by Donna Swagerty Shreve
In March of 2006 I was reluctantly fixing up a condo my mother had lived in for twenty-two years. She had let the place run down and there was a lot of renovation needed before I had to move in. I needed to leave my home of twenty-seven years as selling the condo would involve paying capital gains.
I mentioned my woes of fixing up the condo to my niece Jen and she asked if she could perform a cleansing. Jen had done several spiritual cleansing and felt the condo needed to be rid of bad vibes that had accumulated as my father was dying and then my mother had become ill. There was also the bad vibes from my mother’s second marriage. None of us had been fans of my mother’s second husband. A girlfriend of mine volunteered to be included. She also had some spiritual cleansing background. We entered a now empty condo that had a lot of memories for all of us.
Jen and my friend Linda started the cleansing with a huge sage bundle and great enthusiasm. There were also bells and maybe some feathers involved. All entryways had to be addressed first. This included all windows and doors. The burning sage was carefully moved around the perimeter of all openings clockwise. As we progressed from room to room, Jen felt bad vibes from the master bathroom. She and Linda spent extra time cleansing this area. It still had the handicap handles from when my father had used it 17 years ago. That bathroom had then become my step-father’s bathroom. I planned to strip the room to its studs and redo it completely.
I enjoyed the support of dear ones and I progressed with the renovations. Soon the plumber came to me and said there was a problem in the master bathroom. It seemed there were seven inches of standing water underneath the floor waiting to cause trouble. It had been an extra wet winter and the house had had a weak spot at the bathroom. The room’s floor was carefully sealed and a modern bathroom was installed.
I had not shared the cleaning ritual with my husband. I knew he would roll his eyes and make some rude comment. I really thought it was not necessary for him to know. He stopped by the condo as it was being renovated to check on some item. As he opened the door he was greeted with smoke. He quickly checked all of the rooms looking for fire. The heavy smoke was left over from Jen and Linda’s very thorough cleansing ceremony. As he found no source for the smoke, he came back to our house and told me about his discovery. I then had to share what before I thought he could do without hearing. Yes, there were rude remarks.
I now had a clean condo that I actually wanted to move into. Jen had been very generous in helping me and had the amazing sense of where her cleansing was needed.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 