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On September 6, 1989, after her first acupuncture session
with The Princess of Wales, Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo wrote in
her diary: "Diana has a mission in the world to help
humanity." It was Oonagh, through her own experiences
in Calcutta, who would soon introduce Diana to the work of
Mother Theresa. Neither could have fathomed that 8 years later
to the day, Mother Theresa would have just passed and the
world would be transfixed watching Diana’s funeral.
Hard to believe, but August 31 2002 marks the 5th anniversary
of Diana’s shocking death.
In her inspiring memoir, The Voice of Silence, former
nun, midwife, and acupuncturist, Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo, 73,
tells of her childhood in Ireland, her training in Chinese
medicine, her own brush with death, miraculous recovery, leaving
the convent, getting married, and her work with Princess Diana,
and Edward VIII, better known as The Duke of Windsor.
I recently spoke with Oonagh, whom I’ve met in London
through our mutual friend, astrologer Debbie Frank. Oonagh
is an extraordinary woman, a born healer. She’s lived
life on her own terms and has elements of Dr. Quinn Medicine
Woman and Maria Von Trapp. She speaks confidently with an
engaging Irish brogue, and has always known that her role
was to serve and to heal. I’ve personally levitated off
the table after being "needled" by her.
I asked about her first meeting with the Princess:
"Diana had heard of my connection to the Duke and Duchess
of Windsor and asked that I see her. When I arrived, she was
waiting for me in her white toweling and bare feet. She was
not in good health, her fingers and toes were blue-ish, and
the whole landscape of the body was in depletion."
According to Oonagh, much of Diana’s misunderstood emotional
condition was due to an untreated post-natal depression. As
a matter of fact, that’s how this book came to be.
"The first idea was to write a philosophy of mothers
and babies", Oonagh says. "The first breath is so
important and it’s essential that we’re not cut
cruelly and unconsciously from the umbilical chord."
"Being a midwife, I have always been observing and interested
in birth, and I‘ve seen many times, when a child suffers
from the trauma of a speedy separation from the womb. It’s
dangerous, and sometimes leaves them severely handicapped."
She is emphatic in her protocol for how delivery should take
place and more so about the need for at least six weeks of
tender care for new mothers after birth to avoid post- natal
depression, and a subsequent lifetime of imbalance.
Inevitably, the issue of Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles
came up. Oonagh was discreet, "We’re talking about
love, and I don’t want to point the finger of blame at
anybody. Diana loved Charles, but what she didn’t realize
was that at the time of their engagement and marriage, Charles,
was suffering from a broken heart too. He had loved Camilla
and when he returned from his service on the high seas, Camilla
was married. Both were victims with broken hearts, misunderstood,
and had more in common than either knew."
The sessions between Oonagh and the Princess occurred regularly.
She encouraged the Princess to "learn to look people
in the eye, and to have confidence in her own worth."
Diana was a deeply spiritual person, as was evident in her
being the first royal to shake hands with lepers without wearing
gloves. It is a little known fact, that Diana’s great,
great, great uncle was a saintly Anglican Priest, Ignatius
Spencer, committed to the unification of all Christian Churches.
Even Prince William requested of his mom to meet with Oonagh.
"He was 7 or 8 at the time, and when he arrived without
having been here before, he knew exactly where to go, it was
extraordinary. He asked if I could put a pin in him that would
make him sleep and wake up the next morning at 9AM, and it
worked." "He was psychic himself and he set the
time."
In Paris, she tended to The Duke of Windsor during the last
3 months of his life and was present at his death in May 1972.
"He was generous in his affection and loved his Duchess
so. His deepest wound was the Royal family’s treatment
of her and the withholding of the HRH title". "I
was a witness to their great love", Oonagh adds, "His
eyes would light up like a young lover when he’d hear
her footsteps down the corridor."
Sacrifice and the need for love seem to be a reoccurring theme
in the royal family. "The Duke, Diana, and William are
all Cancerian, the sensitive sign of the zodiac that requires
and gives tenderness and nurturing’, Oonagh points out.
(Camilla is Cancerian too.)
Prophetically, Diana said to Oonagh soon after they met, "If
anything should happen to me, would you please tell the world
who I really was, and not the person who they made me out
to be."
Says Oonagh: "She had the innocence of a child, she didn’t
have the experience and thought everyone was like herself.
She believed people were trustworthy and that she could say
things to them. But most didn’t understand the spiritual
language she had to offer."
Oonagh's philosophy: "The secret of unhappiness lies
in trying to please everybody. It is a moral impossibility
and compromises our true selves."
Regarding Diana's mission in the world: Oonagh adds: "Diana,
I believe, was born to change the world and roll back the
shutters of a rigid and distant monarchy."
Aye, that she did.
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