When One Heals We All Heal- A real life example

Recently, I spent a week in Tulum, Mexico at a spiritual retreat filled with powerful healing practices—Yin yoga, breathwork, microdosing, anger alchemy, a sweat lodge, Mayan clay cleansing, cacao ceremony, sound healing with bowls and tuning forks, and meditation. There were more modalities than I could count, and each one offered a different doorway into healing.

At the time, it had been just eight months since Walter’s death. I knew grief would show up—how could it not? It's been part of my life’s path for many years now, both personally and professionally. I came to Tulum open, knowing that something was ready to be released.

One morning, during a meditation focused on connecting with the earth, I saw myself curled deep in the soil—womb-like, hibernating. While the meditation invited us to grow upward, my spirit needed to stay down in the dark, doing the kind of healing that doesn’t happen in the light.

As I lay still, the facilitator came around with tuning forks. She held one near each ear, and the sound traveled down through my body, straight to the root. It found some grief tucked so deep I hadn’t even realized it was still there. It rose up and out. My body mirrored the vision—I was curled in fetal position, sobbing, releasing.

Later that day, we held a cacao ceremony focused on grief and anger. Again, I let go of another layer—rage for old injustices and grief for more than just Walter. It wasn’t just about him. It was about younger versions of me, other losses, old wounds. I felt emptied out. So I did what I had promised him I would do—I walked to the beach and released some of Walter’s ashes into the ocean. Before he passed, we talked about how I’d bring his ashes to the places I visited. It’s become a sacred part of my travels—a ritual of remembrance and love.

That night, back in my room, I checked my phone. There was a message from Walter’s daughter. She said she’d been thinking of me. Her relationship with her father had always been complicated, and because of that, mine with her was distant too. For ten years, I held space for healing, but progress was slow and subtle. And yet—on this day, in the midst of deep grief work, she reached out.

The next morning, I opened Facebook to another message—this one from my former brother-in-law. My first husband, Pete, and I had done a lot of healing before his death, and I wrote about our journey in a chapter in the book Divine Synchronicity: Women’s Stories of Magic, Miracles, and Manifesting. Pete’s brother-in-law wrote to say that his wife—Pete’s sister, who passed away just four months ago—had always been sad that Pete and I didn’t work out, but that she was proud of me.

I sat there stunned. Within 12 hours, two people from two separate chapters of my life reached out. Neither of them is in my bloodline, but they are in my energetic ancestral line. This is what I mean when I say, When One Heals, We All Heal. Healing ripples outward. We may not always see how, but it happens.

Since Walter’s passing—and honestly, long before—I’ve been walking with grief. Doing the work. Sitting with what hurts. And this moment in Tulum felt like a turning point, a ripple. A butterfly effect. You’ve probably heard of it—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can cause a storm in another. It’s about small actions that create far-reaching, often unpredictable, consequences.

So I leave you with this question:

What’s ready to be healed in your life—not just for you, but for those around you?

Whether it’s your family of origin, your energetic lineage, or your chosen circle—your healing matters.