Choosing Love instead of Fear

August 9, 2016

Eileen Nash

In May of this year I attended a Hawaiian Women’s Retreat led by fellow Color of Woman teacher, Carole Thomassy. We were classmates in the 2013 Color of Woman teachers’ training class. One night I was blathering on about things that were difficult or not working out.

Carole turned and looking me in the eyes, she took hold of both my shoulders and asked “In this next breath, are you going to choose Love or Fear?”

Intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually, I don’t have a choice- it is Love every time. This is a simple, yet imminently powerful teaching. The ‘trick’ here is the action word “Choose”

This encounter has led to early AM study of the book “Love is Letting Go of Fear” by Gerald Jampolsky. He is a former UCSF physician who founded the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California. The reason this fact is important to me, is because I knew about this center through a Nurse named Dottie O’Connell.

We worked together in the UCSF PACU (post anesthesia care unit) in the late 80’s. The photo above is of Dottie and me @ the San Francisco Yacht club. Dottie told me about the first-hand miracles she had witnessed at the Center. She would know as she had cystic fibrosis. The average life expectancy for people with CF who live to adulthood is about 37 years. We met in our early 30’s. Dottie later died of complications following a heart/lung transplant.

Dottie actively chose Love instead of fear- everyday. She was my dear friend, an excellent Nurse, a giggly, bubbly personality who sailed around Nantucket and the SF Bay. I met my husband because of Dot. I would go so far as to name her the ‘Present Moment Queen’. She never focused on the fact that she knew she would die young. She chose Life every day and helped others with her later work as a transplant Coordinator.

When I consider it, each day at work and in my private life, there are Love/Fear challenges. I like to think I’ve done a lot of personal work and it still seems that there is always a new plateau of learning and facing fears. I have a sense that life can be more authentic and livelier if one can practice letting go of fear, and consciously stay in the present moment.