The area around the arms is an extension of the heart, representing emotions, relationships and relating to others. For quite a few years, I would find myself drawing balls of light in this area to represent significant others in the clients life. For example, the client’s mother, child or partner might show up in this area. The colours of the ball of light would tell me about this significant other: giving me insight into their personality, emotional state, attitudes and relationship with the client.

Being clairsentient, I have a natural gift for this kind of work because its easy for me to feel what people are feeling towards one another. Sometimes, I find that the entire reading centers around a significant other and spirit often tells me this can be unhealthy because the energy lines connecting them together are ‘tangled up’.

We need to have our own energy in our energy field rather than someone else’s, with clear healthy boundaries defining where we end and someone else begins. Yes, we grow via interaction with others but there are limits and becoming obsessed with another person can be counterproductive.

Some mothers are obsessed with their children and I have noticed this can be more common in some cultures than others. These mothers are completely uninterested in their own lives and instead live vicariously through the lives of their children. The entire reading tends to consist of requests for predictions on their children- will they be happy, when will they marry, will they succeed in their chosen career and so on. It is fascinating to notice that some cultures are obsessed with their children marrying and having children whilst others are obsessed with the child’s education and career success.

Recently I did a reading for a lovely lady whose reading was completely centred around her daughter. In the sketch I could see the daughter tucked close in around the heart and was surprised at the unusual, strong bond between them. I soon discovered that Jenny’s relationship with both her daughter and husband were under stress because she was attempting to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. Whenever the daughter got into financial difficulty Jenny was there to give her money and recently, the daughter cancelled her own wedding when she realized her lover was her mothers choice for her, not genuinely her own.

“I just want to her to be happy’, said Jenny. Unfortunately, Jenny’s idea about what would make her daughter happy was based on her own values, not her daughter’s. Mothers in particular, can sometimes find it a challenge to step back and allow their children to live their own lives. Efforts to procure happiness for their children usually result in a lot of mutual misery, partly because they think they ‘know what is best for the child’ and partly because they try to rescue the child from the consequences of their own mistakes, thereby robbing them of opportunities to grow and develop individuality.

In reality, Jenny’s daughter was the only person who could possibly know what would ultimately make her happy, but to work this out, she would need to make some mistakes along the way. As parents, we need to ensure we do not fixate on some idealized version of ‘happy’ according to social or personal values and then project this onto our children. ‘Happy’ is a word often tied in with the idea of success and we can have narrow ideas about what success is, especially when it comes to imagining what our children’s lives look life to others and how this reflects on our merits as a parent.

Jenny felt her job would never really be done until her daughter was financially stable and married to a suitable man, so she kept trying to control every aspect and detail of her daughters life to bring this about. In other words, her mothering work could not be complete until her daughter was ‘happy’ (successful) according to Jenny’s values. In her mind, only a bad mother would stop trying to help, even if this meant putting her own life on hold indefinitely.

Jenny’s daughter never had an opportunity to step out from the shadow of her mother’s protective and well-meaning influence in order to find and shape her own identity and destiny. Even though she was in her twenties, she hadn’t really developed a sense of personal indentity because her mother never gave her any space to find herself. How was she ever going to learn how to manage money if her mother always rescued her? How was she going to find love with her mother standing in the sidelines telling her who she should love?

In the meantime, my clients husband was also waiting in the sidelines, wondering if he was ever going to have the opportunity to connect with his wife, because couldn’t she let go of being a mother. My client’s very wise son was advising her to ‘let go’ and due to the mess in both her daughters and her own life, she could see the logic in this advice but she simply didn’t know how! Mothering had become a bad habit and it was a handy way to avoid the scary task of reclaiming her own sense of self beyond simply being a mother. My job as counselor was to validate her sons’ advice and help her find the strength and some practical strategies to start living her own life.