Cherokee Shaman

This is not a new site, just a combination of 2 sites into one.  I feel like writing about who I am today and what better way to get to know me than to know my background and where I am from...my humble beginnings if you please.  I was born in West Virginia at Charleston General Hospital in 1946 on Christmas Eve.  But I was soon to be transported to a little village back in the mountains, where I would grow and learn about life for the next 8 years of my own life.  In this little village, I was free to roam about as I liked, never having to worry about being kidnapped, molested, or otherwise dealt a harsh blow, and I roamed to my hearts content.  All the little houses were painted white and had green shingle roofs.  It was a coal-mining town, and my grandfather was foreman of the mines.  He passed away the same year I was born, back in February.  My father too was a miner and picked slate and loaded coal cars for a living.  He was a hard working man and my mother worked all day on the house and taking care of me.  She idolized me and as I grew she saw many of her father's mannerisms in me.  I slept flat of my back, like he did, and she said he could lay down on a narrow bench and fall asleep without ever falling off of it.  He'd cross his arms over his chest and sleep away.  He was of Dutch/German blood and was a stout fellow as far as I can tell from the only picture I have of him with my Mother.

My Grandmother, Elsie, had been his wife since she was 16.  He passed away at 46 of a heart attack in his front yard after coming home from working at the mines all day.  My father found his body and ran to get the doctor, but it was too late.  He was gone.  My Grandmothers Mother was Cherokee and had a long, silver braid that had never been cut.  When I knew her she was bed fast, and we'd go to see them on holidays.  She liked for me to sit on her bed and tell her stories.  She was a big woman and suffered with diabetes and had a very difficult time of it.  My grandmothers father had passed away, but he too was Cherokee, and my own fathers father was as well.  Tall people.  Dark people, with gentle ways and kind faces.  I consider myself to be primarily Cherokee, with a splash of English mixed in for good measure.  My fathers Mother was from Manchester, England and had come to America via ship when she was only 16.  She was difficult to understand, but she was a very jolly person and had snow white hair when I knew her.  She was very round and very sweet and of a mild nature.  My fathers father passed away when my Dad was only 6. 

The hills of home were covered with trees and plants of all kinds.  You could pick fruit from many of them and it was delicious.  There were black walnuts to be gathered, ramps to clean and cook, and greens of various sorts grew there as well.  Everyone in the village had enclosed porches where they would string up the green beans from their gardens, and everyone traded fruits and vegetables.  What one family had or didn't have, their neighbor did and the food was delicious.  Berries grew wild there...strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and we had an apple tree in the front yard that yielded the best apples in town.  My grandmother would cook them and make homemade fried apple pies for my grandfathers lunch and as treats for us.  I can remember going for walks in the woods with my Dad and there was a fruit they called a Paw paw and he was tall enough to reach them.  They were like a mango, but with smaller seeds.  They were sweet, juicy and quite eatable.  We always had fun when we went with him and the woods were full of all sorts of flowers and bushes.  We also had a small river that ran through town and there were Beech-Nut trees all along the river and as with everything, you only had to run your hands through one of the branches and retrieve a hand full of beech nuts and you had yourself another treat!  It was the perfect place to grown up in and I was truly sad when the mines closed down and we had to move to the city.

But I took something with me that I still have today.  Jack calls me a "shaman".  A Cherokee Shaman.  I knew things.  Things that were going to happen in the future.  It didn't show up until much later in my life.  Another name for it is "seer", or "prophet".  It is a gift, one that I cherish and one that will go with me to my grave, and beyond.  It happened even when I was younger, but I wasn't in tune with it yet...I wasn't paying enough attention.  But it began really making itself known in my teen years.  I knew, for instance, that someday I'd have twins and a little girl.  I knew later on that I'd meet a man with the last name of Tyler, and the first initial of his name would be a J.  I was fortunate to be a Navy child or I'd never have come to California and I never would have met Jack.  We took a round-about way of getting here, but I came back to California at the age of 18, by myself.  We had moved to California in 1963 and stayed for a year, but the Navy moved us then to Minnesota.  I was very sick there.  It was so cold and I was so depressed and just wanted to come back home.  At 18 they couldn't keep me from coming back, and my grandmother helped me to afford the airplane ticket and home I did come.

I worked from the age of 19 at various odd jobs, and at 21 I got a job working for the Federal Government in a Civil Service Job.  I had worked there for 10 years, when a new employee came to work there.  His name was, you guessed it, Jack Tyler.  I wasn't aware of the knowledge I had had at a much younger age, I just didn't recall it at the time.  He watched how I was being treated, and began coaching me on ways to let my supervisors hang themselves.  They would give me project after project and get angry when I hadn't finished the first one, and second one, while they were handing me a third one.  He began teaching me about his philosophy, the Tao.  It was his life blood and I through it was all very mysterious.  I loved it, even if I didn't understand it.

One evening after work, I called him to see if I could come over just for a visit and to get to know one another.  He said sure, gave me directions, and off I went.  We sat in the floor listening to Led Zeppelin and talking for hours.  When I got ready to leave, he followed me to my car, touched my shoulder and said, "sometimes all you need is a friend."  Things progressed, one thing leading to another, and in July of that year, we were engaged to be married.  On December 24th of 1975, we were married at my mothers house in Chula Vista and it seemed the whole world was decorated and celebrating our union.  A year later, on November 17, I gave birth to twin sons.  Brian and Alex.   A year and 1/2 later, I had our baby girl, and our family was complete.  It wasn't until recently that I told him I had known about things when I was a child, and I don't know if he believed me or not, but I had been looking for him, knowing the vicinity of San Diego he would live in, and I knew he had cats, and that he would make me feel at home.  He did in ever way.

There have been many things in my life that I fore-knew.  I'll try to recount them when I have more time.  Back in my little home town, we had many animals.  We had eagles in profusion and I identified with them I guess because once when Jack and I were on our way to work, we were talking about our favorite animal, one that we would like to be if we came back as an animal.  His was the wolf, mine was the eagle.  Years later he bought me a book on Cherokee Astrology.  I am not one to be labeled by astrology, but it is interesting that my sign is the eagle.  The little town was named Ameagle...short for American Eagle Colliery.  It is interesting what it says about those born in the sign of the eagle, and a lot of it is exactly what I would describe myself as being. 

None-the-less, I have always identified with the Cherokee people.  I think they got a raw deal and I think they were decent people.  Very misunderstood people.  They are farmers at heart.  Close to the earth and I feel very close to nature.  It's hard to say whether it is because of where I lived as a child, or because of the basis for the Tao to interact with us, or that it is a part of who I am because of my ancestry.  I am very fond of nature and feel a kinship with it.  I can sense rain before it ever shows itself.  Once I told Jack, on a perfectly sunny day, that it would be raining before he backed out of the drive way to go to work.  He said, "sure it will", and didn't think anymore of it.  He got ready to go to work, got in the truck, and as he neared the end of the driveway, the rain started.  He doesn't think much about it anymore, because I do it all the time. 

My granddaughter Venus is like me.  He calls her the "Little Shaman".  At the age of about 4 1/2, one day Venus was looking in the mirror and she calmly said, "Look in the mirror...  what do you see?  A child, a stranger...".  She has had dreams about me and in her dream other people thought I was dumb.  But she saw something about me and said "Grandma, you know a lot that people don't think you know!"  I was shocked.  At the time, I was on medication for a condition I have had for many years.  Was born with it I think, but instead of it being a detriment, it has shown me many things about the human mind and the spirit of people.  My spirit has taken many journeys...and is not limited by time and space.  My soul is left in charge of my body and my life, and my spirit will go places I couldn't imagine in my wildest dreams.  It does things for people that I don't know...it is mysterious even to me and I am considered very eccentric I am sure.  The spirit is who we are.  It is a part of everything we have experienced, and the things we will experience in the future.  We all have gifts.  Some of us are more aware than others, but it becomes apparent to us as the years go by.

Jack's gift from the Tao is the ability to heal.  When I was 5 months pregnant with the twins, I got sick one night and he had to take me to the hospital.  He had to wait in the waiting room while they were checking me out, and he became like a lens, focusing the power of the Tao into my body.  I felt the immediate cessation of pain in my back and legs.  As it turned out, I had a severe kidney and bladder infection.  They gave me some medicine to take and a prescription to pick up the next day.  But I went home with Jack pain free.  He has used it often to help others.  When our littlest grandson was born, he was very sick.  He had pulmonary hypertension and was on all sorts of life support systems.  I prayed, that's what I do.  Jack focused the Tao to little Kris around the same time.  The Doctor treating him was from India, and he had gone to the chapel to pray for Kris.  We were on our way to drop our son off at home.  After we dropped him off, we continued on our way, and before we got home, the phone rang and Brian told us that the Doctor said that a miracle had happened.  Kris's lungs had expanded and he was breathing on his own.  Even the doctor called it a miracle and was so excited he ran to get other doctors to come and look at the X-Rays of the baby's lungs. 

These things are true.  I have no reason to make it up.  It is who we are.  We were meant to be together and we are all of something much bigger than we can even imagine.  In the Cherokee Astrology book, Jack's sign is the serpent.  But rather than associate it with something bad, as in the Garden of Eden where sin was introduced into the world via the serpent beguiling the woman to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, it says that Adam and Eve were growing soft and weak from their cushy lifestyle, and the serpent took a stick and stirred up the garden and introduced the human race to consciousness.  To know the difference between right and wrong.  They were tossed out of the Garden where they grew stronger and wiser having to deal with the elements of the real world.  It is something to think about.  I am a Christian first, but I use the Tao book everyday to make myself a better person.  It has made me strong and independent and I can do much more than I ever thought possible.  Look at the achievements mankind has made over the years.  Would we have come so far if we had stayed in the Garden?  Would we know how to have compassion on other people?  Would we have ever walked on the moon, or invented cures for many illnesses that have befallen mankind?  Something to think about.  I like this sort of analytical thinking...I love reading about the various religions of the world and figuring out how they are all interrelated.  I am who I am, and I like what I like and for now, that's a good introduction to the world I live in.  I love to write poetry, and to post to my blog, and to make good food for my loved ones, and to visit our back yard daily with my husband where we sit under our orange tree and contemplate the life we have made together.  We are very close, we share the bounty of life, and we are travelers on this road together.  When one falls, the other one is there to help him or her up again.  We don't fight, why would we?  We are One and who fights with himself?

I wish you happy reading, I hope you find it interesting, and if you have a comment to make, please don't hesitate.  And so I am beginning anew here today and I can guarantee that the posts in the future will be fun & interesting.

Regards,
Bonnie