The Elder Berry Woman, part 4 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. Today is the final installment. It is her personal wisdom story. Enjoy!

 A few minutes later we continued our conversation under the rugged roots of a nearby pine. The Berry woman had tucked herself into the cracks of the tree’s bark!

“I saw the Mother Tree in my dream – she’s me, isn’t she?”

“Of course. I hope you noticed that she was very much alive, despite her wounding.”

All I had seen were the holes, the dried blood that poured out of her center. Now I imaged the whole tree in my mind, as if seeing her for the first time. She wore a silvery crown of graceful bare branches, and despite the oval black holes in her body she was elegantly dressed in gray ribbed bark. She wasn’t dying.

“You never saw her before – all you noticed were the holes, not a resplendent tree standing between her two sisters. You have a tendency to focus on what’s wrong and that limits your vision. Some of your favorite woodpeckers made those holes and raised children in them.” Woodpeckers create space for new beginnings…and most holes, even those that weep, do not kill the tree. Note that you have two sister trees and neither have holes. You are not alone!

When the Berry Woman spoke again, her voice was stern. “There is nothing you can do to heal the mother wounds, they are part of who you are, but you can learn to co-exist with them. Unfortunately, when mother dominates your psyche/body you can’t imagine a life not predicated on pain, and this bias has merit because you have suffered deeply.”

I feel sudden fury rising. I am sick of pain.

“Think about it. As soon as you were able to begin growing up you did your best to give others the best of what you had to offer. You discovered a way to live your life creatively through academia, teaching, counseling, your writing, and by learning how to Love through Nature. Your dogs, dove, bears, the animals and plants of the forest have been lifetime teachers. I can promise you that a creative fire is still burning inside you even if you cannot feel it.”

“ You think so? The fire in me feels like it has turned to ash. ” For an instant I see the three Red Birds that appeared during my ritual on All Hallows Eve and speculate on their message…

 I want to change the subject.” Can we talk about the Universe?”

The Berry Woman nods crinkling smooth opaque skin. I love the way it folds over her like an accordion.

“Of course we can,” she replies.

For me, the Earth seems friendly, but the Universe seems unfriendly. I had a sudden thought – Had black holes in the mother tree biased my thinking about the Universe?

” Good question”, chirps the Berry Woman. The Universe isn’t unfriendly it’s the ultimate unknown! We don’t know anything about the rest of the cosmos. Perhaps you need to start to practice thinking about the Universe without attaching a negative judgment to it”.

She continues, “it is very important for you to heal the split you have created between the cosmos and the Earth.”

 “The Universe is so immense, so abstract, seemingly so empty that it is beyond my capacity to imagine feeling at home in it, let alone safe. Yet my senses also tell me that the Universe may be much more complex than physicists or humans can imagine. It may even be that the Universe is also intuitively tuned to all its inhabitants from quasars to photons just like the Earth is.”

“Ah, open -minded thinking!” The Berry Woman is pleased, and I feel grateful. The grape is wrinkling her skin into that engaging smile.

When she slides under a crack in the rough bark of the tree I don’t question her disappearance, although I always feel regret when she leaves. Nothing the Berry Woman does now seems strange to me. With surprise I realize that I have started to trust her a whole lot.

Stiffly, I get to my feet, stumbling over those rugged tree roots and returned to the house. I am exhausted from all this conversation, and very much needing to return to the mundane world and the love of my dogs.

‘My personal history may be a challenge but receiving help from Nature certainly helps neutralize the depression it causes’ I wrote a couple of days later. Somehow. I must figure out how to locate myself in the bigger picture. How to help the child enter my body still seemed to be an impossible task. All I had gleaned so far is that she lives through the holes of my “mother” tree.

I thought about my lost Universe connection. Up until the last few years I had always been drawn to the night sky.

I wrote about how I lost my cosmic connection by way of the stars and moon. First my dog Morningstar died after a prolonged and painful illness. The light of Venus darkened perceptibly. The following summer when the Perseid meteors struck on the night of my son’s birthday I stayed indoors. He had severed our relationship so completely despite years of prayers and pleading. These days, after viewing the Great Bear constellation in the Northeast sky, I was  ready to return to the house.

For thirty years I had been in love with the moon turning to her each month during her fullness to help me heal my broken relationship with my body. But the moon eventually turned dark. At first it was her trickster grandson aspect, rabbit, that seemed to send me frightening dreams, or topple my life upside down each month when the moon was full and bright; more recently the specter of death hovered – the moon kept me from sleeping – death fears soared as she masqueraded as the Old Woman whose scythe cut the cord of life. Had I neglected her/his dark aspect until it overcame me? It wasn’t lost on me that restoring this relationship to the moon and stars was a bridge to reconciliation with the rest of the cosmos.

Every word I wrote seemed to create more questions; more challenges but no answers emerged. I was feeling discouraged.

One day about a week later I walked down to the tree by the brook and put my hands on the nubbly bark where I had often visited the Berry Woman. I wanted to tell her how grateful I was to have someone who seemed to understand what I was going through. I noticed the tree seemed to be gurgling almost inaudibly, and before I could say how much I missed my friend, she chimed in from above.

“Here I am!” I craned my neck upwards to get a glimpse of her. She was perched on a nubbly branch.

“I thought that since you have been writing about stars and the moon that I’d visit from a tree that catches stars every night in her branches. I’m glad that you see how one -sided your relationship with the moon and stars has become.”

“Uhmm…” I nodded sadly.

The Purple Grape continued. “I want to remind you of part of your story… A long time ago you turned to the moon and stars – the Universe for help – you put your trust in possibilities that never materialized, and eventually your hope bled out like the resin still bleeds out from the mother tree. Feeling unworthy, you also made your son a guiding star instead of putting that trust in yourself… that was a grave mistake. When your son betrayed you the last time, part of you crumpled into a heap born of despair. You never recovered. You couldn’t bear to watch the meteor shower last summer because your grief has finally caught up to you and it is starting to seep through your body. Healing tears still do not come. The positive aspect of this process is that you are beginning to become more physically embodied through this torment. As I said before, this journey to become an Elder is difficult; most choose not to make it. I am also compelled to tell you that learning to live in your body as receiver, with increasing awareness, means opening yourself to even more pain and fear as well as to the possibility of joy.

It’s just how it is.”

She was quiet then. I wondered if the berry woman was giving me a chance to absorb the enormity of what she just said. Then she began speaking quietly.

“I am making you a promise. One day when you least expect it you will once again feel joy, marvel at the unfathomable mystery around you and wrap yourself in the cloak of the moon and stars… Perhaps then Starflower will finally be able to find her way home. I can’t promise that, though.”

How much I loved the fact that The Berry Woman was so honest; no wonder I had come to trust her so completely. I started to thank her, but she stopped me.

“Part of me is part of you, don’t you know that yet?”

She had no sooner uttered these words, when my friend’s voice started to lose substance. I noted this abrupt change with alarm. She couldn’t leave me now… The frightening sense of impending loss was intolerable. Not again…

Transfixed, I watched as my Berry Woman wobbled precariously on her branch. When she toppled from the tree a jellied blob hit the ground disintegrating into the rich detritus of the forest floor. I gasped in disbelief. Only a single polished brown and white seed remained.

“This seed is my gift to you.” I barely heard her whisper.

“Thank you, thank you for coming. I will never forget…”

I bent down to pick up the gift – the seed that was her life – my life – Life in the Round? I held it reverently in my hand as I trudged up the hill to the house. I wondered then if the power of the Berry Woman’s seed could keep me attached to the rough road ahead. There was no way to know.