Being a child of the 60’s I’ve seen a lot of changes. One thing for sure, nothing stays the same.
It is the fate of our carbon based world that all things decay, which seems sad, but on the bright side, it is what has helped to create Garden Earth.
We have life giving rich soil to grow wonderful plants and trees here on our planet. It took 500 million years of dinosaur poop and volcano lava regularly ground up by glaciers to get to the ecology we have now.
Our planet changes, weather changes, situations change, lives change. Cultures change. We change. Nothing stays the same.
I have experienced some remarkable changes since I came to live in the remote wilderness of the NWT seven years ago. Some know a bit about my story but the synopsis is, the pressure to conform to the perfect standards of our strict childhood home gave me terrible panic attacks from a young age. Alcohol was my only escape.
I finished high school at Samuel Hearne Secondary School in 1978 and worked in Inuvik for a couple of years. My dad was transfered to Chilliwack in 1980, and with no family in the North, I reluctantly followed behind.
After two years in B.C., I joined a very bad American-based church that required complete obedience under threat of hell, which was quickly followed by an arranged marriage with two children soon born. I was mentally trapped in the States for 23 years until 2008 when I made a break for it and came back up north as fast as I possibly could.
Arriving alone in Yellowknife in 2008 was scary.
For the very first time in my life, I had the ability to choose my own path. Freedom was a manic roller coaster I seemed to have no control of.
After such oppression my entire life I had absolutely no idea who I was as a person, so I went back to who I had been before The Group. It was like I was 21 and I started drinking again.
Desperate for grounding, I was grateful when friends from Lutsel K’e invited me to the Desneth'che Spiritual Gathering out here in the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and allowed me, with others in need of healing, to fly by bush plane to the Grandmother in the Falls (Perry Falls) on the Lockhart River.
Standing over the great and majestic waterfalls, I prayed with all my heart to this Grandmother, T’sanku Theda, to heal my life.
Our local guide indicated that I was to take a certain rock with me. Good to heat up on the wood stove for a sore back he said. Prophetic when I consider how much wood I have helped haul these seven years.
Through strange coincidences, soon after going to Desneth’che, I met Roger, moved to Reliance and started writing this column. I was glad to get away from people and I needed to figure out what the heck was actually happening on the planet.
Living in the bush working on becoming my version of a strong woman, I overcame my alcohol dependency once and for all.
I felt like I was finally getting to a place of healing a few years ago when I was blindsided by horrible news that my son in the States has traumatic brain injury.
The guilt of prioritizing my own life overwhelmed me. Sorrow flooded my soul. I had brought suffering into the world and I blamed myself completely.
I had nightmares every night. Guilt piled upon guilt.
Isolated by both geography and my choices, I took a short break from writing this column. Thankfully I was able to stabilize and then continue writing my bush stories.
Then last winter I experienced what some refer to as “the dark night of the soul”.
The battle in my mind increased to the point until all I felt was crushing grief. I could only cry, Why? Over and over again.
It came to me clearly in those darkest moments that I had better start seriously practicing the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment or I would lose my mind from such deep grieving.
It was like magic, once I was brave enough to step back and become an observer of my own past life and experiences.
I looked at my anger and fear and where they came from. There were reasons far beyond my control why things had gone this way.
My mind cleared and I saw my own actions had very little to do with the outcome I was grieving. I saw that life is meant to be dark and light, Yin and Yang, positive and negative.
That’s how it is supposed to be.
We shouldn’t blame ourselves when things go wrong, or when we have to deal with unspeakable tragedies.
Human sorrow is a part of the intense experience of life here on Garden Earth and to seek its avoidance or not understanding its purpose only brings us more suffering.
So simple, as deep enlightenment often is.