Healing the Wounds of the Past
When we sing our national anthem, our natural confidence shines through, even if we don’t know the words because as Hannah Gatsby, the Australian comedian observed, we are also ‘culturally confident.’ When our national anthem comes on, we get up to stand up because we’re proud of our country and it shows our belief in what we stand for. Summer is when we all shine and is full of barbecues, some with square dances and moonshine. Moonshine may be too edgy for some, but don’t block it because that’s Prohibition and we all want to speak easy when the stars (and stripes) come out. So lift every voice and sing, which is the Black National Anthem, a glorious song, full of emotion and joy, that makes me well up every time I hear it.
After 250 years of being on this soil as both natives and non-natives alike, we’re traveling toward what it means to be American in the 21st century, employing our creativity and ingenuity to unite. We all have flags we raise, waving them to show who we are and this time of year we are especially American as we see the rockets red flare. Francis Scott Key, inspired by a flag waving in the wind, authored the words that became our national anthem. But others may have looked at it with sorrow because white settlers were taking the land they loved. We can all be inspired to look to the future, which is what America was built on, but in times such as these we also need to believe our truths are self-evident and the discourse around the truth is off from the words penned by a man who created nostalgia.
I’m not one to be nostalgic, I prefer to see the bright lights and big city streets,
but those streets also bear names such as Seneca, Algonquin, Wyandot, Apache, Iroquois, Navajo and others. Recompense is long overdue.
“As an American who has lived on the soil in this country, I know we are overdue to rectify the wrongs of the past in our indigenous cultures that are still happening today in the form of anger and hatred, keeping direct money from the people who need it most, abhorring nature in the form of a vacuum of disinterest, and disrespect of elders who have come before. In many ways, we are a backward-looking culture in the US, however, many of us don’t want to look back through our family trees who have left the past behind. But we don’t need to take on the past to heal, we can start with the present because that is where we are right now. … It’s time to start thinking, feeling, and being more informed on how we can help each other, which starts now, not tomorrow. Right now we can effect change through understanding and forgiveness in our indigenous cultures if we pull our heads out of the sand and start moving towards an energy of love which is not a moral obligation, it’s reciprocation. It’s stereotypical to give from the heart and it's a good place to start, but we are all living on borrowed land as the generations that come after us will have to take care of what we are not. Taking care of the one Earth takes care of the many. “ **
Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
When we travel to past battle grounds, we don’t know what happened there before the battle, we only see the history that is presented to us, while the spirit of the past moves to show the beauty surrounding us — we just need to notice it by letting ourselves be free and find each other in love and joy. Sounds like a fairy story, but we will all know it’s real when our wounds are healed from past generations.
What about the free and brave men and women who came before the revolution who were held captive while we sung out as heroes in our own plight? Past generations of indigenous people don’t exist in our history to this day as the men who wrote those books penned a different version of history, enacting it away from cultures who sing out through their belief in a brighter future. Their truths were self-evident in bravery that may not have landed on a battlefield, but in the field of their hearts. Indoctrination practices were used to keep people down, sowing seeds of unworthiness so deep that the plants became destructive with no sunlight. They were (and are) told through words and images that they’re not good enough, keeping them down and feeling out of time.
Freedom falters when we waste the land to construct prisons, data centers, slice and dice communities with highways, and all the other ways men see the ‘right’ to build while constructing a disbelief in the structures of the Earth and nature.
We believe it’s our right to build in any form and at any location no matter who or what already exists there. We’ve built in natural flood plains until the rivers flood us out, so we dam them, causing a current of disbelief by cutting us all off from the natural currency of money that flows like water. In other places, we’ve dammed communities for the sake of ‘progress’ by flooding them unnaturally. The bounded behaviors of our hearts are no more problematic than a river finding its own course through the land. If we are free in our hearts, then our land should be, too. Instead we lay waste to the land, causing our own hearts and abilities to be cut off or feel flooded out with behaviors that keep us from our natural rhythms.
The Earth as Sacred
Are we on our way to repairing the past? Not really, but pardoning American-ism is one way, because we know, but we don’t know. We know in our hearts we are proud, but we also need to stand up for truth, which is another American-ism. The truth can be many things, but when we see people suffering, we can’t look away from their truth. Like back up singers who aren’t in it for the fame or glory, we can let our creative voices shine through and back up to the understanding that we stand on others’ sacred ground. Acknowledgement can help reverse the patterns of the past while rectifying the institutions that keep us all down in fear and degradation.
But it’s in our national anthem to be free and brave, not sallow and wasted. If you look out and see that surrounding you, then it’s time to take a look within because we see what we feel in this mirrored existence of land and water. It’s time to put our minds to work and believe in our hearts to enjoy a brighter future. No, we can’t go backward, but we can acknowledge past wrongs, provide recompense to those who deserve it, and find our futures to be self-evident, not ground down by the mill of inequity or afraid of retribution. How can we all do this? Take the time to understand it in your heart and know that the land supports.
“As humans, we mark our time spent on Earth in different ways and we mark the Earth so that we’re not forgotten.
Graffiti, monuments, or sacred spaces are forms of understanding who we are and how we feel in the continuum of time and space. We have a human need to be remembered because our time spent on Earth is brief, and the Universe is so large. When we visit landmarks or monuments, our sense of time is activated, and we encounter a sense of awe about ourselves, the Earth, and the Universe. The sacred spaces we visit and re-visit become a type of time capsule.”**
Timefields are my methodology of understanding and healing emotional overwhelm. They “coexist in our minds and the land if the emotions are strong enough and if the land can support the energy, which it usually can. Timefields are created not only from negative overwhelm, but also from what we would call positive overwhelm or emotions. Feelings of positivity can overload our nervous systems and get transferred into the Earth if enough people are present. These areas on Earth are our sacred spaces and many of them have a healing vibe.”**
“Some buildings are able to create a sense of the sacred while others try but fall short. Why is it that some do and some don’t? I believe it begins with the designer or architect putting their energy into the project, feeling love for what they are doing, and wanting to build something in integrity with both the land and the people. If the design of the building communicates love and integrity, the people who build it will feel it as well and transfer their emotions and energies of love into the building materials used to form the space. … And when they are done, the people who use and visit it can feel it no matter how much time passes because the energy, or timefield, of the space or place, is continuously fed, this time through the higher vibrations of love and joy rather than the lower vibrations of pain, grief, shame, and suffering. It all works the same way.
Imagine what we could do if we considered the entire Earth a sacred space!
Nothing would feel abandoned, lost, or downtrodden. Everything and every place would spiral upward, pulling us with it. We would reciprocate that energy, feeding it with more love and joy.” **
‘E Pluribus Unum’
Our nation’s motto is e pluribus unum, ‘of the many one,’ also translated as ‘out of many one.’ Either way it speaks to our inclusion of the many cultures and people that exist on this land. We find common ground when we are at our best. We see the ‘other’ as someone who also has hopes, dreams and a family to enjoy their cultural heritage with. When they don’t, we extend a hand and include them in ours, which is what Thanksgiving is all about. It’s in our national stories that people of all ethnic origins can find joy around the dinner table because we all like food! Maybe your food is spicier than mine, but we can find joy in how we prepare the Earth’s bounty. Depending on your ethnic origin, the Thanksgiving meal may have extra dishes than the typical turkey, potatoes and dressing, but we all feel stuffed when we’re done, which is a comforting feeling.
The multi-cultural inclusion in our country is part of a long tradition of many indigenous cultures living free, yet we forget we owe them for being shunted onto ground that was not their native land, forced to speak a language that was not their native tongue, and made to be a one-dimensional culture by giving them a monolithic label. I am not part of these indigenous cultures, but I am native to the Ohio Valley and understand what happens to people when they are forced, or indoctrinated, into a language and culture that is not their own. My own grandmother went through it, felt insecure for being born some place else, made to speak only English unless she was at home. She ended up with agoraphobia, or feeling anxiety about leaving her house because of the extreme insecurity. She didn’t teach my dad her native Italian, a deep regret that left my dad feeling separate from his own family members, which then transferred to me and my siblings. Many immigrant families go through this no matter the country, but indigenous people of the United States weren’t immigrants! This is their native land, their home, and yet they were made to feel separate from it by the people who took their land from them.
Get up, stand up, and speak for reparations of the past and find time to heal by blessing the land you are walking on.
It belongs to all of us, but it also belongs to the people whose ancestors were here before ours. Let’s repair the past while looking to the future without sorrow. When sorrow is passed down through the generations, it moves out and onto the land, leaving a hole. Fill the hole with blessing the people who stood for beliefs that we are only now realizing are more inclusive and empowering than the white settlers who forced them off their own belief systems, keeping the land scarred.
**From my book, Creativity for Soul Healing, publisher: Moonflower, 2026