| Transcript |
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May 1996
THE WAND
Vol. 13, No. 5
Womynspace Activities / Networking Directory
Inside: Book Review
/ Know My Own Heart:
The Diaries of Anne Lister
Dyke Night at Carr's. .Alaska
The Passing of the Mother by Hitaji Aziz
I write this in remembrance of my mother, Jeanette
Liddell and my grandmother, Bessie Forte. When
grandmother died last January, I was challenged to
look at grief as a journey not to be avoided. I realized
that I had never properly grieved my mother's death
along with other losses in my life.
I had to decide to take time to sit with her death. I
wanted to understand the culture of death. The time
that I am taking has helped me to notice the gift. Life
will ask me many times to die before my body passes;
how I embrace this process will be the key to what kind
of life I want. I write in honor of the Mother Spirit. I write
in honor of my grief.
I have been in an emotional / spiritual retreat. I had to
take another inventory of my life, let go of relationships
that I didn't need and hold on the relationships that I
would be willing to invest in. I had to take stock of how
well I was taking care of self.
I was the biggest part of my own blockage. When
grandmother died I could see that death was multidimensional. In our USA culture, death is allowed to be
seen in very narrow ways. People shy away from death,
grief and the grieving person.
My grandmother's death brought me face to face with
the wounded mother that I see in most people.
Because I am a woman, incest survivor, mother and
recovering addict, I am moved to look closer at my own
woundedness and my path of healing. This path slowly
leads me back to the womb of my mother and
everything since that time.
I am finally realizing the sacredness of being a mother,
having had a mother. For the first time in my life, I am
actually aware of how important it is to be a mother. It is
really a powerful duty to be a vessel for another person
for nine months and then assist them to step out into
their own life. My children were never mine to own, just
to guide in sacred space and love unconditionally. It
doesn't matter if the mother was a negative or positive
force; her very existence was powerful
We are mothers with or without children. We will
always be faced with the birthing of some part of us or
the witnessing of some else's life experience. We are
either asked by the universe to be the midwife or the
mother in labor. It is how well we accept this task that
will affect the quality of our lives and the life of our
planet.
Anytime we run away from this, we find ourselves not in
balance feeling uneasy. We end up walking around
spiritually and emotionally limping, hanging with other
people who keep us limping. We try to find out what is
wrong by rehearsing the same tribulation over and over
because we don't get it. Blindly, we feel confused, not
realizing that we will always be guided back to the
source of our pain until we embrace, heal and move
on.
Most of us are afraid of our own light because we have
become so used to living in the non light of fear. We
pretend to be progressive and on the front line, but
when it comes to the intimacy of death and life, we run
back to denial. Some of our most creative people
commit suicide, cheat, stay high and stay miserable
because of fear.
We actually run from the possibility of how it could be
without the struggle. We complain about our lives, but
become unwilling to suffer the short term uneasiness of
recovery for the long term peace of wellness. We end
up like a pregnant woman, unwilling to embrace the
birth of ourselves. We keep walking a road that keeps
ending.
My grandmother's death not only opened the half
closed wound I had with my mother, but the pus filled
wound I have with other women. I had to get real
honest so that I could figure out the insanity. I knew
that if I was to have healthy relationships with other
women, I had to really notice the lies I told myself about
my mother, my grandmother, me as a mother and me
as a women. Until we heal the mother inside, we will
never have healthy relationships with other women.
These lies aren't right on top; they are buried deep
inside my inner most being. I have to seek emotional
truth. I have spent years being angry and scared. My
mother was very wounded and scared. She handed
what she got from her mother to me. Even though my
mother is dead it feels like she rides my back every day.
My back has felt like a bridge that someone refuses to
cross. I carry all of the abuse, neglect and oppression
of all the women in my family, the stuff they never got a
chance to heal. I was pregnant when I was born. The
intergenerational distortion will kick my butt until I walk
through it.
I have to learn how not to hand it to my children. I have
to face the hurt that has already been passed on. I
have to support them in their own healing by first telling
myself the truth, cleaning my messes up and staying
honest. This will be a tough job; my pain keeps me
willing. I also received gifts from the women in my family
that I get to keep.
I know that for years I have been afraid of the real me,
the empowered woman, the one with no limits, the one
that is creative and bold. That part of me that knew I
could stand alone, step out on faith, sing my own song
with no one else's band. Today I look at pain and
aloneness differently, more like friends than an enemy.
I never got a chance to see the women of my family
really live through their greatness without the struggle.
My mother and grandmother did the best that they
could with the resources that they had. They did have
the courage to keep trying. They told the truth about
oppression. They were my first political teachers.
The reality was that I needed more and because of
that, I sit with a wounded mother inside of me. I also
have attracted other wounded women and men as
confused as I have been. I don't mind being close to
wounded people as long as they are processing some
form of recovery, accept their wounds and will do
something about it.
Healing the mother means that we must have the
courage to see our fear, where we have no integrity,
when we lie and leave other women in the emotional
lurch. We assist each other in the miscarriage of our
own selves. We walk around half born, overwhelmed,
isolated. We have to be accountable about what we
didnt do right.
We have to be bold enough to see how we hurt and
destroy one another because of our internalized
sexism, racism and oppression. We have to notice how
we breastfeed on others and become unwilling to give
anything back. We settle for less.
We create TV relationships stacked with drama. We
start friendships then run from them when we are
challenged with the hard stuff. It is only when we stay
through the hard part that we receive the gift of growth.
This is the foundation of a committed friendship.
We fail to see relationships as reflections of what we
really need to heal on. People not only bring us into the
light, but will honor us with our shadow side as well.
We dance with others who won't bare their own load.
Some of us know that there is no liberation for women
without recovery, sanity and spiritual growth. As long as
we rationalize mistreatment, dishonor, drugs, sex
addiction, violence, gossip, slandering and relationships
that don't offer peace and respect, we won't make it. As
long as we approach each other from a fear based and
needy position, we will never give ourselves a chance.
We have to be willing to give what we really need.
Somehow we have to get ready to reach into our own
personal Higher Power and tell the truth. The truth is
that we need a healing and it won't all be done by how
well your poetry is written, your politics, how good you
are as a wife/lover, your new hairdo, your Jamaican
weed or the money you make on your new corporate
job. It will be a combination of your emotional, physical
and spiritual integrity that will bring us into a new era of
human evolution.
The healing will reflect how close you come to you. This
is a scary path because it calls for the old you to die so
the new you can live. It is here that we get to
experience the stages of death only to be reborn into
the healed mother.
The old and the new woman can never live in the same
house. One will always dominate the other. Death is
about embracing the shadow side of our lives, pushing
past the comfort zone. This kind of death is an inside
job, the path of a spiritual warrior.
Continued next page
The Last of the Last:
Great Black Woman
For Grandma Bessie (1907-1996)
SHE IS THE LAST OF THE LAST
A GREY HAIRED WISE WOMAN
WHO CHOOSE NOT TO SPEAK
' WHILE WATTING FOR DEATH
SHE WALKED THE STREETS OF PITTSBURGH
WITH RAGE
A COPPER PENNY
TIED AROUND HER KNEE
A KNIFE IN HER BRA
LOOKING FOR THE NUMBER MAN
SHE IS THE LAST OF THE LAST
SHE CAME FROM WOMEN
WHO WOULD LISTEN TO MAHALIA
SINGING IN THE UPPER ROOM
WHILE THEY SHOOK
THEIR HEADS IN SILENCE
RIGHT HAND POINTING TOWARD THE SKY
SHE CAME FROM A LONG DUSTY ROAD
OUT OF ALABAMA TRAILS
BANJO BLUES
COLLARD GREENS,YAMS
GRITS, HOME MADE SYRUP AND FLAT BREAD
SWOLLEN WITH DANGEROUS TIMES
ONE OF THOSE AME ZION METHODIST WOMEN
SHE WAS THE LAST OF THE LAST
SFIE WAS ALWAYS WARNING US ABOUT SOMETHING
SHE WARNED US ABOUT AMERICA
ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
ABOUT BIRDS FLOCKING WITH THE SAME FEATHER
SHE WARNED US ABOUT WARNINGS
YOU BETTER MAKE SURE
YOUR DRAWLS ARE CLEAN
CAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU
WILL BE ON YOUR BACK
NEVER WEAR OUT YOUR WELCOME
DONT TALK LOUD
WHEN THERE IS A STORM
DONT EAT THE FOOD
FROM SOMEONE YOU DON'T TRUST
GOD IS WATCHING YOU
HE MIGHT NOT BE THERE
WHEN YOU WANT HIM
BUT HE WILL BE RIGHT ON TIME
KEEP YOUR LEGS CLOSE
BURN OR FLUSH CUT HAIR
YOUR DREAMS ARE IMPORTANT
THROW SALT
SPIT ON THE BROOM
SOMETIMES THE DOCTOR
MIGHT NOT COME
BUT THE DEAD
WILL ALWAYS BE NEAR
WATCH YOUR BACK
WATCH YOUR BACK
WATCH YOUR BACK
SHE WAS BORN OUT OF
FOR COLORED ONLY SIGNS
SHE SANG GOSPEL
WHEN SHE WAS HAPPY OR BLUE
SHE CAME UP
ON THE ROUGH SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN
SHE DID HER BEST TO MAKE IT IN
SHE TOLD ME ABOUT A RACE
THAT WOULD SOON BE OVER
Continued inside back cover |
