For most of my life I was
untooled unskilled unresourced
for what was happening to me on the energetic-spiritual-soul level.
It didn't occur to me that people would have these similar experiences.
My childhood environment lacked a spiritual base (thanks to residential school
generational impact and the inherent blandness of Canadian cultural landscape
we were trying to mimic). While I was sent to Catholic school, there's nothing
there that hinted at similar experiences. I didn't think anyone understood or
could help me decipher what had happened to me; one minute I was a grown woman
on a desert road, dying, and the next, a small child with carpet under my
hands. The steps inbetween were known but non-conceptual/not understandable to
the small child I was.
By the time I was 18, I had been reintroduced to native culture but the
rebirth that was occurring was just too fresh, and not very substantive to what
started happening that year. Time-space-death-alive dimension split open with a
visit from my grandfather right before he died. He "told" me enough
to ground me in my new reality for the next few years. Dreams that used to be
filled with home (home for alison part one) were now filled with a historical
revisioning of "canada" pre-contact, and visits with elders and
beings and concepts that were beyond my day-to-day now moments. It didn't match
anything I could find by myself in the library of a small northern town. So I
went to Trent University for native studies, hoping to find what I needed.
Instead, more strangeness. Being away from traditional territory --- you
don't really know how much that grounds and centers and educates you until you
are away from it. Things just got weirder. The veil between now and not-now
faded, for the most part. I was still young woman trying to figure out this new
adult way of being, and still grown woman-part one experiencing a part two
reality that was being non-real, unreal, uncomprehensible.
While I searched for some sort of understanding to guide me, I let life
happen to me. I had the blessing of being grounded in this non-real way of
living by meeting a Tuscororan medicine man, a bear, and a science fiction
author who gave me just enough information to make it for the next few years.
Also, Daughter visited and hinted at a directional change. I went with it all,
one unskilled step at a time.
This is all just to say: if you are a parent, don't shy away from asking
your child about their spirituality, or what they may know. Let them know that
whatever they may be "preloaded" with is natural, and it can be
talked about, even if it's not a similar experience to what you or they are currently
living in. Give them the space to state it all; this has nothing really to do
with you at all, except their comfort is your comfort later on. Knowing your
child can be open with you, without dismissal or judgment, will help both of
you. It can help you reclaim your soul-side, your magic. It can help you
remember what you were preloaded with.