Past Lives: healing for this life. By Diane Harvey White
Past Lives: healing for this life. I hadn’t even thought about whether we might not be able
to have children when my husband and I met. It didn’t occur to me that we would have to plan how to
manage intense personal loss and at the same time continue to try for another child. The only thing
I did know was that my husband was a man who desperately needed children and I would do whatever
I could to provide him with a family. So after three miscarriages I started to ask questions and to really want
to understand what was happening. It started a journey of discovery that has continued to this day,
giving me insight into my marriage, my relationships with my wider family group and into my own
growth as a soul.
It had always bothered me, the size of my husband’s head. I’d asked the midwife if she thought this
was going to be a problem and she had looked at me as if I was mad. We were at cross purposes – I
really didn’t want to have a Caesarian section and she couldn’t imagine why I would have a problem
with it. And then when I lost the baby, I became convinced that the size of my husband’s head was
indeed something I was going to have problems with.
The second miscarriage, I started to feel as if I was failing at something really basic. Human
biology was supposed to come naturally and I started to feel deeply frustrated by all the mothers
who became pregnant ‘by accident’. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do something as
simple as carrying a child? Obviously my husband and I talked about our grief, but in my head this
was something I was doing for him and I was failing.
The third time we conceived, we really thought it was all going to be fine. I got as far as eleven
weeks and six days – surely out of the woods – and ended up in hospital. The foetus had stopped
developing four weeks earlier. I had been blissfully ignorant and had somehow managed to stop the
little group of cells that would have been our child from exiting my body until the last possible
moment. Stunned with disbelief, I knew I had to do something to make sense of what was
happening to my body and to us as a couple. I stopped work, went back to dance class, had
reflexology treatments, but what haunted me was the sense that I had somehow been in this
situation before. I couldn’t let go of the fact that it seemed familiar, that we had endured the same
grief at some other time.
Was it possible for trauma to ‘overlay’ itself from one life time to another? Could I really be
suffering these miscarriages because of a long held belief stored deep in my subconscious? I knew I
needed to find out because it was obvious that simply having physical treatment at this point wasn’t
enough. My doctor had already told me that after six miscarriages, I would be straight onto the IVF
programme, which was something I really didn’t want to do, if I could help it. I knew this was
something I was causing and I didn’t think that filling my body full of hormones was going to be
any more successful without me first having ‘done the work’. I began to meditate more and even did
a series of rebirthing sessions, but still I didn’t feel I was accessing the heart of the problem. So, past
life regression was the therapy I started to focus on.
Tara Sutphen had held a number of workshops at the Mind, Body and Spirit Festivals in London
and I had been a regular participant, so I already knew something about my soul’s journey. I loved
the knowledge that regression therapy gave me, understanding the dynamics of relationships with
other family members and then being able to see why the issues continued to be repeated from one
life time to the next. I knew that as individuals we had different lessons to learn and that shared
experiences would have a different impact on either participant, but mostly I loved the warmth of
having seen another aspect of my soul unfold in the same way that my life was unfolding, for the
benefit of my soul, getting me closer to pure energy. It was the sense that I was part of a team – my
soul team – that I wanted to tap in on.
Because patience was not my strong suit in those days, I decided I needed to do this regression
NOW. I couldn’t wait another day. I was going to sit down and do it myself. In the early days of
exploring my spirituality, I attended classes with Blair Styra in New Zealand. He channels a
wonderful and wise entity called Tabaash and it was his energy I felt with me as I sat at my dining
room table that day.
With the warmth of his presence at my back the whole time, I saw a life I had never known, but
which spoke volumes about the relationship I had with my current husband. Suddenly I could see
how the dynamics between us had been formed, me with the creative arts and he with the
institutions of government. The two were unlikely bed-fellows, just as we appeared to be, but as I
watched our history play out across the Russian landscape of the late eighteenth century, I felt the
calm that comes from an experience that resonates with the truth. This was the heart of the matter.
This was the experience I felt haunted by and yes, the husband of that lifetime was also of large
physical stature – with a large head. No wonder I had fixated on that detail.
I asked to see the issue that was blocking me, I knew it hadn’t ended well and the beloveds, the
collective unconscious assembled to help Tabaash with the energy levels that would allow me to
access this trauma, were suddenly very vocal. They felt I wouldn’t cope, that it would be too much
for me to see, that I wasn’t ready. It’s quite something listening to an argument of disembodied
entities when you’re in a deep meditative state, but Tabaash insisted I would be fine, that I was
ready and that this was important to my progression.
I saw a wood paneled, dimly lit room and a woman, wild eyed and in the pain of advanced
childbirth, writhing in agony, unable to find comfort on the tangled sheets of the bed. Beside her a
worried looking nurse. Across the room was the tormented husband, this his second wife to die in
childbirth. I focussed again on the woman who screamed, ‘I should have stayed chaste, I should
have stayed chaste. I asked what the significance of this was and was told ‘Same husband, big head.
Slowly I cameback to the present, giving heartfelt thanks to the beloveds for their help and guidance
in this experience. I sat there stunned and comforted by what I had seen. It made sense,
I could understand why my body was reluctant to hold onto a pregnancy, but here I was now in an
era where medical science was able reverse my experiences from the past and I actually had to convince
myself that this was possible. It seemed that for me a stored memory was inhibiting my growth and
I puzzled over this.
How was I to get my body to understand that it was ok to trust in nature this time? I knew
intellectually that I could survive the experience of childbirth but integrating that knowledge into
my subconscious took a little longer. I had two more miscarriages and with meditation and
visualizations, simply held onto the belief that I would be able to carry a child to term. And then
finally, finally I got past the twelve week mark.
Fourteen years on, I have a six foot son and a daughter who is two years younger. They are happy,
intelligent children who thirst for knowledge and live a fast paced Twenty-first century life. But
when I look at them, I am reminded that some processes take time, can’t be hurried and are
controlled by forces outside of our understanding. Some experiences need to be assimilated to be
understood, much like teenagers themselves. Maybe my experiences with childbirth were to help
me reflect and understand the journey, to give me an insight into the processes my children would
eventually need help with? If I had gotten everything I wanted without having to grow in the
process, would I have been as able to nurture my children in the instinctive manner I’ve become
accustomed to? Perhaps not and looking back I now think that for me, motherhood was about the
whole package. We wouldn’t be who we are if I’d been different.