In the book ‘Too Close to Remember’, a pivotal point in Hazel’s journey was attending 2 St Raphael’s Sanctuary Healing Retreats. They have all moved through their own personal and family crisis and it was this healing journey that led them to the farm in Tulbagh, South Africa with a passion and calling for healing. St. Raphael’s Sanctuary Healing Retreats presented by their Family of Gentle Healers, are hosted on their farm. Their family is made up of Father Albert – a Diocesan Catholic Priest, Louise – an occupational therapist that specializes in mental health, Mimi – their mother and prayer warrior, and Dr. Eric – a medical doctor. They have combined their accumulative 80+ years of experience and skills to make it possible for their clients to be able to overcome a range of obstacles and learn to make Spirit-inspired choices which leads to them living extraordinary lives. Find this family on www.familyofgentlehealers.com.
Welcome everybody, welcome to Spiritual Biz Chat for Spiritual Biz Magazine, I am your host, Kimberly Maska, and today we have joining us Eric Post and Louise Fouche who are best known as Family of Gentle Healers. Eric and Louise, welcome, and thank you both for being with us, how are you two doing today?
Eric and Louise: Great to be here and be invited to the Spiritual Biz Magazine interview! It is really exciting times for us and also the whole journey of publishing the book.
Excellent! So, could you share the story behind your personal journey down the path to your current life’s purpose and work?
Louise: Wow, that makes me realize that life hasn’t taken the path that I always anticipated it would take. Looking back, I realize that I am living a life more fulfilled and enriched than what I had hoped for. The ups and downs in my life have provided the experiences I now have to live out my passion and life purpose. I have learned to listen to God and follow my intuition. As I take one step, the next step that step appears. It is a journey of faith. Often the next 2-3 steps ahead aren’t always visible and despite life not being easy, my life has been filled with a myriad of colors and a richness of experiences and people which has been extraordinary.
I was a lecturer at a University in Pretoria, South Africa, but my soul was dying. My husband & I decided to get out of the rat race and follow our passions. Being in the field of mental health, I saw how spirituality was not part of my client’s treatment and believed that true healing can only happen when we incorporate the spiritual. My brother, Albert, is a priest, and coming from the religious and spiritual side, he again experienced that his spiritual guidance needed to incorporate psychological aspects as well. With that realization, we developed a psycho-spiritual model for healing, especially for people with mental and spiritual dis-ease.
Eric: Personally I went through my own arc of life’s knocks and experiences and learned that I am not perfect with my flaws and yet God loves me and has a mission for me. Professionally speaking, I am a trained medical doctor and what lured me into this profession was having a keen interest in healing patients but over the years I found that there was something crucially missing … despite my training and knowledge I wasn’t able to heal all my patients. The next step was to deepen my knowledge and specialize as an OtoRhinoLaryngology Surgeon. Same result. There remains a group of patients that I and my colleagues don’t get fully cured … I can control these patients’ symptoms through medication or surgery within reason (that means they can have a manageable quality of life) but it doesn’t heal them. With Louise and Albert’s psycho-spiritual model, I have been able to help more patients because I now address the physical as well as psychological, and spiritual aspects…meaning all these aspects need to be addressed for a patient to be truly healed. Each individual has their own pain, hurts, and pathology which show what is the most important aspects that need to be addressed.
You two use your own psycho-spiritual model: combining psychological perspective and spirituality. What is this model? And how did you come to using it?
Louise: Our model is an integration of 3 things to attain healing:
1st is the Creative aspect. Here we lean on Vona du Toit’s Model of Creative Ability. This focuses on our ability to be creative, drives us to create our world own internally and externally, and as a way to listen to our souls.
2nd is the Spiritual aspect. Here we integrate Richard Rohr’s guidance to spiritual development. His model describes 9 levels of spirituality. It is important to identify which level an individual is on. We can’t expect a person on level 2 to find their life purpose when they are still finding their identity in the collective. Similarly, only people on level 6 are able to truly surrender to God. Another example is forgiveness. We are aware that if someone isn’t ready to forgive, we first focus on anger and making sense of it before diving into the spiritual virtues related to forgiveness, taking it step-by-step, meeting the person where they are at.
3rd is the Psychological aspect based on the teachings of Carl Jung who describes the concepts of the True self vs false self, shadow work, synchronicity, and the process of individuation. We incorporate these into our psycho-spiritual model of healing.
So, our model integrates these 3 aspects to guide people to healing.
It is very interesting to observe the relationship dynamics like yours – you two are not only blood relatives but work partners also. How do you balance both worlds? And how do you assist each other in your inner work and self-discovery?
Eric: I can honestly say that it doesn’t feel like I have to balance anything with Louise. We come from a strong family unit where family is held in high regard. Building onto this foundation with the passion we each have to help people in their personal growth and healing journey allows us to move forward in a partnership that we use each other’s strengths and skills and experiences for a common good. My father always asked deep questions growing up, so we are used to introspection and we are comfortable being honest about where we are. It is a blessing to have the opportunity to work together and learn from each other and ultimately work as a team to help others to reach this goal. To top it off I believe our sense of humor pulls us through any differences we may have…which certainly keeps us smiling.
What is your advice for navigating and healing from trauma? Be it an addiction, childhood trauma, or any other form of emotional pain or abuse…
Louise: I believe professions such as therapists, doctors, psychologists/psychiatrists all have their place in healing. BUT I want to focus on the wisdom of our soul and how it can really guide us on our healing path, understanding that each person’s path to healing is unique. Looking at how Jesus typically heals every single person differently, some He heals from a distance, some He touches, some He asks “What do you want?” and some He takes mud and spits on it and places it on the person’s eyes. There is no one size fits all. However, I believe we have a map inside us, that points to our healing, but we have stopped listening to it. So, for trauma or addiction, we focus on teaching people to listen to their own soul and God’s voice. Using creative techniques in a specific way helps our clients to bypass the analytical mind, towards the soulful answers they seek.
Congratulations on your upcoming book, ‘Too Close to Remember’, which will become available on Amazon on December 8th! What was your inspiration behind the book and its title? What is the most important thing you hope for the readers to take away after reading your book?
Louise: I will try not to give away too much about the book ‘Too Close to Remember’ that I co-authored the book with a client of mine, Hazel Zion. She had a deep knowing that she had been sexually abused yet didn’t have a conscious memory. This caused great anguish and dissonance within her for most of her life. The book beautifully illustrates how incorporating a spiritual aspect into her healing journey, leads to extra-ordinary twists and turns and ultimately a deep sense of healing. In a nutshell, the book is about Hazel’s healing journey where she starts to listen and follow her soul which leads her to discover her life purpose and prompts her to write this book. The purple feathers on the cover are very significant to the story and show us we are never alone. With this book, we want to encourage others to start their own healing journey.
I want to say this book is not an easy read because it is real in Hazel’s experiences. However, it is deeply inspiring and fills those that read it will hope.
How brilliant! In your opinion, how is this book relevant in today’s world?
Louise: It is estimated that one in 3-5 people have been sexually abused. We had people who did not want to be on our launch team because the topic was too close for comfort. This shows that more healing is needed. There is still so much guilt and shame around sexual abuse and as a society, we encourage silence. But nothing in the dark is healthy and it breeds to be brought into the light. The only way we will heal as a society is to break the silence and to provide safe spaces for people to tell their stories without judgment and with acceptance and love. I hope this book will give people who have had similar experiences the courage to tell of their stories and be liberated from their shame and guilt.
Hazel’s journey takes her down a path where her own son shows inappropriate sexual behavior and the horror, guilt, and shame surrounding that. If sexual abuse survivors have little support, those that are the abusers have even less and family members, hide in fear of their secret becoming known. However, these secrets fester and cause damage as well. So again, Hazel’s courage to speak out is so inspiring.
One fascinating chapter is named “Victims and Perpetrators” and addresses shadow. Can you tell us more about that?
Louise: In Hazel’s healing journey we so clearly see how we love to label people into categories of good or bad, right or wrong, wise or stupid, and the list goes on. But these are very relative terms and in the case of both of Hazel’s mother and her son, we see that they are both victims and perpetrators at the same time. This challenges us about how artificial our labels of others are and that it has more to do with our “stuff”, than the other people. So shadow work and Hazel’s journey help us look with new eyes at people we love to hate and challenge us to heal from our own issues. It helps us become more whole, more human and enables us to offer grace towards others.
What else are you offering with the book purchase?
Eric: Louise and I have been really busy coming up with a host of free gifts to those purchasing ‘Too Close To Remember’; we want these gifts to add to our reader’s experience of the book. I am really excited to announce that there is an Interview with Hazel Zion which gives some insights to the reader about some behind the scene aspects of Hazel. We have a Hand-on-the-heart technique and Centering prayer (meditation) exercises which are practical and very useful. There is also a Quiz to assess whether you are living from your Authentic self with some helpful tips around that as well. Lastly, there are “6 steps to trust your body” for abuse survivors put together specifically by Hazel. I really encourage the readers to dive into these gifts and make the most of them.
It’s very interesting how your paths cross with Kimberly Maska, the CEO of Maska Media… How and why did you reach out to her?
Eric: We realized we had a family block around money especially being able to receive money and to prosper financially. My father came from a poor background and my mother’s side of the family was considered wealthy, but my father felt he was never accepted. Having deeply loved our dad and knowing that he came from a loving and jovial family, we concluded that poor people were the good ones and that anyone who rejected him, aka our “rich” family, were the bad ones – thus ingrained into our young minds was that being poor was actually a good thing… we wanted to be the good guys. You really helped us with a shift to be able to run a spiritual business, earn money from it, and realize that we are serving our clients. You also presented us with the solution on how to have Louise’s book published as well as tie it into our business so that the two complement each other. We really are grateful for your guidance, dedication, and teaching in this regard. It has been life-changing and fun at the same time. Thank you for always holding us in our highest light, to be able to grow personally.
Is there a final message you want to let our readers know? Or just any last little words that you have for them?
Eric: Healing is available to all of you. When you are facing a crossroad that you can’t see the true path to follow, realize that you need a guide who will take you by the hand and point you in the right direction. There is no shame in this, in fact, it is the way to proceed. Reach out where you can receive wise counsel and be led through the valley of desolation, especially by those that have been through the valley themselves. Remember you only need to make a decision about the next step, don’t expect to see the full journey from your starting point…only when you journey down a path can you see what is beyond the bend. Also, have a daily spiritual practice, be it in the form of prayer or deep soulful reflection, or meditation. Here is where your peace lies and where the deep connection to God will be found so that the Holy Spirit will teach and guide you.
Louise: If Hazel in the book could heal, then so can you no matter what your circumstances are. If you open your eyes to the signs being shown to you and you are able to connect to your soul and have the courage to follow them, then life unfolds in an extraordinary way where you will see how intricately our lives and other’s around us are inter-woven together. As much as trauma hurts us there is a gift in our wounds and even though it is counterintuitive. We typically want to run away from our pain, our hurt; and we want to blame and ultimately to not embrace our wound. One of our clients conveyed that they never wanted the initial trauma but now looking back at their lives they wouldn’t want a different life at all, in fact, they said they wouldn’t want to go back to the life they had before the trauma!
One last thing, is to encourage therapists or coaches that want to learn more about our psycho-spiritual healing model can contact me, Louise at Family of Gentle Healers (www.familyofgentlehealers.com)
Thank you, Eric and Louise, very much! It has been such a pleasure chatting with you today!
Eric and Louise: Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity. It was great being with you and the readers.
