All this happened a few years ago.
"My girl" was dying. The trouble was there was no way of knowing when.
Her greatest fear was the fact that while she was waiting to die, somewhere along the way she would start loosing bits of her brain. The doctors could not tell her which bits, at what rate or what the effects would be. My job was to help her continue living her life as she always had. To put supports in place as pieces of her independence slowly crumbled away.
When I started working with her she was still fully functional and "compos mentis" but her terrified dread of what was to befall her and her obsessional uncertainty of whether a bit of her brain had "gone" without her realizing, often threw her into a world most of us cannot imagine.
The effects of this were that often she had a hard time coping with daily living.
It was pouring with rain, my grandaughter of 7 years old sat next to me in the car. It was her mothers birthday and nobody had remembered.
We could change that!
I swung the car round and before long we had purchased cake, candles, cards, presents and flowers....Duly armed we were now in the car heading for her mums house.
The wipers were on full and the rain was just not going to give in. It was about 6 months since my amazing initiation into other realities, so I was still like a puppy exploring these new worlds. I thought it would be wonderful if the rain would go away and the sun would shine for her mum today.
As soon as I thought of it, the idea hit me to experiment to see if I could stop the rain and make the sun shine. It was worth a shot at least. I turned to my grandaughter and said "shall we see if we can make the sun shine for mummy's birthday"? she looked at me quizzically and gave me her usual half questioning wry smile (grandma was always wonderfully odd). I told her we could do it like the "Care Bear countdown". That we could wish with all our hearts for the sun to shine for mummy's birthday whilst counting 5,4,3,2,1....So together, that is what we did....we pulled outside her mums house in brilliant sunshine. All around hung thick dark rain clouds, except for a circle of brilliant blue sky above us... This is true (we even had a rainbow)!
After this I was intrigued to find out how it worked. I would sit outside for hours experimenting with shaping clouds and messing about with the weather.
Before long another opportunity arose, again with my grandaughter. We were on our way to ride the pony, it was pouring with rain and there was no way she could ride in this weather. Again I said to her "shall we do the care bear countdown" and see if we can make the rain go away like we did for mummy's birthday...again we arrived at the stables under a beautifull blue sky while the thick, dark and heavy rainclouds covered the rest of the country! ....and yes, unbelievably the clouds held off over us all through the 4 hour pony trek.
I was getting used to this.
I arrived at "my girl's" house in full sunshine, but inside my girl was in the depths of depression. Her depression had been getting worse over the months and there seemed no way to help her. The agenda today was to go grocery shopping, pick up her prescription, pay the bills, plan a nutritious menu for the week etc;...the usual for a Tuesday.
While we were in the car on the way to get her prescription I was in deep thought. Today was not a day for the usual routine, what my girl really needed was a way out of this depression, it was not going to happen over night. She needed a vision that would change her life.
Building up my courage, I took a deep breath and just spurted out what I had been thinking. "I can make it rain" I said. This woke her out of her silence. She figured it was such an insane thing to say, and only the sort of thing I could come out with in all sincerety, that she looked at me and wanted to laugh.... "I can, I really can" I continued. Smiling she said "no you can't", "Yes I can I replied, I will prove it to you".
At that point the sky was bright blue and apart from a few white wispy clouds there was not a chance of rain at all.
Deciding to ditch the usual Tuesday routine, I drove the car in the opposite direction and parked by a path that led down to the river. We strolled along the river. It really was a lovely day, I kept looking at the sky, no change. I started to think that today it was not going to happen. After a while I decided that maybe I ought to put more effort into it for "my girls" sake. In earnest I put my thoughts into it. Scanning the horizon I looked to see which way the wind (there was hardly any wind at all) was coming from. I imagined that just out of sight, maybe a few miles off there were grey clouds coming our way. Shortly, the grey clouds appeared. I watched them come nearer, silently but expectantly. They gathered over us, not big and heavy, just a huge light grey one enough to cover half of the small town. It started to rain, very lightly at first, then the incessant drizzle had us running back to the car.
We got into the car and I turned to her and said "I told you I could make it rain". She did not believe me!
After that, whenever I was driving down the road that led to her house for our "sessions" I would look at the sky and start to "work" on it, so that every time I arrived I would tell her "OK, so it's raining now, but by the time I leave the sun is going to be shining" or, vice versa. It always happened, but she never believed me.......
The good news was that she did get out of her depression. She learned to dare to make her dreams come real, and believe me some of them were very spectacular.
Thanks to those of you who took the time to read this. I woke at 3.50am this morning and could not sleep so remembering "my girl" and the rainclouds I thought I would share it with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltRwmgYEUr8
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