A Time for Healing - and Action

Though Hillary won the popular vote, the electoral college system awarded the presidency to Donald Trump. I won't bother attempting to tone down my dismay. I called in sick today because between not getting any sleep last night, and being stunned by this turn of events, I can't think straight. I'm a proponent of positive thinking and the value in choosing to focus on what's possible, and what's good, especially when it's most difficult to do so. But today I'm granting myself much needed space to grieve - not just for the loss of my candidate, but more so for what this "Republican" win means for my country, my family, and myself. I was not pleased (to say the least) when Bush won the highest office in the land twice in a row, but that feeling just doesn't compare to how I feel on this day. 

Still, the show must go on. These are the moments that Tarot was made for - when you are stumbling around in the dark, confused and unsure of your surroundings. So I shuffled my Zombie Tarot and pulled two cards:

Where does healing begin: 4 of Pentacles (rx)

A man sits in his supply room, surrounded by food stores, and cradling a rifle. His ears are plugged against the group of people banging on the boarded doors, seeking refuge from a coming onslaught of zombies. He is safe, and isn't willing to take the risk of opening his stronghold to invite others in. He doesn't want to share his resources with anyone else, either, otherwise he won't last as long as he might on his own. This card tells me that it's okay to take some space apart to process the significance of all that is happening around us, but it's also critical that we not shut ourselves off from each other as we move forward. Sharing with others who feel the same way that we do helps to weave strong bonds of solidarity; helps us remember that we're not experiencing this pain in a vacuum. We may question our community, and the fabric of our very society. We may look at our surroundings with new eyes. But ultimately we must connect with each other - and that includes those who see the world differently than we do. If we are going to heal as a nation, we have to forge bridges, even where we feel they've been burned.  And if they crumble, we have to be willing to rebuild them, or find a new path to understanding. This is not simple or straight forward, but it's necessary. 

How do we take the first step forward? Queen of Pentacles (rx)

This woman sits in a drawing room with tear-stained cheeks. She has no arms, and a chain reaches from a chair leg up under a blanket to close tightly around her neck. I am sure that many in our country feel momentarily powerless; at a loss for where to go from here. Indeed there have been many tears shed in the last 12 hours, and a deep sense of disenfranchisement. There are vibrant fears at the idea that racist police protocols such as "stop and frisk" may be revived, and that Muslims may be discriminated against through the application of a broad (and vague, and un-American) "Muslim ban" on immigrants. Furthermore, the opportunity to break the glass ceiling in terms of the ability of women to achieve the highest office in the land was hugely important to many people. Knowing that the new President-elect is a man who disparaged women in a variety of ways, who touched and kissed women against their will because he believed that his power and prestige awarded him such liberties - that has been hard to swallow. Awareness that women's health issues may come under fire, and that marriage equality for all humans may be at risk, is high in the minds of a large segment of America's population. Many discuss the possibility of relocating overseas, or to a neighboring country more friendly to progressive ideologies. But is that the best way? At some point we have to recognize that we do have a voice, and there are contexts in which our advocacy is still needed - perhaps more now than ever before. Rather than resigning ourselves to a new order, or giving up on our country, it may be just the right time to get our hands dirty. We are in fact not powerless. 

Find a cause and dedicate yourself to it. Be selfless, and show kindness to strangers. Speak up when you witness bigotry in action. Ally yourself with legislators in your area that are fighting for you. Advocate for immigrants and refugees. Bring cross-cultural trainings to your workplace. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. Remember that one person can make a difference. 

Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter is not a movement only relevant to law enforcement; at its core it forces all people to consider inconsistencies and inequalities in the way black citizens are treated by others, generally due to unfair and deeply ingrained assumptions, biases, and fears (both acknowledged and unconscious). There is added pressure on law enforcement to take special care with this precisely because they are tasked with protecting all citizens, and thus they hold a particularly potent – and potentially deadly - sort of power over others. Black Lives Matter is about shining a bright light on the truth of inequality in our country so that it can be recognized for what it is, which is the first step in the healing process.

In my experience, many of the people who use terms like “playing the race card,” “All Lives Matter,” and “liberal agenda,” fundamentally misunderstand - and at worst diligently refuse to understand - the reality of racism as it manifests in our society.

Racism is one of the greatest banes of our existence. The worst part is that so much of it is subtle, and unless experienced or witnessed first-hand, many instances can be - and often are - easily brushed off (by those fortunate enough not to have to face it every day) as exaggeration, misunderstandings; treated with skepticism; taken with a grain or two of salt. The truth is that racism is real, it is vibrant, it is pervasive, and it is easily fed. Each one of us is charged with a sacred responsibility to acknowledge it, understand it, and do something about it.

If you don’t know, don’t understand, don’t see it or feel it, that’s okay. But rather than criticize or minimize the importance of this movement, challenge yourself to ask questions. If you’re willing to consider other perspectives, you might be quite surprised to realize how deeply the roots of prejudice have entangled themselves within so many contexts and domains of our lives. It will do so much more for the well-being of our country to be willing to compassionately consider other realities, as opposed to insisting that there is no problem at all.

Guest Post: To Be Loved Is to Be Given Life

Today I'm featuring a guest post written by none other than my mother, Cecilia Skidmore: licensed counselor, grief and change expert, former radio host, and MBTI administrator (to say very little!). To read a bit more about her click here, and to view her blog click here.

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"TO BE LOVED IS TO BE GIVEN LIFE" - those words were written years ago by the artist wife of my minister and he used them as a Christmas card the year following her death. To be loved is to be given life -odd words for a memorial for someone who has died. What does that mean? Given life...

In our society, in relatively recent times, we avoid mention of death. We left the armbands behind, left the wakes held at home behind, left the formal mourning periods behind. Death is a spectre, just like on Halloween, hovering in the shadows of our homes, our lives, our minds, and we use a great deal of energy trying to find a way to shut the door on those shadows and seal them off forever.
When our childrens' pets die, we buy another. The illusion is that life is replaceable, that pain can be erased in the blink of an eye with a new puppy. When our parents die, we keep our children home from the funeral. We keep our tears and pain inside, so that they (and we) won't have to experience that so uncomfortable emotion, despair. It feels so out of control and so intense that we fear we might frighten the children. So, while we can't replace Grandma with a new puppy, we can act as if it's ok that she died. We might even pretend she's "away" or "asleep," common euphemisms for the word "dead." We can not talk about her; we can fill the space she had in our lives and in our homes with other people or more work - or a new car. Or a new love. The hole is not only a physical one (she's not in that chair anymore) but a spiritual one and a psychological one- and we race around desperately trying to fill it with everything and anything except the few things we really need.

Golden Tarot - L. Dean

We need a light to shine on those dark spaces in our psyches where death lurks. We need to look death square in the face--and when we do, we find that death looks very familiar. It looks like us. It looks like our loves and our hopes, but also like our failures and lost dreams. It looks final, though - like we don't get another chance. Perhaps that scares us the most. And perhaps it should. We need to say and do important things now - not after they are no longer here.

We need education. Sit with someone who is dying, as I have done at Hospice. When you spend time with a dying person, you find they are Person first. Not a spectre. They live, often better than before. They find great pleasure in people, in children, in animals. They still find joy in reading, in smelling fresh cut grass, in watching the birds on a snow-covered pine. They are thoughtful and less concerned with things tangible - like money or possessions, except as a legacy they might be leaving a loved one. But they are very real, very human - very alive.

5 of Water - Gaian Tarot
Joanna Powell Colbert

We need to ponder what comes after death. (I firmly believe in reincarnation until someone I love dies - then the thought of them embarking on a new life when I've just arrived in Heaven seems so sad - so I revert to the safety of clouds and harps.) We need to read books, talk about it with friends, and weigh what we learn. A firm belief in something greater than ourselves, or a firm belief in the natural cycles of life and death on earth can be comforting.

We need to learn about grieving as well. It helps to have a belief about life beyond death - but usually that's not our biggest concern when a loved one dies. An incredible amount of the pain of grieving comes not from worry about where they are, but from the fact that they are not here with us. Grief can be an emotional, psychological and physical maelstrom. So much is unanticipated, unexpected. We experience a gnawing in our guts, a weariness in our bones, a breaking of our hearts. When my mother died, some thirty years ago, I wrote a poem:

"This morning when I woke up, I found my heart had been ripped from my body....What I want to know is... why am I still alive?"

We become forgetful, losing moments, hours, names, faces, appointments. We see things: the look of our beloved on a stranger in the hardware store - or visions that are so real, but impossible to explain.

We hear voices - or we are visited in our dreams.

We remember and remember and remember - with others, on paper, in our daydreams and our night dreams. We relive so many moments, trying to keep them alive and here with us. We are so afraid to forget.

Vision Quest Tarot

And people, other loving, fearful people try to push us forward, to get us (and themselves) away from the pain. So gradually we have our lost loved ones in our lives (so it doesn't hurt) and we gradually talk less about our beloved - so it doesn't hurt. But the hurt comes from a deep would and deep wounds take a long time to heal.

So we need to know about grieving and how long it will take. Hiding from the spectres of death and grieving leave us unprotected from the turmoil they bring. If we know, we can take care of our needs, learn to share our pain and not be overwhelmed. Grief happens all our lives, if not from death, then from divorce, or job loss, or moves, or aging. The grief experience is the same, and it carries compound interest from all the others before it. The more we know, the more we can help ourselves and our children.

At last we can take the time and energy to begin to understand who we are now - after.

When someone dies, they are transformed. Some faiths believe our souls go to a heaven of clouds and harps where we live happily ever after. Some believe literally that God's house has many mansions where we will all go,, and other that only they will receive everlasting life. Some believe in a seemingly endless cycle of life, learning, death and rebirth until we reach oneness with God. People who don't believe in a God or afterlife acknowledge that at least the body becomes part of the earth again, fertilizer, renewing other life.

The reality is, when someone dies, they are transformed - whatever you pay attention to.

Earthbound Oracle

But so are we - we who are left behind. The person we were when our beloved was alive changes - in sometimes very subtle, sometimes profound ways - always viscerally. So when the time for mourning and grieving has passed, when we awake to a new morning, free of the deep pain, we are newborn.

We are a fresh creation.

But we have not left our beloved behind. We have not forgotten. If death is like a shedding of our outer skin, a metamorphosis, grieving and healing from grief is like communion - an absorption into our living flesh, our changing psyche, our evolving spirit - of the essence of our beloved.

It's hard to understand - ask someone who has grieved. Those parts we thought were gone forever have now become part of us. And with that transplant comes a new human being - broken, but stronger at the broken places, as Hemingway said. Malleable, but firm, solid and real, but transcendent. All those cliches about dawn after darkness, spring following winter - are real, true.

They are true because love and grief are inextricably bound. We don't grieve what we never loved. We grieve only those things or people who have enriched our lives and given it meaning. When we love deeply, we grieve deeply. But we do not forget. And in our remembering we keep our loved one alive.

To be loved is to be given life.

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Ashé

In The Empress's Earthy Embrace

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that during my vacation I became very aware of something that has always been true: that I feel calm, at ease, nourished and filled by nature and my connection to the earth.

When I was a child I spent countless hours alone in the forest picking wild raspberries, listening to the wind rustle the maple and oaks leaves, building living huts (where saplings are used for a shelter, but are not cut down). I saw deer, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits, and I'll never forget once when a red fox sprinted past me - they are elusive and beautiful creatures. I still have a red hawk feather that I found while picking through the underbrush in a wild wood. I would spend time along the river where I would see raccoon prints in the sandy shore. I would dream of having the opportunity to live there full-time.

Wildwood Tarot - W. Worthington

It's funny how growing up and becoming more deeply enmeshed in society can make those voyages into the wild somewhat more challenging. Not that they cease, just that our modern society as a whole has been structured in such a way that cities have become "cement jungles" where access to raw nature is limited, at best. You must be very intentional about being out in the natural environment...or else live in the countryside!

For years I worked in the center of a city doing neighborhood organizing in underserved communities. Even now, as a teacher, I live in an urban, high-technology environment and am constantly exasperated by the quantity of cars I must navigate through each day, the hurried drivers, and the almost-daily accidents that dot the city. My back yard provides a measure of relief. I have sage, rosemary, lavender, lemon balm, and sweet mint growing in my little garden. We have a maple tree and a towering palm, and an abundance of flowering bushes such as gardenia and hibiscus. Butterflies and lizards abound, as well as the occasional snake and mole. Each morning during the summer I watch the dawn sunlight filter through the vines at the border of our property, which always reminds me of a magical door opening. In early winter I sit outside in front of the fire pit with a hot cup of coffee and welcome in the new year.

Vision Quest Tarot

However there were so many moments during our recent cross-country drive, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, where we passed stretches of deep forest - the kind of nature that I'm used to (as opposed to the central Florida climate which is fairly different!), that I grew up with, that always calls to me on a visceral level. My soul always wants to rush out of the car window and roam through those woods and rolling hills. In the far north of Michigan where we have a family-owned cabin house I realized just how much I value that land as a place of retreat. There are wild grasses and wildflowers, red pines and white oaks, ice cold rivers and lakes, deer and elk. And it's all at my fingertips when I'm there. Raw, wild, untouched nature is waiting for me when I simply step over the threshold of the back door.

Navigators Tarot of the Mystic SEA

Over the past month or more I've been drawing the Empress quite a lot, and I sense her energy nourishing and nurturing me, enveloping me in a comforting, earthy embrace. Being aware of how important nature is to my well-being (all humans' well-being, to be sincere) has allowed me to be more intentional about the way in which I manage my feelings, including stress. Sitting outside and inhaling the breeze, observing the movements of animals and insects, or noticing the growth of our two backyard pineapples becomes a way to channel out dis-ease, and invite in healing and sensuality. I may not always have ready access to the raw wild, but the Empress is all around us, even here in the city. She is present under our feet, and her energy is accessible through the tiles and cement and floorboards that support the structures in which we live. When I feel most oppressed, I simply close my eyes and feel roots sprouting from my feet and reaching down deep into the ground. The Empress, the Goddess, Mother Earth, provides nature-energy like food that sustains me.

Easter Tidings: A Call for Healing

Today is Easter. While not all celebrate it, I find that most holidays have something positive to offer everyone, if we take the time to look. For today I decided to pull a card or two on the following question:

"What is the essence of Easter time?"

I drew a single card from the Wildwood Tarot, and an additional card from the Halloween Oracle:

7 of Stones - Owl

Wildwood Tarot (W. Worthington, M. Ryan, J. Matthews)
Halloween Oracle (S. Demarco, J. Manton)

I found it to be an interesting draw, in part because both cards have some important elements in common. Both call us to pause a moment, to reflect on what is happening in our lives, so that our responses, decisions, and path forward will be a product of our wisest, most thoughtful selves, rather than our impulses.

An important element of the Wildwood 7 of Stones is that of healing and forgiveness. What weight of regret, sorrow or pain are you carrying in your heart and soul, and how can you accept it and let it go so that you may become a happier, healthier person? This card highlights the importance of making time in your life for quiet reflection and careful consideration; making space to nurture yourself.

The owl is often seen in the Justice card in the Tarot, as associated with Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war. The owl asks you to detach yourself from your emotional reactions and responses, and view your circumstances with an objective eye. You are far harder on yourself than you would be on others. Owl asks you to be as fair with yourself as you are with those you relate to; honor your experiences for the wisdom they've given you, add the notches to your belt, and then keep walking on.

Where are you now? Where do you want to be? What road(s) will take you there?

These cards resonate well with Easter's sense of renewal. Springtime as a whole is a time of shedding our old skins and embracing fresh perspectives, mindsets, and possibilities. Many households will throw windows ajar to allow the brisk breeze to whisk stale, inside air out and away, as "spring cleaning" ensues - out with the old, in with the new. Easter is a wonderful time for inner spring cleaning as well - what's holding you back? What burdens are pulling you down? What "should haves" are still buzzing around your head?

Today is a great day to commit yourself to personal wisdom, healing and renewal.