A Taking Off Overcoats testimonial

Dear Karen and Barry - 

This email is long overdue, to share with you the ongoing gratitude I have for the gift of your book.  While so much of it is familiar territory for me in my healing practices over the past many years, I find that the spirit of your book is so engaging that I am drawn into it again and again.

I find it to be a very accepting and nurturing approach to addressing this experience of being human, recognizing my conditioning and the many ways of protecting myself that I adopted over the years.  I also really enjoy the spaciousness of your writing, both in the way it appears on the page and in the easy pace you have in covering the subject of our 'overcoats' – both in how we came to acquire them and how we can loosen them and let them fall away.

The easy pace has also served as an invitation for me to take my time in reading the book.  Even though I haven't finished it, I will often circle back to parts I have previously read, to review and refresh my understanding from the vantage point of a new day or a new week.  My underlining and highlighting and marginal comments are littered throughout the book; these are like 'cairns' I have left for later visits to passages that moved me deeply.

My experience is further enriched by being in our Love-Oneness book group, where we have created and held sacred space for several of us to go through the guided experiences you have recorded and to openly share about our own struggles and learnings.  The group has also been a reminder to me of both the similarities and the differences we all have in recognizing our overcoats and nurturing self-compassion.  DeeDee has been a wonderful guide, both for the group and for me personally.

This past Monday I was reading the chapter on feelings, and the words reached out to me and asked what was stirring in me at that moment that wanted to be felt.  I had barely read a couple of pages, but I put down the book and just sat with my breathing and went inside.  What I found was not a big trauma buried for years, but rather the threads of little hurts over the past couple of weeks that had cumulatively built up into a sadness and a negative judgment of myself and my worth.  I just let myself feel all this as fully as it wanted to be felt, and released it all, collapsed on the floor in tears.  I felt completely wrung out afterwards and also cleansed in a way, as my emotional thunderstorm passed.  I felt grateful for the release and later shared the experience with my family and my men's group, and I was grateful for their acknowledgement of my feelings and their support.  A couple of days later I came across this quote by Ram Dass:

As long as we grab at our divinity and
push away our humanity we aren't
free. If you want to be free, you can't
push away anything. You have to
embrace it all. It's all God.

This sums up where I am with your beautiful book.  It's all God.  I am learning to ground myself in this Truth and let it live through me.

Eternal gratitude and blessings for your support on this journey.

Love all ways,

 - Alan