photo credit: Reginald Adams
It all merged. This place, this day, this year, day of my birth, this photograph: a metaphor for alignment, for realizing my calling to the planet. Education, Reiki and the healing arts, visual art, writing. If I pick one, it is evident how either of the four would feed its counterpart. Finally.
When I was a little girl, Sundays, my father's ritual was going to the Health Food Store. During these visits, he and Mom would stand at the counter and talk to the cashier about healing. I learn to listen. I acquire the knowledge; the benefits of herbs, grow to appreciate the dense smell of Earth in the bottles, and stomach the taste of anything healing. Earth, the impetus for an intrigue of stones: obsidian, rhodonite, turquoise, crystal, amazonite. Their presence in my hand, at the center of my chest, the calm I felt just before they rolled off. Energy.
Beginning in Middle School, and years therafter, I was accepted into Wittenberg University's Young Writer's Program. Ever since, writing has pulled me out of the bed dusk and dawn to document a wave of thoughts, a prose statement, a feeling, a pull to manifest words and work them into a formula, much like Math, actually. My first serious journal was a gold heiroglyph psalter. In grad school, I learn to make paper.
I am a self taught painter. Whatever limit the word might have, the image exposes. This is all. I wanted to translate the open intrugue of a slanted eye on the subway in Chicago, the curvature of a back, give reverence to a sun symbol, blend the color cerrulean with sage, define a mermaid's scales.
While living on the pier in Seattle, I was asked to tutor privately. Parents begin to see changes in their children they have not seen before working with me. "She listens, she's funny, she understands me, she calms me, she does not judge, she draws examples instead of explaining them." They begin to notice grade increases, self esteem is higher, the students advocate for themselves and they trust themselves more. Parents tell me when my name comes up, students smile. They call me Mom #2, or Sis, Aunt Folade. Moms tell me I have academically healed their children, giving them an ease about school and a sense of self love toward their individual learning styles. I walk into coffee shops to greet clients and there is a sense and sigh of relief that overcomes the students. We are minutes away from an eager, curious conversaiton. I love this work. It turns into a business- Speaks-Love Tutoring Agency.
Love is my former married name, and Speaks is my maiden name. My children are 11 & 12. When they were babies, it led me deeper into natural healing as I wanted to provide as much purity to them as I could: we homeschooled, we made their food, we did Mom and baby Yoga, we stayed outdoors and gardened together. From that came Reiki attunement. The healing and grounding vibration I feel when my hands are in the soil of a garden is remarkable. It is divine. Reiki is that same energy, I am its vessel. When it becomes clear that all you love has synched up and moves in a circle that nurtures counter-clockwise and clockwise, what rebirth!