06

I once took a fabulous vacation to Italy. On the bus tour I passed out some of our newsletters. A woman named Florence came up to me and said, “I understand what the two of you are talking about in your newsletter. It happened to me. Do you want to hear about it?” I said that I did.

“It was about a black cat. Yes it was a black cat that helped me find myself again. When my husband died young, I was very upset. I took a job teaching. The job didn’t work out well and I felt very down. My world was falling apart. I knew I needed some way to hold onto the good parts of myself, but how?”

“Then it came to me – I wanted a black cat, just like the black cat I had in childhood. So many of my childhood memories were happy and so many were associated with this wonderful black cat, Duke, who we had for 20 years. A friend found a black kitten for me. She brought it over and as I held it, I knew that it was love at first sight! From that day forward, I felt that my life was good again. I found myself again. I felt more sure of myself. So what if one school system didn’t work out? I knew that I was a good teacher! I’d find another.

I asked, “How could a black cat have made such a difference?”

She said, “You see, Duke was a part of the family. When we went to the country every summer, he had a friend – a skunk – who came looking for him and they would go off playing for hours. The skunk never sprayed him! He loved the country.”

“One day we were going home and the windows were open. We came to a small parade. Suddenly Duke jumped out of the car and disappeared. We were heartsick. After hours of looking, my Dad said, ‘Let’s go back to the summer house so we can start out really early tomorrow morning looking for Duke.’ We drove twenty miles back to the house. As we approached, there was Duke, sitting on the front porch looking at the door. He had walked the twenty miles while we had looked for him. He knew where he was going!”

“So, that’s the story of Duke. I guess I had to find that hook from my past to get myself back. I didn’t think a lot of people would understand how a cat helped me that much but now having read your newsletter, I wanted to share this with you. My new cat is named Tywaket. That’s the name of the cat in Bell, Book and Candle, and it’s kind of a mystical name – Tywaket certainly changed my life!”

I was very moved by Florence’s story of her cat. Indeed, the positive hooks in our childhood are extremely important, not only for recovering positive states of well being, but for giving us a sense of self esteem and self purpose. They almost serve as magical links to a personal integrity and self-knowledge that intuitively we have as children. However, this wisdom constantly gets pushed down and covered over by negative effects of many things that happen to us.

Let’s all look for positive hooks in our childhood!

Author: Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein , originator of THE ENCHANTED SELF®,

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