Chapter 3 Separate Paths Converge
Excerpt from “Licking Honey Off A Razor Blade” by Valerie Grimes
Available on Amazon and Medium
Being with my clients feels so natural. I love what I do and do what I love. Hypnosis is access to self-care, and I enjoy the positive results my clients share with me. My friends call me a healer, a light-worker. They say that I am radiant and have an aura that is both calming and alluring.
And so I wonder where all of that goes when he calls, how that aura is switched off and I turn into someone that I don’t like, someone from years and years ago.
1985 comes to mind. My daughter was five and quite the “difficult one.” She was defiant, and I was too young and immature to handle her. And her step-dad was too angry to handle her, and I realized in that moment of “anger expressed” as he slapped her face, that I had married another very angry man. Until that point there were signs, like the way he drove, and they way he would yell at her. But I didn’t get it until I saw her red face and the tears, and I felt as though I had been slapped. With head swirling, I asked him to “get out.” Several months later we were divorced, and I thought, “Well that problem is over.” I didn’t realize, but I was the problem. I attracted men like that, and he was not going to be the last. Salvador was probably the fourth or fifth. Like a subconscious magnet, I pulled them to me. But I didn’t know this at a conscious level.
The receptionist interrupted my thoughts, “Valerie, your next client is here.” While my client was filling out the paperwork, my mind wandered to thoughts of Salvador.
Even though he was unemployed, he once was a bright, rising business development star for a medical supply firm until the pain kept him up at night and the lack of sleep led him to drink. Being out of work in Dallas in 2009 was a common situation. He was living off a large commission he received from the last contract, so he was just sitting back, drinking, and watching TV. He was tired.
I longed for conversations with him about marketing and new business. We would start to talk about it, and he would get turned on and ask me to ‘come over.’ That was his way of saying, ‘I’m hard. Come kiss it.’
As I thought about how easily distracted he got and how his attention always turned to sex, I smiled, and as I was about to silence my phone for my session a text message from him appeared, “I just came all over myself thinking about you.”
That was our connection, sex was when we were one, melted together: he was open; I was open, free to enjoy the physical pleasures. We were always equally satisfied and exhausted. Sex released us—it tamed us for a while anyway.
As I walked out into the waiting area to greet my client, all thoughts of him were tucked away. I took three long, deep breaths and whispered a prayer, “Spirit, may all my focus be on Maria. May I be open to your guidance and may I use all the wisdom and experience to assist her in reaching her goal to be a non-smoker.” I smiled and feeling grounded, opened the door to the waiting area and stepped out with confidence and shook my client’s hand.
“Hello Maria. I’m Valerie Grimes, your hypnotist. Are you ready to be a non–smoker, to put down those cigarettes once and for all?” She replied by mirroring my head nodding in a yes response.
To assist someone in overcoming an addiction, getting to the source of the dependency is key. I asked Maria a series of questions designed to create in her mind the psychological reason she smoked as my mind wandered a bit as I wondered what the reason was I drank so much.