I'm in line in Kroger, talking on the phone to my sister Dora. She's
actually the one doing the talking, doing her Wise Woman Talk: don't
worry about pleasing everyone. You can't make everyone happy. Just do
the next right, good thing.
When I hang up, I look at the
woman behind me in line and say, "I love my sister." She chokes up.
"Oh I love my sister too except she had an aneurism yesterday. She's ok
now, she's home. Her husband took her to the hospital because she had
such a bad headache. We think it's from flying all the time"
My
stomach drops and I hug her and let her talk. I tell her I'll pray for
her sisters healing. She thanks me and tells me more. They're keeping
it from their mother because it's her birthday, but the mother knows
anyway. "She called me last night and asked if everything with Kelly is
OK because she had a feeling something was wrong."
I tell her simple things. Don't lie to your mother. Keep praying.
I
leave and drive to the bank to meet my other sister Cheryl, who makes
me laugh and then walks into the bank to do her business. I call Dora
back to tell her about the woman I just spoke with in Kroger and am
amazed (sort of) to see that sad sister enter into the bank behind
Cheryl.
So I follow them both and introduce my new friend
to my other sister, "See?" I tell her. "There are three of us Gholson
sisters and you're today you're surrounded by Magic Sister Power and
everything is going to be just fine." We hold hands. She looks
exhausted and thankful. When we go back outside, she drives by and rolls
down her window to shout, "I just talked to her husband and she's doing
fine. Her name is Kelly and thank you for your prayers." I love that.
Now
Cheryl and I go into Bells Diner to eat spicy spicy Korean food.
After we order, three sisters come in with three babies-sleepy, blond
cherubs about a year old.. They sit behind us and tell the waitress that
the babies are triplets. One of the sisters had triplets and now they
were all taking them on an outing.
From behind my seat
one baby places her pudgy, fresh arm near my neck. I turn to see her
unblinking blue eyes. Cheryl and I smile with her, whispering prayers
across generations.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Poison and Healing
My ongoing histamine reaction just won't go away. I chewed two Benadryl earlier in order to stop the swelling in my lips and neck, I think that's bad, This has been going on for years.
I used to think I'm allergic to everything but today I realized I'm not. We're just poisoning ourselves. Poison is everywhere; it's in our food, medicine, earth, water and air. I know it, hell everybody knows it. So why am I confused and cheesed off that my body is not functioning properly? Why am I surprised?
Toxic thoughts flood my system as well. War is hell.
I call Dora. I can hear her navigating her big orange truck through the tiny coral street of Key West as she listens. She says Yep when I talk about how we've poisoned ourselves. And she says Oh Yeah when I tell her I better get my thoughts right, that the first step in healing myself is to get back to praying every morning, before my children get up, to cleanse my thoughts of negativity because right now I feel stuck and swollen and desperate and afraid.
When I go outside first thing in the morning and pray, everything is better. The veil lifts between our world and the Spirit world. Shimmers.
Why do I not do this, I ask her. Why do I not take care of myself?
Our relationship with ourselves just like our relationships with other people, she says. We have to work on it every day, like we work on our relationships with everybody else but yeah, if i forget to do it, everything gets really fuzzy and out of focus. Life gets blurry around the edge if I"m not doing what I need to do to take care of myself.
She yells Hi! out her truck window to someone on the street. I wonder if that person knows how lucky they are to live on the little island and be able to see her drive by.
I need to constantly work at connecting, grounding myself into the earth she says, and then I say, 'oh yeah, that's right. I have this body.' But even then, sometimes I'm chemically, hormonally in a place where even that doesn't make everything all better.
Dora is clearly further along than I am, and not by accident. She's been working hard at creating the exact kind of life she wants. She makes a living doing what she loves, is deeply committed to organic, vegetarian foods, sustainable living and healing. She inspires me. I miss her horribly.
I know I have to cleanse my thoughts, cleanse my body, heal myself. My Elders say it is the our job as women to heal ourselves, to heal our family, then our community and finally help the living, breathing Earth heal herself. Today I'm still stuck at healing myself.
Dora is leaps and bounds ahead of me. I'm a baby, working so hard to toddle to me feet while she grows weary of flying.
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