1984 was the year of college for me after a whole childhood of being moved from county to county around the north west of England due to my Father's job, and never being able to keep up with the constantly changing syllabuses.
I was clueless about education, but I had learned a lot about people and about trying to fit in to environments, like some sort of inconstant little chameleon, that were totally foreign to me and sometimes a bit scary.
Going to college was just the thing people did next after school, regardless of having left secondary education with one qualification in French, which I still, to this day, cannot speak. I had to choose what course to study there and picked a secretarial course because I felt that at the very least, I could manage to use a typewriter. I just didn't expect the course to come with a business study element. Hmm...numbers and economics and marketing and me...not great. There wasn't really a fallback for this course, it was pass everything or fail entirely. So my fallback became Sarah's Cafe in Macclesfield where I spent a lot of time hiding behind a newspaper in the hope no passing lecturer might see me (which did eventually happen I might add) and drinking hot chocolate.
It was at college on this course that I met my friend Antonia, and whilst the course was a dud and I was a dropout, going to that college wasn't a waste of time, because I met her. She was a couple of years older than me and fearless. I'd never met anyone who felt they had an absolute right to live their life their way in spite of what lecturers, bosses at part time jobs, sketchy boyfriends and royally offended family members might say. It sounds stupid to say this now but I was so uncomfortable in my own skin by the time I was 16 it just never occurred to me that I might have a right to my own point of view or the ability to make my own choices and decisions. This came up one day when we were chatting and I told Antonia that I was fed up because I didn't have any money and she asked me why I didn't get a part-time job. It hadn't even occurred to me to think that might be possible, let alone consider doing it. I wasn't sure how my French O level might help in this situation but by the time the lunch hour had finished I had an interview booked that evening at a local restaurant and by 7pm I was working my first shift for a volatile Spanish manager and a team of madness in the kitchen and restaurant. Everyone was odd and I fit right in.
This girl filled me up with possibilities and made me see that there isn't just one way to live life, that it doesn't matter if no one else gets you or you get them. What matters is what you do to overcome problems and that you don't let anyone dictate to you what can or cannot be. She was my inspiration, a joy to be around and so funny that at times we'd be clutching our sides speechless with laughter. So when I left college after narrowly avoiding being kicked out after being caught behind a newspaper in Sarah's cafe, we eventually lost touch. But I never forgot her.
Fast-forward to 2019 and I find her again. On Facebook, but she's changed her name and I'm not sure...is it her?...maybe just a lookalike?...this woman has dreadlocks as well, they're a new thing.....but such a memorable face...and she's laughing, I remember that face laughing. So I reach out to her and we reconnect and meet up and we talk and talk, about our lives and all the things that have happened in the years since we last saw each other. And it turns out that our paths that might have diverged have led us almost to the same place; we're both healers, she's a Shaman and works with people experiencing addiction, she's a Reiki Master and teaches Reiki as well as healing people, I'm an holistic therapist working with clients in the workplace and young people with Autism - we're both working in places where we're really needed.
And then suddenly she's there again when I really need her after I go into hospital for an operation and come out the other side of that slightly mad and unwell for a brief period. She's sitting by my hospital bed trying to calm me down and giving me Reiki which feels like someone pulling on a ball of wool that's stuck in my side and unravelling it...freeing me and my mind so that I can relax and sleep for a while. She's sitting with my daughter comforting her and cracking jokes. You know what they say about Angels in disguise.....
In February, once I was home and better we decided to work together teaching Reiki courses. The planning for this has been so typical. It takes me all the way back to 1984...we are so similar and yet we are so different. She's still free from the opinions of others. I say I want a photograph of us both to put on the adverts. I have in mind something where we're sitting in a field (which we both do a lot because nature is so much nicer than a greasy spoon cafe) with the sunset behind us looking all interested in the land around us and she's smiling at me as I'm saying this. That evening we're in the Chinese take-away and she draws this picture above on the whiteboard wall that anyone can doodle on; 'G & G Reiki' and yes, it's the picture that'll go on the adverts. She's still teaching me. I reciprocate by helping her and being part of her family along with many other friends that she has who probably have all benefited from having her in their lives.
Last week she shares a post with me about an all-singing, all-dancing Reiki Master who I think may have hands that glow gold and shoots bolts of light out of their eyes. This person tells their audience they come from a long lineage of Reiki Masters. They also charge a huge amount of money for their courses. Are we doing enough? Are we charging enough? Neither of us says a word to each other - I can't even see her face - but I think she might be able to hear the ghost of my laughter as I read this post. A little later we speak and we still don't speak about this teacher but we do talk about the fact that Reiki is an energy open and accessible to absolutely everyone and that so long as you're open to using it with compassion towards yourself or towards others it will work.
I titled this post Everything But The Girl because this was a band that was up and coming in 1984 and who Antonia liked. They released a song called Missing in 1994, 10 years after I'd left college, that they might have wrote for her. The lyrics have so much meaning for what I saw in her and how nostalgic I felt when I thought about her. I'm delighted to be teaching Reiki courses with her this year and if you love great energy and teachers who are honest and real then we're your tribe. Expect to feel free and unburdened afterwards and go home with some very different and liberating thoughts about life and all of the potential that both you, and it contains.
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