Rebirth

I was fortunate enough to have been raised with my great-grandmother, Myrtle, an avid gardener who was 77 years old when I was born.  She went barefoot everywhere, dumpster dove before it was cool, and never said a bad word about anyone, even when I believed they deserved it.  In her backyard garden in North Portland, I learned from her the inherent value of all living things and the interconnectedness of the natural world.  She taught me that all creatures deserve to be treated with care, respect, and dignity, and that compassion and empathy make us stronger, not weaker.  She taught me how to read, take care of myself, and stand up for what is right.  The most important thing I learned from her was that I wanted to leave the earth a little bit better, healthier, and safer, than it was when I got here.

My great-grandmother provided some of the only stability I had in my life, and her home was a refuge during times of turmoil.  She passed away when I was 20, and at that time I had just graduated high school (finally) and was struggling with depression, PTSD, and years of pent up anger.  I was devastated by her death, and I did not really know what to do with myself and my life.  I fell into a deep depression.  I decided to go to college, where I changed majors five or six times in the first two years, got kicked out of numerous classes because I was unable to keep my opinions to myself and resented being told what to do, and eventually flunked out and lost my financial aid.

Part of the reason for flunking out was of course my loud, bitchy mouth, but the other reason was that my uncle was admitted into the ICU and I spent every day there until he died (another story for another day...).  I was mad when he died.  I was mad at him.  I felt like he wasted his life and died too young, though I realize now that it was his life to waste and it was none of my business.  But at the time I was angry with him (I was generally angry with everyone, everything, and the entire universe) and I ran away to Tucson for two months to clear my head and get some perspective.  I have no idea why people go to the desert to gain clarity, but for whatever reason, it works.  I realized that I had been wasting my life, by being angry and mean and depressed and stewing and brooding and pissing people off at every turn.  I was stuck, stagnant, in a quagmire of bullshit and I would continue wasting my life if I did not get unstuck.  If I could not let go of the anger built up from my past, I had to at least figure out a way to turn it into something constructive.

I returned to Portland.  I started volunteering at different places around town and got my first canvassing job with the Sierra Club.  At first I was just registering voters and taking a survey, then I started campaigning against a ballot measure that would pretty much destroy two state forests if it won, which it did (even almost ten years later, drive from Portland to Tillamook or Seaside to see the aftermath...it makes my stomach churn...).  That was my first taste of the extreme disappointment that can be associated with trying to protect the environment, but I did not let it stop me.  Rather, it started a fire deep inside me.  For a while after the election, I tried other types of work, but nothing brought me any fulfillment.  After a long term relationship ended, I felt completely lost and went back to canvassing to find myself.  I was afraid of wasting my life again, and I wanted to be someone my great-grandmother would be proud of, the woman she taught me to be. 

The next two years of my life were dedicated to protecting the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  I threw myself into this work completely, at the expense of my mental and physical health.  (Read more about this here.)  It was very rewarding work, yet ultimately depressing.  At the age of 28, I was completely burned out and jaded.  My anger was eating me alive.  I had to do something about it before I completely lost my mind, so I moved 2700 miles away from my home and the forests I had vowed to protect.  This time I went not to the desert of Arizona but to the mountains of Appalachia.

I wanted to start over in a place where no one knew me and where I would not be constantly reminded of my past.  I had no idea how hard it would be and what challenges I would face.  In the first six months I lived there, I cried a lot.  I cried at home, I cried during class, I cried in the kitchen at work, I would drive to Swallow Falls State Park and sit on a rock and cry.  I feel like all I did was cry.  Somewhere inside me, a dam had burst, and 28 years of repressed emotion came out in the form of tears.  I stopped brushing my hair, I lost almost thirty pounds, and I became a complete mess. 

Then I was offered the chance to take a class in Costa Rica during the winter intersession.  I of course jumped on it.  I needed a grand adventure, but mostly I needed to escape the terrible cold of real winter, for which I was ill-prepared.  Before I left, I made a wish list of what I wanted to experience most.  I wanted to hold a snake, see a monkey, and most importantly, see a bat.  The first two were easy and happened right away.  After a week of mud, beans and rice, and intense studying, I finally got my chance to fulfill the third wish.  One evening I received an invitation to accompany the French-Canadian students into the jungle to see what they called “les chauves-souris,” or “bald mice.”  François, their instructor and long-time bat researcher, asked the students to speak English so I could understand as they used dichotomous keys to identify each bat.  One by one, the bats were weighed, taken out of the cotton holding bags, had their forearms measured, and then were fed.   For most of the evening, we saw three species of bats: Carollia perspicillata, Artibeus lituratus, and Carollia castanea. 

Toward the end of the night, François removed a small bat (Glossophaga soricina) from a purple holding bag, examined it closely, uttered a few words in French which led to a collective gasp, and turned to me.  “She is pregnant,” he said, “You may touch her.”  I did not count on getting to actually touch a bat, and I certainly did not think doing so would have such a profound effect on me.  Slowly I reached out and gently touched the round, swollen belly of the tiny creature, and instantly burst into tears.  I felt the unborn baby inside her and at that moment something deep down inside me changed forever.

According to the lore of animal totems, a bat flying into one’s life signifies the death of an unhealthy part of the soul and a subsequent rebirth into the people we are meant to be, coming out of a long darkness, breaking down of the former self through intense tests, and facing of our greatest fears.  When I felt the belly of the pregnant bat, I had what I refer to as my “Bilbo Baggins Moment,” a moment that changed me so deeply I could never go back to what I was before, and why would I want to?