Beyond Healing: Spiraling, Strengthening, Intensifying

By Alice Worthington

In Beyond Healing, author Alice Worthington chronicles her continuing spiritual growth. With the benefit of time and a mature perspective, she re-examines the sources of her healing from childhood rape, detailed in her memoir, and describes how centering prayer, meditation, contemplation, dreams, and dreamwork inspire openness to new perspectives and further growth.

The presidency of Donald Trump, and the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in the broader environment provide validation to Worthington as she moves toward wholeness, employing centering prayer and dreamwork in the process. Many members of her dream group are members of the Jung Society and provide Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological concepts to the dreamwork. In addition, she shares that the daily meditations and books by Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have informed much of her spiritual growth.

Beyond Healing recounts key dreams with accompanying dreamwork, demonstrating Worthington’s growth through her interpretation of these dreams. She thinks of the final dream in this memoir of growth as a mountaintop dream. Based on experience, she knows she won’t stay long on the mountaintop, but she will descend to continue her journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480881105

Alice Worthington

Alice Worthington is a pen name. She divides her time between New England and Florida, where she lives with her husband, whom she married in 2014.

Book preview

Advance Praise for Beyond Healing

This is a compelling story of transformation, courage, and contemplation in your life’s journey. I was fascinated by your insights into self via math equations and your acknowledgment (which I share) that numbers are safe; they do not evoke emotions.

Interestingly, when my husband was dying, I asked him to go outside by the pool with his two daughters and leave me alone in the living room with the checkbook … where I could be calm and centered. The emotions were out of control otherwise.

The different sections of the book, which parallel your individuation through your life work and dreams are well thought out. Initially, I questioned whether or not you should reveal specific dream members’ responses to your dreams, but after much thought I felt that you are sharing your dreams and part of your soul in this book with strangers, a courageous thing to do.

What a journey you have been on … Your parents did not protect you or even respond to the rapist (which in today’s world I find impossible to imagine, especially since he was a neighbor they had to see often; and so did you, their little girl). I can only imagine your fear, rage, sadness, confusion, and resulting inability to express emotions and how this affected every aspect of your life. You are indeed the strong, intelligent, courageous woman in your last dream who is to be applauded.

This story will be a light in the darkness for those who have experienced rape or abuse. It certainly will enable those who consciously or unconsciously avoid focusing on their dreams to see great merit in dreamwork.

Congratulations. What an amazing story of transformation and individuation … personal growth and its rewards.

—Candace Boyd

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This book follows the author as she makes a journey through a hostile land, searching for a safe pathway with her only compass the hints given by her dreams. It is an account of how she navigated past horrific obstacles and reached a safe place for healing, where she could repair the ravages of the journey.

—Mike Brown

BEYOND

HEALING

Spiraling, Strengthening, Intensifying

ALICE WORTHINGTON

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Copyright © 2019 Alice Worthington.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Interior Image Credit: Joy Pendergast

Bible Scriptures taken from New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8109-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8110-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019910869

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/16/2019

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

PART I

Chapter 1     Context

Chapter 2     The Role of Science in My Healing

Chapter 3     My Journey to Healing through Faith

Chapter 4     Growth and Healing from Just Plain Living #MeToo, #Time’sUp

PART II

Chapter 5     Dreams and Dreamwork

Chapter 6     Numbers in Dreams

Chapter 7     An Anxiety Dream

Chapter 8     Transformation and Growth

Chapter 9     Exploring the Environment of the Outer World

PART III

Chapter 10   Select Dreams from 2017

Chapter 11   Celebration

Epilogue

Notes and Figures

Acknowledgments

M any people have contributed to make this book possible: all those I acknowledged in my earlier book, which served as the basis for part I of this book; all the former and current members of my dream group; my readers, Candace Boyd, the current leader of my dream group, and the late Mike Brown, a very creative friend and writer in his own right; my friend and editor, Robin Willink, whose patience, skillful editing, and provocative questions significantly improved the quality of my writing; and granddaughter Lucy, who performed a skillful final edit; and my friend Joy Pendergast, who again perfectly captured this part of my journey in her vibrant watercolor painting for the cover of the book. To all these friends and family and many more too numerous to name, I am profoundly grateful.

I also want to thank those at Archway who helped me shepherd this book through the process from inception to final published product, especially Jed Dominic. I’m grateful for his patience and guidance. The several major delays in the writing allowed time for much of the personal transformation to occur and be included in the story of my journey to wholeness. In this litigious environment, his suggestions as to how I should protect myself from claims of libel were important, though difficult to accept!

To all those on the journey

Prologue

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

L ike Stephen Hawking, I love the big, the huge questions, and am constantly applying skills from both sides of my brain and from my life experiences to think about these questions. I read with interest Hawking’s final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions. I find that the most exciting questions are both scientific and faith based.

What is God?

Is God the unified field?

Is the call of God gravity?

After I die, will gravity pull both my soul and my dust into a black hole?

Is that black hole eternal life?

What is eternal life?

Is there rebirth from a black hole?

Will we ever develop an elegant equation for the theory of everything that Einstein searched for in vain?

Does it include the equation for e=mc2

Or is it something we can only know?

Although I will never know the answers to these questions, that doesn’t matter to me. When I was in business school, one of my professors asked us what legacy we wanted to leave to our heirs. I answered that I wanted to leave my children a long list of things I hadn’t had time to do. I suppose that would include a long list of questions I was unable to answer.

PART I

Chapter 1

CONTEXT

W riting my memoir was the first phase of responding to a powerful call I felt towards healing from childhood rape. Speaking to others is also an important part of responding to the call. I have found that many of the anecdotes in my memoir resonate with those who have suffered domestic violence or other physical abuse, as well as those who have been raped. They are not alone, and I encourage them to seek help. There is no shame in being abused. Yet it is highly traumatic, and recovery can be expensive in terms of time and money when unhealthy defenses have become as firmly established as mine had. Treating the wounds quickly and professionally should help to minimize the damage and the cost.

My personal journey began when I was raped by a trusted neighbor at nine years old.

Thirty years later, I suffered a breakdown, was hospitalized for five weeks, and had to take a five-month leave of absence from my job as an investment banker. Because the doctors saw evidence that I had insight, they were optimistic for me and prescribed insight therapy. The goal of insight therapy was to help me discover the reasons and motivations for my behavior, feelings and thinking so that I might make appropriate changes and improve my mental health.

In the beginning stages of my breakdown in early August 1982, I imagined that President Reagan, Paul Volcker, and my boss were all calling me to figure out how to fix what was wrong with Wall Street. Reagan was asking, What is wrong with Wall Street? My boss banged his fist on his desk at the end of a frustrating day and virtually screamed at