- Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

‘Without Accountability and Justice for their death… I will light a candle every year to remember them, so their lives were not in vain.’ Mary said.

‘There is no Forgiveness without Justice. Without Justice there is no Healing and therefore no Reconciliation’.

7th April 2011.

My new career change as a complementary therapist was inspired by my mother.

My informal introduction to massage and herbal remedies began, I confess, somewhat less happily. I was in my early teens when my mother used to ask me to accompany her to the forest to fetch local herbs. I would follow her around, listening to her go on and on about the names, the curative properties of different herbs. “Today you don’t understand the importance of what you’re doing,” she would tell me, “but one day you will have a use for all this in your life”.

My mother was a registered midwife and ran her own private clinic, but it did not generate enough money to support us. As a single parent bringing up ten children, she was often stressed to breaking point. On weekends when I was not going to school, she would lie on a comfortable African mat, and call me or my siblings to massage her head. We did that in turns. I hated missing playing with local children to give her the head massage, nonetheless I never complained.

After the massage mother would be in a good mood, she would burst into a song and we would dance together all evening. That’s the only time she would most likely listen to my requests without telling me, we couldn’t afford to buy this or that. Those were the happiest moments for my mother.

Years later, in 2009, after dedicating my life to running Survivors Fund (SURF) – a charity I founded to give a voice and practical support to survivors of the Rwandan genocide, I stepped down as director. For 15 years my natural tendency had been to avoid thinking about the painful memories of genocide. I suppressed them and hoped that they would go away. But, they didn’t.

It was only when I left SURF that the enormity of the memories became apparent. I was slowly sinking under my own weight. On the surface everything was alright, but I spent many nights locked away alone, distressed, anxious, and grieving for my family. Not even my husband would stand the changes I was going through. I was my mother’s daughter, the strong one, the fighter. He would tell me to pull myself together. He would bring newspapers home and offer to help me find another job. He wanted our life back again, but I didn’t know how. I did not know where to turn, everyone seeing me as a tower of strength. But the only strength in me was driven by empathy, and the pain of genocide was consuming me.

I began writing my memories down, to make sense of the anxiety, grief, and total chaos in my head. I waited for my family to go to sleep and cried all night alone. I remembered my mother; times she was stressed and unable to cope. But there was no one to give me a head massage. I spent days living in my head, speaking to myself. Flashbacks of survivor’s stories, once safely locked away in my memory, began filling my head. Skeletons and the remains still displayed in churches and schools that I had come to know would speak to me. I was leaving SURF without giving them a decent burial; the world outside, including survivors, blaming me for everything that ever happened to them.

But carrying other people’s pain, or fighting back, was not an option anymore. I had lost the fire in me. The life of high stress, high speed, high burn out, had caught up with me.

My mother made me aware of the value of massage when I was a teenager so I suppose this became my focal point, my return to normality. Knowing how it feels to nearly lose your mind, I felt a need to find an intervention that could benefit survivors, because I know how they felt. I took up the opportunity to become a visiting scholar at the Wagner School at New York University to research more on different methods of dealing with intrusive memories.

I was then able to write every letter, word, line, paragraph of my book, You Alone May Live, from my heart, from my personal experiences. By the time the book was published, I had no doubt my life was changing. I was my mother’s daughter. I was strong and able to face the world again, to look beyond my physical condition, to have a balanced body, mind and soul. I am relieved I made the change in my life.

I completed studies in Complementary Therapy in 2011. I am now a qualified practitioner of Aromatherapy and Oriental Medicine, Aromatic Acupressure and Meridian Massage; Spinal Reflexology and Foot / Hand Reflexology.

My practice focuses on clients with mental health issues, stress, anxiety, worry and depression. I am now working on utilising this new skill set to benefit Rwandan survivors, who continue to deal with the effects of the genocide, in particular PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as well as the intergenerational inheritance of trauma now experienced by children born and raised by survivors.

Mary said on her nomination, ” I am honoured to join a great organisation, whose work has made a difference to millions of people across the world.”

Aromatic Acupressure / Meridian Massage uses essential oils carefully selected for its therapeutic properties to stimulate the routes or pathways through which the energy (Qi) travels around the body. Rather than thinking of the channels as fixed physical constructs (e.g.blood circulation system), the meridians can be thought of as continuous flowing rivers of energy subject to physiological and emotional influence.

Acu points may be used to influence locally or in the wider view to balance / harmonise the channel as a whole or to influence corresponding parts of the physical body off-site.

Mary stressed that genocide did not stop when the killing ended. It continues today. With no justice and accountability for genocide, a culture of impunity has become a way of life in Rwanda.

Under the tutelage of an International renown Expert of Chinese Medicine, Gabriel Mojay, the Institute Principle, Mary has gained an understanding of client’s symptoms, by looking at the underlying imbalance they often spring from.

The Oriental Medicine focuses on a pattern of energetic disharmony or an imbalance of the body’s vital energy. Understanding how essential oils can help to correct these disharmonies allows us to treat the root of the client symptoms, taking a holistic approach to treating the body, Mind and Spirit.

Mary is a member of the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists (IFPA), and holds a title of MIFPA

The sore of your foot represents a vital map of your body, as a matter of fact; there are over 7000 nerve endings in your feet that corresponds to every organ and system in your body. These nerve endings are called Reflexes, and Reflexology is a technique of stimulating of these nerve endings to elicit natural healing response from your nervous system.

Today, stress statistics are alarming; up to 70% of modern disease have a stress related background.

• Around 75% of adults suffer with back pain at some time during their lifetime.
• It is the number one cause of absence from work. Resulting in 120 million lost working days in any one year.
• Strains and sprains of the lumber due to everyday activity cause 5% of back pain

However, this may not be the case it could also indicate that internal organs maybe the underlying cause, this is when Spinal Reflexology helps, to indentify referred pain.

The nerve roots extend out in between the vertebrae and reaches parts of the body. Any type of compression on these nerves can cause interference in neural pathways which can cause the organs not to function properly. This could mean if someone has spinal disorders like scoliosis; blocked blood supply; tumour; or compression by a fracture it will compress the spinal nerve root and have a detrimental effect on the organ or part of the body, which it serves.

Spinal Reflexology helps to identify which specific vertebrae is causing the problem

She was subsequently welcomed as a recognized full member of ‘The Guild of Holistic Therapists.’

Mary is eligible to use the designated titles of MGHT