Dear Friend,
Linda Bergh, (beholdingthethreshold.org), Biography Facilitator and Death/Dying Guide, recently posted the following on her Facebook page. It was so beautiful that I asked her if I could share it with you and was grateful when she said “yes.” Linda’s daughter, Kirsten, died in 1996.
“Golden morning light at White Feather Ranch awakens a
memory of an earlier time here:
A time of early grief 18 years ago when I first visited this land after Kirsten died. I was feeling intense missing of her, and trying to find her in pictures and memories with friends. I was especially excited to get picture of her from a California friend, of her lying on the beach on her stomach, smiling up at the world… I went to Kinkos and copied it as large as I could.
Shortly after that I arrived at Nancy’s and we walked to a native site. I was shown a sacred grinding bowl, a hollowed out place on top of a rock mound. I circled and circled the bowl with my hand, picturing the ancestors grinding their grain. I awoke the next morning with a vivid dream. In the dream I have my eyes closed and am stroking what feels like gentle hills. I open my eyes in the dream, and I am stroking Kirsten’s back. Slowly gently, knowingly, sensing her and at the same time releasing her, somehow…
I awaken just before sunrise, and go running down to the rock mound, and thank the ancestors for leading me home to my Kirsten, my ancestor. I realize later that at the time of the accident I was not able to physically say goodbye to her body. I was in ICU in the hospital. And so, my soul searched and found another way to help me touch her body and find some closure in releasing her from this life.
So this morning, September 18, 2016, 18 1/2 years later, I find myself awakening in the same early hour, walking the same path through the golden grass and scraggly oaks, to the mound, and pushing aside the debris with my hands, searching for the grinding bowl. I am sensing where time has brought me. I am not fraught with missing, or finding, but with gratitude for a visit to this place, almost as if to a grave. Somehow one place she lives is here with the other ancestors.
But mostly now, she lives inside me, and all around me, and in her friends and their children, and in the joy of laughter, the abandon of swimming and dancing, and in moments of creativity. But she can also live here in this quiet stone mound on White Feather Ranch, surrounded by ancient oaks and tall golden grass, where the ancestors helped me to let her go.” – Linda Bergh, September 21, 2016
You can find Linda’s daughter, Kirsten’s book: She Would Draw Flowers at Amazon.
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