Category: Refuge

The word, No, can be be more powerful in its patient education then Yes.
Oh we love, are in love, with the word Yes and all its exclamation and forward momentum.
But it is No, with its arresting power, that reveals the most about our character in our reaction to it.

American women are often extraordinary in their tenacity.

Jacqueline Smith had been protesting the location of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN from the corner across the street, since her eviction as the last tenant from The Lorraine in 1988. Evicted to make way for the construction of the museum. The Lorraine Motel was where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Ms. Smith was protesting the museum’s displacement of the community MLK was fighting for, and the museum’s emphasis on the violence of MLK’s death as a sensationalist lure for tourism.
Ms. Smith was not protesting MLK himself and his legacy of leadership in the civil rights movement.
Far from it.

I met Jacqueline Smith in 2018 coming upon her corner and her then 30 year protest, and was immediately fascinated by her relentless search for refuge.

I tried to woo her and was met with immediate defeat.

This is clearest photo I have of Jacqueline Smith and i only have two.

She was not having it.
Having me.
At all.
I wooed her.
I charmed her.
I flirted with her.
I did tap dances and cartwheels.
Jacqueline Smith wanted nothing to do with me or my camera or my project.
I came back multiple times over the course of two days, repeatedly asking for an interview and I repeatedly got her prickly and decisive,
“No.”

I was being much more specific in that leg of the journey, I was wanting to widen the diversity of the women I was interviewing and as I was in the American South, I was seeking southern black women to speak with about how they navigated their fears and created a sense of safety.
That all sounded well and good on paper as far as a project’s intent in representation. It’s different though when a northern, west coast white woman walks up to a southern black woman on the street and says,
“Hey there, tell me what you’re scared of please.”
And the black woman is going to answer,
“You.”
“Move on girl.”

Before meeting the indomitable Jacqueline Smith and her stubborn protest, I had left Iowa and my immersion into my birthplace and my extended family’s legacy of strong women and silence. There was a story of what was not said, not to be spoken, that was strong as well, generation after generation. I got a glimpse and then my internal sense of timing bade me to hit the road once more. This time, a direct line south, along the Mississippi, Route 61 through the Mississippi Delta.

  Following the Mississippi from Iowa, the river took me straight into the south.
Straight into our country’s legacy of ownership and owned.
And because I was an outsider and I was white and I knew nothing except what my bones told me, the cotton fields of Tennessee made me deeply uneasy.
There was the gas station I pulled into, there was the highway I came off of, there were the cotton fields in early winter bloom right where the cement ended.
The proximity of cotton and the mundane gas pump filled me with sadness.

Nothing had changed, not really.

Leaving the gas station cotton field, I drove into Memphis.

Driving around in an unfamiliar city, I found a forgotten backstreet that had poetry blooming in its cracks.

  Camera in hand, I walked away from my truck, left it unlocked. Wandered further and further away, caught up in the street’s story, I looked back and I was suddenly far away from everything that i owned and left unattended.

And there was a man now on this forgotten street and he was much closer to my truck than I was and that made me feel deeply uneasy.
Quick-stepped it back, the man and I watched each other as the other got closer and my unlocked truck was the meeting place.
I slid in and he walked by my window and with a casual wave, his black face wrinkled in a kind smile, he walked on by. Sitting there, I flashed on the gas station and its cotton fields and then the images I had just taken and wondered how they’d look together, side by side.

  Jacqueline Smith and her saying No to me. The education of her No.  I’m just now really starting to get it and I’ll spend the rest of my life learning about it. Ms. Smith and her emphatic No, was a clear setting of boundaries between who can be trusted and who cannot. And that there wasn’t much to talk about in the matter as far as she was concerned.

It didn’t matter who I was, it was a matter of what I represented. I was no one that was trustworthy, and for Jacqueline Smith, I never would be, so why would she entertain the idea of opening herself and revealing what made her afraid and what made her feel safe. All of these power dynamics were a given and Ms. Smith was single-minded in her focus of what was worthy of her time.  She had her life’s work, her mission, for the past thirty years.

Ms. Smith’s contention was with Civil Rights Museum board and Memphis’s Black community in how best that community would be served in practical hands-on help for those the most in need. That for Ms. Smith, was first and foremost. The re-imagined Lorraine and its representation as an isolated figurehead for racial equality and advocacy,  second.

The Civil Rights Museum was an institution of racial education and a grave marker. An extraordinary leader had been murdered there due to his audacity, his temerity, to advocate that through peace, love, and brotherhood, the achievement of equality between the races in the United States, would provide abundance for all of its citizens. That all would prosper in diversity and equal opportunity.

For this, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on the second floor of The Lorraine.

So, the education of No.

What did Jacqueline Smith’s specific No teach me?

That what I want is not the most important thing. That the only person who thinks what I want is important, is me. That I am not the most important person in the room. That when I arrive to a place, to be aware there is already so much in place that is happening all around me.  And though I am unaware of particulars, I am already deeply connected to the story and its legacy, whether I am aware of it or not. That the respect I give to the story I am entering upon mid-stream, is everything.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

This is Great-Aunt Donna Lee, Queen of the Storytellers, Walker Woman from the famed Five Walker Sisters and Great-Grandma Walker, her mother, Mary Harriet.

Aunt Donna is my extended family’s matriarch and holds the family’s stories. She is the last of her generation and she holds the whispers and sighs of the a world that has passed. Aunt Donna is 87 years old, she was born in 1935, the Great Depression and then WW2. Bobby socks and drag races. Drinking hooch and working in the coal mines. Taking care of the little ones, one after the other, after the other. A world away. The past barely recognizable in its distance to now. The past in there whether we recognize it or not and there is Aunt Donna in the doorway, waving and her sweet smile.

Here she is, Donna Arringdale, nee’ Walker. I as her great-niece and fellow Walker Woman. We are the bridge from the past to the present to the future. Family. Blood. I had the beautiful pleasure and honor of interviewing Aunt Donna for my project, The Nature Of Refuge.

Aunt Donna shared her home, her laughter, her children and grandchildren, our family and our stories, with me, there that day that I rolled into Marshalltown. I was christened a Walker Woman at her dining room table that first night I visited and never have I felt more included and safe and part of our great, sprawling family tree. We are all so lucky to have one another, to have found one another, to be of one another.

Family.

This is the nature of refuge.

Please enjoy Aunt Donna’s full length interview here, she is such a treat!

http://vimeo.com/469973756

Thank you Aunt Donna!

Margie Walker, the WOW of Wonders!

That was a favorite phrase of Margie’s,

Wow! Wonder of Wonders!

Margie would exclaim this intermittently whenever she was overcome by a train of thought or conversation, overcome by the joy that bubbled up her spirit at the interconnectivity in being alive.  Margie would laugh, and often cry in response to her fervent intelligence seeking the connection points like tiny roots reaching out and going to earth. She rooted and was awestruck. She rooted in her emotional vulnerability in the moment and felt the sacred safety to express it; so she wept openly in her ritual of gratitude. Our conversation was littered with such exclamations and mutual rooting with one another, I had the feeling that this was often the case with Margie as she moved though her world.

Margie is a deeply spiritual woman and a storyteller. The importance of sharing a person’s  story springs from her Celtic heritage and is a major factor to her calling as a spiritual director in her faith. Margie extends spiritual direction to others in relationship to the power of story. The ritual of oneself in relationship with faith. Margie is also rooted in her family, they have always been everything in her intimate community. Margie is a traveling pilgrim and has been her whole life, comfortable and curious in all settings, life a continual, joyous adventure. Margie is aware of her privilege of comfort and being cared for, respected, loved. She uses this awareness for the powers of kindness, a deep understanding of her responsibility to that privilege. Margie is amazing.

Please click here to enjoy Margie Walker’s full-length interview.

A dear aunt had facilitated an introductory email between Margie and I as I drew near to Omaha, Nebraska and was seeking women from my aunt’s community to continue the interview process for this project. My aunt’s community was connected to me in a way as my father was born and raised there in Omaha and my older sister was born there as well. Echoes of this old origin story were still alive in the community of my aunt, who had shared my father’s childhood and created her own personal and professional life that sprung from the foundation of her family’s bedrock, the Catholic Church.

The little exposure I had to the Catholic Church growing up was through my father and my sporadic visits to him in a city on the other side of the state of Washington. We settled in Washington after leaving the midwest when I was quite young, a family creating a new story in its own pilgrimage.  My own spirituality was always rooted in a strong Pagan relationship with the natural elements and through legends and myths rooted in magic and allegory. I was a reader of the highest order as a child and the stories of the supernatural were always my favorite and guided my relationship with the sublime. The catholic religious experience that I encountered with my father was one of rebellion,  Jesus Christ SuperStar or “Motorcycle Jesus” as I nicknamed my father in my twenties. His Jesus was the destroyer of temples immersed in commerce and the banishment of corruption, my father’s Jesus was a righteous holy man who fought for justice for the poor and downtrodden. I could dig it as an idea and not fall sway to the indoctrination.

The Catholic Church in Omaha, NE is decidedly un-hippy, but the church and the women that I encountered who worked there and devoted their lives to it, were full of compassion. Sharing a love and deep commitment to investigating the depth of those emotions in the relationship to their faith and community.

Margie Walker is a spiritual advisor for those who are wanting to join the church. She will hold your hand and listen and witness your navigation of your understanding of the Catholic faith. Margie’s wise sweetness will guide up to the door and step to the side as you walk through to the wild pageantry of the Catholic Church. If the Church held a chorus of Margies in every office, the Catholic faith would be truly a most compassionate and joyful sanctuary.

I came to Margie’s home at her invitation to conduct the interview. Margie’s reaction just in the initial email exchange was full of excitement in what I was doing in this project’s work, lots of capital letters voicing encouragement and connection to the theme of storytelling being the gateway to true compassionate understanding between individuals and their seeming differences. Lots of WOWS and an impassioned invitation to come to her home, her sanctuary and participate in the work.

And there she was, that sweet woman. When Margie opened the door after I walked up and knocked, she stood to the side with a wonderful smile and asked me in. Margie has a knack for standing at thresholds.

Homemade blueberry muffins and cool lemon water, inspired conversation in the loveliest midwestern backyard garden. Cicadas buzzed, next door neighbors kids screamed and played, and our drinks beaded perspiration in the humidity. Margie and I delighted in one another immediately. Spirit-Sisters from the get go, verbal gifts flew back and forth between us, a “Yes!” And!” of epic proportions. We both laughed and wept and stepped through that mystic connection door together with a great deal of joy and gratitude for one another and our meeting that day. Margie’s God, her self-described, “Holy One” is not a god rigid in exclusive patriarchy. Margie’s Holy One is joyful and relaxed, sprung forth from the structure of the Catholic Jesuits which encourages self examination and the innate spirituality present in the pursuit of intelligence and the wisdom of discourse.

Literally from the top of our conversation, Margie vocalized her faith in the power of story. Our consciousness that is our story and our connection to our unconscious which is rooted in the divine. Our story teases out the thread and encourages that connection to be tangible through vocalization. In giving shape to the interior emotional jumble through words and a thoughtful narrative, we can trace the pure gold of when the story drops away and we can relax into life without the tense sensation of isolation. We can access grace. Story as access to the universal connectivity that is at the heart of all life. Nothing is left out in the cold, nothing exists alone.

Margie and I spoke further about the power of story. How in sharing your story, a person can create a space of freedom by being vulnerable in speaking of what makes you feel weak. In speaking emotional truth, a person is giving the listener permission to explore their own vulnerability and the freedom of self expression. Witnessing one another in vulnerability literally creates emotional room for something more than instinctual reaction. It gives the room for letting go and learning to choose more thoughtful emotional responses to one’s fears in the future. Story and the telling creates wisdom which allows emotional freedom.

And the freedom to do and go and say and feel is a very important thing for the average American. We equate ourselves to our physical freedoms like no other country on this planet. We take for granted our freedom like no other country and due to our wealth and abundance in this country, we see our freedoms as “God Given Rights”. Whatever that actually means. The majority of Americans rarely look closely at what, “Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness” specifically refers to.  Just don’t tell us what to do. You are not the boss of me.  Let me do my own thing and buy my own stuff and enjoy my own life thank you very much. A lot of unconscious defensive reaction to the connection of being responsible to anything or anyone besides oneself.

To be able to create a sense of interdependence through story and the emotional freedom that is experienced in allowing one another to surrender that guarded mentality, to create spiritual vulnerability with one another as an access point to our cultural obsession with “freedom”, feels like a massive win/win. The carrot of “Freedom” brought to you by our sponsors, Wisdom through Emotional Vulnerability. That would be fantastic. American culture takes a step forward, all of us, all the different stories, together.

WOW! Wonders of Wonder.

Margie Walker. I’d like to return to the beginning of this story. A story introducing this one woman. A sweet, wise, strong woman. A woman who is a self-proclaimed pilgrim in all of her travels and life adventure. Specifically a pilgrim and not a gypsy as Margie views her life as one long pilgrimage derived from a deep connection with her Celtic heritage, the wild mystics that flow through her veins. The connection to her god as, “Big, Gracious, Holy One” and being a child in that sacred relationship that she feels so acutely. A life long journey, a pilgrimage in her communion with story and divine love.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

This is Namoli Brennet from Decorah, Iowa, the sweetest little heartland town you can imagine. We conducted the interview in the town’s baseball field’s dugout, how more All-American can you get? I guess the fact that Namoli, an amazing singer/songwriter, had just finished performing at the weekly farmer’s market across the street, sun shining in the early am to play back up singer to Namoli’s set while the town passed back and forth in front, could be the cherry on top.

 

For a current listing of Namoli’s shows and tours, info about her music and bookings, please check out her site at: https://namolibrennet.com/home

Namoli was an amazing woman to interview for The Nature Of Refuge.  Namoli lives in her truth with complete concentration and with a searing honesty. She doesn’t pull any punches, using her wit and superb sense of humor as a mirror and a blade that she most often skewers on herself. That sense of humor, Namoli’s self described barometer of where her anxiety level is in a given moment, the more she jokes, the more anxious she is; Namoli started our interview out with a stand up routine that relaxed into a vulnerability and candor that was deeply moving to witness. And ended with a series of rapid one liners that had me giggling as the interview came to a close. I laughed with Namoli from the start and as she began to reveal herself to me, we shared quite a bit about fear and where it can take you in a given day.

Namoli is articulate, heartfelt, a powerful creative voice, a seeker, a truth teller of the highest order, introspective, wickedly funny and smart as hell, a survivor, she suffers, she rolls with it all, she feels it all deeply. I enjoyed Namoli’s company from the start, I hope she discovers her own true compass, or learns that her very mutable essence is the core of life itself, adaptability and all its guises.

To enjoy the full length interview please follow the link for Part One; https://vimeo.com/345229782  Part Two will be posted shortly.

We met and conducted the interview under the recommendation from one of the local newspaper’s reporters whom I met through my uncle. My uncle and my family, I had come to visit in my quest across the country. I was born in Iowa, had a huge extended family, and didn’t really know any of them due to my mom and dad moving us out to the west coast was I was little and I had never ventured back as an adult to explore where I came from, to get to know that part of myself. I decided to fold that aspect of what refuge and sanctuary could possibly mean through the discovery of my family roots into the project as well. I am nothing but ambitious.

My uncle is a big cheese in this lovely little town, he has worked hard his entire adult life to establish and maintain community, connect with people and make something sustainable and beautiful. He’s done a great job in that endeavor and though he sold his pharmacy a few years ago, he still has quite a few business minded spinning plates that he enjoys twirling and gets people involved in. My uncle is a man who gets the job done with a good amount of flair and bright smile. He’s funny, he and Namoli share that.

This little Iowa town, Decorah, is a sweet place to live. It’s got a thriving business community, strong economy, lovely tree lined streets with big pretty houses, a little river cuts through the town, its green and smells fresh,. There are music festivals, and a cute liberal bookstore. There is a democratic headquarters with all its blue slogans just up the street from the republican headquarters with all its red slogans; it’s all very civilized. There’s quite a few aging hippies with a bunch of neo-hippies mixed in that all frequent the local co-op. Live bands play often during the summer and if Namoli isn’t touring in a given moment, you will find her playing out quite often, a town favorite with her gorgeous voice and soulful lyrics.

There is a big festival that happens at the end of each summer in Decorah, it’s called Nordic Fest and celebrates the Scandinavian heritage of the town and area. For me, it smacked a bit of white pride but I am an outsider and for the locals its just a fun way for the community to come together and celebrate what is important to them as a common identity, an ancestry. What also offsets the possible creepiness of white pride is that there are people of color living in Decorah, not a huge amount but more than you would expect from the stereotype of a small, midwest, American town. One more thing that tips the scale away from the town’s traditional whitewash, there are quite a few rainbow flags being proudly hung outside of private homes, there is a small liberal arts college that has attracted quite a few LGBTQ students over the years that has created a good sized gay community that is cemented in the social fabric of Decorah. It delighted me to discover this and have the facade of this small, Iowan, town pull back, revealing itself as being much richer and multi leveled that you would expect on first glance. And this is where I met the first transgender woman that I would include to the chorus of American women voices in this project, Namoli.

 

It was Namoli’s voice that I heard first. I had arranged the interview over FB and Namoli invited me to join her at the local farmer’s market held behind the co-op and she would be playing a gig down there . It was a beautiful summer morning, I packed my gear and left my uncle’s pretty, big house, walking over, everything is in walking distance in Decorah. I wandered through the market, gorgeous local produce, baked goods, all the good stuff spilled out in the stalls. I saw Namoli setting up between a couple of those stalls and there was a bench right across the way. I sat content to observe and enjoy the day, I’d introduce myself after she played. Namoli then began to sing.

Namoli’s voice is rich and warm. It pours into your ears, pours over you, you lean in to that voice. Clear with the ache of spilled emotion, raw but smooth, she’s got the stories to tell and her voice, you listen. The words, she’s telling you a truth, your truth, and your truth over there. Its dusty roads and barrooms. The crack of a cue ball and a screen door slamming. It’s footsteps clocking away in the other direction. It’s the highway at night in the middle of nowhere. We all have these stories and they are all in Namoli’s voice. While I listened, that’s what came up to the surface, how familiar the stories were. We are of the same age, Namoli and I, both seekers and transformers, came up in the 80’s and 90’s, felt strong in ourselves in the mid-ought’s, that breeding ground left it’s similar stamp. Namoli is of the school of The Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, Kristin Hersch, Tracy Chapman. Songs lit up by tail lights down a back highway. Good stuff to say the least.

My uncle sat down next to me on the bench and handed me a muffin, perfect accompaniment, he and the muffin. My uncle loves music so we were both happy to be there in the morning sun and listen, enjoying the beauty. Watching Namoli’s set, watching the people walking by enjoying Namoli or not paying attention,  great people watching with a badass soundtrack.

After Namoli was done I introduced myself, offered to take her out to lunch so we could get to know each other a bit and I could tell her more about the project in depth and make sure she was down to participate. We walk over to the town’s sushi joint that has a great menu, strangely though almost every table has ordered sushi-on-fire, neither Namoli or I know what to make of it and it made both of us giggle at the sushi-on-fire-mystery each time it was presented to a nearby table. We got along well, fell into easy, intimate conversation, the nature of this work opens doors quickly to authentic intimacy, Namoli is indeed down to participate. We wander behind the now dismantled farmer’s market where it’s grassy and there’s a little stream, we head back further looking for the right private spot to conduct the interview – ah, a baseball field, a dugout, somehow just right.

When I spoke to the reporter and asked who she thought would be an interesting woman from the area to interview for this work, she recommended Namoli as she is an amazing musician and well known in the community. What was not as well known was the fact that Namoli is transgender. Not because she hides it, not at all, but because I think it’s due to the fact that Namoli is quite feminine, has a light voice. Namoli’s transition is well suited to her physically which reflects her spirit in her altered house. My uncle had no idea she was transgender until I told him and he’s watched her perform and seen her around town for years. The fact that Namoli was transgender and was an integral part of the community in this small Iowan town was what made me interested in hearing her story for this project. Namoli’s perspective was different from the traditional story of rejection in a tight knit community. When it was established early on in the interview that I knew she was transgender and would love to hear whatever she was willing to share about her experience, Namoli was eager to get real about it and detail her personal journey. What a gift her vulnerability was.

Namoli is funny, like i said, she started the interview off with a comedic bang which was fun but we settled into a deeply sincere conversation about fear and suffering, getting older, and the mystery of self identity.

Namoli’s voice pulses with sadness, a weary angel singing in your ear. In the last couple of days while writing her story, I’ve been listening her most recent CD. She gave it to me on the day of our interview some months ago and i wonder if she is still as sad today. During Namoli’s interview, we traded anxiety stories and the onslaught of the early forties life experience, when everything suddenly seems to fall to shit and your left holding an empty bag that once was your life. And the hope that you will build anew, love might ring your doorbell, and abundance will flow again. All with an altered force and again the hope of wisdom to carry you forward. The hope, always the hope.

On the day that we spoke, Namoli wasn’t so sure about the hope. The sad and the depressed and the anxiety was looming large and had been for some years. It had been worse at the beginning of her forties, Namoli had fessed up to the sharp degree of her depression and sought professional help, always so good to ask for help. Namoli then experienced the bouncing around of finding the right anti-depressants and the right dose and the fact that its all a game of hit or miss and a person is just trying her best to keep her head above the water. Namoli’s candor in all this jump starts the conversation we can be having about our fears and how we navigate them. How we escalate and deescalate ourselves in our levels of panic, how we attempt to live with ourselves. How the mental health community is of service and when it is not, do the drugs work or don’t they. Let’s get real.

Getting real is the job of the artist. The artist is the voice of the mirror, the one who says,

“Hey! We all are in pain, suffering. We all feel love, that bloom of passionate hope. We all feel! I’m the artist so I’ll go first, this is what it feels like, sounds like, looks like”

That’s what the artist does and not only does she feel, she experiences everything exquisitely, and she suffers, then makes it bigger for her canvas so everyone can see. This is life.

It’s extraordinary and exhausting and Namoli was totally real with how tired she was.

Namoli grew up in a conservative Catholic family where faith was strong and  struggled with showing affection and getting all the basic needs met. There was repression and everything unsaid, And there was the fact that Namoli was transgender in a time before that word even really existed. Then the word was born, caught fire, and look where we are as a nation with the conversation of gender, transgender, identity, fluidity, especially in the last couple of years.

Namoli describes herself growing up as a chameleon and a people pleaser, shape shifter to survive. That seems to be a common theme in people who transition, born with the gift to adapt, to mirror what they think the people around them want them to be as their own sense of identity is so fluid. It is a gift but we are taught, or have up till this moment in human time, that we have to cling to the identity given to us at birth, that is the starting point and everything else is built on top. This is who you are in this world, boy or girl. Don’t deviate, don’t change the script, if you do, heavy repercussions, outcast. This ability to explore the variety of selves, genders, non gender, in one lifetime, how gorgeous. Wouldn’t it be lovely if that adaptability was rewarded, fostered into flowering, a revolving door of multi colored light. As it is now, we are having a brand new conversation, a decriminalization. But it still is a crippling aspect for many who transition as the punishment is still severe in the growing up and realization process. The mutable sense of self is still enforced as a detriment and so it is turned into a place where the person breaks. If you don’t know who you are, something is terribly wrong.

I don’t agree. I’ve had my own sundering, a reckoning and the self that I thought I was and who I invested so much, suddenly disintegrated. The shock of that, set off a panic bomb that took almost a year to calm. When I saw that I had all this room in no longer being certain who I was, I felt the primal wisdom of not knowing. Now, I distrust the idea of “knowing” who I am. I would love to be able to pass this knowledge on to Namoli, or anyone who is struggling to feel a self. We all have our own journey with that understanding.

Namoli may be tired, but she is still touches hope. It’s in every one of her songs. The exhaustion one one side of the face and the light that touches the other. Always one and then the other. Namoli sings in her track, Heart Like That,

There ain’t no reason or rhyme, To the ways we find to keep trying, In the face of more than you signed up for, You pray for luck, Keep keeping up. Take all the best, And make up the rest, The times I’ve been on the edge, A light keeps pulling me back. And you know I’m glad, And you know I’m glad, And you know I’m glad, To have a heart like that.

This is the nature of refuge.

This is Tiffani Sheriff and she is a force. She is calm, extremely intelligent, articulate, intuits connections, generous,. She listens with her whole self and has a direct gaze. Tiffani is completely present and always has been, she is fierce, kind, adaptable and practical. Tiffani is of spirit, dream, and awake. She is pop culture savvy and politically astute. Tiffani and her beautiful daughter live in New Orleans and Tiffani  is magic.

Please enjoy Tiffani’s full length interview by following the link: https://vimeo.com/330263665

Or watch Tiffani’s full length interview here:

New Orleans magic is a true, magnetic thing.  It is so rich, dense, that If you experience New Orleans as a head beating against the wall, thats what you are beating up against. You are not letting what is under the surface influence you. It’s an introduction to the flow of Mystery. The legends of this city are true. I once lived in this city and my northern and west coast self could not wrap my head around this basic M.O. and I was always so frustrated when I wanted to take care of a thing practically. It still kinda frustrates when I visit and me, the self proclaimed Mystic Superhero Of Love and Fear; I still have so much to learn, to listen to.

I say Mystic, I lay claim to it. Tiffani and her call to arms of showing up in my fullness compels me to take this moment here to stand up among my spirit sisters and brothers. Tiffani and her powerful spiritual integrity inspire me to stop shuffling around in the shadows overcome by shyness, enough.

I don’t know who I am anymore to be brutally honest. I used to know, so fiercely. I held on to my identity as Sara Brown, invincible, self reliant badass extraordinaire, so tight. So tight that the Mystery with great helpings of external and internal Pressure caused my ego to explode in an overwhelming metaphysical rewiring one fine morning in dirty old New Orleans. Magic City epicenter.

I experienced it as a complete cold water plunge into the endless depth of my primal fear through an electric firestorm being set off in my nervous system. I never resurfaced, not really. Someone else did wearing my face. The face I came into this world with, the first face before all the conditioning, she came back for me and I still don’t know her very well three years later. I like her though. I didn’t at first, but through the trauma of losing my constructed adult identity, I found this First Self and grew to love her. She is now me and I can do Magic. I have visions, I heal with my hands and trees speak to me through the language of energetic pressure in my palms. Crows follow me and throw down gifts of feathers and chunks of bark frantically pulled from the branches on which they perch. I meditate with red dogs, our chakras breath together through their fur and my bare skin. My ancestors are a chorus of angelic cheerleaders joyfully cheering me on as I uncover yet another layer of supernatural connection.

Sometimes you have to be hit on the head to talk to angels.

 

New Orleans, the Mystery birthed in the bedrock, the land is haunted. Then brought in chains, the Magic of desert and hot sun enslaved and consumed, woven dark and deep. A port town, Magic imported from around the world, soaked in the cracks of the infrastructure, that infrastructure that feels so unstable is actually born on the supernatural. And that Magic once grabbed me by the throat and when I was able, I ran away from that city as fast as I could. 

The day I met Tiffani Sheriff and interviewed her for The Nature Of Refuge, I had been on the road interviewing all the amazing women who have taken part in this project, for pretty much exactly a year. I had swung down to New Orleans from the midwest and was headed to Los Angeles where I was going to start writing the book about the whole shebang. I was hitting specific cities on the way over and setting up interviews as much as possible before I arrived instead of the more intuitive, spontaneous flow I had created with meeting my women up till then, I was trying my hand at a more structured approach in my last push of this revolution of the work. But in New Orleans, that of course went out the window. My attempts to confirm an interview with the various people I knew there acting as potential emissaries, none panned out. I arrived In New Orleans without anything set and I needed to move on within the week but I wasn’t fazed, this was familiar territory, the instinctual approach and New Orleans herself.

I was staying with a friend who is a painter and when I showed up all road jangly, he suggested we go to an art opening to see a friend’s work, that was a perfect suggestion and off we went.  When we walked in, we were surrounded by familiar work in a familiar gallery on Julia street, one of the known gallery rows in the city. The familiar work belonged to a man that I used to assist for.  I also used to shoot the weddings he would send my way in addition to helping out wherever he needed me with his fine artwork. The gallery was familiar as I used to run errands for this man between he and the gallery. I laughed, and there was the man himself in a fabulous outfit holding court at his opening, a man that before I had come to New Orleans for this project, I had been trying to track down and see if he could assist in introducing me to a woman of New Orleans. And there he was. Perfect synchronicity in the city of Mystery, its a small town.  I laughed again and walked up to him.

Yes!, he said, he had a friend that he thought would be perfect, I got a phone number and a name and that’s where the information stopped. I didn’t need more than that, I was used to going in a blank slate, I liked it, it was exciting and the heart connection occurred so far ten out of ten in every variation of meeting and interviewing.  I called Tiffani and she was immediately receptive to the type of work I was presenting and asking her to be a part of. She was open to her story joining the varied narrative of vulnerability and how a person can traverse it. It always takes my breath away and gives me electric shivers in the ease of the yes these women have given me in the work, their generosity moves me beyond words.  

The day that I was to interview Tiffani, I was was looking for a priestess. I thought that i could find her and ask her about the Magic in New Orleans and why it had marked me with a cosmic restart button three years before, the whole Mystery that had lead me to the creative download and performing the work of The Nature Of Refuge to begin with. I was hoping to find this priestess and have this conversation before I was scheduled to meet Tiffani at 1pm.

There was a voodoo shop next to the food co-op in the once rougher artist neighborhood that was now throughly gentrified.  I used to go there once in awhile to purchase a candle spell or something small but I never spoke to the voodoo priestess that presided over her Magic, I was drawn to her spirit of magnetism . When that inner electric hurricane hit me over the head that one bizarre day, my terror was so complete that I only thought of escape not investigation with someone who might actually have some guidance. So here I was three years later, finally clear headed enough to go to a source and ask for help.

She wasn’t available, the shop was closed due to a private ceremony being performed, that priestess was busy investigating magic with someone else. I sat outside on the steps for awhile, wandered with my thoughts, here I was in New Orleans again.

I got up and went down to the Piety Arch nearby, a park with a big, beautiful arch that led you to the Mississippi’s edge with pretty paths and grass and flowers, a favorite place of mine to go and dance at the river’s edge back in the day. Tiffani was the one to suggest it when I asked her if she had a special sanctuary spot in the city to conduct the interview, when she said Piety Arch I smiled into the phone.

I went to go meet Tiffani down by the river, and wouldn’t you know it, she was the priestess I was meant to meet that day all along.

Tiffani Sheriff is a woman multi-faceted and operating on all cylinders, she roars into life and purrs steady.  A woman from New York with roots in West Africa, Tiffani came to New Orleans. New Orleans, where she discovered she could finally decipher the influx of energetic and spirit communication Tiffani had been a conduit for her entire life. Tiffani is an empath who is creating a path of bringing the mystical into the practical. Promoting a relationship with the spirit world and the vortex of energetic exchange, in tandem with business models and everyday language. Strip away the melodrama to revel the practicality of clear communication on all levels. And how, by demystifying the extra sensory experience, we as humans can fully utilize all our abilities to actualize emotional  and spiritual clarity coupled with material abundance.

Tiffani has created a consulting firm, Musings , that brings her professional expertise from the fashion and fine art industries, together with her lifelong extra sensory experience. Musings offers a menu of  services aimed at holistic wellness such as tarot readings, astrology readings, lead meditations, retreats and workshops, the list goes on. Whatever intuitive tools a professional creative  would want to bring to her projects or business model for guidance in creating practical structure and actualization, Tiffani also views beauty in all its forms and explorations as a refuge unto itself, a powerful magic. She offers her clients intuitive guidance in their aesthetic, beauty and spirit hand and hand and Tiffani is there to be a guide and professional facilitator.

Tiffani speaks of her life experience as one of continual winding, never straight forward and always inherently unsafe. Death has visited her close and often. Nothing certain, she intuited the truth from the beginning, had it whispered in her young ears by the spirits, we are all so achingly close to the edge and can fall, and will fall, at any moment. We are all angels preparing for that Fall.

In all of this primal chaotic force, Tiffani has always found sanctuary inside herself, learned to create the quiet sacred space in her own psyche, she carries her refuge with her wherever she goes in life, Tiffani will take it with her in death. In this sacred inner space, Tiffani learned the interpretation and separation of the hieroglyphs of the spirit whispers and ancestor shouts and the continuous wide river of electric connection between all life. It’s just another language, making innate sense once deciphered. Tiffani can escape into trance in a second and access this inner sanctum, she reveals that so can her daughter, the circle of ancestry is actually an ellipse, coming back to the similar place just slightly to the left with the new generation.

All of this is the Magic of New Orleans. Tiffani is giving it, the Mystery, a practical language to share with others as a profession, as a bridge in the ways that it makes simple sense to her, a conductor. She was the one that told me indirectly it was time to come out of the Mystic Closet, to claim myself along side her as a fellow conduit to a heightened human experience, to share and to teach  and to listen to what’s coming next, right around the corner, the evolutionary leap.

Thank you Tiffani.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

Tomiko Jones, sounds like a spy, a pirate, an adventure. She is a strong, bright light. In pursuing a passionate life, Tomiko is a truth-seeker, through her work as a photographer she allows the moment to reveal itself, for divinity in the natural world to seep in. Then she captures it. It takes patience to achieve this, quiet concentration and deliberation, then letting go to enter into the moment. To let the present be just itself and recognize the majestic, visual poetry that is inherent in everything. There are powerful stories in every last thing and Tomiko through her work as an artist, recognizes and honors the ones that resonate for her.

Tomiko and I had a conversation more than an interview in our time together. I would say that was an integral element to all my time with all the women I have sat down with in this project; give and take and holding a space of listening compassion. With most of the women I want to just illuminate their truth in that current moment between us, I try to speak as little as possible yet be fully engaged. Then there are a other women where the exchange is amplified by an actual conversation, an exchange of ideas that provides the strongest platform for the woman I’m sitting with to explore and reveal her truth as it comes to her.  Tomiko and I were deep in conversation about fear, vulnerability, refuge, art, from the minute I walked through her door and we continued that in her bedroom sanctuary, her “Cloud Palace” that Tomiko chose to hold our interview. I just turned on the camera and we were deep in it. Tomiko witnessed her own vulnerability and gave the gift of offering me the opportunity to join her, it was beautiful.

Please clink on the link and enjoy the full length interview of Tomiko Jones here: http://vimeo.com/316332617

  Tomiko and I zoomed around so many topics, the petals of emotional illumination unfolding with excited grace as we sparked each other’s consciousness. The gift of speech is mighty; give a person the room in which to express themselves with an open heart, a clarity of mind often follows. What comes to me now as I write Tomiko’s story and its been some months since the interview in Madison on her Cloud Palace took place, I watch the video footage and remember what that white, light room felt like, the Japanese tea and the black and white cat and the lobbing back and forth of bright, verbal flowers. The strongest thread that I tease out now that shapes itself like Tomiko, is surrender and contracts with your ancestry. And love.

Love and Fear, the two primal emotions, the bedrock of the human experience. Impulse and consciousness.

  Tomiko started off our time together with a story about flying to Hawaii with her mother and sister to bury her father. Or release her father actually, as my understanding of the Buddhist death ceremony, Hatsubon, is a ceremony of letting go, surrendering a loved one to the water, to the ocean, allowing all the fear and sorrow to splash out and be carried away. Hatsubon, is the project and installation that Tomiko has been absorbed with since the death of her father. Begun during his dying process, through his death, and continued and shown and expanded, morphing onwards as Tomiko’s grief and life itself continues. Tomiko’s dance with love and death and honoring her father, who they were together, who she is carrying him inside her forward. Its an amazing work that Tomiko has created, the installation has traveled and be shown in a variety of US galleries, the project unspooling and resonating with a wide audience in its candor of her grief and the mystery of death that baffles us all. How to honor the inevitable in the midst of all the fear. Tomiko’s work is quite wonderful, I would do yourself a favor and follow the link to Hatsubon and her photography and dive in.

  When I was checking out her site and exploring her work to get to know her better, these are the words that I wrote down in response to experiencing her work:  drama, quiet, tension, waiting, listening, human-as-visitor.

Ah! But the story about Tomiko and her family flying to Hawaii where she spent a part of her childhood, to release her beloved father into death. The gist of it is this – Tomiko, mother, sister are flying to Hawaii, mid-way there is an announcement from the captain that they are turning around and heading back to the mainland due to an undisclosed issue. Tomiko’s sister knows the insider scoop of planes and this kind of announcement. She herself announces that there’s a good chance something is seriously wrong with the plane and for all of them to say their goodbyes online to their loved ones just in case. Tomiko didn’t go online, she opened her journal and started writing to her father. She made a pact with the ghost of the man that made her, that she would live her life to the upmost, never give up on the passionate life, commit herself to immersion into the cosmic juiciness of it all. If Tomiko could survive this plane ride, she would live her life the best she could,, full-on commitment.

Making a pact with death. I’ve done it myself, not something to undertake lightly.

Tomiko did survive that plane ride and as she describes it, the next couple of years up to the present day of the interview, she has been clearing more and more space in herself and her life. Dropping and letting go of stagnant relationships, jobs that were no longer fulfilling, leaving a city home for the country into a bare bones existence, getting quiet. Getting real. Falling in love unexpectedly, understanding that her life long pursuit of passionate life experience had been somehow sacrificed along the way, the powerful fear of not honoring that call inside herself. The fear that comes with getting older, to no longer being young, and not being really old. The caution that creeps in with that.

Fear and Love.

In this state of in between, Tomiko has placed herself. Life has called her there, mystery and purpose. For women, this is a powerful time. Existential crisis, mid-life crisis, perimenopause; call it what you will but it is a time of reckoning for women on a primal level. All that was tangible, that was worked so hard for, all that was so important somehow; adrift. Those life structures, they float suddenly away, and there the woman is, alone with herself and it’s usually very scary in some way. Then comes surrender. It can take all kinds of shapes and sizes, forms. But it is surrender to what is whatever the guise, whatever it takes to get a woman’s attention. We all bow down to it. That life has changed, our bodies are changing, our place in this world is shifting, our purpose now unclear. And we must sit in that question mark, perhaps indefinitely, and live. The passionate, full life that we as women have an intimate access to. Because we bring life forth? Primary caretakers? We have a closer access point to the mystery of the sacred? Perhaps. Perhaps its because we are wonderful, made to do and be and feel wonderful, deep, scary, divine emotions and impulses. Perhaps its our gorgeous intelligence and our ability to recognize several truths simultaneously and hold them together without ourselves flying apart. That’s what I like to believe. We as women have an innate intimacy with the surrounding world, this in-between time is an incredible opportunity to cultivate that intimacy and let it lead you.

Surrender.

Tomiko is somewhere new. She let go of all that was before in the commitment and promise to her father that she would not compromise in the endeavor of the passionate, present life. Tomiko is literally somewhere new as she accepted an assistant professorship of the arts at Wisconsin-Madison, moved half way across the country to Madison from the west coast and has bought her first house, where the Cloud Palace is. She has made space and is immersed in possibility.

When you are somewhere new, before it becomes familiar, your life has the possibility to be anything. You have left something created behind, a life. Now you are in a new life. it can be anything. Yet you take yourself with you. Wherever you go, there you are.

Finding Tomiko in Madison was a lovely bit of serendipity.

I actually knew Tomiko may years before in my hometown Bellingham, WA. Bellingham was a place of growing up for Tomiko as well and we met as punk rock teenagers at the local coffee shop, Tomiko was  going to the town’s university studying photography and being mentored by my uncle’s techniques of large format photography and seeing the power of light. We weren’t very close but we cherished  the same people so there was a connection. Somehow we connected again in later years in Los Angeles for a minute, I followed her work on social media. When I was making my way out of Washington and traveling down the west coast at the beginning of this project, Tomiko popped into my head as a woman that I wanted to interview, spontaneous and with out much explanation, I had faith that we would cross paths during this project and the opportunity would present itself.

I knew Tomiko was in California so i had it in the back of my head that I’d reach out along my trip south. It didn’t turn out that way, Other women presented themselves, different California stories were told. But, “Tomiko,” floated through my head as I left California for the southwest.

Some months and women’s stories later, I found myself in Iowa for a couple of months exploring my ancestry through the lens of this project.  I interviewed family members and documented the family archives. I was born in Iowa, left as a small child and this was really my first opportunity to meet my family again. When I was preparing to leave Iowa and head south, I saw on Facebook that Tomiko had just moved to Madison, about a three hour drive away. Ha! I contacted Tomiko and set up the interview the week before i left. I arrived to her new home and her place in her question mark and we had an amazing time together. We had been having our own journeys with the quest of surrender, but there were emotional parallels and it was wonderful to share them with each other. Similar questions we were asking of ourselves in our journeys and in our artwork.

I have experienced many forms of seeking refuge and sanctuary along the way of this project, my favorite is the conversations I am having with these women. They provide sanctuary for me in their gift of sharing what makes them feel vulnerable, what they each do to create sacred space.

  When I asked Tomiko, she said, “Photography,” in response to what sanctuary means to her. Her work. Her passion. Her ability to see with concentration and spontaneity. The liberation of utilizing herself well.  Tomiko’s words in relation to herself and her work’s process – A relationship to place… a loose mapping of the landscape… searches for places with a sense of communication… letting the sublime in…

Here, Tomiko feels safe, a sacred communication. Her through line in shadow and light.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been an epic minute since I’ve posted anything here but rest assured an amazing amount of crazy adventures have been occurring in the bends and weaves of this project, The Nature Of Refuge. One of those being that I have been experiencing gorgeous sanctuary in Los Angeles, CA for the past three months. I came here in mid November of this past year and dove right into writing the first draft of the book for The Nature Of Refuge. I’ve never written a book before and is an incredible undertaking that I am throughly obsessed with. The book is a work in progress and here is an excerpt – it’s a slice of how I got to here.

The current reality:

  I had been driving for the past two days the most excruciating dry socket tooth pain that I have ever experienced and was dimly headed to Detroit, MI in a dangerous haze of mind numbing nerve pain. Going to Detroit to interview an unnamed, faceless, female identifying human that would spontaneously cross paths with me, that was my plan for Detroit. By this point, this kind of interaction and connection had happened many times, resulting in an amazing heart to hearts and interview experiences with the women who shared themselves with me. And also at this point,  I had been on the road with the project for going on eleven months in a great big curly-Q shape all the way down the west coast, crossed the southwest, and then over and up to South Dakota and then down into the midwest. Now I was straightening myself out east for that big finish-line-Kodak-moment of breaking the ticker tape in New York., my adaptive superpowers being endlessly employed throughout the experience of this project and now, I was finally on a linear trajectory and nothing was going to stop me.  

  I had everything I needed to make it, my conviction, my aforementioned adaptive superpowers, my truck was in good working order at this time (knock on wood), and I still had a decent amount of money due to the extraordinary financial support from a private donor from a month or so back. It was a golden moment in which I had everything that I needed, so it seemed and the rug was slowly but inescapably pulled out from underneath me anyways.

Right before I left the midwest I went to the dentist as an old dead tooth had popped out its old tired filling and I was left with an alarming broken empty tooth-thing in the back of my mouth. The dentist pulled it, packed it, and called me good so I got on the road, per my plan of course, and started driving east with the intention of finishing out the last two months of this epic eastwardish bound journey, interviewing amazing women along the way and ending in NYC with a sense of well earned satisfaction of a job well done in this first trip around the sun with the project. 

Plan intact? Check. Activate!

  There I was driving determined towards Detroit as I have been fascinated by its DYI artistic and local community resurrection in the last few years after being deemed a “dead” city by the powers that be. I wanted to go there and see the urban flowering myself and interview the woman who would present herself to me, to tell me in her voice, what could be.

  The pain though. I was stopping every few hours to close my eyes and tilt my screaming head back for a few minutes. I had clove oil and cotton ball pellets with a bottle of Advil riding shotgun in my cup holder tray. I reapplied pungent clove oil balls and downed fistfulls of the Advil when I felt it was needed, screw the damage to my liver. I did this for a couple of days.

  I directed myself to Ann Arbor  as i was vaguely aware of its liberal, hippy vibe and i needed somewhere that felt relatively safe, where an outsider could blend in for a minute, and for me to stop and check in with what the hell was spirally out. Pain fog and I let the Google Lady lead me by the hand to a quiet parking lot behind a nursing school in a pretty neighborhood in Ann Arbor, MN. I turned the engine off, leaned forward and rested my head against the steering wheel. This was fucked. I silently acknowledged that I need to see another dentist, I really was beginning to dislike dentists in that moment. So the trusty Google everything came out again, searching dentists, talking to receptionists, talking to voicemails, being told that it was all crazy expensive and no one was available for at least three to four days.

Fuck.

  I was bleeding money by then, staying in motels instead of camping in my truck because of the pain, multiple dentist visits because of the pain, exploding inside because of the pain – this was not a part of my plan. I had come so far in this past year, there had been other times of crisis, often due to the bedrock foundation of a lack of stable funding throughout this entire project. But I was willing to do anything for this work, and I had worked so fucking hard everyday in this epic endeavor because I Believed in it, and I said I was going to do it. Now here I was finally sufficiently funded but only if I stayed on my budget for the next couple of months and this tooth was bleeding me and had turned into a complete fiasco, and god dammit, it hurt!

 So I did what any sane person would do in a time like this, I picked up my phone and called my mom and promptly burst into huge, gulping, tears. I cried and cried and cried and bless my beautiful mother, she listened and accepted them and took those fear tears into herself and let me make space in my pain and helplessness.

 Our half coherent conversation of snot, tears, and railing against the fates came to a close with me sighing into the possibility that my plan may have to alter itself and my mother making reassuring love noises into my ear. I was a mess, all swollen eyes and bleary face to go along with the cacophony of pain that was still screaming around my skull. I had wiped myself out with my fear of having to potentially alter my course and the continuing rollercoaster of nerve pain. I also needed to pee.

  Now, when traveling, especially for months and months on the road, a person becomes – I hope – very easy with peeing just about anywhere with speed and agility. Pull over any side of a road and get the job done. Duck behind any parked car, any swaying tree, any bush, any side of any building, any dark corner, any wide open starry night filled sky in the desert, any billboard, any cornfield, anywhere you can feel like you can release, just do it. As a woman this is a little more tricky than for our penis-equipped brethren; they can just unzip, pull it out and take a pee with ease. A woman must squat when she pees, take off a lot of clothing sometimes to let her urethra free, all of this in a posture of great vulnerability to attack from behind where your bare ass is waving in the wind.

  I am a great pee-er outside-er. It is something that I have cultivated in the last couple of years, I take great enjoyment that I can pee anywhere with ease, that I have escaped that societal noose of that specific body shame, especially as a woman. Women are not supposed to pee outside due to the before described position of vulnerability whilst peeing, but also because Ladies do not show their hoo-hoo in public no matter if there isn’t another soul for miles or not.

Fuck that.

  It’s probably my Oppositional Disorder coming to the fore as well, I just dislike having my instinctual urges dictated otherwise in any way.

  All of this to say, in my weepy state of mind along with the nerve pain fog, in needing a pee, I just got out of my truck looking for there nearest semi-private place i could quickly take care of that. I was parked behind a big stone university building and right in front of me was an old looking vestibule with a door that looked forgotten, perfect. I was wearing a dress so all I had to do was squat and slightly lift the hem to do the job, no untoward exposure. As I was peeing, a woman walked right by me. No way to hide the fact. I took the bold route of shrugging-smiling and waving, silently acknowledging, I thought, the silliness of being caught out in this position. The woman quickly hurried by with a sideways stink-eye, can’t win them all.

   I finished up and got back in my truck with the intention of somehow figuring out what I should do next, I was exhausted but there was no one else around to do the job of decision making for me, I sat for a minute. I was just about to put the truck in reverse and start moving again, when I saw two police cruisers  in my rear view mirror pull in the parking lot behind me and neatly blocked me from going anywhere.

Shit.

 The iconic, big, older white man in a dark blue outfit, sunglasses and gun came sauntering up to my drivers side window. As I rolled down that window, another matching cut-out man casually rolled out of the second vehicle and took the classic stance as back up.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The renegade female Pee-er caught at last!

  I had not yet caught up to hilarity of the situation, being as sensory overwhelmed as I already was in the moment, I faced this new bizarre turn of events with a rush of anxiety and faced my doom with a limp flag of surrender.

 This was my first time in this epic adventure dealing with the police, something I had been probably unnecessarily crafty about avoiding this whole past year. But here I was, at my weakest of course, looking down the barrel of the Po-Po gun.

  That was totally holstered in reality, my own inner outlaw narrative taking over in my fevered state.

 The cut-out cop at my window quietly berated me for peeing outside, the woman that had walked by me had been freaked out by my peeing behavior and called the police. I could feel him assessing me to see if i was crazy or dangerous in some way, that trained, two dimensional evaluation that these law-upholders ran any strange human behavior through. I told him my tale of tooth pain and woe, that I had just got off the phone with my mom after being overwhelmed and in pain and crying my eyes out and made the poor decision to pee right there instead of finding a proper peeing place. He responded in an exasperated tone that there was a bathroom right inside the building I was parked in front of, for god’s sake. The officer then asked for my registration and driver’s license which I meekly handed over, my liberty in his callused hands.

 The second cop now took his turn to sauntering up to my window, to baby-sit me while his partner checked out my legitimacy. This second cop was much more relaxed and wanted to just chat, in telling my ridiculous tale of illegal peeing once more I realized that this cop was trying to flirt with me. I internally sunk further into a gloom funk and raised the limp white surrender flag higher in hopes the universe would see it and end its tyrannical war with me that day.

 First cop finally came back with all my identification and released them back to me along with a yellow-papered trespassing warning, I was not to be arrested for my improper peeing after all, only a warning and that I needed to leave the premises  immediately. And of course another heartfelt, again exasperated, lecture on the fact that the proper bathroom facilities were right there available to me inside the building I had recently desecrated.

  I was released back into my own custody. The two cop cars eased out of my truck’s way and I reversed under their watchful eyes that I could feel burning into the back of my head as I carefully drove away down the block.

This is Kiah Ann from Mabel, Minnesota and she is thirteen years old and will be, at the time of this interview, starting eighth grade tomorrow. Kiah was such a great pleasure to be with and interview for this project. I knew that I wanted to speak with a young woman at some point along the way so when the opportunity presented itself to interview Kiah, I was excited to be able to witness and document an emerging young woman’s perspective on safety and sanctuary. Kiah impressed me deeply with her graceful ability to express her relationship to her emotions. She has a mature access to herself and the possibilities of life experience through being aware and articulate in her truth. Do we all have a version of that ability at that age, access to the simplicity of truth and self and able to experience both with clarity? And then we lose our easy relationship with that truth, spending the rest of our adulthood reclaiming that concise ability to live in clarity, undaunted.

Kiah has a thoughtful relationship with just about anything that comes her way. This is the way i experienced Kiah – she thinks as she is speaking and expressing herself, Kiah is connected to her self expression in a way that I find delightful and sophisticated. Kiah also is thoughtful and present to her relationship with her fears, she can give them some space and see the shapes of her fears with some objectivity. This gives her the perspective of being able to identify them and see through and past the fear. Kiah understands anxiety and struggles with the sensation of being overwhelmed. But the cool thing is, Kiah also can experience the realness that she is more than her fear, that life has so much more excitement and opportunity in store for her. We all are driven by fear, fear of death that unites us, we are alive and do not want to die. Our fear expresses itself unpredictably, irrational surges of terror dictate strange sensations and behavior, We all do it and as adults, we add even the stranger component of pretending that we are not all afraid all the time. It makes us all crazy as well as scared. Kiah is at a beautiful point in her life where she lives in truth and can express herself well, i hope she always retains this compassionate outlook.

Please enjoy the full length version of Kiah’s interview by following this link: https://vimeo.com/295271664

Interviewing a young woman, one that has just barely left her childhood behind her, about her experience with feeling vulnerable, reaching out to others, helping people, and where she may find her sacred safety, was totally illuminating. Kiah is starting eighth grade, she is expected to assume to role of “young woman” now, no longer a child that she was just a few months ago. What grown woman doesn’t remember that strange coming of age at thirteen – you can feel this power from within and reflected back from the people around you. Its female power; deep, strong, and insistent. Its an ancient connection to the seasons and the tides, its the cycle of life and death, its life itself claiming you. And you don’t have a language for any of this. All you know at thirteen is that you are suddenly brighter, people notice you and have different expectations of you. And its exciting and scary, and you re totally curious about what it means to enter into adulthood. Still naive in child life experience, but shining bright in your authentic self with an appetite for what the world has to offer. Or so you hope that is the common experience, some young girls are not so lucky to survive their childhoods intact in this way.

Kiah and I  talked about the difference between seventh grade and eighth for her, what the expectations are from friends and adults around her, but more importantly what Kiah now expects of herself. Kiah expects quite a bit from herself. Kiah is already looking ahead the year after eighth grade – high school, the game changer. She calls herself ” a planner” with a self knowing giggle and shrug, she already knows that she has a desire to be in control that leads to being anxious if she is not. Kiah also spoke about the legacy that she wants to leave in life, her words not my interpretation. Kiah strongly feels the development of her integrity; treating people with kindness and respect, acknowledging  boundaries, navigating conflict with that integrity intact. How do you help people, understanding the power of asking for help so you can better help others, these are some of the topics that Kiah and I explored together and she impressed me with her insight that she has already developed.

When I asked Kiah if she has ever felt unsafe, she replied that her experiences with anxiety and feeling alone it that emotional whirlwind feel unsafe but reaching out to others and having authentic emotional connections distract her from her anxiety and make her feel protected. Kiah has not had life experiences that she has felt threatened from outside forces, this makes me feel such fierce gladness that no one has endangered the sweet sunshine strength in this girl. I asked Kiah what the word sanctuary means to her and she responded, “my mother.” How wonderful is that? Kiah experiences her mother as a sacred protection, that she will always have Kiah’s back, she will always protect Kiah’s trust, listening, loving, being there whenever needed. Beautiful.

i was curious about Kiah and her personal interests as well. Kiah is investigating so many different avenues of self expression and connection. She professes an interest in photography and getting beyond the iPhone selfie, learning the craft of editing and professional technique, She loves writing and feels she has a talent for it, she wrote a seven page story when she was younger that her friends thought it was the “bee’s knees” and ended up writing a prequel to it. Kiah and her younger brother enjoy each others company and bond over Star Wars and Marvel comic movies, she and I agreed that we both want to be superheroes when we grow up, Kiah spends a great deal of time online watching YouTube videos about people doing “real things that make you think,” and social media such as Instagram where she scrolls to find inspiration in photography and also play with her friends. Kiah loves makeup, she experiences it as a form of art that you can explore on your own body; shapeshifting, trying on masks. She wants to learn more about henna too. Kiah also expressed the desire to go out into the world adventuring and meeting people and seeing how we are all different and all still the same, I told her she nailed my current work with this project in a nutshell, Kiah smiled at that.

Kiah is a young woman who has a powerful experience with her fears. I think, out of a desire to thrive, she has come to an understanding earlier in life in how its wiser not to take the fear so seriously, see around it to the other side and head toward that shore as often as possible. Kiah is thoughtful, aware, kind, and brave. She is alert, articulate, and full of rich integrity. Kiah is a young woman who still has the baby curves in her cheeks under a layer of lipstick and straddles the two worlds with a bright curiosity. Seeing her enthusiasm for self expression and the possibility for adventure in life that matches my own and made be feel like I had met a fellow traveler and friend.

Kiah is a treat and has so much to offer, her kindness and generosity of self she extends to others. This last video clip, Kiah talks of her special place which is the high tree stump she is sitting on throughout the interview. It once was a tree that was going to have her tree house but then it got sick and had to be cut down. So instead of being disappointed and being left with a sense of loss, Kiah turned it around and created a sacred, safe place where she comes out every night and sits and watches the fireflies over the cornfield. There is room enough for two, Kiah informed me with a smile.

This is the nature of refuge.

 

 

 

 

Reverend Janice Madsen invited me to meet and interview with her in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, a suburb community outside of Denver. Reverend Jan – as she is called by most people – is running a christian maternity home for pregnant women or mothers who have predominately been homeless or have recently been incarcerated. The home is called Shannon’s Hope and has been in operation under different leadership mantles for the past forty years. Initially, Revered Jan agreed to come and help with Shannon’s Hope through leading bible study classes with the women but assumed running the daily operation of the home with its founder, Leslie Pottebaum.

 

When I arrived, I was greeted warmly by Reverend Jan and taken on a tour of the facility. Reverend Jan was focused on me and our upcoming interview but she was also focused on every conversation and flow of women coming in and out of the home. Conversations with every woman we passed with residents and staff, addressing needs, smoothing interactions, bouncing babies, making introductions, and clarifying tasks; all of this Reverend Jan facilitated while talking to me and showing me the space. A multitasker of the highest order.

Reverend Jan was preoccupied at one point with the fact that one of the young residents had left in the middle of the night. Left out of one of the back windows taking the twin bed mattress she had been sleeping on with her. Reverend Jan saw the humor, the pathos, and experienced the practical frustration of losing the mattress. Reverend Jan referred back to this young woman later on when we were in the actual interview process. The woman had called her right after jumping out the back window begging her not to hate her for leaving and stealing the mattress. Reverend Jan’s response was one of compassion and genuine love, explaining that of course she didn’t hate the woman or was angry with her, she just wept that the young woman wasn’t ready to start healing. Reverend Jan explained her mission statement of building faith, life skills,  and self love into the desperate women and their children that she housed, and that she had the deepest compassion for the ones who were not ready to heal and that they would always have a place to come back to when and if they were ready. Reverend Jan then laughed, and bemoaned the loss of the bed, good mattresses for her women were always hard to come by.

Reverend Jan states that her God directed her to come back out of retirement by the shore of Coos Bay, OR where she was content with living in her RV and beach combing, and return to the Denver area. Reverend Jan had spent all her life as a christian crusader for the most desperate, the most in need in her community and she was specifically called back to Shannon’s Hope through her conversations with her God. Reverend Jan’s God is very specific and is her daily sounding board, touchstone, confidant, best friend. Reverend Jan is a self-described, “holy roller, evangelical ordained reverend of the christian faith” and her God is her one true light. Every interaction that Reverend Jan has is in tandem with her God by her side.

Please enjoy Reverend Jan’s full length interview by clicking here: https://vimeo.com/291582894

The thing of it is, I really like Reverend Jan and I like her relationship with her God. Reverend Jan has a kindness and acceptance in her world view at that same time that she has her firm belief in the literal and therefor, rigid adherence to the scriptures and laws of her faith. She is compassionate and intelligent and deeply connected with the mysticism of her experience with the divine. She has devoted her life to be in service of others, to be in service to the weakest, most vulnerable individuals that exists in our society. Reverend Jan has been an adoption advocate, worked for years with the homeless population in Denver, her husband and her worked with the foster care system and also adopted children from that system, and then in these past years, running Shannon’s Hope and being an advocate for at risk women and their children. Reverend Jan is a true crusader for the poor and helpless and she leads with the banner of her God and Jesus Christ.

I am also fascinated with how Reverend Jan straddles true compassion and the rigid code of conduct mandated by her chosen religion, evangelicalism. In speaking to me, Reverend Jan was across the board open, emotionally available, kind, accepting of others in their love for a god or not, nonjudgemental, articulate in her wisdom. There were also hints in our conversation of her conservative belief system; women and men created by her God for exclusive partnership, contending that the bible is fact and inviting anyone to come and disprove its authenticity in debate. I didn’t question Reverend Jan specifically about abortion counseling, but i believe I can safely say that after looking at the Shannon Hope website and knowing a bit about the born again christian faith that she is a minister in, that there is no counsel and information given to the women in the safe house about abortion options when finding oneself poor, alone, desperate, and then suddenly pregnant.

Another aspect of Reverend Jan I find intriguing is her relationship with one of her children, Merhia Wiese who I interviewed for this project as well and who was the facilitator of interviewing her mother. If you read and view Merhia’s interview, you will know immediately how different these two are from each other ideologically. Merhia is a leftist, grown up pink haired punk rocker who works for the corporate artist collective Meow Wolf, and has three kids, one of which identifies as non-binary. Reverend Jan is a evangelical minister that supports Trump and the far right and is a compassionate crusader for the hopeless and helpless people in our society that very few wish to assist.  A fascinating, dynamic duo of mother and daughter that mirror so many aspects of what we are battling out as an American society with such fury right now.

But here’s another thing, these two are not furiously battling it out, they love each other and at the end of the day, they accept each other despite and I’d say, because of their great differences. I think at one point and time there was a lot more divisiveness in their relationship, but at this point, Reverend Jan and Merhia bicker and i don’t think, bite when they disagree. Age is part of the acceptance of their core disagreements, Merhia in her mid forties, Reverend Jan in her mid seventies; mellowness over time. They are mother and daughter, blood being the connector right? Here’s another fascinating fact on these two – Merhia is adopted, she is one of those most abused in our society that Reverend Jan adopted and raised in her home. At one point, Reverend Jan was on a mission to create a family out the most severely traumatized kids in the foster care system she could find, Merhia was one of them and alternately flourished and did not and became the amazing woman she is today under the care of Reverend Jan. These two are mother and daughter, fiercely bonded in ways many mothers and daughters could never imagine. So its not blood that makes a person accept another no matter what, its true, unconditional love, caring and compassion. Just like Reverend Jan said when she was describing sanctuary – and this is why I like Reverend Jan as much as I do, that she gets that about the power of Love.

Mothers and daughters. The way that that intimate duo takes off and puts on masks in rapid succession when they interact. A myriad of psychic reflections that highlight and contradict. The mystery and magic that binds them together, The profound love and powerful hate. Expectations and disappointments. Shadows of ego and externalizing of of self. Self sacrifice and divine devotion. Joy and laughter in the face of so much strange. Mother and daughter are the same, they are not the same. All obvious and all inexplicable. its a bond for always, It lives beyond birth and death. You do not need to give birth to a child to be its forever mother. You do not need to be alive to be always be the first voice in each others head.

There is another thing that fascinates me about Reverend Jan, its a thing that fascinates me about every woman. Its how women so often identify with themselves in connection to another or something external; mother, partner, career. Its rare that a woman connects and identifies with herself primarily and then secondary how she connects with others. This is gender training, female=others first, male=self first. This is shifting in our country and worldwide and with that shift in gender norms, and definition, there is a great groan and resistance as that heavy societal weight is finally moving and becoming fluid. Reverend Jan shared a story of her own reckoning with self that didn’t occur until she was in her forties and fifties, its beautiful and simple; its when Reverend Jan chose her own favorite colors. She shares it here in this clip:

I wrote these words in after my first impression of Reverend Jan: deep faith/bedrock, strong and intimate relationship with her God, traditional, loving, compassionate, fighter, strong, stubborn, funny, full of laughter, thoughtful, aware, caretaker, zealot, crusader dedicated, intelligent, bossy, connector, literal, aware of paradox and mystery.

This is Revered Jan through my eyes and as a result of our experience together.

This is the nature of refuge.

https://vimeo.com/user15794787

https://vimeo.com/user15794787

https://vimeo.com/user15794787

https://vimeo.com/user15794787

 

 

 

Merhia Wiese is a beautiful combination of strength and vulnerability. This woman has survived and at this point in her life, is learning about her true vulnerability and how she wants to claim herself in this more open, aware context. Navigating her career, family, herself through this relatively new emotional perspective, is a daily unfolding of joy and challenge. Merhia is committed to acknowledging the reality of her fear and moving forward in the truth of it.

Merhia has been quite open and articulate in her life experiences related to fear. Merhia was born into fear and abuse, she was shuttled through the horror of the foster care system in the 1970’s until her adoptive mother took her out of foster care at the age of five and brought her into her home. Merhia’s mother who I had the pleasure of also interviewing for this project, has been an advocate for desperate people as a profession and a crusade and in the case of Merhia and her fellow foster sisters and brothers, decided to adopted as many children as possible that had been the most abused, the most ravaged by life, and create a home for them. A wonderful idea but in actual practice, Merhia shared how that much concentrated damage in one household was a daily emotional and physical threat as the children played out their abused psyche on one another.

Merhia loves her adoptive parents very much but needed to escape the chaos of that household and ended up moving out as a teenager and entering into a relationship that resulted in her being a young single mother by the age of 18. As Merhia put it, you can’t be a starving punk rock artist when you have a child, so she shelved her own ambitions of being a photographer and worked every job she could get her hands on that would support her and her child. Merhia did not give up on being a part of the artistic community, she channeled her artistic passion into repping other artists that she knew and admired and did this for over twenty years. Juggling three jobs at once and two more children, all in the endeavor to take care of her family while maintaining her passion for the artistic community in Denver.

Please enjoy Merhia’s full length interview by following the link here: https://vimeo.com/286779980

So this is where Merhia began. The content of her life experience and character is so much more, but this is the bedrock. Women are amazing in their tenacity, their relentless push to survive. Often with children, often without a stable partner, women insist each day that they and their children will make it through somehow. Some women most definitely abandon those children, abandon themselves, but we most often survive. And the women who do hold onto the kids and also commit to pursuing their passions somehow – heavy weight champion fighters.

Merhia is now enjoying the benefits of all that amazing hard work. She is the manager of the office of operations for the upcoming opening of Meow Wolf Denver, a highly visible DYI corporate artist collective based in Sante Fe, NM that is opening immersive art instillations in cities across the country. Merhia’s long struggle to raise her family, have enough money to meet everyone’s needs, stay working and connected in Denver’s art community, has now born fruition. Being employed at Meow Wolf affords Merhia to utilize all her skills and talents in the Denver artistic community with artist outreach, fundraising, event organizing, She is overseeing the construction of Meow Wolf Denver from the offices on site, a beautiful space to work where I interviewed Merhia and under her recommendation and connection, I interviewed Zoë Williams as well who is also working for Meow Wolf.

Meow Wolf and what that means to Merhia as far as financial and professional sustainability for herself and her family, is everything as far as affording Merhia a sense of true stability for the first time in her life. Merhia can obviously survive and manage just about any situation, but to come to a place of abundance and learn how to breathe and relax into that, is profound. Merhia knows her privilege in this and is present to the responsibility of having more than enough and how to pay it forward to others whenever she can.

Merhia has been a connector in this interview process while i was in Denver. First with Zoë Williams,  Merhia then also really opened herself up and suggested her mother, Reverend Jan, the next interviewee in this project. Reverend Jan is an ordained minister in the evangelical faith, a Trump supporter, and runs a shelter for recently incarcerated women and their children, Merhia is leftist liberal punk rock artist who manages Meow Wolf Denver and has deep roots in the Denver artistic community.  The connection between Merhia and her mother and interviewing them both for The Nature Of Refuge feels pivotal to me as a storyteller pursuing emotional truth. The connection between mothers and daughters is primal and often strange. It is joy and laughter at all the fear that can pass between the two. It is a powerful connection that I will explore further in  Merhia’s mothers interview story that will be published as a continuation of this one. Thats how daughters and mothers work, we melt into each other whether we want the boundaries there or not.

This project is one about exploring fear at its heart. I am interviewing predominately women who identify as female, but I am also meeting and interviewing non-binary individuals and transgender women to add their clear, strong voices to this chorus. I am invested in the stories of American women through the lens of this project because I have a deep powerful faith in the truth of fear and the response of compassion. I am asking these voices to share their experiences of vulnerability and how they connect with their inner sacred sense of safety. I am asking these voices to tell me how they survive, what tools have they cultivated in the endeavor of not drowning in their own and others suffering. I am doing this because i did drown at one point in my own suffering and I learned that magic and faith and love are the cornerstones of emotional survival that open up the door to actual thriving. Suffering being the catalyst. Fear being propulsion. Compassion being the connector and the stabilizer. My own drowning and resurrection gave birth in me a overwhelming sense of connection to other women’s experiences with fear and what they do with it. How we can take care of one another in states of extreme vulnerability. Because we are all the same stuff after all.

Merhia is many things: she is reaching for the light, vulnerable, tough, a survivor, an artist, a mother, a lover, a professional, detail-oriented, a manager, wounded, soft, fierce, scared, courageous, loving, open-minded, caretaker, aware, intelligent, focused, strong, a connector, resourceful.

This is the nature of refuge.