SACRED FLOW ARTS: Balancing Mind, Body, and Spirit
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Musings

Coming Home

For my mom’s 77th birthday, she asked me months ago to take her to the Cherokee National Holiday and Homecoming Powwow in Talequah, Oklahoma. It was just a few years ago that we discovered that her mother, my grandmother, was of Chickasaw/Choctaw/Cherokee descent, and neither of us had ever been to a powwow before. My mom is not in great health, and I felt like this might be a “last.” We were supposed to go yesterday. However, she fell and hit her head Thursday (she got 3 staples and otherwise is okay) and was not able to go.

As often happens when I least expect it, I felt Spirit strongly nudging me on Friday to listen. I was being called to go by myself to the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, a four-hour drive away from my home, and while I have been to 2 different areas of the Trace before (both times with my children), I had never been to this area, and not by myself. If you don’t know about the Natchez Trace, it is an ancient 440-mile trail that runs from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, links 3 sacred rivers, and was used by Native Americans for centuries before the settlers came. There is a lot of history and energy all along it.

On the way there I was drawn to stop at a cemetery in the small Mississippi town where my grandmother, great-grandmother, and 2nd-great grandmother were all born. I’ve been there once before. My 3rd-great grandmother’s grave is there (there is no record of where she was born because she was Native American), and I was drawn to it but had the distinct feeling she wasn’t “there.” Just a few months ago I was gifted an arrowhead (dated 5000-7000 years old) on a trail in the Great Smoky Mountains near some Cherokee burial mounds, and I was led to place that arrowhead on her grave for about 10 minutes before picking it back up and leaving.

I ended up at a place on the Trace called Witch Dance, which is in a national forest, and the area all around it is Chickasaw and Choctaw burial mounds. The veil is very thin there, and I lit up my grid and connected to the earth and everything around me. I felt like a conduit allowing healing through and to me reciprocally as I walked the trails in leather-soled moccasins and offered tobacco that I grow myself, and time dissolved and echoed out in waves as major shifts happened.

Then I looked to my right and saw her up on a ridge. My breath caught in my throat. She was almost my exact height, and after walking up to her I was led to put a crystal on her “head” that I was gifted on another Arkansas trail and had been on my mesa for almost a year. In the picture, you can see a cross in the space above her head where the crystal is.

To me, she is my 3rd-great grandmother, Eliza, and she is not in the white man’s cemetery but with her ancestors. She is telling me she is okay and thanking me for coming. She is also thanking me for coming “home” (instead of to Oklahoma), “seeing” her, and being open to allowing the energy to move through me and through time. She is confirming and reiterating that healing takes place through all lifetimes, timelines, dimensions, and realms, and that I (and we) are truly not alone. And she is reminding me that she, and I, are one and the same. As we all are.

What happens next? I have no idea. But I do know that when I listen, truly listen, I find Truth.

Paula MartinComment