Page 134 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

After the trial, I was buried in an avalanche of grief. Depression froze feeling in place as I began a

twenty-­‐year journey through a psychic wilderness that contrasted sharply with the magnificent

wilderness and mountains that surrounded me. I wrote my way through death with words, turning to

Nature for comfort, and although I didn’t recognize it yet, birds, animals, plants, trees and stars had

already become my Guides.

I never spoke of my losses; I was too ashamed of what my children had done. I went to graduate school

and became a teacher. I became a more passionate naturalist, whose comfort came on the wings of a

hawk, an owl, a hummingbird, the sight of a deer and black bear; these became my adopted family,

allowing me to lean into them through the haze of grief. Although I no longer had a human family in

any meaningful sense of the word, the Spirit of Nature had not deserted me. She was always there,

ready to communicate with me through one of her creatures. All I had to do was to pay attention.

A few years passed and one fall, a male

cardinal unexpectedly appeared at my feeder.

I had a bewildering insight during his visit: my

“fate” was inexorably attached to the same

pattern of loss that had dominated my

father’s life. My dad had unknowingly

surrendered both his children to his wife and

her maternal family through his absence and

rage. My mother, a very clever woman, played

the role of stoic, but never missed an

opportunity to ridicule or denigrate my father,

as did her relatives. All believed that my

father, a first-­‐generation Italian immigrant,

was beneath them. As children, my brother and I learned to dismiss our father without understanding

why. My father’s long work-­‐related absences and his explosive emotional nature left us confused and

resentful. Watching the cardinal, I suddenly understood that after my brother’s suicide, I had

unwittingly repeated my father’s pattern by emotionally surrendering my children to my parents out of

survivor’s guilt.