Sunday Series: These Shores, Part One

Memoirs Of A Spiritual Catalyst

Photo Credit : Priscilla Du Preez

Forever I have run to these shores …
Forever I have run from these shores …
Lia Russ

That is the beginning of a poem I wrote a long time ago. I wrote that when I was 18 and it is about my relationship to energy, and spiritual dimensions.

I had vacillated between the mundane and magical worlds so often that by 18, I was already seeing the pattern. It was frustrating, working with something that others could not see, did not have daily encounters with, that they denied, but which I had difficulty shutting out. All that was made harder by the fact that I was virtually alone. I had no siblings, and my father, a Yugoslavian Gypsy, had died before he could impart any understanding of his culture (which should have been “ours”) to me.

By this time, I was struggling with finding self-acceptance, a task that was made much harder by my constant moving and my undiagnosed dyslexia. We all know how hard it is on kids to have to uproot and change schools, and I had to do that almost yearly. I wanted 3 things beyond anything: to have a dad, to have hope for my future, and to be like other kids. Ok, there was a 4th, to have a horse!