by Rev. Dr. Doe West
About a year after being forced out into a “normal” life that was terrifying, and being forced to learn that my life was not the life of all little girls, that something was terribly wrong with my mother, my life, and so, clearly, with me, I had what I call my “Habakkuk Moment.”
Habakkuk was a minor prophet in the Judeo-Christian Old Testament (a book I had never read). In it, he is brought to such immense anger over injustice that he raises a fist to God!
As I did. To the dark sky in the midst of another terror-driven night, I shook my fist and pressed my heart against the window screen and silently cried out “If you are REAL, if you are this God I am hearing about now, WHY!? Why would you create ME? Specifically ME? And have me live THIS LIFE!? WHY????
I stood and shook my fist and then my whole body as I convulsed into sobs.
Each night for seven nights.
I awoke the 8th morning with what I later termed “the peace that passes all understanding,” and that was the understanding that a creator existed.
My next life shift came when my Native American grandmother took me aside and told me the time had come for me to learn who I truly was. Specifically, I was of The People. I had not known anything about this heritage, this beautiful heritage.
Over the next 5 years, Gra taught me that heritage, and trained me as a “Wise Woman” as part of my lineage. She shared with me how when she was 8, she was orphaned and missionaries took her from the tribal community and placed her as a kitchen slave in a white woman’s home in the Hudson Valley in NY. Thus, we had kinship in a heritage of captivity as well as in understanding the critical role of our own response to it.
Nothing was within normal limits for many more years. I was found to have an IQ that startled our small-town village. In an era without gifted child options, I was “placed” in the library–denied basic education but given the freedom to read every book in that building and forge a lifelong love affair with knowledge! But I also became known as the “Library Gnome,” someone different, again isolated and living a life with the potential for self-hatred, shame, and fear. I chose to focus on the pursuit of knowledge and did research on my own beliefs and those of society around me.
When I finally skipped a grade for the 3rd time, and worked it out with the school system to show up for two classes a day before work, they got state aid and I got a diploma. I had worked full time since I was 13 but now had working papers and could do a regular job outside the village rather than under the table.
I worked three or more jobs to help support my family and pay my own bills and begin saving for college. I knew college was my huge wall to climb over or tunnel under to achieve my own essential form of freedom.
Then the adventure REALLY began… but I will leave that part for later, in simple yet profound celebration of life lessons and mantras that sustain, and lights that shine in the darkness.