That Which I am Here to Learn

At Quaker Gathering so many things were going through my head. I could not believe the insight that came to me sitting with twenty plus people in silence. I thought about systemic racism and the many races of the world. What does this term mean. Does thinking about racism create more of a separation in race. Years ago I came across a text book on racism and it seemed so outdated, as if the subject itself was offensive. To me this seems like another label that we need to transcend. I don’t want to, as a white person with possible Transylvania gypsy ties and Native Canadian blood take on the blame the responsibility for such abuse. I feel that if I am going to take responsibility for abuse it is within my own Family. This is the only place that I have the ability to break the chain and metabolize the patterns in order to not pass them onto the world or on to the heirs of my sister.

Then these thought turned me toward my family. I dodged a bullet, or rather took a bullet by staying with my Family. I am not saying everyone should do this. Sometimes abuse is so great that it makes more sense for a person to escape and see what this world has to offer. We should still make peace before we die. Years ago, lying on a sofa on Queen Anne Hill when I was just a teenager, I made a choice. I was asked by God which road I wished to take. I was told that if I followed the path of mental illness I would save my Family. Twenty years later, here we are, on Lopez Island, my parents still married and all of us living within five miles of each other, on a sparsely populated Island. We always have a choice whether we are conscious of it or not. What am I here in this life to learn? I am here to learn that I deserve credit. Yes, I took the bullet for my Family. This entailed metabolizing the abuse on my Mother’s side of the Family. I believe she did what she could do and regretfully passed the baton to me which I took willingly.

Ironically, the abuse and the addiction came from the side of my family with the strains of minority race, that is if we are choosing to focus on such a thing. Do I look white? No, I look East Indian, Gypsy, Jewish or Italian. I may have been persecuted against during World War II. And yet I fill in the little box, Caucasian. I claim my whiteness. Yes, and so why is it that the minority side of me, wishing my family and myself saved, should take the responsibility for abuse. So someone is to blame and Justice is achieved. Why should I take the blame? Because the point is to not pass on the abuse. I believe if Caucasian people looked deep enough into their ancestral spiritual selves that they would find abuse to transcend. We are all equal in Gods eyes and I feel many things like racism are created within themselves. What is white supremacy, systemic racism; What is White? Ironically this is the conference that staged my first psychotic break. I am not sure it is anything. It is a blanket term for lost ancestry, lost information and lost heritage and culture that was wiped out by war and pillage and rape, just like any other race. It is abuse in and of itself just as the other minority groups. I think it is time to move on.

That being said, the subject of racism and exploring it brought me back to my Family and roots eventually and I solved many mysteries. I AM doing the work. The unseen ancient spiritual work of uncovering my roots and healing abuse by tapping deep into my body and DNA coding that carries all of these mysteries within. I need only dream and listen to myself, discover who I am, and take the time to nurture, preserve and protect my Family, my heritage (the little of it I know, like on my Mother’s side we have a passed down recipe for Baklava and we are very fertile women who rarely suffer form miscarriage and reproduce easily), and my memories. Deep deep memories from the ancients.

I was taught to dream to fantasize by my illness. I was taught to lose reality and find it again. To lose myself and then find me. This is a brave thing to do. I deserve some credit.