Dunmoran Strand at sunset between storms in Skreen, County Sligo Fall of 2015
My bones are cozy and waking up at the moment. It’s 7:00 a.m. in Ireland at Holy Hill Hermitage on February 16, 2016 as I write these words. The wind is swooshing and whooshing at 22 mph, which is about average for the last few months of storms. My bones don’t go walking when the wind is that fierce, but the view of the trees and the ivy dancing and shaking fiercely is quite inspiring. Because I’m in my sabbatical hermitage time, I do not have to battle the wind or go anywhere physically. In my cabin, named after St. Clare, I am dry, warm and safe. I’ve been here since July of 2015 and will be finished with my sabbatical by May of 2016. I am 51 years old, a Jewish Lay-Leader, Mother, Writer, Cook and Healer (all in capitals with intention). My hard-working bones and body needed a year-off between raising family, being very active in my community, and moving into the second half of my life. My body was exhausted, which is quite common for anyone who cares about others or the planet, even if you are not a parent. I was literally limping when I made it here and in constant pain.
By the time you reach 50, which is young, really, but as a woman it marks the transition years of menopause; everything gets drier, bonier, your emotions, your whole physical reality shifts massively and you feel it in your bones. Not everyone works their systems as hard as I’ve worked my body, but all of us need respite and time to contemplate and allow for bone time. Time that is slower, time that is not rushing and that is deep and structural, bone time.
Detail of Nicole from Branches of the Trees, mixed media on board, 2014 by Helen Redman
It’s a common fallacy, propagated by the media and society everywhere, that speed is better, youth is better and all of our technology and systems are designed for the opposite of bone time. Youthful healthy happy bodies are great, and often as the old saying goes “wasted on the young.” But, trying to perpetuate a young, speedy body is not great and actually exactly the wrong direction to go in. Our bodies are Holy vessels, gifts from the Divine, sacred vases to hold our souls.
It’s lovely to inhabit a healthy one, even an aching one, but they aren’t our permanent homes. They are our transitional dwellings. If we are only body, pleasure seeking and speed focused we never engage with our souls and their needs. Not connecting with our souls is wreaking havoc on the structure of life on our planet. If the earth had a skeleton, her bones would be broken, from our lack of regard, from fracking, from ignoring the call of her rivers, all her creatures (including human suffering) and all the messages being sent from her soul and her bones.
When we stop and listen to the wind, or to the silence, or the birds, something magnificent unfolds within us and within the larger home of all our bodies. All of a sudden we get to hear the music of the Divine, and the lament, however we name that. You cannot hear that music as easily if you are rushing or just focused on looking good and feeling good personally. You hear and experience your soul and your bone-marrow knowing, when you are quiet, when you are engaged in loving or helping others, when you are in contemplation, prayer, communion.
Last ** mikveh in the small cold stream outside my cabin, in prayer, communion and bone- chilling cold April of 2016 at Holy Hill
I’m not saying that the way one feels after moving in an aerobic or physically strenuous way isn’t also important or can’t get you to a feeling of connection. For some folks that is where they experience their only sense of communion. I do not think that we can ever, at this point in human history, say it’s possible to have enough folks seeking communion. All of us need to listen more to the call of our bones, to the marrow of the matter. We have to SLOWWWWWW way down and hear our beating hearts and watch the birds or the river or the clouds, or listen to the symphony with our whole beings and offer thanks to the Holy One.
We all have to search for the link connecting us one to the other, where I am part of this earth’s structure, her pinky finger or one tiny filament of bone in her being and you are another. We’ve been gifted with bodies and a home for them to live on, not attending to the WHOLE being of that gift, the gifts of our souls and of our interconnection and need for each other wounds us all and is literally bone-crushingly wrong.
I’m in a state of perpetual tear-filled gratitude for my bone-time, my down time, my slow time to be with the earth, with folks in gentle prayer and song. I’m also grateful for the long walks in the hills and the help of Healers and Holy Wells and all the ways being engaged with the earth in my body and bones is working to ease my pain. I try to walk gently on the earth and hope that my time here is a gift to her and to those few folks I have and do encounter on retreat. I pray with the wind and the frost, the sunshine and rainbows between storms and all the birds of the skies here for all beings to be well, to find each other and to be engaged in deep communion, bones, bodies, hearts, minds and souls all together in reverence, service and joy.
Trinidad Beach, in California, 5:30 a.m-ish, looking for quiet bone time back home in May of 2016
This piece was originally published in the Spiritual Life Institute’s Fall 2016 publication: Desert Call
**I will be writing extensively about Mikveh, my practice with Living Water, streams, Lagoons, the Ocean and other bodies of water that are living in the near future.
River Heart from the stream outside my cabin in Ireland, with my thanksgiving offering, two days before I flew home.
I am taking a moment between the constant domestic duties I find myself right smack dab back in the middle of. This was not how my return to home was supposed to look. There was going to be structure and contemplation built into my re-engagement. There was going to be desert days (time every week for no talking and just praying or moving with the earth and the Divine). There was going to be a gentle flow between what small things I needed to get done to keep my home together (since it was going to be me and my husband, alone for the first time in 27 years) and time to just dwell in quiet.
None of that is what is happening or happened. I came home early to help care for my son Issac, who is 29 years old, and who was hit by a car on April 15th while riding his bike to work. Luckily for all of us, only his right foot was damaged, completely damaged, run over, crushed. The bones in the center of his foot being described by one doctor as cornflakes. Bones and cornflakes, should never be in the same sentence together. I think there are now more screws in his foot than bones. Screws put there to hold the flakes of bone together. The hope is that the bones will grow back and be functional.
Issac’s Right foot with the screws holding his bones together. The large clamp was only in his foot during one of his surgeries (there are more to come). There are five large metal pins screwed into his functional bones on either side of his foot. Those long metal rods have been in place for several weeks and will be removed in mid-June, hopefully.I’m not going to go into the medical or financial reality of all of this, because that alone will take months and years to sort out or try to explain. I’m trying to find myself in all of this, right now in this discrete moment.
I’m describing my re-entry to this world in the following ways. It’s like a rocket returning from outer space and having to go through the atmosphere and have all of my external structures burnt off in the heat of re-entry. Then instead of a week or more floating on the ocean while I decompress and prepare for earth’s climate, I’ve had to jump and roll right on out of my vessel and start running a marathon, while carrying my son on my back.
Another way this feels is like all my molecules have been thrown up into the air and are in a jumble somewhere between here and there. Who I am and how I am is just not easy to experience or articulate, let alone be. My husband and I are both just holding each other and taking it one day at a time. When I’m not too tired, we play Upwords together at night.And there’s this sense of being crazy for complaining at all, because my son is alive. His neck and spine were not damaged. His brain is intact. He will walk again, maybe never without pain or he’ll have to use a cane, but he is in a body still. I think about all the folks in war-torn areas, whose children, beloved partners and parents are maimed or killed by landmines, gunshots, bombs, polluted water or diseases that are preventable but are rampant when men are fighting over territory. I know that folks with less resources suffer all the terror and pain of what I’ve gone through and am going through and I sometimes feel, even with all my community support and friends and family that I am barely managing. I know folks whose children are fighting cancer or who were hit by cars and have brain damage. I’m dealing with something that will have an outcome that is still something reasonable and manageable. Even still, I feel that I’ll need a whole year off again just to recover from the last few weeks. That’s not on the agenda, not even remotely. My Jubilee is over. I’ve got six years of work to do before the next sabbatical year of rest.
So, I soldier on, which is not something I ever think of myself as doing or being. A soldier is not a metaphor, Nicole the Pacifist, connects with, but it is the one I find myself feeling close to right now. The soldier is someone who just keeps going and gets the job done, despite the trenches, the muck, the mire, the pain, the confusion and the exhaustion. You just put one foot in front of the other and move until the time to stop moving arrives or until you fall over. It’s not that terrible all the time, but the feeling of it on some level is. I guess the job of being the kind of mother I am is also an apt metaphor. I’ve also described this time as being similar to what it is like when you have a newborn, lots to do, all the time and it’s constant.
Roses from my husband, gladiola from my garden and the parsley that went wild. This is one thing I do for myself, create places of beauty amidst the mess. These are pictures of Issac and a funny snow globe he made over 18 years ago that I have held onto. The snow globe is of a samurai warrior made out of some kind of water-proof clay. This creature has been wandering around our home in various places and represents Issac in my mind. In the last few weeks, most of the folks I know have gone through or are going through equally difficult situations for themselves. I do not feel alone in having to traverse complex territory. Many of us are walking through a land-mined landscape, hoping that the damage won’t be irreparable or that we will be able to restore the wetlands or the broken home we found after the storms of life have battered our spaces. The Earth herself is on edge, and we’re part of that system, so all of us, without exception are experiencing that edge. Whether you feel it or know it is a different matter.
And our responses are important. Some folks get stiller and calmer and pray more, some folks get busier and move faster and try to fix everything, some folks feel inspired and try to paint, draw, dance or dream a change or healing. Some folks spend hours pumping iron and doing exercises or yoga to make their bodies vessels for strength or flexibility. Some folks just stay in bed or do drugs or take their lives.
I’m somewhere in the middle right now. Moving between doing all that needs doing, a constant stream of dishes, laundry, physical care of Issac and his various daily needs, shopping, organizing appointments, attending to my husband’s and Ethan’s needs and trying to manage other friends, family and a few minutes here and there for myself. I feel badly that I’m exhausted every day, completely wasted and walking through each day with 1/10th my normal speed and energy, but then I look at the list I’ve just written and know that it isn’t even all of what I’m doing every day and if I was listening to a friend tell me their story and it looked like this, I’d say, “of course you are exhausted!”
I think it is a fallacy of modern life that you are supposed to feel good all the time. That somehow if you find the right formula, the right job, the right relationship, the right meditation practice, the right coach, the right diet etc…then you will always be well and hardy and hale and happy. I reject this on a fundamental level. My aches and pains, my fatigue are not necessarily preventable or fixable by me if I just get things right or better. Of course diet, exercise, and my environment play a part, but the idea that WE are in CHARGE is something I just don’t agree with on a deep level; especially in terms of being able to control what goes on around us and how that impacts us emotionally. There are too many factors involved and the only way to control anything often seems to involve letting go of someone or something in our lives. There is no free ride or way to make changes happen that doesn’t have a cost and consequences, some of which we cannot know for years or perhaps eons.
I have done three loads of laundry, which I need to fold soon. I’ve made breakfast and lunch for Issac and myself and heated up soup for a friend and her daughter that came by. They swept the kitchen floor and also did some dishes for me. I had a nice fifteen minute discussion with them about humility on my deck. I’ve looked at my bank account balances and made an appointment for the window cleaner to come by in two weeks. I’ve reached out to my god-daughters who are dealing with a very hard situation right now and I’ve also been working on this piece while doing all of the above. There’s a few other things that have happened as well and the day is not even close to being done.
I think for now though, this piece of my mind is recorded and I’ll move onto doing more that needs doing. This post has taken all day to get written, in between all the aforementioned happenings. Just a little while ago, Issac wheeled himself out onto the deck and we folded laundry together, something he NEVER does with his own laundry and which he finds laughable, but he did it with and for me. He’s an amazing man and when I’m not freaking out about his bones, I’m just grateful for the person he is and that I get to spend this unexpected time with him.
My choice and my response to difficulty is to remember to love and to give thanks. I’m grateful for the flowers, the birds, my husband, my friends, my family, the teachings of all the amazing masters I’ve had the grace to encounter and the gentle breeze blowing on my skin at this very moment. My response involves breathing, when I remember to consciously, and trusting that there will be an ebb and a slowing along with a flow and a quickening. I am part of a great web of folks and creatures, all doing our best.
These words of the Jewish prayer/song by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov also inform and flow through me when things are difficult:
So, here I am, Hineyni, in Western Ireland at a Carmelite Hermitage, I’ve been here since last July. I have to leave here in thirteen days. I packed up six boxes of books and winter clothes which I mailed over here a year ago. I now am reversing that process and removing myself box by box from this landscape and my cabin.
It’s actually very hard. I cry throughout the day. Between bouts of working hard to de-Nicole-Zone my cabin named “Clare” and all the details I have to manage, I also try and take a walk or just sit still and offer thanks. Of course, it’s raining hard again, off and on right now, so wet walking is the deal. Although at this very moment the sun is shining!
Me and My Shadow waving goodbye to the North Atlantic Sea
The time before Passover/Pesach is always many weeks of long days and lots of hard work in order for me to be prepared for Pesach. This year is no different. My internal and external clock always aligns with the Jewish calendar. This is not haphazard. I am connected to the flow of the religious festivals and the year and the Sabbaths by choice and also truly on some kind of cellular level. So, cleaning out all the cabinets and drawers and wiping things down is always what I am doing at this time of year. The difference is that I’m packing to move back to Mitzrayim, not away from it. I’m trying not to see it that way though.
Mitzrayim/The Narrow Place/Egypt is the place we left to go wander in the desert for forty years and have all kinds of adventures, including being given the Torah.
I am not enslaved here, I am free here. I’ve been free to laugh, dance with the stars and trees, pray loudly or quietly for hours. I’ve been free to be as big and wild as I am without any barriers. That’s a kind of freedom I’ve never known before and it is very hard to leave this actual place where I’ve had so much delight. It hasn’t only been good. Lots of work and old hurts and territory has been explored and lived here as well. The hard work of my life and my choices follow me wherever I go and that’s okay.
I’m heading back into the world of doing and working and caring for folks, so it’s sort of a reverse crossing for me. But, I am not heading back into bondage, I’m trying very hard to see my return differently. One of the great things about the Torah narratives is that they are never old and dusty. We live them all the time. So, like my ancestors I’m heading out of what has become comfortable and I’m actually not going to arrive at the Promised Land. Moses never does. It’s a journey, it’s a trek across the wilderness. It’s an unknown passage with the goal being not as important as the journey.
I’m heading home but it will be different. My youngest son will be going off to college in August. The house will be occupied by myself and my husband and our two cats. We’ve never had time alone. We fell in love 27 years ago when I was a single mother on welfare and I already had two small children. We’ve raised three birth children together and housed and helped quite a few others over the last 27 years.
Me and my two babies 27 years ago when my husband Kevin came into our lives rescuing all of us from a crazy hard life.
Being just the two of us will be uncharted territory. I’m so excited about this part of my return home. The chance to just be with my man, to honor him and love him and have more time with him than we’ve ever known. That’s a taste of the Promised Land andOlam Ha Ba/The World to Come, for me, right here on earth.
Kevin and Nicole May 14, 1989-Wedding Day, Billboard Photoshop made by Helen Redman
But, the getting there is hard, hard going. Disentangling from what has been glorious for me, dealing with all my physical stuff, way too much of it that I sent over here, and the saying goodbye to the people and landscape is painful.
I never even cracked open some of the books I mailed over here, and I acquired new ones and now I have to get them back to California. I am leaving some things behind, gifting folks with certain things, but still I have a lot of stuff to pack up and clean up and get sorted. It’s funny on some level when it doesn’t feel like I’m trapped and in bondage to all my possessions and the things I think I need. Oy vey, I’ve got too much stuff! I’ve loved living more simply and, of course, my version of simple is still pretty fancy.
My stuff in transition and on its way back home soon.
But, having a small cabin that I, alone, have kept clean and been completely responsible for has been heavenly. Moving myself back into the large stream of humans in my life, walking with them, working with them, sharing meals with them and stories with them, all of the engagement with folks that I am returning to feels complex. I have been looking at how I will navigate my return without it just being a return to the way things were before.
It won’t be any kind of liberation for me if everything just reverts to how it was. I need to carve a different path for myself even as I return to familiar territory. I’m heading out into uncharted territory, once again, even though the place where I’ll land will be familiar. I don’t have a Moses or Miriam to lead me through the desert and no sea parting to help me get across. I will be crossing the Atlantic ocean on a large cargo vessel called the MS Independent Voyager (I’m not kidding).
Even the name of the boat serves as my reminder that the Holy One is always directing my steps, whether I’m walking in Ireland, crossing an ocean on a boat, or weeding in my garden back in California. I have to trust that the miracle of this place will stay with me and that it lives in me at my core. I am practicing this trust and reminding myself of this in between my freak-outs.
So, back to box packing for me. I’ll take a walk on the beach, rain or no, with Brother Thomas, in a few hours because all workers, everywhere and always, need time for a walk on the beach, that’s ALWAYS TRUE!
Dunmoran Strand, the closest beach to my hermitage, about five miles away. I’ll be walking here with Brother Thomas physically and forever in my dreams.
Mama Nicole by Helen Redman 1993 http://birthingthecrone.com/pages/Nicole/Pages/14.htmlI do not have breast cancer. I did find a lump in my right breast about six weeks ago. This is the story of my adventure with mammograms, ultrasounds, doctors, clinics and biopsies in a foreign country, which I navigated mostly by myself. Something which would never have been the case if I were at home. Strap on your seat-belts, here we go, this is a long ride…..
I had an appointment with my phenomenal local doctor, Sorcha Dunne, who works at the nearby clinic. The clinic is just a mile from my cabin. I needed to go over blood work related to my thyroid condition. I had her check out the lump I found under my right underarm. Because the lump was painful and mushy, she was reassuring and said: “I’d like to put you on a high dose of anti-inflammatory medication for a week and then check this lump out again, in ten days. If it’s still there, then we’ll go nuclear.” So, I got on Ibuprofen 400 mcg three times a day.
I then had a freak-out, crying in the car, praying and I think I went swimming at the pool I just recently joined. I was torn about telling my husband, because I didn’t want to worry him unnecessarily. This lasted for one day. I realized that if he had something like this, even if it turned out to not be serious, I would want to be told. This is a complex issue in most families. Who do you tell, when do you tell, how do you tell? It’s more complicated for me right now because I’m on a retreat NOT talking to all my people and family as I normally would. It’s also expensive to communicate with folks in the states from here and there’s the time difference as well.
So, I called my most magnificent husband. I cried and he agreed that it was right of me to call him. He then said he would do anything I needed and over the week I was on the Ibuprofen I talked to him at all hours of his day and mine. We strategized, he listened to me and supported me in all the ways I needed. We agreed that we would tell family after I had my follow-up visit, in case there was no more to the story, I didn’t feel like causing an uproar of fear in those I love.
I have escorted two dear friends across death’s door from breast cancer. I have two friends who are in remission/recovering from breast cancer, minus their breasts and after intense medical engagements. I have one friend still in a very long battle with lymphatic cancer. I have lost two other friends in the last year from cancer as well, not breast cancer though. In my community I am often the person you call when you are sick or dying because I was the Chair of our Hevra Kadisha (Sacred Society/Burial Society). You can read all about that here: Life and Death Matters
Death, medical challenges, and family complexity around all of this are all very familiar to me. I am often the person who is the medical advocate for my friends or others when they are navigating illness. I know this landscape from the helper side, not from the patient side. Ummmm, they’re really different! It’s a whole other world when you are the one in the scary seat.
A moment to talk about being an ALPHA female. In almost every situation I will be the alpha, I will take charge if taking charge needs to happen. This is a huge asset for the folks I help. It’s not always an asset though and I have to work very hard to not be the loudest, biggest, most intense person in any room. I pretty much have to crank the volume down on who I am all the time. The volume knob on the Nicole Being is permanently worn on the turn down side. Most folks experience me as taking up a lot of space, physically, verbally, and spiritually. This is me with my volume turned DOWN really hard.
It’s actually exhausting to always have to crank myself down, down, down. Part of why I am here away from most human contact is because the trees and the river and the birds and the angels have NO problem with my volume and I feel so safe and free with them. If you could see my energetic being it would be the size of a small sea. I’m not kidding. And everyone wants a wild body of water in their living room taking up space, on the sofa, right?
At the 200 year old Seaweed Baths in Enniscrone , Me as Wild MermaidSo, what happens for me when I have to divert my attention from keeping my volume turned down to be in HYPER-FUNCTION mode is that I get less good at being smaller, and I also forget things and make mistakes.
Well, I still had a lump on Monday, February 29th, Leap not for Joy!
So, then Sorcha referred me to the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin for a triple assessment; Mammograms, Ultasounds and Biopsies. This is “going nuclear,” which I thought was a metaphor, but actually it is called nuclear medicine. I’m not sure if she meant it metaphorically or not, but that’s how I heard it and that’s how I experienced it is as well.
Remember I’m in Ireland. I was told it would be two or three weeks before I could be seen for this consultation. Well, that didn’t work for me or my husband. I’d already been in a state of limbo and who knew how long that lump had been in my boob before I noticed it. One of my friends had such a fast growing breast cancer that a few weeks made a difference and because she was extremely on top of her situation, with two small children, she immediately had surgery and is alive and well today. Three weeks felt like an eternity to me. My husband asked me to talk with one of my sisters by love (name will not be given), who is also one of my doctors back in the states.
I’d been hesitant to do so because she’s a busy single-mom who just brought her mother home with metastasized pancreatic cancer and is taking care of her and her step father in her tiny home following her own painful divorce. But, Kevin insisted that she needed to be brought into the loop, so I called her and woke her up at 11 pm her time, 6 am my time. We talked for an hour and she said she wanted me to at least see if I could get an ultrasound sooner. She urged me to be pushy and she reassured me that based on my description it was probably not breast cancer, but let’s not wait to find that out.
So, as soon as the local clinic opened I called and said I couldn’t wait three weeks to get this consultation and asked if I could get part of it done sooner locally. Dublin is three hours and a whole world away from me here. Within an hour or so, Mary, the receptionist, called me back and said she had secured the appointment for me for the following day at 2:30 pm. PERFECT! I felt a little bit like an “ugly American” but Mary and Sorcha both reassured me. If I did have cancer, I’d have to be packing up and heading home for surgery, my situation was just not simple. Somehow between the angels, the extraordinary efforts of these magnificent local folks, some serious Mazel/Luck and the fact that I would be paying privately, I got into the special hospital in Dublin very quickly.
So, I threw some clothes into a bag, got all my paperwork together and asked one of the nuns to give me a ride to the train station in two hours. I got on the 1:00 pm train to Dublin. While on the platform waiting, I spoke with the Mater Private and asked for the nearest hotel. The receptionist said to try the Maldron Parnell Square and to mention I should get the special rate for their patients. I called them and asked to book a room for two nights. They only had one room available for that night, but I figured I might get lucky once I got there and anyway, I could always switch hotels if I had to.
So, on the train I went. I brought my knitting and my iPad with several novels on it. I spent time on my phone with my travel insurance AIG, and they were pretty wonderful. They assigned me a real person who called me every day and helped me get things figured out. I definitely was in hyper-function mode, which is what had to be done. No room for feelings.
I do need to share that when I first found the lump I did share that information with my Carmelite sisters and brothers here at my Hermitage. They were AMAZING. One of the nuns had a breast cancer scare which turned out to not be cancer. She came over and reassured me. The others also all put me in their prayers and were completely caring and present for me. Lots of hugs and kindness. So, even though I wasn’t with my normal crew of folks I was surrounded by their love. Additionally, my foot reflexologist neighbor, Rachel Dooney, and my chiropractor Sheila O’Brien were very available. Sheila, had also gone through this breast lump territory and procedures and not had breast cancer. So, all of these folks were there for me and praying for me and sending me love and support.
Once I got to Dublin, I took a taxi to the hotel. The staff was completely multicultural, Indian, Brazilian, Spanish, Moldovan, Basque to name just a few. I loved all the accents and languages and every person there was generous, kind and solicitous of me. They printed out my medical documents, release forms for me and even faxed them for me, free of cost. They just went out of their way to be helpful.
I got to speak Spanish and my tiny drop of Russian also, which was fun and distracting, two things that are helpful when you are freaking out about possibly having cancer. I ate at the hotel for dinner and went to see Big Maggie (a play I’d been hearing about on the radio and which has been sold out for months). I figured I’m in the country of the Bards and I am going to try to distract myself and have some fun. I booked my ticket while on the train into Dublin and got a pretty good seat about five rows from the stage a little to the left of center. The show was very intense and powerful and I am sooooooo glad I saw it. The theater, the Gaiety, is very old and beautiful with red velvet everywhere and sculpted ivory-colored angels and flowers all over the place as well as having a huge crystal chandelier. the acting was stunning and excellent and inspiring.
After the show I returned to the hotel and attempted to sleep. Guess how that went? So, reading, phone calls to my husband, solitaire and several episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun were watched instead. I had two hot, hot baths as well. Perhaps I got three hours of sleep (which is my average on a bad night). Around five a.m. I got up and prayed the morning service. This takes me between two to three hours. I read, chant or sing the prayers in Hebrew, then in English. I cry through most of them, so that means it just takes me a while. My tears were not just unique to this intense and fraught time.
I cannot get through three or more words of any prayers without tears of joy, gratitude, and awe. Sometimes sadness too, but that’s not really what the tears are about, they still slow me down time-wise. Perhaps, they swim their way to heaven along the river of the water falling from my eyes. I have stopped judging this. This phenomenon has been constant for me since I came to Ireland. It was pretty frequent before I came on retreat, but there is no one to judge me, wonder if I am okay, or otherwise interrupt my process here, so I have gotten to deepen in all my spiritual practices, which is exactly why I am here!
The very common, although totally not common but breathtaking, double rainbow outside my front door, keeping me grateful and in awe.I am reminded of the story my Rabbi Naomi Steinberg tells about Reb Zusya. Reb Zusya is a simple poor fellow. There are many stories about him and I may not have this one exactly right. The one I am thinking about is a story where someone is commenting to the Rabbi about how Reb Zusya can never get more than two or three words into a prayer before he faints or, the less kind, assume he has fallen asleep. When asked about this Reb Zusya tries to explain that just saying “Baruch Ha-Shem” Blessed is the Name, makes him see the throne of Glory and it causes him to start contemplating the fountain of blessings flowing from the Divine. This throws him into a profound state of awe and trembling and he is overcome. Since almost all of the prayers start this way he can never get past those first few words, and in fact he faints trying to explain this. I think it is the Rabbi in the story who chastises and informs the others about the holiness of Reb Zusya and his devotion and engagement with Holiness.
I’m no Reb Zusya, but I do experience tremendous energy, angels and wonder. This happens for me whenever I pray in Hebrew or chant or am engaged in Holy prayer or meditation with others in any language or religion. If the heart is present, then I feel that in all my cells.
It was good to pray, in my hotel room in Dublin, it’s always good for me to pray. It just takes me a long time and I get wet.
So, after praying I went downstairs for breakfast and headed into town to get my underarms and legs sugar-waxed. I had asked the nurse about if I should shave and she said yes, so I treated myself to that. You may not think a sugar wax hair removal is a treat, but it doesn’t involve me taking a razor to my skin and lasts longer and reminds me of the Hammam Pacha (something I hope to write about soon). I had time for lunch and found a delicious Nepalese restaurant called Diwali. It was so quiet, with a large screen full of images of nature playing, soft raga music, quiet diners and large fish tanks full of beautiful fish; it was a sanctuary in the midst of busy loud, thronging Dublin. The food was EXCELLENT!
The woman Lindsay, who did my waxing, was great. Her business is called The Sugarist. She is from Seattle and we had a great set of conversations full of feminism, food, politics and lots of other great chatter. She was excellent. Alas, finally it was time to head to the hospital, so I hailed a taxi and dropped my big bog boots and large jacket off at the reception desk and got back in my taxi. Once at the Mater Private Hospital I was treated with tremendous kindness and graciousness. There were about seven other women,with their friends or spouses in the breast treatment area. I was the only person by herself, but I know lots of folks were praying for me and thinking about me.
I didn’t have to wait too long before I was called in for the first set of Mammograms. I’m not going to describe those. If you’re a woman over 40 you should know what I’m talking about. If you’re not a woman, this is one of the things you can be very grateful you do not have to go through. So, they took lots and lots of shots of my right breast and several of my left. The technicians were funny, kind and gentle–even if the machines are the exact opposite of that.
Then I went back out into the small waiting area and after another not too long wait I was ushered into the ultrasound room. The doctor Michelle McNicholas was a redhead and I love redheads! She and I also share a name, since Nicole is in her last name. She gooped up my breasts and started looking around. She didn’t seem too concerned and said so, she found a second large lump on my left breast which I was unaware of. This is when you start to really get afraid, if you’re me, even if the doctor is saying reassuring things. She said she wanted another set of mammograms for the left side, since we hadn’t done as many on that side and she wanted to see a certain view. So, back to the Mammogram Monster Machines I went. More mushing and smashing and then back into the ultrasound room. Michelle was very reassuring and said she really didn’t think I had anything to worry about. The tissue looked like and was behaving like “fat necrotic” tissue.
She and I agreed that we still should do a biopsy. I was there, I was lumpy, I wanted to be certain that I didn’t have breast cancer. So, I was then numbed up on my left breast and she did two fine-needle biopsies. I didn’t feel these, at the time, but they have scary noisy loud clicks which the doctor warned me about. Then I got dressed and went back to the waiting area. There was one more doctor to see.
I really loved the process of this place. It was multi-pronged with procedures and tests but also with a follow-up conversation and final exam with a second doctor. I just felt completely covered, seen and cared for and all of it was going on in one small area of a larger hospital. So, the nurse for Professor Gory (the name of my last doctor, really!), came searching for me. She tried to pronounce my last name, and I told her, never mind, just say Frank and don’t bother with the Barchilon. She said Dr. Gorey, when looking at my chart, commented that I must be French. So, as I walked into his room, I greeted him in French.
The whole exam went on in French, much to my delight, and his. There was a little English for his nurse too. It was somehow so comforting and friendly to be laughing and chatting in French. His French was excellent. So, he did a final exam on my breasts with his hands and then sat me down and said. “I’m almost certain you have absolutely nothing to worry about.” We will get back to you on Monday with the Biopsy results, but my advice is that you have a mammogram in two years and that you ONLY examine your breasts once a month. I know you’ll probably want to do it more frequently, but don’t make yourself crazy.” We shook hands and I went to pay the bill, feeling fairly relieved in general.
So, for all of this care, which I cannot even imagine the cost of in the U.S. I paid 1,100 Euros total for Mammograms, Ultrasound, Biopsies, Doctors, technicians, local anesthetic, etc….I think the cost for all of that would be ten times or more for the procedures and consultations. I wasn’t happy to shell out that money, but it will hopefully be reimbursed to me by my travel insurance. I’m sure that reimbursement and paperwork process will be much longer than the medical one!
I walked back to my hotel, which was about ten blocks from the hospital. I took 1000 mg of Paracetamol (like Tylenol) and went for a nap in my room, or an attempt at a nap. I spoke with my brother and his partner and also with my husband and then went out for a really fancy dinner at a place recommended to me by the front desk staff. It was called Chameleon. I asked the Brazilian at the front desk where I could find good spicy food within walking distance. This place was an Indonesian fusion type place that they had heard was very good. I checked it out on my iPhone and walked to it, it was about a twenty-minute walk. I had a phenomenal meal there and will definitely eat there when I’m in Dublin again.
Now it’s all about the waiting for the test results and the anxiety around that. I’ll keep this part fairly brief, although my wait for the results was not brief. On the Monday, five days after my biopsies, I got a call saying they wouldn’t have my results until Wednesday. I was reassured this did not mean anything bad, but there was no way for me to not feel anxious. More crying, phone calls with my husband, strategizing about leaving my retreat early if I needed to and walks and prayers. On the said Wednesday, I got a call saying they needed to do a second stain and that the results of that wouldn’t be in until the following Monday.
I sort of blanked out, at this point, on the phone with the nurse, panic on my part. My husband stayed calm when I told him and said perhaps they’d made a mistake or ??? I asked the insurance medical helper person to tell me what getting a second stain meant and they gave me a very cogent response that was reassuring and said that double-checking by doing a second stain of my tissues was a very good protocol. I still felt totally freaked-out, but was trying to stay positive.
Come Monday, a full twelve hellish days, after the biopsies, I called the hospital first thing in the morning. I was told they couldn’t tell me the results and that the report was forwarded always to my general/referring doctor. This was different from previously, since Louise, the nurse at Mater Private, had called me with information all the other times. Fear set in. I called my doctor’s office and Mary said they didn’t have anything yet. A few hours later I got a call from Louise telling me that there was NO CANCER! She said they’d just gone over the results and had a meeting, their protocol, and she called me as soon as it was finished. I must have gotten someone on the phone the first time who was either new or not aware of the situation. You can imagine my joy and relief.
So, that’s the end of this saga! My youngest son is here visiting right now. We’re enjoying the most beautiful sunny weather, walks, my cooking, and we’ll head to Dublin for a show and dinner at Chameleon before he flies home. I’m a very lucky and grateful woman!!!!
Ethan laying in the non-cancerous lumpy, soft, mushy grassy knolls on the walk to one of the Holy Wells near my cabin. Sun, Son and Supreme Joy and Beauty!
Three generations of women taking care of each other and their families. I’m the baby in this photo on my grandmother Isabelle Redman’s lap, next to my mother Helen Redman.
Recently my mother Helen Redman and daughter were interviewed in the Washington Post. My comment to that article was too long for their comment section, so I’m posting what I want to say here and I encourage you to read the article: Unfinished Business; A feminist calls out her feminist grandmother. It’s part of their New Wave Feminism section. The piece was written by Dave Sheinin. You can read my comments first, but really they refer to the article a fair amount. Or if you read my thoughts first it will give you a unique perspective on the piece that was in the Post. It has great pictures as well! You have to click on Dave Sheinin’s name to get to the article he wrote. Or you can read all of them. http://wapo.st/newwavefeminism
My Full Response:
Weighing in from my nine-month Sabbatical retreat in Ireland. I am the daughter of a feminist and the mother of a feminist. I’m the generation between, in the middle, a FEMINIST always, and proud to call myself one. My mother’s dedication to feminism, to her own artistic calling and to goodness made it possible for me to be who I am. I honor and am grateful to her, and all her sisters, in the work of making the world a better place for all. She and all the women and men who came before her are forever in my prayers of gratitude.
My perspective is different than both my mother’s and my daughter’s as stated in the Washington Post article. Since my personal take wasn’t mentioned in the piece and I rarely hear it talked about in the mainstream, I’m entering this discussion. I do so from my place of solitude and stillness which, I have taken as a Sabbath from my life of caring for my family and community. This is my Jubillee (50th year) and it is an extra special year of rest. I have been planning it for over twenty years. I am alone, completely, for the first time in my life in a small cabin in a remote area of Ireland. I am here as a woman in need of a “room of her own.” You can read all about that under the Jubilee category here.
My relationship to all things is based on and in my spiritual practice. I would even go so far as to call myself a Spiritual Feminist. I’m a writer and a Jewish Lay Leader, not yet a rabbi. My choice to parent, instead of having abortions when I was young (19 and 21) and single, resulted in my two oldest children, my daughter (31) and my son (29). Neither of the men in this story were present for me or my children. I chose being present for my children, welfare as a single mother, and living in the woods with some crazy people (for work-exchange) so that I could be with my kids. The other choice would have been me working some menial job and putting my babies in day-care and still not being able to get by. A large percentage of the women I know have had abortions at one time in their lives and my choice not to have them was within the context of a world where I had that choice.
I made my Feminist decision to be with my kids, even though it meant not finishing college in a timely manner, not having a career and living in very challenging circumstances. My choice to not have abortions, when that was suggested and seemed feminist, was a radical departure from what most other young women in 1983 would have chosen. I have supported and will always support a woman’s right to choose about this issue.
Mama Nicole and baby Ethan 1997
I was in relationship with my body, the earth, the Holy One, and my children from the moment their souls entered my body. I have three children by birth and many others by love, who I have either raised or helped raise, and who consider me one of their mothers. I chose mothering, and being physically present for my children and children in need. I made sacrifices or choices or willing offerings that meant my “career” never happened. If I now go to school to become a rabbi, I will be 60 by the time I’m done. No one will most likely be interested in hiring me. I have been happily married for 26 years to a phenomenal man, who adopted my first two children and with whom I have a third child, Ethan. All of my children have a father who loves, supports and honors them in all their diversity of choices. He also does this for me. He is the more significant wage earner in our family, because his skills are valued by our culture and society financially over mine by several degrees of magnitude. He is a database designer.
My Man and I, May 2015
My skills are extensive, but because I finished college at the age of 32 (attending here and there when my children were in school and I was able to), I was way behind in the career zone. Then, I was pregnant with my third child, Ethan (19). Consequently, I still do not have more than a BA. I have worked since I was fourteen years old as either a child-care provider, waitress, bus-person, cook, legal assistant, office administrator, therapeutic behavioral aide and many other small jobs, that have never paid more than a little over minimum wage.
My jobs have always been part-time so I could be available for my children, so I could cook dinner and we could sit around the table together as a family and talk and pray and share. I have poured myself into the lives of my children as they grew and created an environment for them that has allowed each of them to become the beautiful beings they are. I’ve made huge mistakes and choices that were not good for my children, but I’ve also always loved them and been present for them, I’m human.
Issac and Ethan at Ethan’s graduation from Northcoast Preparatory Academy in May of 2015
I have a large circle of friends and many folks who consider my opinion to be of tremendous value, but no one is paying me for my wisdom yet in this world, other than my husband, who considers my input and efforts for our family to be of tremendous value. I also am in relationship with the Divine, who I trust for my sustenance in all things and down to the core. If I don’t earn much money this lifetime, I hope that my Chesed/Loving Kindness and my Avodah/Service will do me just fine in Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come)
Feminism, for me, is about relationships, it is personal, political, and spiritual.
When I pray I use Hebrew, which is a gendered language. In Hebrew the Divine is referenced in the feminine when She is the Shechinah (In Dwelling Presence of Holiness), in the masculine when He is the Melech (King). But you won’t find that nuance, which isn’t even a nuance in the Hebrew, when you read the bible in English. So, in my prayers I call out to the vast energy of Holiness and there are an infinite variety of forms and qualities to Holiness.
The Divine is Ineffable. Gender is just a context we use that is familiar when trying to relate to our universe. We are all souls in bodies, on a very fluid spectrum in terms of our relationships to our genders and to our planet. Some folks feeling they are ONLY Male or Masculine, others ONLY Female or Feminine.
I truly believe most folks are in a much more flexible place on that particular scale, we are all Transitional Beings as far as I’m concerned. We are all moving through this world in one form now, but that is only one of our forms. We are not singularities or individuals as much as we think we are. We are all ONE. All of this is part of my Feminism and my Judaism. Without the Feminist movement the discussions about gender, and Holiness and choices being fuller than either or, or one size fits all, wouldn’t exist. The problem is that we are still NOT in relationships of value and meaning with the Earth, with our souls, with our beautiful and different bodies, and with each other in loving and kind ways.
My Feminism is about embracing a world where things are radically different than they are now. It’s a world where we are engaged with loving our bodies, our choices, our differences, our minds, our hearts and this amazing gift of a planet we are spinning on. It’s about having conversations with trees, birds, flowers and with those walking around in human form. It’s about not making more reasons to separate ourselves one from the other, but looking for where we are RELATED and similar and how we can build those connections so that we NEVER maim, harm, rape, kill or violate each other. That world isn’t here yet, but I am praying every day for it. I call out to the Shechinah and to Ha–Melech all the time in hopes that this dreamed and hoped-for world, Olam Ha-Ba will arrive in my lifetime, or if not mine, perhaps my children’s.
The window-seat in my hermitage, where I pray for the world where we are all honored and treasured and loved.
Open Heart Open Hands 