She was a mother with four children and a loving husband. She
was an artist, creating paintings and sculptures. She was a spiritual
woman, having a strong fidelity to her Christian faith and the
Catholic church. She was a mystical woman who believed in the
inherent value of dreams and spiritual experience. She charted
her life by synchronistic events and dream interpretation. She
was an avid reader and student of psychology and spirituality.
She had taken courses for decades on Jungian psychology and dream
interpretation. She kept a detailed journal, which had been influenced
by her study of
Then illness struck. A powerful interruption in her ongoing search
for meaning. She experienced the inevitable boundary-a transcendence
crises. Angst and terror set in. The struggle to give meaning
and transcend her illness began.
Early in her illness she was faced with not so simple questions,
should I give in and lose hope or should I choose life and transcend?
She chose life and transcendence. She renewed her zest
for life in the face of death. The choice was not easy.
It involved a commitment to discover new meaning in her life.
Face-to-face with death and its terrors she continued on her journey.
Initially, her journey took her through the natural realm of expert
medicine. Advanced evaluation, two operations, and state-of-the-art
chemotherapy at a top healthcare institution followed. She suffered
the pain and discomfort from both surgery and chemotherapy. She
exercised, took vitamins, rested, did biofeedback, as well as
positive visualization and imagery. She read about her physical
body and tried to practice optimal self-care. She entered only
a partial remission.
On a psychological level R.M. saw illness as the great challenge
to self-transformation. Early on she learned about transcendence
of the ego. Her terminal condition was to signal the final phase
of transformation. Her dreams led her out of the egocentric realm
into the broader realm of the human self. She studied her dreams,
wrote prodigiously in her journal and deepened her practice of
spiritual disciplines.
Socially, she made a conscious effort to repair and strengthen
relationships. She studied her family tree and met with each family
member to forgive and communicate honestly. She was aware of the
"shadow" elements of her family history (such as alcoholism)
and imparted this knowledge to her own children. She was concerned
about repetition in family systems and wanted to help break dysfunctional
patterns. She met with friends to talk deeply and with great honesty.
She attended church and gave and received much love from this
community. She became more aware of the illusory nature of the
comforts offered by social institutions.
Spiritually, she renewed her devotion to the rosary. She meditated
daily, She listened to and trusted her inner life. She awakened
her mystical awareness. She sketched out mandalas and wrote down
all her dreams, She read spiritual literature and entered her
reflections in her journal. She prayed alone and with others.
Human spirituality is not all that simple. In the Field Model
it encompasses all dimensions of the human. R.M. saw her illness
as a call to wholeness. She believed in a mysterious purpose of
life beyond the values espoused by our society. She abandoned
herself in a positive way to this mystery. For R.M. the call to
wholeness took her through healing and integration in all dimensions
of her life. The call to wholeness for her was an active
process. She created and re-created meaning and balance. Her call
was to transform and give meaning to social, spiritual, physical
and subjective aspects of her life. It is the same call that each
one of us hears in the depth of our hearts.
R.M. illustrates the path of the human-as-spiritual-being. Her
story evokes the human search for meaning and fulfillment. She
died in October of 1988. Her final passage and funeral echoed
the words of the poet Wallace Stevens: "death is the mystical
mother of beauty". Her story is one of paradox. How can one
survive and transcend their very death? It can be done if her
testimony bears value.
R.M. actively and creatively constructed her life and being.