Episode 5: Standing on Ancestors' Shoulders
Welcome to MOONDAY CAFE a podcast that’s posted every month on the day of the full moon.
MOONDAY CAFE is devoted to the mind-expanding, mind-bending magical power of story.
Dovey realizes she is completely alone and alarmed by the visions in the night. As she shores herself for the first long and lonely night of the vision quest, she reflects on the struggles of her ancestors, which gives her newfound courage.
Our guide is author, inspired performer, and barefoot cowgirl, Dovey Conlee.
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Episode 5: Standing on Ancestors’ Shoulders
To buttress her fear, Dovey struck a waterproof match as fast as her shaking hands cold muster and lit the kerosene lamp, letting it burn through the night, casting a wicked swaying shadow across the tent.
She sat up straight on the futon, propping herself up against the low headboard, still in terror, but feeling fierce about the recent fright from the lynx.
Deliberate rejection over time can change the brain. She knew enough from university studies to know that this type of brain change can trigger psychosis, particularly if there is a sense of isolation. Was she losing her mind?
Maybe her time and experience in Japan triggered more latent wounds in her psyche.
Doubt added fuel to the fear, crippling her logic.
She had to ask herself if what she just experienced with Indian and the wild bitch-lynx was actually a dream, or a true vision OR a dangerous psychotic episode.
But, she felt it. It was real. She could smell the horse. She could feel it’s breath. This had happened at her request. At her conjure.
She had deliberately come here, to this powerful Hawaiian ‘portal’ to experience a greater understanding of her true self. She HAD asked to meet her shadow self. So, she held that belief.
This was a vision.
She pulled out her journal.
In the pages she had written on the flight from Guam, she had drawn a scrawny family tree and noted the immediate relatives and their names and their origins. Calling on her ancestors was a source of strength for Dovey.
Her birth family had been in Texas since the end of the Civil War when a great migration came to homestead in the western part of the high plains where grass was tall and rolled like a waving ocean of green.
Both families of Dovey’s ancestors made arduous journeys from Scotland to America, and brought with them Celtic lore. That fierce Scottish culture was in her blood, she told herself, so accepting that her visitations were actually real, she called upon these ancestors, for their protection and guidance.
And, for a very good measure of insurance, she repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over, taking time to pause and still herself as only a wild animal could. She sat motionless, but wide awake and on alert.
Only whispers of her heritage were shared with her through her nanny Lupe and the Curandera that blessed and protected her in secret.
And, because of those stories, she knew she had the strength and drive of those that came before her. She ‘stood on their shoulders,’ Lupe would remind her.
Lupe carried a vast amount of this oral history that she gifted Dovey in small, small bites, always with a dramatic flair and it offered Dovey a sense of self that she could only manifest through those stories.
The stories of courage were like her own fairytale and as a young girl she often retreated to them when she was terrified and alone. The stories were her magical foundation. The stories gave her courage. She convinced herself that she was just as brave and could endure the trials of life just as her ancestors had. After all, SHE would not be here if THEY had not survived.
She had been told a story about a great-grandfather that was just a boy living in Atlanta when General Sherman’s troops moved through town, burning everything in that path.
That grandfather was only 9 years old when soldiers torched the curtains of his family home, setting the house on fire. In terror, the boy ran through the front of the home while the rest of the family ran through the back towards the carriage house. There was not enough time to run towards them and when a neighbor’s wagon passed, that family escaping the blazing carnage pulled him up onto the buckboard and raced out of town. They did not stop until they reached the Mississippi River.
Once they reached the river, somehow they ferried across the wide estuary. When they reached the western bank, they continued on to Texas. The journey took over 3 months. Then, they settled on those endless grassy plains, raising that boy as one of their own.
When that boy turned 15, he was considered a ‘grown man’ and he could now craft his own life.
This young man made the decision to return to Georgia. The bloody war was over, and by himself, he walked back to the Mississippi River, crossed the river again and returned to Atlanta to find his family.
There was no family. They were no where to be found. There was no house. There were no tombstones. There were no neighbors. There was no trace of his former life, so he decided to return back to Texas and to the family that raised him.
The young man walked back to Texas, crossed the Mississippi again and walked back to that home and married the family’s daughter.
They had one son and they named him Noah. His name was Noah.
Noah was Dovey’s grandfather. And, strong Noah was the father of the mother she never knew.
This story of courage and drive was her history.
Remembering it made her feel that she could be just as strong and driven. At least she owed it to them to try.
She had always heard that her mother had come from that strong Scottish stock, she was just not strong enough to live through a difficult birth. Dovey was taught to feel responsible for that and she could never shake the shame.
Now, half a world away, she fell into a state of shame that was paralyzing.
Sure, her ancestors were heroic and that was a reminder that she had the strength within her, but now she was questioning this spontaneous decision for this vision quest. Surely the ancestors hadn’t done something as foolish. This was different than walking back to Georgia. Or, was it different?
Dovey was also alone, making this journey in much the same way. By herself.
The shame made her wonder:
Had she actually called up the darkness? Was this a courageous journey or just plain dangerous? What did she know about parallel worlds?
Religion had warned her, but her heart had always pushed against some of those warnings. Her heart pushed her to seek.
She knew her intent was pure, she felt that she was protected. The Mama San had told her that in this process of seeking, she could not be truly harmed, only taught. She could only observe and be taught.
These were teachings, she convinced herself. These were lessons. Both Indian and the lynx were symbols. Just visions with a message.
Writing now, the words she put on paper brought her the answer:
The shame she carried for so long WAS her shadow self. It was the lynx that jumped her in the night. The message taught her that her shadow energy of shame could come ‘out of nowhere’ and attempt to destroy her.
The lynx was only an image, a vision of a spirit that brought her the message that if her shame placed on her by others, a shame designed to make her suffer, if that shame was not fought and kept at bay, it could attack and destroy her sense of self.
This was the message that the lynx had brought.
The smells, the sounds, the breath of the animal. This was not her imagination.
This was the message and the lesson from the lynx.
This experience had been so real that she was afraid it might happen again before she could fully ground herself. And she would ground herself.
She burned some sacred incense and thanked the lynx for the lesson and for the message. So sleepy now, she closed her eyes.
Then in the distance, the first birdsong sounded.
In minutes, before Dovey could see ANY daylight at all, the sound of a hundred lyrical birds spoke to the new dawn. She had made it through the night.
Dovey grabbed an orange from the fruit basked and scurried out of the tent. As the sun rose, she headed up the trail to the flagpole.
She raised the ‘green/all good’ flag.
She was no longer afraid. She would complete the journey. She owed that courage to her ancestors.
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