Hello!
May this find that Hopefulness is sitting beside you as we near the end of 2024 and stand at the threshold of new beginnings.
As part of an end of semester project, some of my students taught all of us the power of a soul circle. They guided all of us to draw a circle in the center of a piece of paper and place our name in that center. Then, in whatever sizes we wanted to make, we were instructed to draw circles surrounding that circle and on each of those write the names of people – human and fur – who are important to us. Then, inside each of those circles, we wrote why each of these people were important to us. Among the values in this exercise includes pausing and reflecting with gratitude on all the support that surrounds us.
You often hear me express “see and see again. Hear and hear again. There is always more than we initially hear and see.”
Like this picture for example. What do you initially see? The opening in the rock? The tree branches? The sunlight streaming through the trees? What do you hear whispering within when you look at this picture?
For me, in this moment, I see each of the branches as something I could write on about the importance of each person as part of my soul circle. I look and look again and see the branches as intentions I wish to set for the year ahead. I listen further and see a threshold to the brightness beckoning ahead.
Like a blueprint showing the way to a hope-full life.
Namaste,
-Christine
The Creases Now Speak
Kaylen
Kaylen was nine years old when she witnessed what it means to experience irreparable heart break.
It was at the annual Mills Family Revival, as her grandmother liked to call their weekend long family reunion. A time to recharge and renew. Individually and in their collective bond. Mental recalibration and spirit restoration. A time to remember that love conquers, withstands, endures, and is stronger than anything that comes on their paths trying to invoke doubt, fear, shame, or inferiority.
Even death. For her grandmother made sure that the weekend included a lighting ceremony to honor their ancestors. Those who had passed from this earth from natural causes and those who had died in chains. The ceremony would always conclude with everyone gathering in a circle around all the children from the ages of newborn up to thirteen while her grandmother spoke of how special each of them were in this world, how each of them had a destiny to do great things, and how they needed to make sure life did not end with them.
“See these lit candles? These are the lives that walked in darkness for each of you to shine. If you dim your light in any way, it diminishes these flames. You must continue the future generations so that the stories of those who lit the way don’t fade. My dear children, you are the ones to ensure they did not endure shackles and whips in vain.”
As Kaylen stood internalizing her grandma’s words deeper than last year, and the year before that, and each year she has stood in this circle aware enough to listen to her grandmother’s words, she heard the sudden piercing, anguished, wail “Nnnnnnnooooooooo!”
Kaylen’s Aunt Nia, five months pregnant, was bent over, falling to the floor, while her Uncle Aaron, aunt Nia’s husband, was wrapping his arms around her trying to soften her fall, hold the weight of her pain, keep her from falling off the edge into the abyss she was about to fall into.
As the wail deafened the frantic commotion surrounding Kaylen, she could faintly hear frenzied movements of feet and shouts “call an ambulance,” “get a blanket,” “here, honey, squeeze my hand. It’s going to be ok”. All the frenzy Kaylen was hearing sounded so far away as she kept hearing her Aunt Nia’s sobbing unlike any crying Kaylen had ever heard and hoped she would never hear again.
Kaylen’s aunt had been trying for a few years to have a baby, become a mom, fulfill Kaylen’s grandma’s words to carry life forward. Kaylen only knew this from overhearing her mom and Aunt Marissa talking when aunt Nia and Uncle Aaron shared they were pregnant.
Her mom had exclaimed to Aunt Marissa the next day, “Glory be! They have tried for six years. All that fertility work no longer in vain.”
Aunt Marissa responded, “All those calls! So happy she was late. And so sad when Aunt Flo would come.”
“When she called after her second miscarriage, I thought her and Aaron were going to stop trying. She talked about friends who didn’t have children and were happy. She talked about places her and Aaron wanted to travel to.”
“When she called me, she was worried about disappointing momma that she couldn’t keep life going forward.”
Kaylen didn’t fully understand what her mom and aunt were talking about, but it sounded bad. Really bad. Disappointing grandma.
Letting the candle flames go out.
Not keeping life going as grandma insisted.
Kaylen stood watching her aunt in a fetal position on the floor, listening as her wails turned to low deep moans then to an eerie silence just before the paramedics hurriedly reached her side. As the paramedics checked her aunt’s vitals, she heard Aunt Nia say in a monotone robotic voice that didn’t sound like hers at all. “There is nothing to check. It’s gone.”
Aunt Nia looked like Kaylen’s rag doll as Uncle Aaron and one of the paramedics helped her to the stretcher. Her arms and legs just hung from aunt Nia’s body, moveable only at the hands of Uncle Aaron and the paramedic. As they wheeled Aunt Nia away, Kaylen saw blood on the floor where her aunt had been.
Kaylen looked up and around. Everyone was so sad. Kaylen wondered if she should start crying, too, like her mom, her aunt Marissa, her cousin Tasha. Kaylen saw her grandma walk over to the lit candies, put her hand to her chest, and then saw her grandma’s shoulders begin to move up and down. Her grandma was sobbing. She had never seen her grandma cry like that.
She’d only seen her grandma cry from laughing really hard or when Kaylen or one of her cousins would give their grandma something homemade one of them had crafted. Their grandma would put her hand to her heart and exclaim “what do we have here? For me!” She’d then hold whatever it was in her hands staring at it for what felt like minutes, a tear would start rolling down her cheek, then she’d scoop them into a big hug, expressing how much she loved it and them.
Kaylen watched as a candle flame went out near where her grandma stood. Last year when the candle flames started extinguishing, Kaylen asked “shouldn’t we light them again Grandma? “. Her grandma knelt and put her arm around Kaylen. “It’s ok my precious child. Each of them decides when it is time to rest. If we relight them, we are not letting them rest in peace.”
Kaylen’s grandma looked at the extinguished candle flame, walked over to the matchstick on the table, then returned and relit the candle.
Kaylen didn’t know how to name the sudden pit in her stomach.
Many years later, Kaylen understood that pit meant that once a wail like that takes place, peace is allusive for the rest of life.
And family ceremonial circles never take place again.