Category: Memoir

Memoir Q & A (Part 1)

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Uncategorized5 Comments

I have received several questions from readers of my memoir, A Girl Named Truth, so I thought I would start a Q & A series on my blog. Many of the questions share the same themes, and also, I feel, point to our collective universal search for peace and healing. Here are three that were posted via my author Facebook page:

A white spiral shell
A shell spirals to the center. Image credit: Pixabay.com

Have the pains that you suffered went away?

When I read this question, I realize how loaded it is. There are many layers of “pain” that are encased in the story of A Girl Named Truth. There is the pain of the physical body, which eventually manifested in the form of two years of debilitating IBS as an adult, and there are the emotional “pains” that were brought on by divorce, family estrangement, a difficult childhood, and an adolescent filled with bullying and insecurities. Yet, these are all connected, and the body of pain is the physical manifestation of the mind’s trauma. We often trap our stories in our bodies, and the emotions that go with them linger and can lead to dis-ease, and various diseases.

In my memoir, I reveal that on Mother’s Day of 2008 I experienced my last night of interrupted sleep curtesy of my body’s battle with IBS. In his book, Quantum Healing, Deepak Chopra talks about the intimate connection the mind has to the body. It is so intimate, he shows us, that the mind is ultimately what heals the body. By mind I am referring to an awareness and decision to heal that often surpasses the brain’s logic and comprehension. Herein lies the concept of miracle healings and cures. I believe that on  Mother’s Day of 2008, I had forged an agreement with my mind and body that it was time to heal, and I did.

Although the nightly episodes of IBS stopped that night, the healing, in essence, had just begun. The contract I had made between my mind and my body, I came to realize, included the release of the stories that I had so long held trapped inside of my belly. And so I began to write. As I wrote, I healed, layer by layer, and I am still healing. I believe life is like spiral back to the center, and with each turn of the circle, as we walk closer to true being, we heal another layer of our story of life.

So, to answer this question in more simple form, I would have to say yes, and also no. The physical pain of IBS is no longer playing out in my body, and with it I have reduced much of the emotional pain. Yet, I still walk the spiral, and with each turn I visit another layer that wants to be exposed, examined and healed. For example, even though I have come to the place of acceptance, I still feel the inner child’s yearning for unconditional mother-love. In additional, old patterns around self-worth and rejection still resurface in new forms, and I am reminded that I am a human who is still learning how to be whole.

What is your current relationship with your father?

Without giving away too much of the already written story, I will say that the memoir was deliberately written to form a symbolic circle. In essence, it begins and ends with my relationship to my father, but there is no epilogue. Also a deliberate choice, as I wanted to inspire a forum for discussion, such as this one, and the story is still being played out.

I have seen my father only once since the time period covered in the book, but I have talked with him often. Although we are still learning about what it means to form a father-daughter relationship as adults, we continue to inch our way closer to the center. Our reunion has been one of the greatest and most healing gifts of this journey. Although we have lived through a troubled past, mostly individually, he was able to accept my gift of my story with grace and gratitude. There has been no judgement or animosity. Instead, he has thanked me, as well as shown compassion and a willingness to help, in his own way, to weave back more of the threads of separation. He knows I love him, and I know he loves me, and that now underlies everything else. Its has become our new foundation in the journey we share together.

Do you have peace after completing the book?

Another loaded question. The simple answer is yes. It took me nine years, from when I started writing my stories, to the release of the book into the world. Even after I wrote them down, I began to realize I was still holding them close. They were no longer inside of me, but they were like a cloak, covering me. It was an act of protection, and releasing them into the world was both necessary and incredibly vulnerable. I knew I needed to release the cloak, but I didn’t realize how naked I would feel. Yet, the day after I hit the button to release the book out into the world, I found myself sitting quietly on my sofa and realizing that all I felt was peace. A deep, quiet and profound feeling of inner peace.  I had birthed my book into being, and now it was no longer just mine. Like a child, I could continue to grow with it, but it was now ready to take on a life of its own.  And, like most children, it has received acceptance from some, and not from others. What matters most though, is that I have let it go, and hopefully it will find a healing place in the world.

 

I want to thank my readers for their questions, and welcome the sending of more. Questions can be posted here, on my Facebook page, or sent directly to me at aekehas@gmail.com.  

The Stability of the Trunk

On By Alethea KehasIn A New Earth, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized5 Comments
Pine tree in NH
A pine tree divides at the base

My lower back gave out on Monday morning, after a weekend of yoga teacher training. Ironically, we covered the root chakra during one of the classes. Tragically, the night before my back gave out, more than fifty people were shot in Las Vegas in a horrific act of gun violence.

Our 1st chakra, the Muldahara, is also called our Root Chakra. It is associated with the color red, the color of blood. It is our support system, and our tribal chakra. The root chakra connects us to each other. When there is instability, or disease, in an individual, the wellbeing and health of all of us are compromised.

All week I’ve been thinking about the stability of the base and what it means to the individual and the whole. We may think that we are birthed into individuality, but if we hold on too tightly to this belief, we become estranged from all that binds us together.

Surrounding my house there are trees, and each day I walk in the town’s forests with my two dogs and walk amid more trees. There is perhaps no better analogy than a tree to describe the interdependence of life. Science has shown that beneath the ground, where the eye does not often travel, there is a complex network of communication that is shared among tress through their systems of roots. Nutrients and water are exchanged, and warning signals are released when pests and fire are near.

Life does not thrive in isolation. Nor does it thrive when fear, anger, greed and arrogance try to separate out the individual from the group.  When a tree divides itself to form multiple trunks, their is an increased risk of collapse. Without a strong base of support, an individual trunk will often break off into decay.

Without strong roots the crown cannot grow toward the light.

What is true for the tree, is also true for us. How can we collectively evolve and thrive, if we keep striving for separation in favor of unity? In the aftermath of tragedy, individuals often come together in a collective empathy. After months have passed, though, a status quo of individuality often returns.

When my back gave out, I experienced the discomfort of having to rely upon others for support. The ego mind wanted to hold onto its illusion of individual strength, yet when I surrendered to the slow-time that came with acceptance, gratitude took its place. It became almost silly in my mind to think I might have wanted, or preferred, to stand alone. To support myself when there exists a network of support in the form of my tribal unity, or family, around me.

The air I breathe mingles with the air you breathe. Each inhale collects the breath of all life and brings it, for a moment, into the body before it is exhaled to rejoin the whole. The heart cannot beat without the shared breath of life. So why to we try to breathe alone?

 

 

The Roots of the Circle

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized2 Comments

My mind is still ruminating on the circle. Last night I dreamt of water surrounding me on all sides, getting ever closer to my body. I fled before I could be stranded, not wanting to become an island, cut off, with a relentless tide washing over me.

Later, in my dreams, I found myself in a classroom as a student with my husband. The teacher was giving us assignments, and my husband and I were to write an essay about the root chakra. He told me he wanted to write about a place he calls “Blueberry Mountain,” and I found myself wondering how this related to the first chakra, where we hold our sense of stability and our fears of instability. Yet I relented, agreeing to partner with him on our shared task. While we were writing, there were interruptions. A girl I’ll call Margot, because that’s the name I gave her in my memoir, who was also in the class with us, teased and taunted, trying to disrupt the flow of our work. Trying to cut us off from our collaboration.

When I return to the circle, I think about the space in the center that is shared by all who form the perimeter. I think of the energy mingled into one collective body that is the source of all life. And, I think of an invisible network of roots feeding and nursing life.

A tree, upended, will eventually starve and wither away.

Why did my dream mind lead me to the classroom with my husband and Margot, I wondered when I woke, until I began to think about the upending of my own roots.

I met my husband when I was seventeen. In the years preceding our relationship, I had experienced multiple compromises to my family and social networks. My structure of tribal unity, held within my root chakra, was severely compromised by the time I met my future husband. It had left me feeling compromised, fearful and distrustful. Then, one day, I sat in the library of St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, and found myself falling in love with a boy from Manchester who was writing an essay about a place he called “Blueberry Mountain.” Maybe you can go there with me someday, he told me.

The individual who finds him or herself cut off from the circle, whether willingly or unwillingly, can always return to a place of unity.

Just over 26 years ago, while siting in the library with a boy I barely knew, I began to reclaim and regrow my network of roots. I began to realize that I was not, in fact, an island of one struggling to survive amid stormy seas. I began to trust in love again.

In the center of the circle, which is also the self, there is Love.

For the past month I have been feeling naked and vulnerable. The birth of my memoir, A Girl Named Truth, has called into question my very stability. When I find myself succumbing to old patterns of thought, fear slips in and threatens to topple my roots. I temporality forget that I am not an island, even though I feel, in many ways, raw and alone. This, though, is a temporary feeling, a cruel game of the ego’s mind. When I settle my thoughts into peace, I feel the presence of all life. I feel the Light at the core, and I remember that I am never alone. That at any moment I can rejoin the circle of invisible hands and feel whole again.

Beneath the veil of fear, the body is always searching for the breath of love. When the veil is removed, nothing else exists. Without fear, the roots reach and mingle into unity and the body bends toward light.

A wheel of life found in the woods
A Medicine Wheel in the forest near Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum with legumes in the center bending and growing toward filtered light.

Friends Don’t Give Friends 3 Star or Below Reviews

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Uncategorized10 Comments
Flower card by Quilling Card LLC
A Congratulatory Card from a Friend

I was going to incorporate this concept into another blog post I am working on about self-publishing, but I feel it is important enough to warrant its own page. It happened to me and has probably happened to other writers, especially, I suspect, those who have self-published. The receiving of the dreaded 3 star or below rating on a review site by a friend, acquaintance or an anonymous reviewer. Here is my personal opinion on this: Just like friends don’t let friends drink & drive, friends don’t give friends 3 star or below reviews. I believe that goes for fellow writers, and really anyone who chooses to publicly display a review (unless that is your profession). Here is why:

Please understand that the writer whose book you have chosen to publicly rate has just laid his or her soul on the page. It is a vulnerable and courageous act. If you cannot honor the writing by the author by a 4 or 5 star rating, it is a much kinder practice not to rate at all. Most writers and avid readers recognize that a 3 star or below review will not help an author gain more readers, it will do just the opposite. If that is your intention, than you may want to question your motives. If you feel the book is honestly offensive to potential readers, than by all means, write your review. In this instance you would be doing a service of greater good. If not, consider either not posting a review at all, and/or approaching the writer directly about why you could not a post a more favorable one. You may actually be able to help the writer craft a more polished story. When I received my 3 star review by a friend of mine, I was crushed. I still am. I would have much preferred her to contact me directly, or not rate at all. I tend to believe everything happens for a reason, though, so I wrote this post to help enlighten others. I also went back through my book, since it was self-published, and caught more of the typos, formatting, and other errors I had previously missed. There are likely more (I am only human), but it did inspire me to go through it one more time, and a cleaner copy will soon be available.

Back to the bigger picture, though. The bottom line is self-published, and writers who have published under small presses, are especially vulnerable to less-than-favorable reviews. They do not often have the resources or the privilege of having multiple editors, agents and reviewers helping them polish their craft. Instead, they are doing their best to follow their passion through into publication in the hope that other readers may find a value to their words. If you personally cannot find value in their work, that is okay. Few writers hold the misconnection that their work will be adored, or will be relatable to all readers. If you are one of them, especially if you are a friend or acquaintance, simply move on to another book.  Not rating a book at all almost makes a statement.

 

 

What we choose to remember

On By Alethea KehasIn Energy Healing, Memoir, Uncategorized4 Comments
Forest Light
Light & Shadow

Repressed memory is a pretty common term. Most people are familiar with it, and many have probably explored their own minds in a search for what has been forgotten. When I was writing my memoir, A Girl Named Truth, I spent a lot of time retrieving memories, from myself and others, and often found myself frustrated with what could not be remembered. I was obsessed with the missing gaps, not only because I wanted to fill them in with the lost scenes, I also learned a lot about what I, and others, had chosen to forget.

For example, I have no memories of going to the bathroom at night in the outhouse my family had for many years. Not one. Yet I must have. Instead, I remember the bathroom that came before the outhouse, a hole in the ground, as well as my fear of falling inside of it.

I remember being irrationally afraid of the dark and a reoccurring nightmare I had as a young child. In the nightmare, I am riding in an old brown Ford truck. My father is driving and my sister and I are crouched on the floor in terror. We are in the middle of a forest of pine trees, and swinging from their branches is a monster the size of a great ape. I always woke at the same moment, with a scream trapped in my throat, right before the monster reached the door to take me and my sister.

I don’t remember ever living with my father as a family of four. I don’t even remember visiting him before we left Oregon when I was nearly five-years-old, but when I was two-years-old, he had a fight with my mother and that became my first stored memory.

This memory is so vivid, I can tell you where I was sitting and who as on the couch beside me. I can describe for you the picture above my head. Yet, I cannot tell you what it was like to live with my father, even for half a day. And, I have a theory as to why.

In this first stored memory, I made the conscious choice, even at the young age of two-years-old, to give my father the role of villain in my story of life. My mother, in turn, I chose to love with a fierce loyalty above anyone else.

Shortly after my first memory was stored inside my mind and body, my mother ran away with me and my sister and went into hiding with the Hare Krishnas for a period of several months. Here is what I chose to remember from this long journey. The roll of green grass into blue pools of water, as well as scattered images of beautiful gods. Most of this time period has been recovered through other people’s narratives, which can be read in my memoir.

This past summer, I did some work of a regressionist/psychic friend of mine, and together we recovered some of the memories I had chosen to forget. The story, The Moon Child  came out of this remembering, but there is a more traumatic narrative I have decided not to share. What is important to the larger narrative of my life, though, is what I chose to remember as a child, what what I chose to forget, and why.  If I had decided to remember those long months in hiding, and the trauma I had endured, I would have had, I now realize, nothing to hold onto. My very foundation would have crumbled beneath me. So I made a choice for survival, as many do when they are faced with trauma, whether it be emotional, physical or both. I chose what I needed to remember and what I needed to forget.

What we choose to forget, though, lingers as truth in the recess of your body. It causes unexplainable ailments and diseases/dis-eases, until we are ready to remember. Then, if we truly want to heal and feel a greater sense of wholeness, we must ask not only what have I chosen to forget, but why have I chose to remember everything else? When we do this, our story becomes more complete. We learn why and how we have shaped our individuals lives. We may even discover that what once defined us, has changed dramatically.

 

Alethea is a writer and owner of Inner Truth Healing. Her memoir, A Girl Named Truth, is now available at Amazon and Amazon.co.uk. To learn more about Alethea, please visit her website, aletheakehas.com AGNT_CoverThumb

A Girl Named Truth

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Uncategorized25 Comments
AGNT_CoverThumb
a memoir

It’s not easy for me to self-promote my first published book, which I have held close for so long. Yesterday, a friend on Facebook asked me how long it took me to write my memoir, and I told her a partial truth. That I started A Girl Named Truth ten years ago, nearly to the day I hit the button to birth its release on the night before my 44th birthday two weeks ago. This is true, but the journey leading up to putting the words on paper is perhaps what is most significant, for it is a journey of silence. A journey that started at my birth.

Even when I was a young child, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Some may call this lucky, but it is also a bit of a curse. Putting words onto paper, even in journal form, always felt like exposure. It felt hugely vulnerable, like I was opening myself up to censorship in the worst possible kind. Instead, I wrote stories and poems inside the pages of my mind and kept them neatly tucked into the folds where no one could venture but me. Then, one day, after enduring two years of debilitating IBS, I decided I need to write. Really write, the words waiting, not too patiently, inside the folds of my body.

IBS, when looked at on a metaphysical level, is a disease, or dis-ease, of the lower chakras, or energy centers of the body. The first (in the seven chakra system) is found at the base of the spine, and is the energy center that connects us to everything around us. It is our root-center, or our tribal connection. When we feel disconnected from our tribe/family unit, or are wounded by our tribe, this energy center will be compromised.

Our second chakra, located directly above it and surrounding our sexual organs, relates to our creative fire. Here is where we start to form and birth our individual gifts. How we related to others on an individual basis affects this chakra. If we feel secure in love (in all forms), this chakra will be vibrant and healthy.

The third chakra, located in the middle of our abdomen, is also referred to as our power center. Here is where we assert our individuality. Those who are confident in who they are, without being aggressive, will express a healthy and active third chakra.

I am telling you this, because I had none of the above, and if you read my memoir, you will learn about why. IBS, being a disease of the lower charkas, is a red-flag that these centers are out of balance in some way. I didn’t know this when I decided I needed to heal, I just knew that I had reached the point when I could no longer contain the trapped emotions inside of my belly. Each night a storm raged inside of me, and on a deeper, more subconscious level, I knew the storm was fueled by words, and more importantly truths, that needed to come out of me.

So I began to write and heal. As I wrote, my body began to talk to me, realizing that I was finally ready to listen. As my bloated belly birthed each word that had waited so long for release, I began to learn, really learn, about the little girl inside named truth. I learned to love her and to accept her. I cried her stored tears and relived her pain. Her timid, quiet voice began to discover its strength, and together we realized we had a story to tell and share. A story, that although individually unique, is every’s story. The quest for inner truth is universal. I wrote A Girl Named Truth to heal the inner child, but I compiled and bound it into a book in the hope that it may help others heal.

Alethea is a writer and owner of Inner Truth Healing. Her memoir, A Girl Named Truth, is now available at Amazon and Amazon.co.uk. To learn more about Alethea, please visit her website, aletheakehas.com 

It could have been worse

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized9 Comments

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I had been looking forward to this week, in the middle of the summer, since the middle of winter. Not because I was going anywhere, but because my children were. It was to be my one week all to myself, if you don’t count four-leggeds who live with me, but the fates had a different plan.

I spent last week with my daughter when she wasn’t hanging out with friends, or at her twice-a-week soccer bootcamp. We had a few rare moments together, which included an outing to her favorite restaurant where she happily ate eggs bennie with a mug of forbidden coffee.

My son was at basketball camp.

Then, over the weekend, he went to his buddy’s birthday party where eight boys camped out in a tent and maybe got a combined two-hours of sleep.

I should have know by then things might not go according to plan…

After pick-up on Sunday morning, I drove my very tired, but happy, son home where promptly took a shower and went to bed.

Five hours later, the dog barked at the neighbor’s cat and woke him before I could. I didn’t want him to sleep the day, and then not the night.

Monday morning brought a cold rain, and I made breakfasts and packed lunches for my two children as they prepared for their days at camp. I knew my daughter would be fine, she’d had a relatively relaxing week and weekend, and her camp was going to be indoors. Based on the forecast, I was hoping for a good dose of common sense on the part of my son’s counselors, even though he was supposed to be playing baseball.

After dropping off six children (only two of them mine) to their respective camps, I made my way back home.  I had five hours before I needed to get back in the car for pick-up. The majority of which I spent staring at two computers, one containing my manuscript, the other YouTube tutorials on how to format it into a book. After three hours I started to get nauseous from turning my head back and forth from screen to screen, and holding my breath every time I made a change, so I put it aside. I ate lunch, puttered around the house, checked social media, and headed back out into the cold rain to pick up the six kids I had brought to camp.

While I drove, the nagging worry I held in my gut all day started to itch for release. I really hope they kept the kids inside, I kept telling myself, until I pulled into the driveway of the fields and realized there were no kids to be found.

“They’ve got them at the field house,” one parent revealed, “They’re walking down now.” In the pouring rain. My daughter was at the field house across campus, I knew how far a walk it was.

Five minutes later, the groups of boys started appearing. Some of them wore caps, some of them worse sweatshirts. Some of them were simply dripping rain over t-shirts. When I saw my son, he looked unhappy. Miserable might be a more apt word. His blue sweatshirt was hanging with the weight of water off his shoulders, and his red hat was leaking rain down his hair (from the inside). His summer skin was a ghostly white.

By the time I got him in the car, 10-15 minutes later, after the counselors had given out the two “camper of the day” awards, my son was shivering for warmth. I handed him the mug of hot chocolate I had bought on my way to get him, and turned the heater of his seat on. “I can’t get warm,” he kept telling me as he gulped his hot chocolate down. It turns out they had spent the morning outside, in the pouring, cold rain, the afternoon mostly indoors, where they never fully dried out, then walked across campus, in the pouring cold rain, back to the ballfields for pickup. Why they never thought to keep the kids inside, or to at least call the parents for pickup at the field-house at the end of the day, I can’t tell you. But it could have been worse. They could have kept them out all day.

And, my son could have come down with pneumonia or mono, instead of strep. But I didn’t know that until today.

Monday night brought a fever, and after picking at his dinner, my son went to bed. Tuesday morning he slept in, and when he woke his forehead still felt warm. The thermometer read 100.4. I breathed a sigh of relief. It could have been worse.

We spent the day inside, my son sleeping, not eating much, and playing a little on his PS4.  After a shower, it was another early-to-bed for him. When he woke this morning, he ate half a bagel with some juice and told me his stomach was bothering him, but his temperature was down to 99.7. It could have been worse, but I suspected strep.

At 11am the rapid test taken at the doctor’s office confirmed my suspicion, and I breathed a rather large sigh of relief. It could have been much worse.

It hardly mattered, after that, that my son threw up all over the living room floor, his socks and the bottom half of the (new) sofa after I got him home,  because I knew he would be feeling better soon enough, and that it could have been much worse.

He’s now napping upstairs, and I’m waiting for my daughter to be driven home from camp. All four bathrooms have been cleaned. Another load of laundry has been washed and hung outside to dry in the sun that decided to break apart two days of clouds, and I am feeling grateful because it could have been worse. Much worse. And, maybe by Friday, my son will be well enough to sneak out to our favorite restaurant for some french toast before his sister gets home from camp.

 

The Climb of Life

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, Tarot/Oracle Readings, Uncategorized2 Comments

I thought, naively, that it would get easier once I reached the teachings of the third-degree, but that of course was the wish of the fool. The path back to self is not for the faint of heart. One must sign-up for the long haul over treacherous terrain. The stumbles speak of resistance to the fall, yet who doesn’t stumble? This is not a dive off a cliff into icy waters to over-come fear in one brave leap. No, this is the walk of the conscious placement of feet while knowing that the ground may give way at any moment to quicksand. That at every bend in the road, one might find a monster from the past, reminding you of what you have not let go.

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The Fool card in The Rider Tarot Deck

We are birthed to experience separation, but life is not actually about the survival of the fittest. No, Darwin had it wrong. This is not about whose genes are superior, for no one is selected out. We can pretend we are immune to the darkness that haunts us as we walk through life. We can pretend we have control over our steps, which are always one step ahead of our shadows, but that too is the walk of the fool.

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The Five of Pentacles card in The Rider Tarot Deck

Shadows lurk until we shine the light of awareness upon them. They feed on our thoughts and our dreams, draining the light within until the darkness dims the soul’s truth. Eventually we must surrender.

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The Nine of Swords in The Rider Tarot Deck

The demon is always within. All else is an illusion. You can pretend it wears the face of the other, but you can only lie to the soul for so long. Growth withers in darkness, yet somehow most of us learn to shun the light. We forget that the light without is also within. That there is, in fact, no separation. After we are birthed into the world we fall prey to pride, telling ourselves, “Ahaha, I can do this alone. Look at me!”

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The Five of Swords in The Rider Tarot Deck

We look at each other and say, “Look at me. Look at you. We are not the same.” Inside our minds we draw up comparisons and place ranks. Yet the soul knows no division. It knows only unity.

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The Sun card in The Rider Tarot Deck

You’d think it would be easy, this coming back home to the core. To the truth. Who doesn’t want to experience the harmonious state of oneness. Of a state that is of joy, peace, and grace? Yet we cling to the past. To what we have learned through separation. We cling to the hurts and the perceived injustices. To the what-ifs and have-nots. We cling to the not-good-enough and the I-want-more. We believe life is a struggle for survival, a constant climb to get to the top, not realizing that once we get to the “top,” we must fall back down.

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The Tower card in The Rider Tarot Deck

The Moon-Child

On By Alethea KehasIn Gaia & Elementals, Memoir, Uncategorized3 Comments

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The moon-child forgot who she was before she turned three suns. In her time of  forgetting, she mapped the stars with rocks in the dirt below her feet, and played with the rainbow of light around her growing body. When the birds flew down to watch her, the moon-child hummed their songs deep within her throat. Sometimes she would even sing.

One day, when she was playing with the trees’ broken fingers, drawing spirals in the Earth’s brown body, the moon-child learned about silence. The rays of solar light were too glorious to ignore, and the moon-child rose from her crouch, threw the tree-fingers to the side, and began to dance. Her orange dress caught the waves of the wind as the moon-child wove the golden light around her. She raised her face to the sky and opened the mirrors of her eyes to absorb the endless blue. Laughter bubbled up from her belly and tipped the flap of her throat until it released her air.

The moon-child, too absorbed with the sky, didn’t see the tree-finger next to her dancing feet, and when she twirled, one last time, she stumbled her tender body over the rough limb. Down the moon-child fell, like a tiny comet, rolling into a ball over her bleeding skin.

It was the first time the moon-child saw her body release a red river and she became filled with fear. Her small lips opened in a cry to her Earth-mother. Over and over she cried out her name, until her voice grew faint with frustration. Before she gave up her voice, the moon-child grew angry, and stamped her bare feet on the hard ground until her wounded toe bled a small stream of red into the dirt. “Ouch,” she cried out, remembering her pain.

Once again, the moon-child began calling out for her Earth-mother to help her. She wanted to be held. To be loved. To be told everything was going to be okay. She wanted her Earth-mother to cradle her in her arms and make the hurt disappear along with the red stream leaking from her body. When she again paused to listen for a response, her ears heard only silence. Even the birds had stopped singing.

The moon-child didn’t know that her Earth-mother had chosen to sleep away the day, and heard her cries only as a dream. And so, the moon-child also learned about abandonment.

Days passed into troubled nights, and the moon-child stopped dancing in the golden light of the sun. When she traced shapes in the dirt with tree-fingers, she began to forget their origins. Although the birds still settled nearby to watch, and to sing to her, the moon-child stopped singing back. They are not singing for me, she told herself. They are singing for each other. They do not see me. No one does. Not even my Earth-mother who is always asleep when I need her most. 

At night, when her Earth-mother left their cabin and it was her turn to sleep, the moon-child gazed at the white light in the sky that slowly grew from nothing into a large white circle, then back down to nothing, as though it was playing peek-a-boo with her.  Where do you go? she wondered when the body of light disappeared behind the veil of darkness. Take me with you! she whispered into the inky air as she imagined her body sailing through the dark sea on a path of stars to get to back home.

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Labor Pains

On By Alethea KehasIn Memoir, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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A Girl Named Truth is born into the world

Who would have thought it would be the formatting that would do me in. The simple, yet seemingly impossible task of placing page numbers on the pages as they should properly appear in books. You know, with the roman numerals grandly marking the preface, and the number 1 positioned neatly at the bottom of the first page of chapter 1. Not to mention the alternating headers, with every other page marking the author name and the book’s name. Yet, the melt-down was inevitable at some point. The feeling of being so close to birthing, after having labored for so long, but still having that final lip, or hurdle, removed is something I have experienced before. And, like this birthing, it felt like a failure.

It’s all coming back to me now. The memories of trying to birth my first child into the world without help are in so many ways mirrored in this birthing of my first book. But it goes back much further in time. To the five year old child who knew with a fierce, yet secret conviction that she was here to write books. And even further, to the fetus who knew rejection before birth, and held onto the feeling long after. She holds onto it now. When we hold onto a belief, it becomes our truth, and true to form, that fetus became a child, and later an adult, who experienced multiple forms of rejection. Or so that was her perception.

This birthing has taken, in essence, my lifetime to date. It is my story of truth and all the entanglements that have had to be unwoven, then rewoven in new form, to get there. It took me many years to write and rewrite. Over and over again, in an effort to birth a perfect form, while knowing that perfection is impossible to achieve. It took the acceptance of failure, or at least failure in the form I had always imagined. To set aside the dream of having one’s book accepted and published by a “real” publisher is something I’ve had to accept, only I realize now that I have not fully accept this, which feels like another huge form of rejection. It feels like a failure as a writer, especially perhaps, one who has an MFA. You see, we writers who have been trained to be writers, are conditioned to believe that you are not a real, credible writer, unless you obtain a “real” publisher to support your work.

So that is something else I need to let go of, along with the notion that I have no idea what will happen after I do get over the last, seemingly insurmountable, hurdle to self-publish my book. There is, of course, the possibility of another failure, or at least in my perception, of the book, once birthed, not making its way out into the world. I’m not going to lie, having only a couple of dozen copies of the book purchased will feel like a failure, if that is its fate. Yet, birth it I must. I know I have no choice. It is the fetus, now formed into a full-term baby, pushing its way out of the birthing canal. I can feel its pull to get out of me. It squirms with release, yet there is a lip that pushes against it, holding it back, for now.