Firefly Horizons Under Hummingbird Skies

Generational Shame

Unfolding Narrative

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Opus Interiorem
– Latin For –
Inner Work
(Hear Crystal’s Audio File for this Blog 4:21)

Inner Work…though it is a deeply personal matter, it is not necessarily a private matter: inner work can be helped along in community. Indeed, doing inner work together is a vital counterpoint to doing it alone. Left to our own devices, we may delude ourselves in ways that others can help correct. But how a community offers such help is a critical question. We are surrounded by communities based on the practice of “setting each other straight” – an ultimately totalitarian practice bound to drive the shy soul into hiding.

~Parker Palmer 

My Unfolding Narrative

Our family story hinges on the principle from Genesis 50:20. “Even though the enemy planned evil against us, God planned good to come of it.” 

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The Origin and Consequence of Soul Erosion

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(Hear Crystal’s Audio File for this Blog. 12:39)
Secreta Secretorum
~Latin For~
Secret of Secrets

Iterative Consequences

Our family lineage has been progressively and compulsively disintegrating in the wake of my grandfather’s actions. Many in our family tree have immersed themselves in drugs and alcohol to numb the pain that resides as a latent malignancy. The cycle of suffering has manifested itself consciously and unconsciously. Like radioactive waste, the fallout scattered throughout our family tree. After my sister, Kitty’s death in 2009, her two adult sons, (Shawn and Chad) committed suicide due to the consequential effects of their drug habits inherited from their mother.

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The Journey Home

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(Hear Crystals Audio File for this blog 9:08)
Viae Errantia
~ Latin For ~
Wandering Roads

Generation of Awakening

Wandering roads manifest in a multitude of form; literally and metaphorically. My wanderlust is rooted in understanding the mystery that is ever before me which proliferated my Seeker’s avidity. Paradoxically, I have come to accept that great questions are an introduction to doubt. “Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises..” (James Hollis). Thus, my odyssey is an inward journey. The warp and woof of my life are pathways woven by a cogent, circuitous-grid providing many access points to my soul. This grid-like passageway positions me with various perspectives to understand more deeply the meaning I forage.

When I began writing my family story over ten years ago, I wrote these words:

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Like Waking Up From the Longest Dream

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(Hear Crystal’s Audio File for this Blog. 6:09)
somnium longissimum
~Latin For~
longest dream

Generational Dreamers

“Once upon a dream, I fancied fairy tales and fantasized the type of life that little girls believe someday might be theirs. I held in my heart that my true love would arrive on a white horse and whisk me away to a happy-ever-after-life in his castle where he would be devoted to me forever and ever.”

 The End.

The schmaltzy archetype and allegory of what love and romance should look like were emblazoned in my heart during my childhood era through movies featuring Elvis Presley and stunning leading ladies.
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Inheriting the Wind

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(Hear Crystal’s audio file for the blog. 8:07) 
Possessio Ventus
~ Latin for ~
Inheriting the Wind
Proverbs 11:29

Generational Inheritance

Welcome to the fourth installment of My Mother’s Story and Mine. I offer you, the reader, an invitation to follow the path on which I have labored in making sense and finding meaning of my maternal family history. This solemn narrative has developed as I have developed, ripened as I have cultivated my thoughts, and effloresced as I continue to pour out of my heart into written word. This series of blogs titled, My Mother’s Story and Mine reveals our painful family history and is now shared vulnerably as a case study with my professional and personal assessments. Which is to say the only real authority in which I am able to speak, is from my perspective. It is my narrative as I experienced myself in our family.
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Manifesto of Pain

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(Hear Crystal’s audio file for this blog. 4:04)
Edictum Doloris
– Latin for ~
Manifesto of Pain

Generational Shame

The following poem was penned by my mom
in the wake of her Evangelistic father’s abandonment
with his sister-in-law Pearl, a member of his congregation.

The poem suggests mom lived with Basil and Pearl 
until she ran away at age 16.
Basil continued the cycle of abuse against those in his domain.
The depth of creative expression revealed 
in mom’s words is amazing with the witness of her own mother’s pain.
Mom became distrustful of men, having developed a negative schema which impacted her relationships with men thereafter.
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