On the Isle of Ancestors– Lori

Why didn’t anyone warn me? Well, truth be told, if I had read between the lines of all the comments and posts I should have had an inkling on what this Heroine’s Journey is really all about. I haven’t even made it to the blessed island yet and I’m ready to turn around.

To start, I printed the guided image exercise and read it. I should have trusted that quiet little voice in the back of my mind charging me to “run, run away!” So I did what I always do when I get uncomfortable—I either get glib and flip or I get heady and intellectual. I read the exercise and immediately began formulating silly exchanges between myself and the Ferry Women or between myself and one of Anita Marie’s quirky characters. When that didn’t seem to work, I then got the idea to systematically consider each dead relative until I found one that would fit some archetypal literary theory I learned in graduate school and write some dry essay on “allies” or “gatekeepers.”

That didn’t prove too easy either. I didn’t want to write on any of my more recently deceased relatives for fear that I might write something about the dead relative that might get back to some living relative and they would get in a snit about it. Furthermore, I didn’t want to write about the ones that had died before I was born because, well, I just didn’t know them.

Then I came to the conclusion that I was thinking too much about the process when I should actually be experiencing it. Again, the little voice sounded: “too close, too deep, run, run, run”. Instead, I dutifully began the exercise just as it is written.

To my shock and mystification, the person who appeared in my mind’s eye was an aunt, by marriage, who had died when I was a teenager. I have not thought about her for years. There is a reason for that: she simply wasn’t that important of a person in my life—even though she lived on the same street, on the same block, from the time I was born until she died. She wasn’t a bad person. She was actually quite sweet and nice from what I observed. However, the thing that stands out the most about her is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever having a conversation with her. I have no memory of any exchange, a loving word, a praise or an affirmation. (However, to be fair, I have no memory of her being unkind to me either.) She simply didn’t talk to me.

Why should she come to mind? I continued with the exercise. In my imagination, she had no question for me and my question to her was simply: “Why you?” to which she had no answer. She had no gift for me and I had none for her. We simply stared at each other until I said: “Well, time for me to go.”

I was doing this meditation whilst lying on my bed and I continued to lay there for quite a while pondering the meaning of her presence in my imagination. Then it became crystal clear to me: her behavior towards me was not much different from any of the other members of my family with the exception of my parents. My aunts and uncles and grandparents really didn’t give me much thought. They fed me, gave me gifts at Christmas and birthday gifts and yelled at me when I was too noisy or in the way. But did any of them ever ask me what my day was like or what I learned in school and what hobbies interested me? No.

I’m disappointed but not necessarily angry at any of these people. This is just the way they were. I suppose it was that Northern European predisposition to avoid anything that smacked of emotionalism or indulgence. (At times I wished I were Irish or Italian or Greek or any ethnic group that knows how to have a good time). And in my imagination, this aunt, this vague memory of a dark haired woman, came to represent these members of the family.

But, let me retract what I just said: she did come bearing a gift—the reminder that their legacy to me was the honing of an emotional self-reliance, the realization that I have been enabled to stand on my own two feet and find the strength to deal with life on my own.

Now, does that statement sound as pathetic to you as it does for me? Yeah, I thought so.