#Reverb10: Healing

Prompt: Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leoni Allan)

{A cloudy day in November - outside my window}

In July, I wrote a post about my grandmother – a post about how time heals all wounds.  I said, “the scars stay with us forever so we never forget, but time allows us to move on.” Five months before that, I shared with you the poem I read at my grandmother’s memorial service: The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

In April, I wrote a post about my future tattoos. One of those tattoos is going to be a trio of seagull silhouettes.  Seagulls represent so much to me – my grandmother, my home, freedom.  With the tattoo, they will symbolize Jonathan Livingston Seagull which was one of my grandmother’s favorite books. She and I shared a deep love of literature – it was almost like a little secret world we shared – the people and places in those books.  In this story, Jonathan rebelled against his fellow gulls who were only living to eat.  He knew something was missing in his life, so he chose to rebel against his family and perfect his flying skills instead of living a mundane, routine life.  One day he was so free and fearless that he flew all the way to Heaven to meet the Great Gull.  He carried with him the wisdom he’d learned from the Gull back to Earth to share with young gulls who had not yet become set in their ways.

Over Thanksgiving, I was putting some things away in my mom’s bedroom. I noticed that she had taken my grandmother’s old copy of Seagull and it was on her nightstand. I mentioned to my mom that I was planning on getting a new tattoo to represent Pegoo (my childhood attempt to say Peggy Lou stuck and that is what I called my grandmother).  I explained how I felt that she embodied so much of  Jonathan – her rebelliousness and ultimately, her bravery in the face of death. My mom said it was a perfect tattoo.  Then she started to cry and asked, “Have you seen her copy?”

She handed it to me – the beautiful 1970 edition (something about old books makes me weak in the knees).  She had purchased it for herself and had written an inscription.

To Peggy.  Because I want to fly with Jonathan and the gulls.

When I see a seagull – which isn’t difficult when you live by the beach – I think of her.  In those moments, I know I’m healing (slowly, always, forever) knowing she passed her wisdom on to me. I can heal knowing she is where she wanted to be in the end – with Jonathan.

You will begin to touch Heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there. [...] Heaven is not a place and it is not a time. Heaven is Being Perfect.  To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere there is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived [...] Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom.

~~~~~~~~~~

This post is part of #Reverb10, an annual event and online initiative to reflect on 2010 and manifest what’s to come in 2011. I’m participating with over 2000 amazing people. I will be blogging, tweeting, tumblring and posting photos each day as a response to each prompt.