The Elder Berry Woman, part 2 by Sara Wright

Moderator’s Note: FAR will be on hiatus for the month of January. We wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Before we head into our hiatus we will post a four part serialized story from our long-time contributor Sara Wright. It is her personal wisdom story. Today is part 2 of 4. Enjoy!

“I want to trust you Berry Woman, but I can’t let go of my fear.” I feel ashamed admitting the truth.

“You endured the legacy of abandonment, and this has given you great strength, but you have also been cut away from your ability to trust, and the safety of being Earthed. You are like a tree without a taproot, vulnerable to collapse in heavy winds and storms. If you can lean into me just for a moment you will feel a difference. Shut your eyes. Try it.”

I close my eyes. I breathe deeply, sudden images of hearts thrumming, soft skin next to mine… then I feel the warmth of my two little dogs. I am totally relaxed; I trust my dogs implicitly.

“That’s right, start with who you do trust – you are well aware that your dogs have been your most powerful teachers since childhood.”

I get it.

Start with what I have, not with what I don’t. I think about Nature whose benign presence is palpable in all but my most despairing moments. Isn’t this how the Berry Woman came to me? A big part of me must already trust her.

“Let’s leave the trust issue for now and move on to the second problem. You have no faith in your ability to persevere. You are strong but you must say no to the negative voices that undermine you, and to do that you must be able to listen to what they are telling you.”

“They always say the same things Berry Woman – that no one cares if I live or die, that I am worthless and needy, that I have no power to effect positive changes, no authority…” I could go on here, but I don’t.

“Listen to me carefully. You are not invisible or powerless. The good news is that if you refuse to accept these messages, eventually they will begin to lose some power. At the same time, it is important to be aware that during cycles of depression those same voices will return to haunt you when you are most vulnerable. This is the hardest part. But you know how to endure and during these periods you must lean into that strength and hang on. Starflower has to develop roots that interpenetrate yours, and you have to strengthen those roots, grounding them deeper in Nature.”

How did she know about Starflower? Around 45 I discovered that Starflower was the name of the child that lived in the air and water around me. I let my right (non-dominant) hand draw a picture of her. She was both – a star and a flower, and she gave herself the name.

For a moment I was caught in the joy of Starflower presence… Then I sighed, sagging under the weight of the Berry Woman’s words. What she was asking me to do seemed impossible.

“I never said this would be easy.”

Waves of the Berry Woman’s compassion flowed around me; I was not invisible to her.

“I need to leave you now; but I will come again. We’ll talk more about these problems, I promise.”

Suddenly, I realized I had been in the forest all afternoon and it was twilight. “Goodnight.” Her voice trailed off as the sun sank into the horizon, radiating a golden luminescence that lit up the purple jewel cloaking her in deep indigo at dusk…

I quickened my steps back up the hill and entered the house to feed the dogs. I felt much stronger – and certainly less depressed. An irritating voice kept nagging that I had made the Berry Woman up because I was caught in a crisis of meaning. I ignored it. I needed her help too badly.

I felt calm and starry eyed as I peered out the window that evening, determined to reflect more on what scared me so much about aging, dying, and death. I tried to stay with my fears to examine them more closely.

As I continued my writing Death took center stage.

A few days later I heard my purple friend chirp, “Good Evening” just as twilight set in. Shadowed by grape vines, she was hovering in the air just outside my bedroom window. Oh, I was so glad to see her.

“Death really scares me.” I began in a rush to get the words out, feeling shame and embarrassment, tears welling up and spilling over unbidden. “I have lost so many people – my children – animals and trees that I have loved; all of nature seems to be dying. I am unbearably lonely and filled with grief.”

“Yes, I know because I know you and because I am very old; I live inside every tree and plant that you have ever loved,” she replied.

How can that be? I wanted to ask the question, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Let’s begin to talk about death by looking at the bigger picture – a good example is what happens in your forest. Pay attention to that mossy hemlock stump with its twisting roots. You often visit that spot near the brook. The white cedar fell over during a storm leaving its jagged trunk and roots behind, but this is where you chose to plant partridgeberry. And look – the little ground creeper is climbing over that decaying emerald green bark birthing ripe red berries even as the stump disintegrates. Lacey cedar seedlings are thriving along its base. This is a perfect window into the ‘big picture,’ and intuitively you already knew this when you chose the place to plant your creeper…One of your strengths is that you are such a keen observer; we appreciate this… Death in the context of Nature can’t be separated from life. The two are inextricably tied as one process and not as separate events.

We?

I was pleased that she acknowledged my seeing. I also knew she was right about the big picture, but I still couldn’t feel the truth of her last words. “You make death sound so natural. Why then am I so afraid to die?” I am deliberately emphasizing this question.

“When you die all the cells of your body must give up their individual lives, the cells of your heart, brain, veins and arteries, blood, tissues, muscles and bones are all made up of cells that cooperated and collaborated to create you out of one fertilized egg cell. Fear of death is part of your complex cellular structure. Every single one of those lights must go out. Remember what happened when your teeth were extracted last summer? You grieved for the loss of parts of your physical self. Dying means coming to terms with grieving the loss of your whole body through each of its cells. You must enter the unknown without your physical self.”

The Berry Woman’s voice sounded sad as she continued. “You were born with the awareness of being unwanted/abandoned; you couldn’t help abandoning a body you couldn’t trust as a baby. We’ll return to this point in a minute. Next you lost your brother tragically, and you were barred from knowing what happened to the remains of his body for 32 years. When your grandmother died alone in a hospital two years after your brother’s death the trauma of loss of body was repeated a third time; You were abandoned, your brother had simply disappeared, your grandmother died alone when you ached to be with her, and you desperately needed to find a bridge to both of them to create a bridge to yourself, because with those deaths you officially became an orphan.

Much later you learned in the Amazon that the child/soul self never incarnated in your body in the first place because living in a body that faced annihilation was too threatening. As you have written repeatedly, you have spent a life ‘walking on air’. You have done an enormous amount of work to become embodied as an adult; but the child can’t overcome her visceral fear of moving into her/your body even though you long for her to join you. You now know that you were almost aborted as a fetus – Today, the disembodied child is blocking you from moving forward beyond this point.

I nodded in agreement. I had already had foreknowledge of these truths through dreams and intuition, but conversing with the Berry Woman made them more real. Fear of my death was intimately tied to that abandoned baby’s fear…

The Berry Woman continued…”To compound matters, you were taught by your culture that life is not lived in the round. Life is split away from death.” Look at what happened to you – you crossed a psychic boundary at your 70th birthday, and that event was tied to the arrow of time that supposedly flows in only one direction.”

This of course was true. In postmodern western culture, death is supposed to occur at the end of (a linear) life, and death is final. Whatever happens afterwards is a mystery, a journey into the unknown; one perhaps dependent on personal belief.

Parts 3 and 4 to follow