INITIATION

As a deeply sensitive young person, I went through the shock of uprooting by exile, being estranged form loved ones, parents divorce, several surgeries, a lonely, year long stay in a foreign hospital, etc. These, were my Initiations.

As a teenager, I had repeated bouts of “unexplained” depression, and mysterious ailments, most likely, the aftershocks of all that, mostly unacknowledged trauma.
In spite, and because, of such trauma, since childhood, I gleaned avidly if at times only “by osmosis”, from the wells of ancestral and other wisdom, not knowing I was applying it already on self and others around me, but also, that I would have to put it all to intensive good use, to successfully treat myself for a number of things, including several years of what a few doctors labeled as Multiple Sclerosis...

I was in my 30’s, healthy and strong. I was living in Southern California, and enjoyed an active and very creative life.

The illness was totally unknown to me at the time, and even though the tests were inconclusive, truth is eventually I could hardly carry my own body weight, lift a cup of tea, or even hold a book in my hand… By nature, and as a practitioner of Tai Chi, I always had excellent spatial awareness, but I lost balance, was bumping into things, dropping and braking stuff... I lost all my hand-made clay cooking pots! Some got incorporated into Mosaics, later. Making lemonade with my lemons. :)

When there were times I could manage a short walk from point A to point B, (if carrying a little purse, surely without coins, keys, or such weight!), afterwards I’d collapse for days.

I was pretty scared, but my intuition told me not to follow medical protocols which, back then, in essence entailed taking a big glass of Resignation, to swallow a cocktail of drugs, meant not to heal, but just to suppress my immune system and so repress some of my symptoms. Then, adding another cocktail of drugs, meant to cope with the “side effects” of the first ones, which incidentally included things like, well …“death”!, lol! …All this, while I basically awaited indeed a slow death, from an incurable disease, loosing use of my whole body, …little, by, little…

- And I thought, …mmmmh, nah, thank you. - Call me crazy. :)

And took my health in my own very weakened hands.

I read a ton of books (which as I said, I could barely hold, nor cognitively process!), saw many doctors, “alternative” healers, shamans, curanderas, a couple of psychics, etc. To my pretty wholesome lifestyle, I added many funky diets, expensive programs, exotic supplements, weird, painful treatments, etc… and learnt a lot. About life, about human nature, about healing…

- OH, THAT ELUSIVE HEALING!…

But it wasn’t until later on that I found that elusive healing. On my own.

It was a slow, gradual process, in which I got re-acquainted with the many things I had learnt since I was a child.

My neglected Energy work, my grandmothers’ nutrition wisdom, along with the rather magical assistance of the botanical realms. It was mostly a “do-it-yourself” endeavor, and had a hefty price tag. My life went through a big “remodel”. By the end, I had let go of everything-on-Earth-I-held-dear… That’s right. ALL.

It was a gut-wrenching Persephone’s adventure, definitely not for the faint of heart, which I navigated with constant sprinkles of precious Grace… the only way to survive such things. In a path that already had a certain spiritual flavor, and in a way that can actually resemble a proverbial shamanic initiation.

After traveling to several places looking for said healing, I had come back to square 1, Southern California.

As part of the many sprinkles of Grace, that sometimes are also Cosmic Jokes too, I arrived to a place located on a street called “Santa Fe” (Holy Faith, I kid you not.) It was part of a bigger, rather dilapidated property, where the main house had a sign that read “Chateau Debris” at one of the entrance doors… But there were many trees (yay!), including an abandoned little orchard, and some wildish land.

This place, where I landed through many synchronicities, was the setting to some profound spiritual openings, and eventually, the longed for physical healing.

THE LAND ANSWERS A CRY FOR HELP

I spent the next months, living in a tiny “airstream” camper, a spaceship looking aluminum bullet, on the neglected orchard. I communed deeply with the land, and connected to the trees. Still ill, I would spend most of my time in solitude, under a beloved loquat tree, sitting on a crumbling strawbale.

My body could barely carry me, I couldn’t sleep much, had intense, bizarre pains, and yet, and yet…

My mystical self was in full bloom, like the loquat.

Nothing too flamboyant. I was simply dissolving within an all-directions-at-once embrace, of what I can only shyly describe as Divine Love …A love so intense, blissful and overwhelming, I could not bare it, and so I had to sit, and I would melt and cry, melt and cry, melt and cry...

I left for a while, summoned to South America, but when back, for a second season at this place, the botanical realms delivered the second part of the healing, that had already began under the loquat tree.

I had been invited to be part of an art show, and the time had come for me to actually build some big, complicated artworks. I was still ill, weak, and also terrified of not being able to follow up with my professional commitments.

This time, I had rented a little cottage on the other side of the property, where I eventually was “contacted” by a few plants, one by one. Say, each time I walked by or sat near a particular succulent plant, I felt her calling. Not as loud and clear as “hey Luna!”, but loud enough for me to wonder about its medicinal properties, and eventually venture in eating a small portion of a leaf, sit around, …and wait to see if I dropped dead… :)

Soon enough, she bloomed, so I could look her up, and confirm there was no danger of adding poisoning to my already vulnerable state! then I found an old recipe, by a Brazilian priest, of a magical potion I proceeded to make for nearly a year. As part of the synchronic events surrounding me at the time, I was just arriving from Brazil, and had mysteriously gathered the rest of the ingredients to the unknown concoction, a bit confused, not understanding what would be their use, until then…

To that powerful concoction, I added several plants, that “spoke” to me; some very old Mediterranean perennials from my landlord’s semi-abandoned gardens, as well as wild ones, that volunteered with unusual vigor that Winter/Spring, due to a rare abundance of winter rains, in that rather dry climate.

ON THAT DAY…

One day, shortly after what felt like a titanic feat, the completion of my artworks, I was sitting outside, communing with some of the many creatures that used to visit me, my little blue bird everyone though imaginary, the bigger blue jay that used to eat from my hand, and later my landlord’s cat, that had insisted on being on my lap while I worked on the pieces at my outdoors tent-studio…

But that day… I suddenly looked down at my legs, and simply realized that they were back at their same thickness… See, for a while, my left leg had lost muscle mass, and was thinner and weaker than the right one.

I wept, in sudden recognition of the healing that had taken place…

A few seasons had passed, with me slowly rebuilding my strength, while (very symbolically!) making these life size, anthropomorphic artworks.

They now hang as part of a Public Art collection, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, California. A secret testament to my own healing, that also is rippling further, as this art is, incidentally, devoted to the Earth.

Go visit them, is Public Art after all! :) and I hear people are always touched standing in front of these life size embodiments of Earth…