People Tell Their Stories:
Potpourri: When Life Doesn't Easily Fit into Categories

The Journey    Alissa M. Lukara

Everything went dark as he touched the girl, as he reached toward the core of her and grabbed at her soul. With one sharp breath that cut like a knife, I jerked and slipped out of her skin, deserted her to save myself, leaving her body behind. I was suddenly there, not here. And once there, I turned away from the dark world where her body lay broken. I couldn't stay there. Not in that child's body. Not encased in that tomb.

So I flew. I flew up high with my silver cord attached and touched angels' wings. I don't know who found whom first. When I first saw the angels, they lay sleeping behind a cloud. I wondered if they were pretending or if angels really slept. I skipped up to them boldly and buried my face in their wings. The feathers tickled my nose and I giggled. Then, they giggled, too, and before I knew it, they gathered me in their arms close to their hearts and held me ever so gently. I got all squirmy, not wanting to be held even by angels, so they took me by the hand and we flew far away from the dark place. We went far enough so that no matter how hard I squinted, I couldn't even see it as a speck anymore. When it was gone, the heaviness lifted and I was lighter than air.

We journeyed to the peaceful realms, where kind beings and fairies lived in balance with each other and with the rocks and plants and trees. The earth was bountiful there. Trees shimmered with fruit, and gardens teemed with vegetables. Cool, cleansing waters flowed. The angels took me to a meadow and we sang under a tree. We lay down in the grass and they gently rubbed my feet. I loved it. The feeling of angel wings on the bottoms of my toes. Then they fluttered their wings all around me and sent their sweet angel breath wafting up my nose. It caressed my cheek and drifted inside me, mingling, filling me, helping me forget what had happened.

We traveled to a lake, and the angels let me swim as much as I wanted. I just knew how to do it, though I'd never learned in that other place. I automatically knew how to move my hands and feet in time to keep afloat. The wet was so soothing. Water animals came to play with me and a beaver took me on a tour of her dam home.

An eagle brought me a shiny red gem stone from the top of a mountain peak. It felt cool and smooth against my face. And the flowers, so many flowers of different colors and sizes and shapes, growing both on the land and right out of the water. I cried tears of joy for the first time. And they washed away the remnants of pain deep inside me.

Tired, I went back to the angels now and they rocked me in their arms. I felt so warm and safe, glad to be held now. They promised that one day I would be free of all this that was and to know that they were with me always, even in those dark times when I couldn't see them and forgot how to fly. I so wanted to stay with them, but they told me that it wasn't time yet. They asked me to trust them and placed a seed of faith in my heart for me, a glowing seed, an eternal flame that never expired.

And suddenly, I felt myself falling, plunging falling away from them. Instead of going back to her body as I thought I would, though, he stood in my way. He was outside his body, too, blocking my path to her, waiting for me. Waiting to take me away. Far far away to a place from which I would never return, he said. A place so lost that even the angels couldn't find me again. So he took me, took me to the cave of the lost children. The cave of the lost souls, the darkest dreariest place in the universe. And he abandoned me there. Threw me into the place of those so lost that they had no idea who they were or that anything other than darkness was possible.

Barely able to move, these lost ones crawled toward me, wanting to suck out my light when they first saw me. Starved, they wanted to steal my light for themselves, like leeches. They didn't have enough of their own to live on anymore. But I escaped from them by dimming my light as I had already learned to do on earth inside the girl's body. I escaped by dimming the eternal flame in my heart and hiding behind a rock, tucking myself deep deep inside a crevice of that rock and closing off my brightness so that no one could see. I got so small I forgot who I was. I got so small I couldn't even hear myself breathe. I was lost lost except for those angels' words. Know that we are always with you. No matter what. Then, I forgot those words, too.

I stayed crouched without moving an inch. I became one with the rock, one with rock nature, frozen except for the warm flame in my heart, the seed that lived yet could not grow. I breathed only enough to stay alive and it seemed that encased in my rock-ness I fell asleep for a very very long time.

I didn't know how many years or days or hours or minutes passed. I don't know if my eyes were open or shut. It was so dark that it didn't matter. Night became day became night. All was the same here. I couldn't afford to be afraid because someone might smell it and find me. I couldn't afford to cry tears because someone might discover the wetness and drink the life out of me. I couldn't afford to know my rage because it would shatter the rock into a million tiny shards that leave me bleeding and exposed.

I stayed in this place for so long that I began to believe I had always been here, that I had been born here, that I had never known a mother's touch, that I had never been nourished, that no angels had ever spoken their words and tickled me with their wings. The past was erased except for the other words, words from the dark world, which stuck in my throat and turned in on me. "You are evil. You deserve this" the words insisted. And since no one came for me, I believed for a time that this must be so.

Then, one day, as if from a great distance, I heard a voice inside my head call to me, "Light child. Where are you? Child of light. Show yourself. I have come to take you home." And just as suddenly as I heard the voice, a woman stood before me. Fire streamed from her hands and hair and eyes. I could not see her face, but I knew that she was not from this place and I was intuitively not afraid of her. A huge bird, an eagle stood beside her. "I have come to take you from this place, my little one," the fire woman said. "But we must move quickly. My animal medicine, the eagle, can hold off the others for only so long."

Her words sent a reverberation through my being and I could move again. I unfolded myself from the rock and stood straight and tall for the first time in a lifetime of years. I took a deep breath and looked into the clearest kindest human blue eyes I could remember seeing. They were like the angels' eyes, so full of compassion. My tears began to flow.

"My goodness," she exclaimed. "You have so much light in you when you stand up. So much light around you. I don't think I've ever seen so much light in one small being. How child did you ever manage to hide yourself in this godforsaken place? How did you survive?" But without waiting for an answer, just as suddenly as she spoke, I was whisked away, whisked up and out of the cave by the eagle who traveled with her. She came, too, holding my hand.

Darkness exploded into day, as we exited the cave and I stood in the sunlight, my eyes adjusting to the forms around me. I felt sun's warmth on my skin and matted hair for the first time in so long. I took in another breath now, a deeper, longer breath and as I soon as I did, I began to vomit. I vomited up years of words withheld and words taken in that had nothing to do with who I truly was. I vomited up pain and rage and sadness and fear. I vomited up calcified tears and rotted feelings. I vomited up the poison the man had forced me to swallow, the pus from the lesions he had opened in my heart and brain. I vomited up all that which was not me, all that which was held inside which interwove itself with truth, which insinuated itself around the open spaces of my creative longings. All that I vomited up and the woman, the strong, yet gentle fire warrior stood with me, held me, stroked my hair and just let me be. When I was done, we dug a hole and buried that which was not me into the receiving earth. She cried out herself at what she witnessed coming from me and offered up her own tears to the divine ones. Her blessed holy water transformed to a gentle cleansing rain which washed away what remained of the cave from me, washed my hair and face and body and that which had passed years earlier on earth.

"The eagle and I are your guides back to the other world," the woman explained. "We've come to take you back to the one you left if you will go. She needs you, you know. Remember her. She needs you to come home so that you can complete your work together on earth. She needs you so that you can both do what you came here to do."

I vaguely began to recollect someone, a girl. "No," I thought, tightening in horror at remembering and the woman, seeing my face, said, "No, my light child. Not there. Not to that time. That girl is all grown up now. A woman. A strong, beautiful woman. A courageous woman who can take care of you as you've never been cared for. But not unless you come to her.

"This women is hurting, you see. She misses you so much. You are part of her life force, light child, and without it she can't move on. Without you, she is incomplete. Without her, you too are incomplete. The light that is you is matched by the light that is she, and only when you come together, can you shine your own hearts to illuminate your way and the way of those around you. She is as lost on earth as you are here, because you are missing from her. She can love now, little one. Oh, she can love and cherish you as you've always wanted. She can protect you and let you know the fullness of your being. He is not around anymore, dearest one, the one who brought you here. He is long gone. She has banished him. You can trust her.

Trust. The word stunned. For so long I had not trusted anyone or anything.

"She needs you and you need her. I am only the guide," continued the magical fire woman. "She is your home little one. Your chance to finally have the voice that you lost. I can't promise it will always be easy if you go back. There may be some pain for a while. Some sadness and fear. Even some anger. But it's not time to live with the angels yet, and I have journeyed a long way and experienced many dangers to find you, my child of light. Won't you come so that you can shine as fully as you were meant to shine? Won't you reclaim your life, your true light and take back that which you lost, which you cast off and which was finally hidden from your view?

"She is all grown up now, you know, as you wanted to be. And she has many people who love her. But she is also sick in body and spirit. She can't recapture her own healing essence, hold it unless you choose to rejoin her. Will you come? It is your choice. I won't coerce you. No one will force you any more."

I breathed some more as I took in her words. Deep, deep breaths all the way down into my finger tips and toes. Every part of my body tingled now. Vibrated. The body that was numb for so long, and I felt a tug, a tug where my heart used to be, an ache, a longing for her, a longing to go home, to take a chance. "Maybe," I thought. "Maybe this time…" I looked into the guide's smiling soulful eyes and remembered that I too was a soul. A spirit living in a body.

The angels' words came back to me from long ago, and their song filled the skies and my heart. The flame inside me expanded. The seed stirred, preparing for the renewal of spring. "We are always with you, even in the darkest times," the angels' words in my heart said. "We are always with you."

And deep deep from my belly it unfurled. The voice I had lost. The voice that I silenced.

"Yes," I said to the guide. "Yes."

©2001 Alissa Lukara. All rights reserved. From Riding the Grace, a work in progress. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Alissa Lukara is the author of the memoir Riding Grace: A Triumph of the Soul (Silver Light Publications, February 2007) and president and founder of this nonprofit website, Lifechallenges.org, which provides individuals in 97 countries worldwide with the self help tools they need to cope with and transcend adversity. Riding Grace chronicles Alissa's 12 year quest through the dark night of adult chronic fatigue syndrome and childhood sexual abuse to accept the unacceptable and find wholeness and healing. She offers inspiring workshops and presentations to groups, drawing on her personal healing experiences and the larger perspective she gained from them and empowering people to use challenges to transform their lives. Lukara’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Conscious Women, Conscious Lives, the secret of salt: an indigenous journal, and Ashland Magazine.  She can been seen hosting the Southern Oregon community television program, “Transcending Life Challenges.”  A Reiki Master, Lukara is currently studying to be a family constellation practitioner which is based on the work of psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. She now makes her home in Southern Oregon with her family. You can write to Alissa at info@lifechallenges.org  For information: www.ridinggrace.com.