volunteering to help clean up the cat rooms, and slowly but surely, I just followed my heart, and found myself studying the Let Animals Lead® method of Animal Reiki by Kathleen Prasad, which has become my passion.
I no longer limp, and my “crutches” have become my strength, my meaning in life…
Thirty-seven… perhaps a silly number, I agree, as the word “silly’s” original old English meaning is “blissful” or “blessed” so I guess that it is my “lucky number” now, the number that was destined to guide me to my True Self… and so my Animal Reiki journey began, with many wonderful stories which I can’t wait to share, and most surely many more to come….
By SARA Practitioner Tamara Grodzicky
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