“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
-Chief Seattle, Duwamish (1780 - 1866)
It resonates…that threaded-together-sentence:
“Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
For me, that translates as such:
If I heal myself, it impacts the web of “me & mine”. Specifically stated, my actions directly affect and effect me, my children, by proxy their farther, our combined ancestors (those before and those to come), as well as those who choose to tangle themselves within my web.
Yes.
Them too.
*In all reality though, it is just one big CONNECTED web, chosen or not. But that often becomes the point of contention, so, I’ll leave it right there and let the asterisks speak for itself.
Today I got the best news possible.
In the end, I was right.
All I did was trust my gut.
I acted with integration of wisdom inherited and lessons learned.
I acted swiftly in multiple manners:
mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually and unapologetically.
I went into surgery in warrior mode.
I came out in healing mode.
When I woke for surgery, it was to a sky whitening thunder and lightning storm. My favorite!
When I woke from surgery, the one I had to fight for, including the surgeon, I woke to a fire alarm going off, two Reiki healers, some high frequency music, and was under the nourishment of one of my best friends, also a healer in her own right. I have known her since at least our fifth year of life. As little girls, we caught fireflies (aka lightning bugs) together in rolling fields of green on my grandfather’s land. At some point, it was just easier to call ourselves sisters. Now, after last week’s events, we prefer to say we are “Sisterectomys” followed by a gentle giggle.
I blinked my big eyes open a little at a time…to the shadows among the backlights then, the same way I did when:
And I do recall fondly, visualizing my first healer…
I was blinking my eyes open from a nap.
A cold sleep on a hot summer day.
I had been laying on my tummy. Only a slab of pressed wood and a yarn twisted barrier separated me from the concrete floor.
I saw my first healer, sideways, as I was peering down a dark tunnel. He was wearing a red shirt and his long black curls spilled out from under the netting of his blue snapback. He was shoveling. This side of the tunnel and that, keeping both sides of the lane free and clear. His posture, his arms, his work ethic, all very strong.
After all this time; collecting all of these visible bits and pieces, I can plainly see that he looks like a spitting image of my eldest son, exactly as we speak. It is phenomenal…the way moments in life warp, wrap, spin and reveal.
The scrape of a shovel switched with the swish of a broom. Plopping and patting. Stomping and mooing.
The smells.
Pungent.
I still love a whiff of a good-barnyard here and there. It brings upon a swell of envy. I release it. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I distract my waxing and waining covet for country land. I distract myself with a story I was told at least once or twice. One that states that I was named after his prized heifer. “She had a star; a diamond marked upon her forehead,” my mother would tell me. That was when she could tell me. I still don’t know it to be false or true.
I stood up and grasped the wooden rails that comprised the playpen’s boundaries. Not all but many, had sliding colored beads…perfect choking-hazard-sized-beads that, tiny tot digits and hands could push up and down; all around the posts, spinning and shifting, exploring laws and gravity, passing seconds into minutes, minutes into hours, counting the ways. My first abacus. My first adjustments. A calculation tool of my time that I can still easily use to help myself or others compute and comprehend!
I blinked at the light pulling through the small windows, cracked either in structure or to let in some “fresh air”…the kind of windows that you find in the bottom portion of a barn that lives on a slant of a hill...where I grew up. Slow, steady and still.
The dust and debris circled around, swirling like a mini tornado, vortexing here and there only to like magic, suddenly slip out of site...into the shadows...
where his daughter had just slept.
That’s me.
The Shadow Queen's Daughter.
Since I was a baby, my father took me to the barn with him;
when she wasn't able to care for me...due to her illness.
The playpen sat upon a concrete slab on the southwest side of the barn. A bit elevated. And when he couldn't care for me, the confinement of that wooden square apparatus - did.
I watched my father, my first healer, work that way many a times. Water into the trough, feed into the basket. Salt in the bins. Pitch forks sticking, sifting, sorting. Milking the cows, feeding me from the cup. Providing me sustenance to supplement what was within. *If you were born and raised on a farm, it was said that “this is good for your gut”. I know mine at the time appreciated the unadulterated milk that came straight from a mother, albeit not the obviously intended source. I was still, provided for.
I blinked my big eyes. I watched the elements. I fidgeted with a few beads. FINALLY, he took notice of me.
His eye caught mine. He set the shovel down...as he did, he cut the side of his arm on an ‘ole rusty nail poking out from the beam;
a pillar supporting some part of the overall structure.
The blood dripped down.
Bright red in flow. Cleansing the skin’s edges as it was all let go.
There was no emergency.
He reached up to the glowing and the glittering; the spider webs flowing among the barnscaped sky.
There I was, catching and cacheing all the things others did not see.
Those webs, they caught and held light. It was always obvious to me.
He stretched his healthy arms up, he batted a bit then pulled at a thread. It came down and a few others followed. That is how it is when you pull on a single strand of a web, that’s how this all ensues.
He rubbed it on that scrape of his...the one that was bleeding so.
Rinsed his hands under the hose, patted his pants ‘till they felt a bit *more dry.
He smiled at me.
His whiskers gave a familiar flick, it happens still due to the experience of an unexpected or undefined emotion, especially when he’s trying to figure it out. Most often though, during smiles;
the tell is over the top of his lip.
His eyes squinched in such a way.
He made a playful noise.
He then, picked me up. Up. Up!
It was good for our immunity too they say. To have used the God given coagulants to stimulate our own systems. This particular course of healing though, is *only for those of us who were born and raised on the farm. Or for those who grasp exactly what it was that we caught onto, working and living way out there…where things spun freely.
Despite the odds stacked against us and many years later, I graduated as “defiantly predicted”, from a doctorate level school. It felt good to know that I could have told my father right then and there exactly what bio-chemical-components did what… when he placed those silken threads over his wound. But I never have felt the need to. What matters is that he already, somehow knew.
Knew how to stop the bleeding right then and there.
Eventually, I learned too.
Although I no longer live near the barn nor would I rub cobwebs into my skin…(only ink will do),
this act of self healing is not too far from my kin.
Healing.
We know.
It comes mostly, from within.
With this pathology report back, reporting great news, Now’s The Time for me to let the *true healing begin!
Friends, I have some pre-recorded stuff and a few little time released posts regarding information about the MomMark Project on the way! In addition, watch for updated news about Team No Stigma and Teen Team No Stigma, a teen and adult mentor program that advocates and raises funds annually for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). But that is all I can commit to or guarantee at this time.
While sedated and resting in the hospital, I was gifted another light filled memory between my dozing; this one about my birth mother. Lesley.
Often times when she was well enough, my mother would tell me stories…and things. One story that I hold dear to my heart, a very transparent one at that…got me to this realization:
this unadulterated and impenetrable REMEMBERING of my mother that I had, while I blinked myself in and out of pure consciousness, brings me this choice:
Given that the opportunity to “actually” stay home and heal has been most “ironically” presented to me, I will officially and finally begin: a 7 week working exclusively from bed position! Never in all my pregnancies or post pregnancies have I been afforded the opportunity to take any type of leave from my “practice” or my uterus. So, Now’s The Time for that. Actual, true, bed rest and rehabilitative times. Please note that if you reach out and I am not quick to respond, it doesn’t mean I will not. I am just taking some much needed, and earned, self-care MEtime!
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