Monday, August 11, 2008

How My Daughter Found Her Way in Life

At twenty-five years old, my daughter Katy was lost. Dyslexia had kept her from performing well in school, and although she had a definite artistic streak, she did not feel any inclination to a definite career. She bounced from job to low-level job, found it hard to concentrate in any class she took, and had concluded that she was a failure.

Then a friend of mine, Katherine Henderson, who runs Market Street Books in Chapel Hill, invited me to bring her to a reading by Kathy Odenino. Kathy could help her, she said.

Fortunately, my older daughter Andrea was in town at the time, and because she has a great interest in alternative medicine, was enthusiastic about going. Katy came along because we both were going. She sat throught with her arms folded and grim look of “what a lot of rubbish” on her face. When Kathy O. had finished, I asked Katy if she would like to meet her. She shook her head decisively, “No way.” So her sister and I got in line to have a book signed, and Katy, not wanting to be left sitting on her own, stood with us.

And then a remarkable thing began to happen. As we came closer to Kathy O., it seemed that an atmosphere of what I can only call love flowed out of her, getting stronger the closer we came. At the same time, Katy seemed to gradually melt, until by the end of the evening, with everyone else gone, we three were deep in conversation with Kathy O. Taking my courage in my hands, I turned to Katy, and asked if she would like to try a treatment session. Nothing to be lost, I told her, and you do not even have to foot the bill. To my amazement, she agreed.

The next week we went down to Kathy O’s delightful office, which is full of warmth and love, and I left Katy there for a two hour session. Coming back, I found a transformed daughter. Her face was open. She was smiling, laughing, delighted with herself. She said, “I feel as though my head has been let out of prison. Now I can think about what I want to do with my life.

On the return drive, I told her that when she got home she should take a yellow pad and pencil, sit down on a chair, and draw a line down the center of the page. On one side she should write all the things she hated to do, on the other all the things she loved. Then, of the things she loved, she should think about how each one might be translated into a career.

I had seen Katy sit on a chair before, and watch TV, or stare blankly at the wall, but I had never in my life seen her sit and think. For two days she sat and thought. She slept and ate, of course, but in between she sat with concentration on her face. One the third day, she came looking for me. “I want to go to the Aveda Beauty School,” she said. “I want to be a cosmetologist.”

I wasted not a minute. Two days later we went to an open house at the Aveda school in Chapel Hill. Katy decided then and there it was for her. Now she is almost through the course, and has done extremely well, with grades in the ninety percent range the entire time. As an added blessing, I have had my own personal beautician and hairdresser for the last year or so, and never have I had better haircuts in my life.

When Katy started at Aveda, her father promised that if she stuck at it and did well, he would send her to take a post-grad course at the WatPo Traditional Medical and Massage School at the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. She will head off to Thailand in September, a young woman who has found her way in life because of Kathy Oddenino.

Joanna S.

Friday, August 1, 2008

NDP over Dinner

Listen to this impromptu clip from a Springtime dinner party. Kathy Oddenino explains why Research has always been a "love of her life," and why Neural Depolarization is a very special procedure which shows us why we can heal without harm.