A year of days learning framed love circling hate
Cicadas fading hum meets the cool morning breeze
photography courtesy of Pat Cegan
Holidays always carry an energy of remembering. This season included table talk with my mother, the heroine, of many sad and ugly tales…her memories of life from a darker side of life. I know few whose life embodies “survival” as hers does.
The tales, however, have left me grieving a heritage of pain. I am most sickened by tales of my middle name. I learned I am the name sake of a Jane who guised humiliation and murder with postures of rescue and embrace. I am that Jane who battled for a baby not mine by stealing from a mother in a court of law, that Jane who arranged a drowning at birth to hide the shame of a holy seed in a less holy womb, that Jane who welcomed only to the basement the lesser ones in the unsanctioned family tree.
I have asked myself this new year, “who am I really?” What does the power of my name speak in the circles of life? What part of this heritage have I carried to daughters and granddaughters? How can I redeem time in my life as Jane?
I will start by saying I prefer the name Lolly.
The walk of life requires some places of surety and sound footing. There needs some protection, some cover in the walk through the hurt and fear layering the everyday path.
It’s all about the shoes.
You need to make your own.
You cannot wear another’s shoes- even if they seem to fit and look more fresh. They will blister the soul… you will die with them on. Your shoes belong to your journey.
Such shoes are crafted by the pain of a specific life, in how one survives the losses, walks through harsh words and even self judgements. The fabric is rich in the blood of sacrificed wants and dreams- the binding and seams, though, sewn with Love, God-breathed and polished. This is what makes them strong enough to make the climb and last the dance.
Like Dorothy who trusted her shoes to take her home, there is a trust in the walk home, finding the ways and places of self knowing and healing– standing in your own shoes.
