Hummingbird E-Book

Diana Raab

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 239

Beschreibung

Explore the depths of love and loss across three generations of women
Hummingbird is a spiritual memoir about the connection between three generations of women--the author, her mother and her beloved maternal grandmother whose wisdoms taught the author how to exist in the world by following her intuition and listening to her heart. Follow Diana on a journey of more than five decades as an author, nurse, research psychologist, teacher, cancer survivor, and more. With insightful prompts, the reader is also invited to explore their own ancestral connections.
"...Raab offers poignant and thoughtful insights to help us heal intergenerational trauma. Raab rightly reminds us that our ancestors live on in us and we are invited to call on them anytime we need help..."
-- SONIA CHOQUETTE, New York Times bestselling author, The Answer is Simple and Ask Your Guides
"Diana Raab knows the terrain of the human heart... she invites readers to reflect upon their own life's journeys and to use writing and journaling to navigate a pathway for healing..."
-- TERRA TREVOR, author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways
"Hummingbird is not only a poignant spiritual memoir, it is an invitation. Raab is accessible and authentic... She opens hearts and deftly offers insightful prompts, sweetly encouraging the reader's collaboration."
-- MARILYN KAPP, author of Love is Greater Than Pain
"With disarming honesty, Raab slows down our jittery minds to share the intimacies of experiencing trauma and healing self-care in a way that they feel as normal as sleeping and eating... A safety net for the reader to explore their own path to hope."
-- TRISTINE RAINER, author of Your Life as Story, and The New Diary

Leseprobe

Dedicated to my children, grandchildren,and future great grandchildren

Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors—A Memoir with Reflection and Writing Prompts

Copyright © 2024 by Diana Raab. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 978-1-61599-764-0 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-765-7 hardcover

ISBN 978-1-61599-766-4 eBook

Modern History Press

www.LHPress.com

5145 Pontiac Trail

[email protected]

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Tollfree 888-761-6268

Distributed by Ingram (USA, CAN, UK, EU, AU)

Portions of this book previously appeared in Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal (2007) from Beaufort Books. Used with permission.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Hummingbird, poem by Diana Raab

Chapter 1 - My Story Begins

Chapter 2 - My Grandmother, My Guide

Chapter 3 - When a Loved One Takes Her Life

Chapter 4 - Visitations

Chapter 5 - My Grandfather and I

Chapter 6 - Cancer, Quarantine, and Intuition

Chapter 7 - My Journaling Practice

Chapter 8 - Finding Grandma's Journal

Chapter 9 - Ancestral Trauma, Demons, and the Search for Meaning

Chapter 10 - Dealing with Childhood Scars

Chapter 11 - Honoring Poignant Words

Chapter 12 - Dealing with a Long-Term Illness

Chapter 13 - How Life Gives Us Perspective

Chapter 14 - Conscious Living and Transcendence

Chapter 15 - Our Legacies

About the Author

References

Acknowledgments

My inspiration for this book arrived one fine spring morning during the early days of the coronavirus lockdown. I was sitting at my desk in my writing studio in a somewhat dreamy state, glancing out the window, when a hummingbird arrived on the red flowering plant in my garden. It spent a long time hovering, and it was at that very moment that I decided to write this book. My sense was that the bird arrived at that moment in order to deliver me a message. he unfolding of that message is this book’s premise.

So, my first acknowledgment goes to the visiting hummingbird. Her message was loud and clear, and the incident reminded me of the importance of being open to what the universe offers us. Had I not been looking out the window at that very moment, I would have missed seeing it, and this book might not have been brought to fruition. That incident with the hummingbird happened just before my sixty-sixth birthday. In a pleasing parallel, the book’s release date coincides with my seventieth birthday.

While it might seem strange to thank a pandemic for an artistic creation, there’s no doubt that the lockdown and isolation encouraged me to just sit and write with the deepest focus I’d ever had writing a book. Being my fourteenth book, I speak from experience.

In addition to inspiration, every writer needs a good support system, and I’m very grateful to Simon, my husband and love for more than fifty years. I’m also very grateful for my three children and six grandchildren whose existence has played such a large role in this book. As the family matriarch, subconsciously, I felt pulled to write this book as a gift, as they all are beginning to embark on their own life’s journey.

Much of a writer’s support system includes publishers and editors who believe in them. Huge thanks to my publisher, Victor Volkman, for once again believing in me and publishing me for the fifth time. Yet again, he believed in my project, even at a time when he was inundated with manuscripts from the masses of individuals, also under isolation, who had plenty to stories and plenty of time to write. He always puts the authors he’s already published at the top of his list, but this time I had a lot of competition, as we were all in the same situation.

My long-time, freelance editor, Sharron Dorr, who only takes on one project at a time, once again said she was interested in working with me. I am indebted to her unwavering ability to focus and her meticulous eye for clarity. We worked together on the flow and organization of this book so close to my heart. Her support, enthusiasm, and vision has been instrumental in the completion of the final manuscript.

I am also grateful for Kathleen Lynch, my graphic artist, who once again has created another book cover that I love from the bottom of my heart.

Another integral part of my team is Libby Jordan, whose long-term enthusiasm for my work and creative marketing strategies have been invaluable to me. Our brain-storming sessions have always been illuminating and inspiring.

It would be fair to thank everyone who has crossed my path during this lifetime. A special shout out to some individuals in particular who have touched me with their curiosity, interest, and support during my writing process: Tristine Rainer, Jodi and Johnny Goldberg, Terra Trevor, Grace Rachow, Charlotte Rains Dixon, Tim Frank, Pam Lancaster, Ljiljana Coklin, Elaina Smolin, and all my many memoir-writing students who feed my soul with their own stories.

I want to thank all my sentient-being ancestors, those who are alive and those who have passed on. As I mention in the book, ancestors also include place, so I want to thank all the places I’ve visited during the course of my lifetime that have inspired me and that I also call my ancestors.

Last but not least, many thanks to my team of healers who continue to keep me healthy. You know who you are.

I feel extremely blessed and grateful.

Hummingbird

I have fallen in love

with a hummingbird—

the way she arrives each day

at the red flowers outside my studio

and moves among the petals

as if the next has more to offer.

The nectar, oh, it oozes so gently

while other birds nuzzle their beaks

in curiosity.

She might think I’m foolish

to stare at her

in this wonder and amazement,

as she performs so naturally

and I pretend to be writing a new poem

Beseeching her for inspiration.

But, before I can grab her, she’s gone

On to the next chore, whatever it might be,

maybe reaching for the heavens or

seeking her ancestral friends who hold answers

from the beyond—which, in the end, is all we want.

~ Diana Raab

1

My Story Begins

The story of love is hello and goodbye . . . until we meet again.

~Jimi Hendrix

From an early age, I have been obsessed with storytelling. As an only child growing up in a hardworking family of Eastern European immigrants, I was often alone and left to fend for myself. The peace I found then in reading and writing became a lifelong passion for memoir writing.

This passion intensified when I was ten and began keeping a journal after my maternal grandmother’s death—which, because of our deep connection, was an a devastating loss. Afterward, journaling helped me through my troubled adolescence as a hippie in the 1960s, my enforced bed rest when pregnant with my three children, my grief over the losses of more loved ones, and my struggles in coping with two cancer diagnoses. Journaling has also led to my becoming a published author of several books and a writing coach in workshops designed to inspire and help others with their own memoir.

Please feel free to use this book as a guide as you would if attending one of those workshops. In it, as examples of memoir writing I tell stories of some of my familial ancestors and explore my own life in the light of those who have influenced me the most: my grandparents and my parents. I also explore how writing about them—especially my beloved grandmother, Regina—continues to give me hope and inspiration. Various chapters address subjects such as how my grandmother’s nurturing caregiving contrasted with that of my mother’s narcissistic tendencies; how my grandmother’s lessons have helped me through my illnesses and the recent pandemic; how understanding the traumas of our ancestors can give us perspective; how conscious living can help us navigate challenging times; and how gratitude and being in the moment can help us live to the fullest. I also speak about the importance of sharing the stories from our past with future generations: we stand on the shoulders of giants, even though we might not agree with some of their beliefs or with some of the choices they made. And, as always, I write in awareness of the tremendous power words have to shape our lives.

I believe that in addition to having familial ancestors, we also have ancestors of spirit and ancestors of place. However, this book mainly highlights familial or blood-related ancestors. Ancestors of spirit are those who came before us whose calling may be similar to ours. For example, mine would include Florence Nightingdale, Anaïs Nin, and Quan Yin. An intituitve such as Sonia Choquette says that her ancestors of spirit or master teachers include Mother Mary, Jesus Christ, and Mary Magdalene. Connecting with my spirit guides has also inspired different aspects of my life, especially when it comes to how I’ve been told I am a healer. Ancestors of place are those who came before us who were in a particular place where we were born or lived and with whom we might feel a connection. They could have been neighbors we knew, or maybe someone who built a home we lived in. Even though I don’t go into detail about these other types of ancestors, I invite you to explore yours.

At the end of each chapter, I offer a series of reflections or writing prompts to inspire you the reader to identify and explore the significant events of your own life in connection with your own ancestors. You may find stories this way that you want to share, or you may want your writing to be yours and yours alone; the important thing is to write freely with a sense of curiosity and discovery. Feel free to reflect on those questions which particularly resonate with you. There’s no need to answer them all, unless you are so inclined.

My hope is that you will find patterns of experience that show you the way forward, just as I have tried to demonstrate through my own memories in this book. By connecting with our ancestors, we obtain access to their wisdom, insights, stories, and guidance, which can help us navigate our own physical and psychological lives.

My grandmother’s spirit seems to visit me at crucial times in the form of a hummingbird, symbolic of the sense of joy she bestowed on me. I take great comfort in such visitations and encourage you to search for a symbolic messenger of your own. May your journey be meaningful and also bring you joy and comfort.

2

My Grandmother, My Guide

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

~ Graham Greene

When I was a child, I was often alone and found solace in reading and writing. I loved true stories about real people doing important things. My favorite book was a biography of Florence Nightingale. I loved reading about all the wonderful things she did as the founder of modern nursing. She inspired the healer in me and, eventually, my early career as a registered nurse. Her example gave me a sense of life’s infinite possibilities even when my own life seemed narrow and lonely.

Still, my childhood was not always gloomy. My parents, Edward and Eva; my maternal grandparents, Regina and Sam; and I lived in the suburbs of New York City and were often influenced by its cultural sensibilities. From an early age, I was told that I looked like Elizabeth Taylor, but only in adolescence did I understand that it was my sultry green eyes inherited from my father, combined with my dark eyebrows and thick, dark-brown hair inherited from my mother, that bore the resemblance. I had the innate ability to capture people’s attention even before I learned to speak. I’ve continued to have this ability throughout my life, and even though I’ve never taken advantage of it, I’ve subconsciously felt blessed.

My bedroom was on the second floor of our pink-shingled, suburban home. My bed had a blue-and-green paisley quilted bedspread with a big, brown cork bulletin board above it featuring photos and poems. Through the window overlooking the backyard, I’d sometimes stare out at the birds to see if they were sending messages. There were all sorts of birds—blue jays, robins, sparrows, and hummingbirds—hovering near the red flowers that Mother had planted and maintained with her green thumb, which unfortunately I did not inherit. As an adult I have been extremely talented in killing the hardiest of house plants.

I lived in that same house until I left for college. I looked out that same bedroom window when, as a teenager, I was having my first LSD trip, which I did in response to my grandfather’s death. I remember feeling as if I were having an out-of-body experience and speaking to Grandpa and other loved ones who’d moved into the next realm. That was more than fifty years ago.

Propped up on my childhood bed sat my family of dolls. I cared for them every day, pretending to change, wash, and feed them. My favorite doll was called Tiny Tears, which was a popular doll in the 1950s. She had the magical ability to shed tears from two small holes on either side of the bridge of her nose. This was made possible by feeding her water with a small baby bottle and then pressing her stomach. I tried so hard to make her happy; I couldn’t bear to see those tears come from her eyes, which, to me, signaled that she was sad.

For several years when I was young, my maternal grandparents lived with my parents and me, their bedroom being right beside mine. My grandmother, Regina Reinharz Klein, was my primary caretaker and a huge inspiration. It was she who taught me to type, and I wrote my first short story on the Remington typewriter perched on her vanity. My creativity was set free on that typewriter as I traveled to imaginary places in my mind. Sometimes I read my stories aloud to my dolls.

Caretaking came as naturally to me as it did to my grandmother. She not only taught me how to type and appreciate books, she also taught me how to love and follow my heart and my instincts. Then, when I was ten years old, she died by suicide.

It is often the case that we tend to appreciate people more after they die. They also seem to come more alive when they’re gone. Children tend to take experiences more in stride than adults. I didn’t grieve openly as my mother did. I grieved quietly in the privacy of my room, with my dolls and my journal. At that tender age, it was impossible fully to understand the permanence of death, but I did understand the deep ache in my heart.

It was then and there that I learned how to console myself through writing. Whenever I wrote, I felt better; I realized how healing it was. Soon afterward, I yearned to share my passion with other neighborhood children, so I organized after-school journaling classes in my backyard. These were also children of hardworking people who didn’t have much time for parenting. Many of their young voices remained unheard. Thus, my lessons provided a container for their feelings. As it turned out, they found a lot to write about.

Armed with a stack of black-and-white marbled composition notebooks, pens, and packs of stickers from the local Woolworths, I encouraged the children to decorate and personalize their journals. I told them their journal was their best friend. I suggested they write about their family or whatever concerned them. On some afternoons, especially near the full moon when many of us tend to be more emotional, they wrote nonstop for so long that I had to remind them it was time to go home for dinner. During those days with the neighborhood children, I intuited that storytelling and teaching were my life’s calling. It was something I sensed in my heart.

I believe I inherited this deep sense of intuition from my grandmother. In fact, I have often made predications that came true. For the most part, the more we open our spiritual channel, the more things happen.

Years later as an adult, when visiting the spiritual community of Cassadaga near Orlando, Florida, where I lived at the time, I met with an older psychic. My hope was that she could access the additional information I wanted about my grandmother. I shared a black-and-white photo of Grandma in which she was posing with her coifed, short light hair, dark eyebrows, and pencil-thin lips with unexposed teeth. She had high cheekbones highlighted with blush. Her eyes seemed like vortexes of information and pierced right through me.

The rather tall, well-dressed, blonde psychic, also with deep eyes, held the photo and gave it an intense stare. She then looked up at me and stared deep into my own eyes and said, “You know, she’s a seer.” Her comment stopped me in my tracks. It was as if something I already knew was just confirmed. When someone acknowledges what we already believe, the knowledge somehow becomes even more powerful. Strangely, during my adolescence and early adulthood, I didn’t really think much about my grandmother. She was just an ancestor who passed away. I was busy growing up and doing the things teenagers did. Then I got married and began raising three wonderful children of my own.

My life was busy as a writer and mother, fitting in writing between homemaking and chauffeuring my children to and from school and after-school activities. I always wanted to be home for them after school; I never wanted them to be a latchkey child as I had been. At that time, I was lucky enough to have a home office where I could shut the door and do some writing if the kids were busy.

Then, at the age of forty-seven, when everything was going well in my life, there was a huge shift. My teenagers had just finished summer camp, and I was getting them ready to start a new school year. My gynecologist called to say that I had an abnormal mammogram. His shocking phone call divulged that I had ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a precursor of breast cancer, in my right breast.

There was no history of cancer in my family. Even so, the diagnosis made me wonder if that had been why my grandmother took her life. I began to feel her intense presence. I believe that I subconsciously called her back because I craved her nurturing and love, something my mother was never capable of providing. In fact, when I phoned my mother to say that I had breast cancer, she responded, “Oh no, I better go get my mammogram!” While it was painful to hear her react in this way, I wasn’t surprised because she’d always been self-involved and lacked empathy for me or anyone else.

After my subsequent surgery and recovery, I began to examine and research my grandmother’s life at a much deeper level. The cancer diagnosis had made me realize the fragility of life. I spent many hours journaling unfulfilled dreams and realized that I had always wanted to attend graduate school. A few times a year I received Poets & Writers magazine, and as I flipped through one, an advertisement captivated my attention. It was for a low-residency MFA degree in writing that offered distance-learning education with a brief on-campus program for weekends or weeks each year. It seemed perfect for someone like me who wanted to minimize my time away from my family. After some discussion with my husband, I applied to and was accepted into the charter class at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. When the time came to do a thesis, which was essentially a writing project, I decided to write the story of Grandma’s life interwoven with mine. Based on our relationship for the first ten years of my life, it turned into a memoir entitled Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal. My hope in writing the book was to bring her closer to me and also to keep her memory alive.

While researching and writing Regina’s Closet, I needed help getting more answers about Grandma’s life and death. She had had a very small family, and, by the time I was doing the research, many of her relatives had passed away. I met with another psychic who suggested I try to channel with her. She told me to set a time each day to speak with my grandmother and to set up two chairs facing each other in a place where I would not be disturbed. She told me to sit for a few minutes meditating and, when I felt ready, to call on her to join me. Then, the psychic said, we would have a short visitation, and I could ask questions and possibly receive answers. She told me that with practice I would get better at it.

At the same time, I looked at old photographs of my grandmother and tried to dress like her. I wanted to feel as if I were walking in her shoes. I already knew from my mother that Grandma had been a model in her native Austria, always dressing meticulously in fashionable dresses and heels with a matching purse. I had memories of her closet lined up with shoes on a slanted rack on the floor with matching purses hanging on wall hooks.

By trying to become her, I was yearning to infuse myself with my grandmother’s wisdom. I tried everything to bring her spirit into my life. For more than three decades, until receiving her journal when I was in my forties, I’ve had a black-and-white photograph of her perched on my writing desk. I often stare into her big, brown eyes and ask for answers—which she’s given me. I’ve always known that she’d come back to me.

Reflections / Writing Prompts

1. What brought you solace as a child?

2. What does your childhood bedroom look like?

3. What do you know about your maternal and paternal grandparents?

4. Has someone died whom you appreciate more after their passing?

5. Describe the evolution of your religious/spiritual background.

3

When a Loved One Takes Her Life

This life. This night. Your story. Your pain. Your hope. It matters. All of it matters.

~ Jamie Tworkowski

I am a first-generation American. My mother was born in Austria, and my father was born in Germany. They met in New York in the early 1950s. After they married, they worked together in my grandfather’s general store in Brooklyn, New York. On Labor Day weekend in 1964, my parents left for their usual day of work while my grandmother stayed home with me in our quiet, working-class neighborhood in Queens. My grandfather was visiting his older sister, Rusza, in Paris.

On that morning, I knocked on Grandma’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer, so I cracked the door open and got a whiff of her perfume, “Evening in Paris.” Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the sheer white curtains swaying in front of the open window overlooking the street. The air in her room was crisp, and the night’s dampness clung to the wooden floor. Grandma’s bed was one of two single beds pushed together for her and Grandpa with a single headboard. Her bed was beside the window. Her closet door was closed, and her makeup was spread out on her vanity.

Grandma lay beneath her soft, fringed, Scandinavian wool blanket that she called the warmest blanket in the world. On her side of the headboard rested Graham Greene’s novel, The End of the Affair, a hairbrush, and a box of Kleenex. An open bottle of pills sat on her nightstand. Maybe Grandma hadn’t been feeling well the night before and had taken more of her medication than usual.

“Grandma,” I called softly from the doorway. “May I go to Cindy’s?” Cindy was a friend of mine, also ten years old at the time, who lived around the corner and had a swimming pool.

Grandma didn’t answer. I glanced at my new watch. It was already ten o’clock. On most days, she was the first one into the maroon-and-pink-tiled bathroom that all five of us shared. I walked to the bathroom to see if her toothbrush was wet. It was dry from (I assumed) having been used the night before, but her towel, slung sideways on the towel rack, was still a little damp. The toilet lid was down, the way she had taught me to leave it. In my fluffy blue slippers, I returned to Grandma’s room and tiptoed around Grandpa’s bed toward hers. I gently tapped her shoulder.

“Grandma,” I repeated, “may I please go swimming at Cindy’s? I’ll be back by lunchtime. Promise.” Still no answer. Grandma’s face looked pale, and her eyelids were only partially closed, as if she were about to wake up.

I sensed something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed out of the room, glancing over my shoulder in the hope that she’d wake up and answer me. Under the weight of my footsteps, the wooden floor made creaking sounds, and I trembled while scurrying to my parents’ room at the end of the hallway. They also had two single beds pushed together with one headboard. Two pale-pink, electric blankets were sprawled out on each bed. The beds were unmade, and on my father’s bedside table was an empty plate with crumbs left from a sandwich he’d eaten the night before. The oblong wooden table had a glass covering with a display of family photographs beneath it. One photo that caught my eye was of my grandmother leaning against a tree in our backyard. Her broad smile seemed playful. That’s the way I’ll always remember her.

I looked at the pink bedside phone but was afraid to pick it up. I glanced at my mother’s personal loose-leaf telephone book beside it. Mother was careless about many things, but not her telephone book. This was long before the era of iPhones and similar devices that allow us to store numbers without needing to memorize them. She’d written every number imaginable in this small, loose-leaf book to which she could add numbers. Sometimes, when enough of the entries had become illegible or people had moved so often that she had to do a lot of crossing out, she bought a new book and copied all the numbers into it.

On that Labor Day weekend morning, I knew my mother had gone horseback riding, so I looked up the number of the stable where she kept her horse and dialed it. That day, Mother would be riding in the ring, not in the woods, and the stable boy would certainly pick up the phone. Frantically, I asked to speak to her.

“Mom, I think something’s wrong with Grandma,” I blurted. “She’s not answering when I talk to her.”

“What?” My mother spoke so loudly that I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

“Mom. Come home. I’m scared,” I said, bending my knees and bouncing up and down—an involuntary, agitated gesture—as if I had to go to the bathroom.

“I’m on my way.” My mother hung up before I could take my next breath.

For a few moments, I stood staring at the phone, and then I picked it up again to call my father at the store, but he was on his coffee break. I needed to talk to someone. I was petrified and intuited that something was not right. I wondered what to do. Should I wait in the living room, or on the front lawn, or at Grandma’s side? I was afraid to go back into her room. Had she awakened, she would have called me.

I ran downstairs and then ran right back up again, feeling lost in my own home. I flew into my room, grabbed the Tiny Tears doll off my bed, and then scurried back downstairs, stumbling in my haste down the last two steps.