I go through cycles in dreamwork. A couple of years ago, snakes showed up a lot in my dreams. Recently, I sat in a dream circle with a friend whose waking life and dream life had presented her with several snakes, so I decided to jot down some of the many meanings of snakes as a dream symbol.

Traditionally, snakes are associated with transformation and rebirth because of their ability to shed their skin. In my experience, this level of meaning is always present when a snake appears in my dream. Snakes are also a symbol of both masculine and feminine energy, having clear associations with the phallus, but also the sinuous flexibility of the female. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, snake is the tempter to knowledge, and loss of innocence, which can also be seen as self-awareness. Snakes are also associated with healing, most visibly as they twine around the physician’s staff in the caduceus. Because their bone structure consists almost entirely of spine and ribs, they are associated with the spine and so with kundalini energy that rises up the spine. Dwelling underground, snake is also associated with death and the underworld, though it comes out to soak up the sun, bringing the unconscious to light. The undulating movement of the snake echoes the wave pattern that energy flows in, so snakes represent primal energy itself.

Rattlesnake bones

So when snakes show up in dreams, they invite me to consider how I might be changing, and in particular, how I’m becoming more self-aware.

Blog—The Rapture as a Metaphor

There’s quite a hoopla right now about the prediction that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011.  That’s tomorrow. I shook my head in bemusement when I first heard about it, and enjoyed the jokes that arose because of it on Facebook and in Doonesbury.

Then I read about a family where the parents believe the prediction and the teenaged kids do not. When the parents gave up saving for college, the kids saw it as a symptom of a larger abandonment. A symbol of the fact that the parents assumed the kids would have no future. The mother even said it was “God’s will” that her children wouldn’t be among the saved because of their disbelief.

The kids are victims of a tragic case of mistaken literalism. The Doomsday prophecy and the chord it has struck in the American psyche are a kind of waking dream. Some of us laugh it off as delusion, while a few believe with desperate passion. But in order to understand it, I find it helpful to view it as I would a dream.

When death is an element in a dream one level of meaning is always about profound change. A part of the dreamer must “die” in order for the change to take place. When death is multiplied in a dream, the change is even greater. When the world is ending in a dream, it evokes the need for change at a deep level—the need for change so complete that the world will feel utterly different afterward.

When I imagine myself as someone caught in the belief that the world will end tomorrow, I wonder what in the world I think needs to end. If I see sin and corruption in the world, and I have the desire that God will take me from it and punish those left behind, I must be ignoring my own capacity for sin and corruption. I can see it in others, in fact, I can’t avoid seeing it in others, precisely because I refuse to see it in myself.

Or perhaps  I would feel aware that there’s sin and corruption in me, but that it came from outside me – all those non-believers and predators and temptations and just others – so I would feel like I desperately want all that to be washed away, so that I could easily live a pure life, instead of frequently being challenged and never reacting perfectly.  I would feel that I couldn’t change the whole world, but I’d have to believe that someone could, in order to keep on living and trying.

So the need to believe in the end of the world is a projection of the need to change something huge within myself.  In my projection, what needs to change in our culture is that we need to think for ourselves, to sift through our beliefs with conscious awareness of how our beliefs shape our lives.

It’s hard to believe another Pikes Peak Writers Conference has come and gone. It was, as always, great to hang out with other writers and agents and editors. The weekend started early on Friday, with the carpool leaving my house at about 6:30 in the morning. I had the lingering dream image of bare feet in my head—it often symbolizes walking one’s true path, so I took that as a very good sign. And it’s always good to travel with Janet Fogg and Shirley Wilsey, members of my 20-year-old critique group.

The conference started for me with a session by Bev Sninchak on Paranormal Investigations. I found out that ghosts drain batteries, which explained why batteries at my house failed in great numbers shortly after my mother died. I’m fascinated by the work Bev does, but I’m not sure I could do it, since when I wrote a novel about ghosts I had all sorts of weird happenings in my house.

The lunch speaker, Debra Dixon, offered the most succinct advice on perseverance yet: “You have to be present to win.” As I’ve been learning, if you don’t find ways to enjoy the journey, the dream loses its luster.

In the afternoon, I read the opening of one of my novels in a read and critique session with Natalie Fischer of Bradford Literary. For some reason, my usual ability to read aloud fluently vanishes in this setting, as my nerves kick in and I can’t get a full breath, despite having done this many times at many conferences. But I got through the page and she liked it, so after that I could breathe again.

By the evening, I’d entered the zone of severe sleep deprivation, but so had everyone else at the children’s writers party. Andrea Brown came by, so I was able to tell her that I had mis-heard something she said years ago at PPWC, and I’d gotten an entire novel out of it. It’s good to thank your muses when the occasion arises. As they had last year, the hosts, Hilari Bell and Anna-Maria Crum, provided temporary tattoos. The caduceus-like one called to me, especially since it had a sword in place of the staff, so it evoked the Ace of Swords in the tarot. All good associations of healing and new beginnings. However, not even tattoos could keep the party going past ten, since we were all so tired out from the day’s early start. The best part about that night’s insomnia—the tattoo glowed in the dark.

Saturday started with Natalie Fischer’s incredibly helpful workshop on writing a hook, which she generously posted to her blog. If you’ve been looking for a useful formula, check it out here.

After a couple of agent and editor panels, it was time for lunch. I sat with Denise Little and thanked her for her encouragement from a read and critique I did with her a few years back. It’s great to see familiar faces and be able to say, “You helped me when I needed help.” The lunch speaker, Beth Kendrick, offered her top ten tips for writers, keeping us laughing the whole time. I particularly appreciated her comment that the best part of being a writer is having writer friends. After twenty years in my first critique group, and having made many, many friends along the way, I have to agree.  Although those moments of inspiration when everything suddenly becomes clear are also the best thing.

After lunch I went to a panel on marketing e-books, offered by Becky Clark. Becky’s a lot of fun, and her sessions are packed with info, so that was a good combination for the post-lunch slot. She definitely keeps an audience awake!

At the end of the afternoon, I had my pitch appointment. Though I’ve done a lot of these, there’s still a certain nervousness that arises from sitting down with someone you want to impress. Fortunately, Natalie Fischer is very approachable, and once we got to talking about dreamwork, the rest was easy for me. Of course, the table cloth caught on my pant leg when I stood up and threatened the water glass’s stability, but I did avoid dumping ice water on Natalie, so it’s all good.

At the awards banquet, I had the pleasure of cheering on a couple of long-time writer friends—Carrie Seidel, who won first place in Children’s, and Pam Mingle, who placed first in Romance. The evening’s speaker, John Hart, kept us laughing while tossing in the occasional note to get us all choked up. His words of wisdom resonated with me, after my tens of thousands of steps along the writing path: “It’s dangerous to put your foot out the front door. You never know where the path will lead. It could be a really good place.”

Sunday morning I went to two workshops—Karen Albright Lin’s on Nonfiction Proposals, and Becky Clark’s on Turning Research into Revenue. Both were very helpful, and got me to thinking more seriously about writing about dreamwork. The book I’ve been gradually drafting on it is calling…right after I crank through my to-do list.

At the luncheon, I was astonished to win the on-site contest, which had been a scavenger hunt for clues to a larger puzzle, and which I collaborated on with a couple of friends. Since the prize was a huge basket of books, it was easy to share with my friends. Thanks to Dawn Smit of Rainbow Editing for sponsoring the basket! It was great fun to leave feeling lucky.

Next year is Pikes Peak Writers’ twentieth anniversary conference. They’ve already started on a fantastic line-up of presenters, so save the date—April 19-22, 2012. Thanks, PPWC, for another great conference!

In the last four days, the DMV started cropping up in conversation. In person, I heard the story of a dreamwork friend who endured a half-hour of fussing when she went to replace her lost license because her fingerprint didn’t match the one on record. She found out later that her office job—handling papers treated with various chemicals—could be the culprit. Then on Facebook, a couple of friends mentioned having just been or needing to go to the DMV. My husband and I both had renewals up, so we decided to go in together, and at least have good company while we waited. Because I was going, we took our car for the trip across town. Otherwise, my husband would have ridden his bike. When we got there, we found out we’d need proof of residency, a change just instituted today and not dramatically obvious when I looked on the website for what I’d need to bring. Fortunately, since we’d brought our car, we had one of the list of ten possible documents to fulfill this new requirement—our vehicle registration. While we sat there waiting, I saw two men in line recognize each other, though it had clearly been a while since they’d last met. They knew each other’s first names, but not what their connection was. Later I commented to my husband, “Maybe we’ll get the clerks right next to each other and it’ll be easy to share our proof.” Our chances were one out of three, since the third clerk sat a few stations away from the other two. Sure enough, we got the clerks right next to each other, who were happy to share our proof, and the woman who helped me asked if I wanted to write my check for both of ours. She then deftly paid cash for my husband’s out of her drawer to his clerk’s drawer, wrote both our numbers on the check and we were half way done, with astonishing efficiency and kindness. My husband finished just moments before me, so was ahead of me in line as we took our seats to await the next step—the fingerprint and photo. His went smoothly. Mine, guess what. The fingerprint didn’t quite match. Instead of being freaked out or annoyed, I laughed to myself as the clerk had me move my finger this way and that, trying to get it to match the old one. She said she could see they were the same, just one or two lines slightly off, but the computer wouldn’t recognize it, so she had to fetch her supervisor and have him override it. It took an extra five minutes or so, and thanks to having seen my friend’s experience in the light of dreamwork, it made me wonder in what ways I’ve become a different person since the last time I gave a fingerprint to the DMV.

I’ve now had a day and night to process my projections on the events of yesterday in Tucson.  I’m grieving, with the sense that we, as a democracy, have been attacked, and at the same time mourning for the individuals who were present at the shooting—including those who died, were physically injured, and the eyewitnesses who were psychically scarred.  I include in my mourning the young man with the gun, so lost to his own paranoia that he could believe that acting on such a violent impulse was the right thing to do.

My first projection on hearing the news through links posted on Facebook was that this is what hatemongering leads to.  An interesting, and civil, discussion of other points of view ensued on my Facebook post about it.  One friend said that this young man should have been helped, and his access to weaponry was a failure of our mental health care system and the regulation of gun ownership.  Another friend argued with me that we shouldn’t point fingers at Palin—that we don’t have to look far to find a long history of gun metaphors in our political and sports discourse.

My friends are right, and indeed, in the hours that followed, blogs and commentators plunged deep into the recognition that our political speech has gotten too militant to be in agreement with one of the basic principals of our constitution: the peaceful transition of power.  I’m not naïve; I know that despite our ideals, our history has far too many examples of assassination and murder influencing political course.  Yet we have to recognize that words have the power to shape our shared understanding of the world in which we live, and the ideas that gain traction in our discourse find ways to manifest in our physical lives.

JasonAshlock on Twitter commented that Sarah Palin was guilty “of the irresponsible use of metaphor.”  He captures the point exactly.  Politicians have long recognized the power of language.  Ad agencies know how crucial just the right slogan is.  Poets understand the layers of meaning within word choice.  Dream readers imagine the whole dream as a metaphor for waking life situations.

To buy into violence is to choose the destructive, rather than the creative, path.  If we are to survive as a species, we’ll need to be creative to solve our problems.  We’ll have to find compassion for the wounded, the sick, the criminal.  We’ll have to change our public discourse.  For too long, we’ve let penny-pinchers tell us we should keep what we possess at the expense of others, leaving too many in our society hungry, literally and metaphorically.  Too many are excluded from contributing their talents because of poverty or skin color or any of the hundreds of ways we classify “otherness.”

We are a creative people.  Let’s start using gardening metaphors instead of war metaphors.  Instead of trying to “beat” the opponent, let’s try to “grow” support for our own candidate or idea.  Let’s dream up a new way of envisioning our world.

Writing with an eye toward publication can be a spirit-killing career path.  Although I know, and believe, that, as Joan Baez said, “Action is the antidote to despair,” sometimes taking action is the hardest thing to do.  When you’ve had a long apprenticeship, and your move into having a novel published seems to lie in the hands of capricious and unfeeling Chance, it’s hard to muster the enthusiasm to send the work out again, or to tackle yet another revision.

Those are the times when having a writing community and attending a conference can save a writer’s sanity.  There have been a few times in the last eleven years (the time I’ve been seriously pursuing a writing career) that I’ve been tempted to just give up and walk away.  Those times coincide with the death of family members I held dear, and I know that grief played a huge role in my questioning of my work.  The first time, my daughter’s despair at the thought that I might stop writing was enough to help me limp along into another period of relative optimism.  This latest time, it’s been the encouragement and friendship of my writing tribe.  I can’t bear the thought of losing my place among them, so I continue to send out my work.  (I’ve never been able to stop actually writing, though I’ve been advised that a hiatus would not be a bad idea.)

This last weekend, my commitment to the tribe paid off in a big way.  I attended the Fall Conference of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SCBWI.  I went because I always go, because some of my best friends are the movers and shakers that make the conference happen, and because I always get something useful out of conferences.  This time, I was blown away.  Bruce Coville gave the opening keynote, and his boundless enthusiasm for writing, writers, and readers, was clear in his voice, his body language, and his humor.

Bruce reminded us that our hearts, and children’s hearts, are hungry for real work.  Meaningful work.  Yes, my heart hungers to write the best books I can, so that they can reach out and feed the imaginations of my readers.  He spoke of the seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues for writers, reminding us that we must work, and work with joy and passion, embracing life.  Reminding us that even, or perhaps especially, the worst things that happen can be material for our work.  I’m honored to be part of the tribe that Bruce describes as “Storytellers, dream makers, and heart healers.”

The other speaker who helped to shift my mood from despondency to enthusiasm was Traci Jones.  Her workshop on multi-cultural writing was full of concrete information, and her banquet talk was delightful.  She reminded us that not too long ago, she sat where we did, and she spoke about the challenges of writing her books while also raising kids and working at her day job.  Her humor had us laughing at our shared experience, yet she reminded us that we must take ourselves seriously if we expect anyone else to.

The editors and agent at this conference were among the friendliest I’ve met.  Usually the “Industry Panel” is not heavy on comedy.  This is where the editors and agents at a conference answer questions about their work and their houses, trends in publishing and what they’re looking for.  But the combination of Elizabeth Law, Elena Mechlin, Kate Harrison, and Rotem Moscovich proved to be very entertaining.  Even though long ago I realized that picture books are the hardest genre of children’s books to write, hearing Rotem and Kate and Elena talk about them made me wish I had the calling to pursue that form.  In fact, I wished I could write something that each of them would love, not just to see my work in print, but because each of them would be a delight to work with.  They did get me to thinking about projects that I have languishing in early drafts that I could take out of the drawer and revisit.  That in itself was worth the price of admission.

Last week I dug through some boxes of my grandmother’s belongings that had been packed away for years in my parents’ basement.  I brought several beautiful dishes to light, including a set of delicate stemware each in a different vibrant color, a tea set of beautifully painted china, and two cups and saucers in floral patterns.

The crumpled newspapers that protected them from breaking date from the fall of 1977. The newsprint is yellowed, the dishes dusty and a bit grimy from the acidic paper.  As I washed them in preparation for display, I couldn’t help but think that these dishes are like the best aspects of many people—delicate and beautiful but wrapped and packed away.  At first they are hidden for safekeeping, but later because they are forgotten—out of sight and (mostly) out of mind.

The hardest lesson I’ve learned from dreamwork is to attempt to own my brighter gifts and talents.  My teacher calls this “Bright Shadow projection,” and the idea is that we often fail to recognize or acknowledge our greatest gifts, and are able to see them and admire them only in others.  Owning our gifts can be harder than owning our prejudices, because we have a cultural bias against being “too full of yourself” or boasting.  So we learn, usually very young, to tuck away our brightest lights into carefully packed boxes in our souls, and then sigh with unnamed yearning when we see our heroes shining with that same light.

In order to grapple with this process, I’ve made lists of qualities I admire in others, and then searched within to see where those qualities in me have been hidden.  It isn’t easy, but my dreams, and the dreams of my fellow dreamworkers, point us relentlessly in that direction.  For example, one of my friends recently dreamed of a man whose work he greatly admires.  In the dream the man sits at a table, teaching his followers, and there is an empty chair across from him.  The dreamer realizes that the chair has been empty for a while, and even though others are also standing, this chair is for the dreamer.

Of course, reclaiming and using our gifts can be a frightening process.  After all, we first packed them away in order to protect ourselves, maybe from others’ teasing, or jealousy, or anger.  But the effort it takes to ignore our truest selves can lead to exhaustion and depression.  Recognizing and reclaiming the talents I have has unlocked rooms of joy in my life.  When I’m truer to myself, I attract the people who truly resonate with me.  And I’m stronger now than I was when I first wrapped up those parts of me that seemed too big for the people around me to handle.  I have more knowledge of how to channel my gifts in ways that don’t overwhelm those near me.  And I have the enormous pleasure of seeing my friends embrace their own gifts.

Another dreamer recently reported the “billboard” message from one of her dreams as:  “To the extent that I choose suffering, I increase the suffering in the world.  To the extent that I choose joy, I increase the joy in the world.”  Unwrapping our hidden talents, while it may feel terrifying, leads to greater joy.  It makes us more whole as individuals.  And to the extent we make ourselves whole, we bring greater wholeness to the world.

There is a place at the table for  each of us.  The world needs our talents and gifts and art and creativity and problem-solving.  To keep our gifts wrapped in ancient newspaper is to deprive ourselves and the world of what is most needed.

Today’s post is by my friend Tim Shea.  His friendship and his words have helped me through many dark hours, and I’m honored to share his essay here.

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.  (Prov. 23:7)

For thousands of years and in cultures around the world it has been universally understood that the inside, drives the outside.  That a person’s perception of who they are, what they are capable of, and their relative worth to the world will in large part determine the levels of success and happiness that they will know in their lives.  I have never met a successful man who was not also a confident man.  I have never met a resolved, determined woman, who did not eventually realize her goals.  Conversely, a person with low or poor self-esteem, has very little chance of realizing great success in this life.  The two states are mutually exclusive.  Countless books have been written on the subject of the causal relationship between self-perception and success, and with good reason.  Virtually no one would argue this point.  And yet many are the people who at one time knew success and happiness, and now find themselves in a state of confusion, at best, and despair at worst, wondering what happened, and wondering whether, or even if they can climb back out and return to their former, happier state.

Do you know who our friends are?  Do you know who the people are in our lives that we must cherish?  Who we must hang onto for dear life?  They are those people who can look into our eyes and remind us of who we once were.  Of whom we once, long ago, or perhaps, not so long ago, might have become had we stayed on the path that we were following back when they knew us.   Those who can make us recall that spark of divinity that lies within each of us, which in some way set us apart from everyone else once upon a time.  That spark that in some way made us special, even if it was only for a while, and even if it was only in some obscure and insignificant way.  Everyone at one time or another has had a brush with greatness.  Everyone at some time surprised themselves and came close to realizing their potential.  Came close to knowing how good or even great they could actually be.  Our friends remember it, and they help us remember it.

Life can be very hard on dreams.  Life can take people who at one time were full of hope, curiosity, determination, confidence and perseverance, and wear them down to the point where they find themselves living in that wasteland where dreams go to die and disappointment and regret flourish like weeds in an abandoned lot.  People can become worn down to the point where they actually have come to believe that the divinity they once manifested was no more than a fluke or a happy accident.  That in fact, the true spark of the divine wasn’t really ever there.   This almost never happens overnight.  That would be too easy to explain away.  Too easy to bounce back from.  No, the kinds of things that cause people to lose their way happen very slowly.  They are insidious.  They start lightly.  Faintly.  Almost imperceptibly.  Then, a bad break here, a bad decision there, inactivity at a time that there should be massive activity, and things begin to change.  With each passing wave of failure, however slight, a little piece of the shore of confidence is washed away.  From the undertow of doubt, the foundations of competency and success slip away into the seas of mediocrity and a once sturdy and secure beachhead slowly begins to crumble.  This can take years to happen.  In fact, it usually does.  And there is a proportional relationship between the amount of time it takes to happen, and the amount of time that it takes to return to our starting place, if, in fact, we can return at all.

However, some of us have been richly blessed.  Some of us have people in our lives who are not content to allow us to continue to live in that dark place that we have carved out for ourselves.  That place, that on the surface seems rather innocuous.  Rather unremarkable.  In fact, quite like the place that the majority of the world lives in.  The place that many of our parents called home.  That so many of our friends call home.  The place from which the cynics, the doubters, the jaded, the disappointed and the heartbroken, tell those of us who dare to hope for something better, that there is, in fact, nothing better.  That this is as good as it gets, and that we would do well to make our peace with it as soon as possible.   Our friends are those brave souls who venture into that place, and take us by the hand, and remind us of who we are.  They remind us of what we once were, and what we could be again.   They appeal to our true selves.   They call us back into the battle with exhortations of reliving past glory, of recommitting to a hope and a destiny reserved especially for us.  They beckon to the best that is in us, and they call it forth, believing that it is still there almost as though they can see it.  They look into our eyes and they remember who we once were.  They act as a lighthouse for us.  A beacon on which we can fix our gaze, and then follow into a safe and familiar harbor.

These people are our friends.  These people are the heroes of our lives.  These are the people to cherish.  They rarely give us something we didn’t  already have.  They just reach in and help us find what we misplaced.  They help us dust it off, and set it aright.  And you know what the best part is?  They actually want us to believe that we did it ourselves.  They won’t take credit for their part in breathing life back into our souls.  For restoring hope.  They won’t even share it.  But we, who have been on that journey, know better.  We who have been to that dark place, and are leaving it behind, know better.  Some of us are still making our way out.   Some of us are well on our way.  Wherever we are on the journey back, and in whatever way we were touched, we know.  We all know.  And we are forever grateful.

“Squid wrestling: all tentacles and no substance.” Sleep Talkin Man

As a dream worker, I find it fascinating to try to understand what dreams mean. Images that arise in sleep talk are little jewels of dreams, which can be explored in the same way as longer, more involved dreams. I discovered Sleep Talkin Man because all of a sudden, several people brought the blog to my attention…friends on Facebook, and other dream workers. When I saw the post quoted above, at first I just had a good laugh, which is a sure sign that there’s a nugget of truth in it. But then I began to wonder what that nugget of truth would be. After all, I have no plans to literally wrestle squid.

As I considered the symbol as a metaphor, the first thing that came to mind is that this is exactly what it’s like for me to wrestle with my grief. All tentacles and no substance. Since my last blog post, my mother-in-law decided she’d had enough of her multi-year fight against cancer, and died peacefully in her sleep. After losing my mother seven months earlier, the grief was familiar, yet different. I didn’t have the prolonged fog or sense of unreality, but I did find that I could sleep as long as I was allowed, including multi-hour naps during the day. At first, sadness mixed with relief that her suffering was over, but as the days wore on, the relief faded and the sadness took over.

Every little reminder, mostly unexpected, raises tears. Today, it was the bulky white envelope in the mailbox. Seen from the end, in the stack of other mail, it resembled the sort of envelope my mother-in-law would send, stuffed with photos and clippings and a cheerful note. Each of these reminders grips me in its tentacles and I have no choice but to live through the rise of emotion.

Yet there’s nothing of substance to grab onto. There’s no physical being to wrestle to the ground, no actual tentacle to peel off my skin. Instead, there’s just the acknowledgement that loving someone creates deep and lasting ties, and even when the other person is gone from this earth, the habits of those ties remain in our hearts and minds. People say that time will heal my grief, and they may be right. But I know, from watching my mom get teary when she spoke of her dad, decades after his death, that the tentacles never really let go.

I didn’t expect the undertow to be this strong when the first wave of grief receded.

Six weeks ago, the first tsunami of my grief for Mom overtook me. I developed bronchitis, a back ache, fatigue. I took to bed as much as possible, and I dragged around at half energy, or less, for more than a month. Around me, the undone tasks accumulated—housework and paperwork, correspondence and processing photos. I walked along the bottom of the ocean, in company with my grief.

The profound depths of it astonished me. Mom’s death was not unexpected; I’d had years of grieving for her declining health. I’d gotten through the initial sense of dislocation and fog and pain, planned her memorial and even overcome my anxiety about singing in public to sing with my sister at the service.

And then it all hit, and I sank. I struggled with physical ill health and the enormity of the loss. My family remained an anchor, though my loss of spirit affected them all.

After more than a month, and two weeks of antibiotics, I felt like I’d come up for air. Much better, inspired by a new story, energized by a professional critique, I wrote like mad for several days and felt like I’d bounced back.

Bounced was right—now I’m plunging down again. At least I caught my breath.

Sixteen days after my mom’s death, I wrote this pantoum:

Generations

My first daughter is learning to drive.
But, my mother has died.
I’m practicing to sing in her service,
Honoring the loved one with a lullaby.

But, my mother has died.
How can I sing without a cry?
Honoring the loved one with a lullaby
I am blessed with a glimpse of her.

How can I sing without a cry?
The woman I knew returns to earth and sky.
I am blessed with a glimpse of her
In a memory, implanted in my heart.

The woman I knew returns to earth and sky.
I imagine her spirit dancing in ease.
In a memory, implanted in my heart,
I breathe the scent of her.

I imagine her spirit dancing in ease
And bless her journey.
I breathe the scent of her;
I consider how I am me because of her,

And bless her journey.
Her place is now with the ancestors.
I consider how I am me because of her,
And I’m dreaming of who my daughters will be.

Her place is now with the ancestors.
I’m practicing to sing in her service,
And I’m dreaming of who my daughters will be.
My first daughter is learning to drive.