A Knife as a Keepsake

 

Dream of the Endless by Colleen Doran with colours by Shane M. Bailey

I dreamed about Rob and Katie and somehow ending up inside their house. Rob is really upset about something, but I'm not sure what. He is complaining to Katie about some issue. There was more to this dream but I can no longer remember.

In a different dream, I ended up at some "cousin's" house. It is no cousin I know in real life. It feels I am much younger in the dream than in real life and the cousins are close to my age. There were two cousins and both were male. The older one was closest to my age. I wandered into some party where the older cousin was with some other kids. He sees me and is drawn to me. Everyone is wondering who I am and then the scene jumps.

Now I am at this cousin's house and apparently he has died somehow. I think it was an accidental death but he was quite young when it happened. The mother, my aunt, is quite pretty with curly shoulder length blonde hair parted in the middle. She greets me warmly and we are in her dead son's room. She is telling me about the first time her son, Frankie, met me and how he had such a crush on me. We hadn't grown up near each other, so it was confusing to him because I didn't feel like family in the same sense as family who grow up knowing their cousins. She said, "He was so attracted to you and didn't understand why he couldn't be with you. He was so drawn to you even after I tried to explain to him why and how babies from two first cousins often come out with genetic issues." I remember thinking that I was also attracted to Frankie but understood that first cousins being together wasn't a good idea.

I ended up laying in his bed for awhile, sleeping. I couldn't seem to wake myself up when the younger brother was trying to talk to me.

I remember a weird scene where I felt a pain at the bottom of my center breastbone where the bone stops. I looked down and saw something under the skin. It turned out it was a deflated white balloon and had somehow entered my body and migrated into that location. I worked to see if I could shift it under the skin and move it somewhere else. Somehow the skin seemed to thin and the balloon just came out.

I was getting ready to leave and I looked around Frankie's room. It was still exactly how he left it when he died. I thought how it kind of wanted to take something of his as a keepsake, but didn't know if I should. I could feel myself coming out of the dream. I lingered in the in-between thinking about Frankie. I saw myself pick of a medium sized folding knife from his desk and take it with me. I woke up at that point.

November 11, 2021

I Swallow the Truth

Embrace by Chie Yoshii

As I was trying to go back to sleep, I heard, "I swallow the truth" and then, as I was processing this, I heard something like, "it's deep, deep inside my mouth" and was seeing an unusual depth inside my mouth. To swallow something seems to indicate a belief in something that is true and seeing a deep, deep mouth suggests someone who speaks with a lot of depth. I never could go back to sleep so ended up getting up after only about 4.5 hours of sleep.

November 10, 2021

How Did It Come To This?

Art by HaDong Song

I came back here, to my mother's nest, thinking I would be creating cherished last memories with her for me and my daughter, but it has turned into something ugly and uncomfortable. 

I listen to her say things like "so that is what went wrong with you" in regard to my sense of humor and finding things funny that she thinks are just vulgar or stupid when I tell her that my exposure to others outside of the family household influenced my sense of humor.

Fart humor...

...she doesn't get it and doesn't think it is funny. My daughter and I laugh and jest with each other a lot and, apparently, my mother finds it gross and offensive.

It is a well known fact that farts are funny!

She has no sense of humor, that has become clear, but I have this memory of someone who used to be able to laugh. Who is this woman that has replaced her? Who is this woman that thinks I am insane, disapproves of my parenting choices and can't see and cherish who I have become no matter how many times I have tried to show her. She loves poetry but never seems to acknowledge that I write beautiful poetry. I write and grow and develop but she can't grasp the value or understand the content. 

My 77-year-old mother is continually at odds with my 13-year-old daughter and often seems to pick fights with her and hold grudges. She doesn't understand her and wants to put her in a box and make her behave a certain way. My daughter refuses to be contained in a box with her mouth sewn closed and her light snuffed out. She is fierce and wild and I like that about her. My mother has repeatedly shown the opposite of support towards her grandchild with backhanded put downs and negative predictions about who she will become one day. 

I've listened to my mother call my daughter a "13-year-old snot nosed brat" and threaten to buy a plane ticket tomorrow to send her home to her father because she "wants to get rid of her". I often end up refereeing and trying to explain how inappropriate my mom is being. 

"You are 77!! You are the grown up and supposed to be the example!" I tell her in my frustration.

But on my walks with my daughter, I let her know she has room to not be so sharp and antagonistic with her grandmother. I say, "You have to try harder to curb some of your prickly side. You have to be the bigger person and choose to not escalate the fight because she isn't going to."

Sometimes during some shitty thing my mother is saying to me I exclaim internally, "Who the fuck are you?!! How did I come from your body?!!"

I thought this time spent with her would make us all closer and more attached, but it has done the opposite. Any lingering attachments I felt for her from childhood have dropped away with every time she shows me she doesn't see me or know me or value me...not in the way I know, see and value myself.  Instead she pecks at me like a vulture on a corpse. The symbolism of the vultures that always fly overhead in the skies here is not lost on me. I miss the eagles of the Pacific Northwest.

Because of this current turn of events and situation, I have been able to see so clearly where some of my hurdles have come from that I have been working on overcoming, so I am grateful for that, but I feel ready to move away from the toxicity that dwells within my mother. It was always there, I just couldn't see it before. I romanticized a lot about her when I couldn't see her everyday, I guess. 

I know that when I finally leave here, I will probably never see her again and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with leaving people behind who will never see the brightness of my soul or the enormity of my value. I'm okay with letting go of old attachments that no longer serve the highest good for the me I am becoming. 

I want my daughter to feel seen, heard, valued, supported and nurtured. I don't want her to fade into the back drop of barely existing. I want her to stay wild and free and feel like anything is possible if you believe.

Rising Like the Sun

Bernard Plossu

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of

Different Parts of Self

It is a strange thing to be more consciously aware of when the feminine part of me takes the back seat in this vehicle we call "Oktobre". I can feel her sitting back there watching and patiently waiting while this male aspect pushes forward with what he feels needs to be done right now. 

Sometimes she reaches over the seat and holds the wheel briefly so she can fill his cup. He has work to do so she lets him drive, but she is still there, quietly supporting him. 

She loves him and he loves her. Together they are a pretty great team.

A Different Reality

Hope Comforting Love in Bondage by Sidney Harold Meteyard (1868-1947)

I remember a bit of dream where K was shooting arrows at some people  walking by. I was one of the people he was shooting at and didn't understand why. I remember seeing a person shot in the back with arrows who looked dead on the ground.

I remember a scene where I found this little creature that was sort of guinea-pig-like but had no fur that had been dressed in some sort of hard shell by one of the kids and he had been given an egg shaped thing that was being held together with sticky candy. Because of what he was wearing and holding, he was unable to eat. So I removed the egg from his hands, removed the hard plastic shell and let him wander away to go eat with some of the other pets they had. They were allowed to roam free. For some reason, he sort of had a cube shape that was a result of the hard shell having been in place so long but considered it would eventually smooth out.

Later I dreamed I was back at J and K's and the kids were young teens at first. But then I see them morph into very young kids and they were all sitting on the couch. I felt confused and disoriented by this. 

I'm seeing myself and my figure is quite slim, unlike what I usually am. J is introducing herself to me. Apparently she knows that the inner me at that moment is from a different reality and I was just visiting. She is saying that in this reality that my name is Summer. 

Then she sits and pauses like she is hearing something and she is saying, "River is here and he is talking to me. Just a minute." Then she continues, "You think that the person you have been connecting with is River but he is lying, his name is actually Erwin." 

In my head I was seeing some guy that I was spending time with and trying to understand why the name Erwin sounded so familiar. I was trying to process it.

J then states, "I have to go to the store to pick up some things, if you aren't here when I get back, it was nice meeting you." I considered that she meant the me inside her Summer would return to my original reality. And then I started to wake.

November 3, 2021

When No One Understands

Photo by Natalia Drepina

It feels, sometimes, that I am faced with one person after another who simply do not understand my journey. They do not see or understand the vast amount of growth and changes I have made, regardless of how nonsensical it might see to them. I try to demonstrate through sharing what I have written about my journey, but even that isn't enough to help them see and understand.

Coming back to Missouri has had its challenges, to say the least, but one of the most disappointing and frustrating things has been knowing my own mother will never truly support me or see the value of the time and effort I have put into changing myself and what I have created.

We have had more challenging conversations than I ever expected which leave me feeling alone, unsupported and grossly misunderstood. Tonight was no exception. Tonight she said some of what I am doing was "insane".  And I can sort of get it from her simple, closed minded perspective. She can't understand half of what I write about and even though she claims to be a Christian person, she thinks being led by Spirit is "crazy".  How is this possible that someone can believe so fervently in the tales of the Bible but not believe it can unfold similarly in the here and now? 

So, it is believable in the Bible that Spirit/God guided people, but she can't believe that the same is true for me and the path I have been on. She can believe in prophetic profound dreams that guide in the Bible but when I am trying to explain it is the same for me, she says I am spending too much time on my dreams which she sees as meaningless.

I am strong and I still DO believe in myself, my journey and trust Spirit to guide me no matter the wild twists and turns it has taken. I do understand the depth and value of it all. I always have which is why that, no matter the lack of understanding I have received, I carry on my path and don't let those people deter me. I just keep going like an Energizer bunny.  

I have faith in myself. I just wish there were more people who had faith in me, too, and could understand. 

Photo by Natalia Drepina

Of course, I have one or two people online who get it because they are on a similar journey, but it would be nice to have people surrounding me, in person, who can comprehend what I am doing and trust in me that it's the right thing to do for me. I wish I had a tribe to lean on, but I don't.

Needless to say, I have found myself working through a mountain of "mommy issues" that I never knew were there until I came back to Missouri and spent (too much) time with my mother where all of these issues are resurfacing and being highlighted through conflict. I am working through deep wounds and clearing a lot of root chakra blockages. It hasn't been easy or comfortable, but a necessary step in healing and growing. 

Photo by Leslie Ann O'Dell

The most recent realization came when my mother questioned my parenting of my daughter. She thinks she should have more rules, less freedom and more discipline. When she said this, I asked her about her own parenting. I pointed out how I grew up with rigid rules, little freedom and excessive discipline. She was the passive one. She didn't make the rules nor did she enforce them, but she witnessed her four children be brutalized by our father on a regular basis. 

I asked her, "How did it make you feel when you witnessed your kids be spanked with a leather gun belt to the point of having welts on their skin?"

She deflected and avoided answering. She said, "It was happening to me, too."

"That wasn't the question, Mom. You were the parent your young children were being brutalized. How did it make you feel?" I asked again.

Again she deflected.

"A parent, especially a mother, is supposed to protect their children. It is supposed to be their instinct to care so much they would die protecting them," I explained. And it was in that moment that I recognized a core wound of not being protected by my passive mother from my abusive father. She just watched and let it happen.

She can criticize my parenting if she likes, but I was determined that I wouldn't allow my daughter to go through similar experiences. I wouldn't allow her to be ruled with an iron fist like I was. My mom thinks my daughter needs "tough love" and all that screams to me is she thinks I should inflict trauma through trying to force my will on her. 

There are other kinder, gentler ways and I refuse to inflict the same trauma that was inflicted on me. My daughter knows she can talk to me about anything and feels comfortable asking me anything. That is no small feat. I have fostered open communication since she could speak which has led to a healthy relationship.

I told my mom, "You know what I learned from all the rules and discipline? How to lie and do what I wanted to do anyway. Inara never has to feel like she needs to lie. She can talk to me, but I never felt comfortable talking openly to my parents when I was her age."

The relationship between my mom and daughter is not good. There are daily conflicts and fights between them that I have to referee. Part of the problem stems from my mother thinking a child's thoughts and opinions aren't valuable simply because they are children. I don't adhere to that belief and make it known that a child is still a whole person whose thoughts and opinions should be heard and not disregarded simply because they are not yet adults. If a child feels heard and valued, they won't feel like they need to lie and hide anything from their parents.

We all want to be heard.

We all want to be seen and understood.

We all want to be valued.

We all want to be respected.

We all want to feel safe and secure.

Sometimes going back to the place you grew up only confirms that it never really was your home to begin with. 

I don't know where "home" is anymore, but I know I'm strong enough to keep going and growing no matter where the wind takes me.

Día de los Muertos

 

Jennifer Maria Syme and Ava Archer Syme-Reeves.

You both existed.

Remembering you both so that you stay in the land of the remembered.