psychics, prisons and grandmothers

Say you're a woman      and you agreed to attend a psychic class to help you to have a healthy relationship with yourself and other people. 

So you get on your bicycle and pick up the pace because you're running slightly late. You definitely left the house alone.

How many folks, of your own, end up at the class with you? 

I thought of riding faster because I left a little late. Good thing I decided against wearing my hoodie so I can feel the breeze, cool on my arms. I missed this class last week because I went to a prisoner support group meeting. Today, I feel overjoyed  that I'm able to attend this class.  "Mo au!", me too!," my grandmother Sauliloa, riding a minimoke, three-wheel transporters that were popular in Tonga in the 1960s and 70s, calls me from behind. "'Aka mamalie," she warns against pedaling too fast, "nake tapeva 'o mate," you might trip over an object and die.  "Tau 'alu fakataha Loa e," we're coming with you girl! 

I didn't think of her today, but here she is, my grandmother Sauliloa. My son Niko and I were able to be with her in Tonga for her last three months of living before she passed away. Now she travels often with me, her namesake.

I go into the class where we begin meditation exercises. A healer prompts us to ground ourselves in the healing space we are in and to let and usher others out. She specifically tells us to let loved ones who we took care of and nursed to leave this particular space. I think of Sauliloa and allow myself to be alone in my healing space. I also let go of Niko and Fui and Mo and allow myself to be alone. 

The healer offers us psychic tools that help to clarify our thoughts, to allow us to be playful and creative about the immense pain we carry and ultimately, these tools give us the power to see our beautiful selves without flinching and running for cover.  They help us, as women, to take up the space that we deserve and that we've worked hard for and to be proud of who we have become. 

The healer instructs us to imagine a rose in front of us. "Let this rose represent what kind of relationship you want from now on." The healer gives us several minutes for this exercise then she asks us to share a description of our roses with each other. 

A few minutes go by and no one volunteers to speak. "OK," the healer recognizes this silence, "Raise your hand if you encountered something that is telling you that you can never acquire the relationship that you wanted. Something that is saying its impossible, you can't do it because of so many reasons?" We all raise our hands. She asks us to name some of the forces that are blocking our abilities to own the beautiful relationships that we want. A woman explains that she clearly sees her pattern of rejecting a man who seems "normal" for a "fixer-upper" relationship and, concludes, it will be impossible to overturn that pattern. Another woman, a great healer herself, foresees so much hurt that accompanies becoming part of a relationship. I don't tell the women what I see. 

I was creating a beautiful rose in front of me. I wanted a gorgeous pink rose that was passionate, sexy, fun and...boom came down the prison bars. Everything became bare. A small steel toilet stood near by and I was crumpled on a stone floor in a dingy, beige suit with chains tightened around my ankles and handcuffs gnawing the bones at my wrists. I pushed myself to face the door and to imagine it opening and me walking out into the sunlight. My body was

too  weak and I was praying that someone would open the door for me. Then I remembered from my own physical experience that wardens don't open prison doors for prisoners.  So I slouched back on the stone and accepted my fate as a prisoner. I continued to work with the psychic tools we were given, trying to create my brilliant pink rose but a screen of prison bars continued to stampede the rose. But I kept working at it, pushing, looking for a way to free myself through the doors. 

Steadily, I sat up and I looked around. The prison changed colors to a bright yellow. One by one, the walls of my prison cell, steel and concrete, crashed and fell away. The walls themselves became the petals of the rose, peeling away like opening a banana. I stood up and raised my hands, like the stamen and pistils in the middle of the hibiscus, and I was free! 

I cannot wait on someone to open the prison gates for me and I cannot look to the gate as 

my only road to freedom. If I begin with myself as a free being, there are no walls, even a physical prison, that can incarcerate my spirit. This is what it truly means to be a free spirit. And so, I was able to reach and create my glorious pink rose, full of passion, intimacy, sexiness, fun, wisdom, commitment and love. And when I did reach my pink rose, there were seconds where the prison bars were reappearing and I had to tell them to get off my stage. 

I strongly believe that the metaphor of the prison walls shows me why it is that I am committed to working with prisoners and injustices in the systems of incarceration. And therefore, I feel that I am receiving a gift of understanding that the work I want to do with prisoners and their families must incorporate the spiritual tools of the feminine and the women healers. I realized that I no longer accept working with prisoners and their families within only patriarchal and masculine dominated paradigms. Those approaches may be good to begin with but men, women and children need the full power of the feminine to access knowledges that will divert us from incarceration and towards healing. These visions have humbly helped me to envision new creative and important ways to reconfigure my commitment to working on issues of incarceration. 

The class ended and we had a little party. Someone brought spring rolls and someone brought brownies. 

As soon as I came out and got on my bike, my grandmother Sauliloa reminded me, "Ta 'alu fakataha Loa, ki 'api." Loa, let's go home together. This is a significant thing for Sauliloa to say because all her life, she never lived with anyone besides her own nuclear family. Sauliloa did not like any of the women who married her sons. She also did not accept people coming to live at her house. Her own mother, my great grandmother, Mele Sanipepa, lived in a separate house adjoining the main house, when Sauliloa married my grandfather Siaosi. 

At the age of 93ish, Sauliloa had a stroke. She was kept at the hospital for a month and had to be returned home. But she could not take care of herself because the stroke paralyzed her entire body. She couldn't return to her big white wooden house that she shared only with cats, dogs and pigs. That's when Niko and I returned to Tonga. On the day we unpacked our suitcases at my uncle Pasi's house, Sauliloa moved in to Pasi's hous too. This was the first time she ever lived outside her own nuclear family setting.  Three months later, she passed away. 

In leaving the healing class, Sauliloa reminded me that she's coming home. This means that she has chosen to come to live at our house with us together. The healing I was doing at my class, was healing that also helped my grandmother. My grandmother did not have these tools for healing because Tonga had become steeped heavily in christianity and a lot of indigenous knowledge and medicine about spiritual healings had been eradicated before my grandmother's childhood. 

As Sauliloa and I headed home, Mele Sanipepa called out, "Mo o e. 'Ofa atu Loa mo Loa e." "Good night you two, lots of love." My great grandmother Mele went to her home. My maternal grandmother Vai called out too, "'Ofa atu Loa mo Loa. Malo e." "Lots of love, thanks so much for our good time tonight!" Polo, my uncle who passed away recently, came with his mother 'Iva and I said, "Mo po'uli a e," goodnight to them. Saane, my grandfather Siaosi's sister came. Saane's mother, Vika, and her sister, Lesieli, who all passed away in the influenza epidemic that killed countless Tongans in 1918, headed back home too. 

All the women in the family and some of the men had attended the healing class with me. I think many times that I travel alone in life but that is not true. I travel with an entourage of grandmothers, aunts and uncles. The healing I do, helps them to heal too. 

My grandmother Sauliloa was never able to share her own home with other people who were not her husband or sons. She attended all the healing classes I went to and now she allows herself to live with her grand daughters. 

We can heal our relationships between women, even after physical life ends. Men can do this too among friends, fathers, brothers, cousins, lovers. Women and men must heal together too. 

I do spend a lot of time waiting to find a key to unlock the prison gates. I am now working on remembering that I can see that there are no walls. 

Mohe a Sauliloa. Ta a pongipongia o ako 'ae lsat.