Healing through time
This will be the start of a series that I will continue to share and discuss.
In October of 2020 I took a solo trip to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. I LOVE solo trips. It had been a while since I did a solo trip where I went somewhere for pleasure rather than work or to visit someone else. I chose the Smoky Mountains because I am in love with nature. We have a deep and intimate relationship that goes all the way back to my childhood. And since I live in Florida I wanted to go somewhere that had mountains, huge trees, streams, and seasons other than hot and hotter. I spent five days moving around to various campgrounds in the national park, sleeping in my camper van, occasionally sleeping in a tent. At each campground I meditated, journaled, hiked the trails and took time out to stop and just be.
Whenever I am out hiking a trail and I come across a body of water I always stop and give thanks. I honor the Indigenous tribes that originally inhabited that land and thank them for their stewardship. I thank the trees, rocks, water and any other pieces of nature for allowing me to come into their space and share my energy with them. I usually give something as offering whether it be a crystal from my collection, a dance or song that I feel compelled to share; anything that can go back to the Earth and replenish her energy.
On the second day of my trip I was on a beautiful hike that was part of the Appalachian Trail. Within minutes of my hike I felt this immense feeling of sadness. I could clearly see images of black folks moving through the woods, dogs at their feet, escaping bondage for the promise of freedom. I had the good fortune of being on a trail that was made for people to walk along but my ancestors had to move through the woods without any knowing of the terrain or people that they would encounter along their journey. It’s never lost on me the hardships that my ancestors and the ancestors of other black, brown and indigenous people have endured in the past and present times of this country.
After my hike I sat next to a stream and opened my energy to commune with Spirit. I immediately felt my grandmother who passed away over twenty years ago sitting by my side. My grandmother was an important woman in my life and we continue to have a special connection. She visits me in my dreams, I feel her presence in my pain and my joy, we laugh together, cook together. She is always with me. As I sat by the stream I remember the story that was told to me of how important it was to my grandmother for me to have her name included in mine. My mother acquiesced and my grandmother’s name became my middle name. Interestingly enough the same name also belongs to my great grandmother.
I never got the chance to ask my grandmother why she was so insistent on me carrying her and her mother’s name. The story was always told with some air of humor inside of it so I was never sure if ti was an accurate account. But on that day in October, as I sat by the stream and felt my grandmother’s presence, it all became crystal clear. My grandmother was seeing into the future. She knew that the names were portals reaching deep into a future that she would never see for herself. My grandmother and great grandmother were time travelers. Their lives were filled with intense heartache and pain that they were never fully able to transmute and heal from.
Both of them died from cancer. My great grandmother from ovarian cancer and my grandmother from breast and stomach cancer. Not too long after my grandmother passed I was able to make the connection between holding emotions in and the insidious spread of cancer throughout the body. I was also painfully aware of the fact that her cancer started in the breast, an area close to the heart and also used for nurturing and feeding babies. To then have the cancer move to her stomach where not only food is process but emotional and spiritual energy is as well. It’s also the seat of our personal power. Once I learned about the woman that my grandmother was and the difficult life she had it was no wonder to me that the illness that would eventually kill her affected the areas responsible for love and power; because she felt that she had neither of those.
By passing along her name to me she wasn’t passing her pain, she was ensuring her healing. Her deep intuition signaled to her that through me, all of the pain and trauma that she carried and was passed down to her from her mother would dissipate. How could she have known such a future without knowing me? How could she have seen so far into the future to know that I would take that torch and extinguish that fire? Cut those generational curses? Maybe she didn’t really know, but had some hope that I would do just that.