Whatever...Love Is Love (17 page)

So I made friends with another actress who claimed to hold secret “Goddess” knowledge for healing. She told me she knew channelers and healers and psychics who could make me all better. The girl, Beverly, was a bit wacky at times and dramatic. She wore big white pirate shirts and black capes. She had raven black hair and big brown eyes, and really white skin. She was an ex-model and astoundingly beautiful. She seemed to have it all together. I wanted to be like her.

We struck up an unlikely friendship when I was invited to her apartment one night for a full moon Goddess circle. I showed up in my combat boots and ripped jeans; she was in some diaphanous white dress. She used an eagle feather to “cleanse” me and the three other girls with sage, put on some Enya, lit all the candles in the place, and began to conduct the circle. One after the other we were told to give up the baggage that was holding us back from our highest good and leave it in the circle. We had to say what we were giving up. I was pretty vague. “My pain. My past. My control.” We danced around and sang a chant and then made a wish on the full moon. Beverly told us that it was ancient knowledge that anyone who made a wish on the full moon would get his or her wish fulfilled. (I think I wished that John F. Kennedy Jr. would fall in love with me.)

Then we ate some healthy food and drank red wine.

I felt amazing afterward. Better than I had for years. Now, I realized, my healing wasn't about going to a shrink and rehashing old events from my past. It was about just letting it all go, connecting with the spirit inside of me. Moving
above
the concerns of the world and moving
away
from my own negative concerns. I didn't need JFK Jr. anymore; I was my own beam of light.

What a breakthrough! For six months I dedicated myself to practicing my newfound spirituality. And only occasionally (10 times a day, as opposed to 100) fantasized about my dream man. I adhered to all the advice Beverly gave me so that I would become “cleared” and ready to move on to the “next phase of my existence.” I stopped eating dairy and stopped smoking, because they “blocked the flow of information and made me an impure channel.” I started to see a Rolfer who literally tried to dig the pain of my past out of my body. It hurt. A lot. I did Beverly's meditations. I went to her place for seminars. One time I went to meet a man who claimed to be an alien from a different universe. He made steel pyramid hats that you would wear on your head to contact extraterrestrial life. (Only the good kind, of course.) He was quiet and smiled like some idiot savant. I was only alarmed when he went into the bathroom and came out with a bar of pink soap in his hand. He looked curiously at the 10 of us gathered and asked, “What is this thing used for?”

For the next two decades I continuously pursued spiritual truths and psychological healing, and visited every doctor, healer, psychic, shaman, and channeler under the sun. I read every self-help, new age book under the sun. And I loved all of it. And I learned from all of it. And it made me more curious and helped me to get through some hard times. But at a certain point, I felt that I had done enough searching outside of myself, so I finally stopped looking. One day, some years ago, cleaning out my bookshelf, I saw that most of these books were saying the same thing. They were usually written by some “authority” attempting to teach you what you can only teach yourself. By telling me over and over again the answers were inside of me, I guess I started to listen.

So I surprised even myself when I ended up recently in the office of a newly famous celebrity doctor. As I had recently quit smoking, I was uncovering some deep feelings that had been hidden under the smoke. Smoking cigarettes has been my addiction for 30 years. I wanted someone to magically take it away. I was also stressed after doing six movies in a row and being away from home much of the year. My now teenage son and I had our biggest blowout and I was having “not-good-enough mommy” syndrome. I was running on empty, trying so hard to keep up with Jack's life, Clare's, my job, Haiti, and the book, I forgot to take care of myself. I was exhausted. I wanted desperately for someone to tell me how to do it, since I couldn't figure it out on my own.

The new doctor drew me in right away. He looked so happy and tranquil in his photos and he had rave reviews from celebrities that I admire.

Before seeing him, I had to fill out 20 pages of paperwork. The first question was, “Why do you need to see the doctor?” In my second-day detox haze, I wrote: “I need urgent care for a lifestyle change. The lifestyle I've been living has me running on empty, feeling stressed, smoking, and is causing me physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.” (Sounds like me at 21, right?) And the second question was, “Why would you like to see the doctor?” What I should have written was, “Many Hollywood people, especially an actress I really like, keep saying how you changed their lives. And today I want to change mine.” Instead, I was vulnerable to a man I did not even know so I wrote: “I heard so many wonderful things about you and had a sign yesterday to contact you. I woke in the morning and knew I could not continue my life as I have been living it.”

Within a day he called me and left a voicemail. His voice sounded soothing and kind. He ended with “I am at your service and send you love.” I was thrilled that a guy who had a year's waiting list, even with celebrities, was going to see me within a few days!

He was ridiculously expensive, especially on “off hours.” He said he never came in on Wednesdays, but he said he knew he was supposed to for me. He came in on Wednesdays
only
for cancer patients.

I got very lost going to his healing center in the middle of nowhere outside of LA, so I was quite stressed when I arrived. I was out of the cigarette detox phase by now, and feeling pretty good from resting, not smoking, and being kind to myself and making up with Jackson. I worried that I didn't have anything to talk to this healer about. Still, I felt special when the good-looking doctor came into the small room where a nurse was taking my vital signs, and I stood up and gave him a hug. “I feel like I know you,” I said. Because that is what you say to new age folks that you don't really know. He said the same and looked deep into my eyes.

When I was escorted to his office, he looked different, now in his white lab coat and serious expression. There was a Virgin Mary in the corner of his room. “Wow,” I said. “Mary, I love Mary. My mother has had visions of her since she was a little girl, and every time she is in a bad health situation, she smells roses or is given a rose or finds one by surprise and knows Mary is looking after her.” He gave me a questioning look. I suppose not many of his patients said such things.

He sat across from me and looked in my eyes and took a breath. “Just know whatever you say stays in this room. I will never share what you say with anyone.” My ears perked up. I learned a long time ago that if someone you've just met tells you that, you have to beware. Usually it means they will tell someone. Thank God I didn't make the same promise.

He began with, “How can I be of service? What do you need?”

I immediately got right to the point, “I have done many modalities of healing. I was very sick last summer so I know I am healthy now, as I've had many tests as you can see on my blood test chart. I meditate, do yoga a bit in the morning, see an acupuncturist, and get vitamin therapy and take supplements.” Turned out that his big sell is selling all of those things but for 10 times the average price.

“So what do you need?” he said.

I said I had read in his magazine about a new psychosocial program that was integrative. I said I felt that my smoking blocked me somehow and I wanted to open up more emotionally and spiritually. Now this is no new age information. Smoking pushes down emotions and takes time away from family, so you feel disconnected, at least I do. I was using it to dull the pain of being menopausal and middle-aged and not finding a new dream to chase. I went on to say that I'd seen many different kinds of healers and told him what one of my mentors had told me: “You dare people to like you.” I told him that I knew he couldn't fix me, that the answers were all inside me and I just needed to love and accept myself. I cried a bit talking about needing a new dream and trying something different and about some regrets I had. He looked at me with a stern look and then came over to the couch and kissed me on the head.

I thought it was a little strange, but like I said, I've been to many of these kinds of folks and they do similar things. The doctor said, “You don't love yourself.”

“Well, certainly not this last week,” I said, laughing. I had been a bitch with Clare and short with Jack, so I definitely wasn't feeling much love.

I told him that I was in a romantic relationship with my best friend, Clare, after being with men most of my life and he seemed shocked. I told him he should read my article from the
New York Times
and that I was writing a book inspired by it. He then exploded. He looked at me like a madman and said, “What book? You have nothing to write! You can't write a book! What are you going to talk about? You don't even know or love yourself!” I tried to tell him what the book was about. He then said, “Oh, I got you, they don't know, they don't know, I see what you do. . . .” He really looked like a madman now and popped off his chair and said, “You've walked around your whole life with a big dildo pointed at everyone, telling every man to fuck off. You need to open your pussy! You cannot receive; you need to receive a man.”

Seriously, that's what he said. And I didn't leave. I started to believe once again that this man knew much more than I did about me. I listened. He sat back down and drew out a graph for me with odd words he had invented but that made no sense. As he scribbled down the page explaining, I said, “I'm usually pretty smart, but can you explain again, because I have no idea what you are talking about.” He looked at me. I don't think he was used to people asking him questions.

Then he looked at me and wrote a word, “sychotic,” and a line going up a graph like up a huge hill. “This is you,” he said.

“I'm psychotic? Did you spell it wrong?” I asked. “I don't think I am. I haven't gone off my meds or anything and . . .”

He stopped me. “Most people are here.” And he pointed to another graph—this one with a straight line and then tiny little anthills popping up. “These are normal people and this is you.” He pointed to the “sychotic” line. My line was
way
off from the normal. I stared at him and he flew across the room to his desk and pulled out a Bible.

He rolled back and opened a page dramatically where he had underlined “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I knew the phrase well after 16 years of Catholic church and since my mentor was a Catholic priest and all.

He asked if I knew what it meant. I said, “Humility.” I had prayed since I was sick last summer for grace and humility, to help me be open to whatever it was God wanted me to do.

He raised his voice. “And do you know what humility means?”

“Um,” I said, “to be on your knees and know you don't know everything and God will take care of it. And no human will fill God's place?”

He then said, “Do you know where the word HUMILITY comes from?” I was stumped and wanted to call Jackson, as he has been taking Latin for two years. And the doctor blurted out, “HUMMUS!” The dip? I thought. “Hummus means soil. You have to be in the soil to be meek.” I felt relieved. I'd certainly felt dirty all week, detoxing.

It seemed he finally got tired of explaining and of me saying, “Oh, I get it so . . .” And he pulled out a book and rolled back over again, nodding his head and looking at me suspiciously. It was a book of faces. A teen with acne, a woman with wrinkles, a man with a lopsided face. “
This
is what's wrong with you!” he said.

“Something's wrong with my face?” I asked.

He said, “When I came into the office and surprised you, that's part of my analysis. I like to catch people off guard to see how they really are and read their face.” I thought about his hug and wondered how I had measured up. Thank God I didn't just shake his hand and lower my eyes; he would have thought I was really psychotic.

Time was almost up so I asked, “So what do you think I need?” 
I was serious. I thought he would tell me that I needed deep psychotherapy with him. But he wrote the name of another doctor down on a paper.

“This is my teacher who taught me cranial sacral. You need to get your face and mouth straightened out first. Your forehead and cheeks are not open enough and the right side of your face droops and your mouth is too tight, your teeth are too crowded.”

I didn't take any offense, as I knew my teeth were a bit crowded and the right side of my face slightly drooped. But only slightly. It's not like magazines published photos of me with headlines like
LOOK AT HER DROOPY FACE
!

He then said, “You can spend twenty-five thousand dollars with me in my special celebrity and powerful people one-on-one therapy sessions but first you have to get this situated.” I was in a bit of a daze at this point. I came here for the guy to say, “You are too fucked up for me to help you”? He hugged me good-bye, looked deeply into my eyes, gave me his cell phone number, and said again, “I am at your service, whatever you need.”

After signing a copy of his new book for me—about how to lose weight—I thought, “Well, at least I don't need that.” And we walked into the lobby. I caught the eyes of another woman who was sitting there with a cute young man. I realized she was a celebrity whom I knew. We gave each other hugs and hellos. The doctor took the young man into his office, looking a bit annoyed. I guess he didn't just see me and cancer patients on Wednesdays, but beautiful celebrities and their young boyfriends as well.