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By Mary Duggan
With the first and most gentle rains of Spring, I watched my sweet new yard come budding back to life and my basement walls gush water. Not seep – gush. When I’d purchased my home, just a few months earlier, the contract had stated that there was some minor seepage along the Western wall of the basement – but only following VERY severe rains. But as soon as the first gentle rains of Spring arrived, I realized I did not own enough towels and buckets to stanch the flow. Luckily with this latest problem case Annie had a guy and so I was able to move on it quickly. He found 11 major cracks in the foundation walls! At a phenomenal price he did a terrific job of repairing them and I have never had one bit of trouble with leaking again. He was probably the all time best Guy I hired in those early months. Even though he would lock his two kids in my garage to play on days when they weren’t in school and that made me so crazy I thought I would break completely.
Once again, I had to dip into my treasured one-day-I-will-have-a-pretty-home fund to make another necessary, unexpected and in no way glamorous repair. Of course, in the process he ripped up and removed all of the carpeting in the basement which was completely wet following just one brief shower. And of course the floor below the lovely but gone carpeting was unspeakable. It was now official that my sweet little cottage with a finished basement was completely a thing of the past. The healing center would have to be upstairs as the basement now looked like hell.
The furnace guys had made all sorts of holes in the walls downstairs and removed the tiled ceiling. Upstairs they left gouges in each room where the radiators had been in place when the floors were refinished in the days before I took possession. Back in the days of I can’t wait to start decorating my new home. And of course there was the broken electrical connection to half the house and not a man brave enough to take on the job of repairing it and so I lit candles and to this day I live with a complex and probably dangerous connecting string of extension cords.
The den officially became the healing center, my funds were nearly gone, and I got into the habit of explaining to everyone that I had not selected the elephant and palm tree border for the vaulted living room and attached dining room and that I intended to remove it just as soon as I could get my house to stop falling apart in front of me. Fortunately the clients to my healing center were so sick or so compassionate or both that they could have cared less about the wretched interior design.
I sallied forth. I did Manual Lymphatic Drainage until my fingers ached. I put folks into my Far Infrared Sauna. I administered Raindrop Therapy and Transformational Reiki and candled their ears. I lit candles, infused the air with flutes and chanting and incense. I listened and guided and taught and tried to heal. I did what I could with what I had and dissolved at the end of each day into my miniscule bathtub that had been refinished by guess who and was now peeling away in small chips of paint composed of God only knows what. A friend planted an Alberta Spruce in the front yard where the previous shrub had died. It died too.
And so I focused on Clare’s September wedding in Rome and spent damn near my last dime.
Mary Duggan is Co-Founder and President of the Duggan Sisters.
The Duggan Sisters cracked the code and created a natural deodorant that actually works: lifestinks. And that was just the beginning. We hope you will spend a few minutes exploring duggansisters.com to experience their spirited approach to wellness through their natural products and healing stories.
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