Title: seeker

Gender: Female

Age: 52

Location: Connecticut

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions.  Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego.  Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn.  The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise.  After that day we become seekers.
~ Peter Matthiessen
(Visionaries: The 20th Century's 100 Most Important Inspirational Leaders)

My husband and I have three grown children and two granddaughters.  Besides maintaining our website and working on our family history, some of my time is used to help care for my 87 year old father (who is frail and confined to a wheelchair) and my 94 year old aunt (who is fiesty and active).  Since their sister lived to be 97 I imagine I will be doing this for quite some time to come.  I'm also happy being a quote librarian here on Gaia and have started practicing Reiki.

My husband survived a heart attack in September 2007, he was 54 at the time.  It was a life-altering experience, but I did learn in a deeper way what amazing and supportive children we have raised.  Even though I'm fond of saying that they grew up in spite of us!

Ever since I can remember I had a strong curiosity about the great mystery surrounding us.  Unfortunately for me my father was an athiest and of the opinion that if it couln't be seen or measured then it didn't exist.  He was a research virologist before he retired.  My mother was very reserved, even with her daughters, and refused to reveal her thoughts about religion.  She died in May 1991 of breast cancer.  She was only 59.  Going through her books and other possessions after she died I have come to believe that she was into Native American spirituality.

I've always wondered about my mother's beliefs and still can't imagine why she kept them so much to herself.  Perhaps to make sure my own children won't be in the dark about my spiritual journey I feel compelled to keep them informed by writing it all down.

In the winter of 2008, a coincidence happened which made me wonder…  My mother was called Betty-Jo and she was a physical therapist.  One day I was talking to a physical therapist who had stopped by to treat my father at home.  Her name was Betty-Gene, and while Dad was finishing up his breakfast, we fell into a conversation about Native Americans.  Out of the blue she asked me if I had ever been on a vision quest.  I had never heard of one and asked her about it.  She was describing a circle made around the one on the quest when my father surprised me by saying that he had gone with my mother to some sort of religious ceremony at the Mashpee reservation on Cape Cod.  Before she started her session with Dad, Betty-Gene recommended the book Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver to me.  The similarities in the book to my own story kind of blew me away.  It felt like a message from the universe.

In November 2008 a wonderful thing happened to me.  I was visiting at my dad's house in the woods, where spotting deer, coyotes, wild turkeys and fishers is not at all unusual.  (Haven't seen any bears, yet, though they have been seen in Connecticut lately.)  We were watching a movie when my brother-in-law noticed a doe in the yard, quite close to the house.  Being so enchanted with deer I jumped up to see her.  She was so beautiful with her large soft eyes and large ears lined in dark brown.  Our eyes met and she stood there transfixed for a very long time.  I could not take my eyes off of her.  After a while she lay down and continued to stare at me, occasionally looking about to see what a noise was, but then fixing her gaze back onto me.  She seemed so peaceful and I wondered what, if anything, it all meant.  Then I started to worry that my looking at her so intently might be threatening her in some way.  But she did seem relaxed.  At one point a buck appeared and walked right past her and started helping himself to Dad's rhododendron.  My brother-in-law was going to go shoo him away but I begged him not to.  After the buck had enough food he slowly retraced his steps and passed the doe again, glanced at her but seemed unconcerned with her behavior.  She ignored him completely.  After another long while she stood up and started nibbling at the ground, looking at me once in a while.  She slowly made her way downhill around the corner of the house, so I changed my vantage point to another window on that side of the house.  She was now one story below me.  But she looked up to the window and saw me again and started looking at me again with the same intensity as before.  Her look felt so reassuring in some way.  It's hard to put words to it.  It was getting darker and darker until I could barely see her, and just at the point where I felt I could see her no longer she suddenly darted away.  More than an hour had passed.  I feel as if I was given quite a gift!

Ive been uptight and made a mess
But I'll clean it up myself, I guess
Oh, the sweet smell of success
Handle me with care
~ George Harrison (Handle with Care)



I was looking for so many answers as a child and as a teen.  In my 20s I thought I had found all the answers (imagine that!) but it was really all a pile of dogma which began crumbling away in my 30s.  In my 40s I finally learned that, as Henry David Thoreau put it: A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place, but a seed to be planted and to bear more seeds toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.  In my 50s now I'm figuring out how to live in the present, be an observer, and find my own way spiritually…

Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us.  Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims & Reflections)

Member Since: Saturday, September 27 2008

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