From Director/Producer Carole Hart:
Healing is a very important part of the Grandmothers work. And stories about healings can be healing in themselves. We would love to hear yours. To get you started, I’m sharing my healing story that brought me to the making of this film.
If you would like to share your story, please send us a video, audio track or written story to:
info@forthenext7generations.com
The Laughing Willow Company, Inc
200 W. 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
Thanks for posting about this, I would love to read more about this topic.
Thank you to Carole and Claire and all the Grandmothers. Thank you for sharing your stories and your visions. I am speechless with tears of hope and love in my eyes.
Thank you is all I can say.
My heart and soul Thank you.
Sincerely,
Leah Shuyler
Grandmothers Gathering, Carole Hart’s testimony, my personal Tsunami
Good Morning Carole,
I just participated in another Sweat Lodge, with a Lakota Medicine Man.
I was praying for miraculous healing, when I read your testimony. I feel uplifted by your personal story of recovery. I am also touched by the genuine beauty of your pictures of the Thirteen Grandmothers and their gatherings. I am thankful for the footage available on the web. I loved seeing your new documentary For The Next Seven Generations at the OR gathering. It is about time the world acknowledges such ancient traditions and listens to their wake-up call. It’s about time the world listens carefully to Women, Elders and Women-Elders, so that these endless wars, constant enemy image projections truly turn into inner and outer peace!
I wholeheartedly resonate with the book Grandmothers Counsel The World. All my life, wherever I have traveled, I instinctively found myself with “simple” indigenous farming and fishing people.
When I touch my clients’ bodies, I appeal to their self-healing abilities. Now it’s my turn to recover whole health after my personal December 26, 2004 Tsunami “ordeal”, defined as an ancient test of guilt or innocence by subjection of the accused to severe pain, survival of which was taken as divine proof of innocenceJ hmm
On Tsunami Day, I survived miraculously on several occasions, signs that my time was not up yet. I am grateful for the powerful experiences and lessons I received. Nearly 5 years later, I continue to deal with the aftermath of my injuries. I am eager to shift from survival to thriving mode, perhaps, hopefully, guided by some wise indigenous hands.
I have tons of stories to tell about “my Tsunami.” I’ll just focus on some of the facts, for now:
I was traveling alone. My plan was to spend a few days in Southern Thailand to strengthen my body near the ocean, then head North again to my beloved Lahu school-village (refugee tribe from Burma) up North, in the mountains between Chang Rai and Chang Mai. This time I was planning 4 weeks instead of 2 of an arduous training in meditation, yoga, Tai Chi and Thai massage.
Instead, I spent a total of 60 days in 5 Thai hospitals and 2 American ones. I underwent 5 surgeries – 3 leg surgeries in Thailand, 1 leg surgery and 1 ear surgery in the USA (the September 08 ear surgery failed after years of misdiagnosis and wrong treatments).
I was swimming when the first wave hit. I got crushed and trapped under a bungalow when the second wave hit. I was saved by the third wave. I dealed with repeated near-drowning experiences (yet was spared the so-called “water-boarding” a repeated, cruel and inefficient near-drowning torture. Please everybody: think twice before using this misleading euphemism)
Rewinding: After I collapsed on dry ground, it took 15 hours to be evacuated from my little island on to a relatively sophisticated hospital, as my condition required. I was lying in the back of an open truck holding hand with one kind fellow traveler for a long time, while wide-eyed Thais passed by and stared at my wounds. When somebody finally spotted the only nurse available on the island, she took one look at my legs and said: you must quickly get to a major hospital to avoid amputation. So she spent relentless hours simultaneously on her cell and home phones trying to reach the mainland. It took 2 failed helicopter attempts, one successful boat rescue and one ambulance to get me to the Krabi hospital. I was immediately operated on, then “parked” in the corridor right in front of the nurses’ hub – quite the bee house or Parisian Gare Du Nord train station, there! I got a taste of what it must feel like to be hospitalized after being wounded on the battlefield. Except that in my own battle, I never considered the Ocean as my enemy, I just did whatever I could to survive the impact of Her pretty impressive power display. On day 2 & 3, the hospital was so packed, that some people were operated outside the building. I am more convinced than ever before, that war is complete collective insanity, is terrorism par excellence. Any other form of terrorism is detail, in comparison.
I was then evacuated to a Bangkok hospital for a second surgery. From my hospital bed, I kept watching BCC and reading the BKK newspaper accounts of innumerable heart wrenching tragedies – systematically avoiding sickening sensation-vampires like CNN. It was my turn to stare and hold my breath as the dead toll kept mounting, up to 300.000. And this is “just” the death toll. Imagine how many more returned home with missing body parts, missing family members, missing entire family, their partner, friends, livelihood. And imagine the ones who returned to an empty home. And imagine the ones who had no home to return to.
My heart was primarily going out to the destroyed fishing villages and their people, to the original nomads in Thailand and to the immigrated Burmese workers, who all suffered so much and in so many ways. Many agonized in utter solitude, didn’t get the surgery that would have saved their lives or partial body functions, or if they were lucky, they were operated, but under dire conditions. Some were even handcuffed and deported back to Burma without medical care after they had lost everything; they were heading to torture, etc. Some died because they were never taught swimming.
One highlight: I soon felt the urge to act in solidarity with them. So when my third surgery came up, and with the blessings of my gentle trusted Buddhist surgeon, I declined any kind of tranquilizer or anesthesia. It was the best crash course in meditation I ever had: it showed me what happens when I stay anchored in the present moment, vs. drift in past or future. It also kept me tangibly connected with the world, while recovering on my remote hospital bed. Afterwards, my surgeon confided to me that he had only operated one time before under these conditions and that his patient was a monk; he was looking forward to more of these special moments. I felt so boosted by our sublime co-operation and this victory over fear/pain!
After five and a half weeks in Thai hospitals, I returned to my lifelong Beloved Sea to rekindle with Her and touch her gentler side. It took me 3 days to immerse in Her again. Further pushing it, I went for 2 kayak trips and had 2 more close calls with tricky waves and strong currents. There, for the first time since the stormy sailing days of my childhood with my father, I was able to admit out loud to my co-navigator what I had never admitted to my father: I am scared. As soon as I spoke it, I felt the old dormant lethal substance of silence in my body wake up, spread through it and immobilize it for a long lasting moment. And yet, somehow, my rowing companion and I managed to get back to the beach.
Then, as I was trying to get to another quiet island for a few days before returning to the West, I was hospitalized again for close to 3 weeks in 2 different hospitals – misdiagnosed and pumped with more antibiotics in the first one, then treated for the real thing, dengue fever, in the second one. I discovered the threatening power of this particular fever, which inflames brain, liver and the like. I understood the full meaning of “tu es dingue – you are nuts”. I got to appreciate life-giving blood transfusions and the generosity of blood donors… Strangely enough, this 2 week long ordeal in a Catholic hospital was void of any English-speaking nurse until day 12, when an embodied angel appeared at my bed-side and spoke softly to me. Until then, I had gone for 12 long days through the 12 Stations of the Cross, as a migraine-ridden little Christ trying to meditate a la Buddhist. I had my own thorn crown… I will never forget the exquisite relief I felt when at 3 AM, I finally surrendered to a potent IV painkiller. With this lowered pain threshold, I could meditate again…that’s my personal experience of ascension. There is so much more to share, but that will have to do for now.
Symptoms keep popping up since my return from Thailand. I am lost in the maze of our American health care system, with some of its sickening insurance and pharmaceutical practices. NOW is the time for a humanized health care reform, which serves people, not profiteers (*) I urge everybody to get informed and active: *Tubes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJneosRxX64 *Public TV: Bill Moyers Journal (hijacking healthcare); David/Maria’s Now *Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. General Practitioner formation/practice is dwindling, what a shame, what a loss!
If it were not for strangers, family and friends, who found ways to contact me and listen; if it were not for Cecily and Barb, who secured my easier return home with down-to-earth “details” like bills; if it were not for my beloved loving dedicated General Practitioner Dr Sarah H. (*), and for my two beloved loving MD allies, who just won’t give up on me, I would have lost my mind by now. Buddhist friends of friends and volunteers from NZ and BKK showed up by my bed. My friend Swee came all the way from Singapore with her family. Out of the blue, my Tsunami-Survival-Sister Tamara and Co. appeared at one BKK hospital. Thai Nurses were kind and refreshing. I am so grateful for the support I received and continue to receive. I am also grateful to my resilient family, who taught me survival: my late brother Daniel showed me early on how to negotiate Atlantic waves in the SW of France; my late dad used to throw me into the sea when I was tiny, so I could teach myself swimming, in preparation for big days like D-Day 2004, I suppose…Their strength lives in me.
Thank you for listening, may you all be well.
Claire M, MA, LMP, clairebw2@gmail.com
Thanks from the bottom of my heart for making all this happen…lotz of love and smiles your way…Love you so much
You are a true example of human dignity and endurance. God must have a special place for you. Your example is so powerful to those so easily willing to give in or give up.
Bless you.