One of the last great psilocybin excursions, November 2019, I must’ve said oh god 100 times. Every time I’d be amazed that someone pretty atheistic would be opting for this particular phrase. Nothing seemed to encapsulate what I was experiencing better than that. The trip was incredible, and it was awful. Dakini came and enveloped me. Things could be hilarious (laughing about spectacles actually helping with vision) and then tragic (sobbing from the awareness of so much impending death). The trip occurred two months before Covid got on the radar. Two months before my oldest friend was killed in a hit and run in Oakland.

There are other types of oh god, like the ‘oh god’ I say out of shock at my own naivete. I recall muttering, ‘oh god’ when I realized my MFA degree and connections, or lack thereof, would not pay off my student loan. There’s the ‘oh god oh god oh god’ I ruminate when my relationship is careening downhill and I think about all the red flags I admired on the ascent. There’s also the ‘oh god’s’ groaned in frustration of having talent in fantastical notions, of not getting enough attention, and when I forget to take off my cloak of invisibility. One of the worst is the ‘oh. god.’ said when I wonder if I led myself astray on my life path; the other bad one is the sinking ‘oh god’ uttered when I rue sharing myself with other people. Apparently, all these oh gods are short for what the fuck was I thinking? Or how foolish am I? Or maybe they’re pleas to the divine, as in ‘oh god, save me from myself.’

i

When I was a kid, I somehow acquired a needlepoint kit depicting a rainbow with a cluster of balloons arching over the words “I Love” and a space underneath it. Wouldn’t you know I completely took to overthinking this. What did I love, most supreme? Family? -Seemed trite. Candy? -Obvious. Cats? -Yeah but what did they have to do with the other elements in the piece? (Oh shit, possible artist alert). A cluster of balloons like grapes? -Depicted. Nature? -Possible contender. Trees? -Too granola. Gymnastics? -Pain. Piano? -Yeah but not exclusively. What the hell, I thought about this for at least two weeks, bothered that the things I loved didn’t sound right by themselves. I really contemplated and came to the conclusion that what I loved most of all was: Love. 

Great, let’s fill ‘er in: I Love Love. Jesus, that sounds funny and looks awful! I was back to square one. Well, let’s think about alternate words for love. Ardor? Affection? Desire? Sweetness? No no no, nothing works. The word is perfection – it has a ‘v’ in it – and the needlepoint had claimed it already. What to do? I did what any kid would do and asked a trusted adult who wasn’t their parents. My Aunt Susan happened to be visiting and working on her own needlepoint, so I figured this was a sign to inquire. She listened to my condensed explanation of knowing that I loved love but needed a different word for love. She thought for a moment and said “Well, some people think that god is love,” and I took to tossing this one over in my mind.

I’m sure I thought of this as a possibility before I asked my Aunt, so when she said it I knew this was the answer although I also knew it didn’t sit well with me. While we went to an Episcopalian church and followed Christian holidays and were baptized as children within the church, we weren’t really Christian with a capital ‘c’, if you know what I mean. It just seemed fake or unnecessary, and the older we got the more it seemed obvious that it was passé for us as a family.  Ultimately, I resisted the g-word because I knew that when I conjured the word ‘god’ I saw a human male form. Big daddy or whatever. Maybe even some kind of weird Brahma-like figure carved out of wood, if you want to get the details of my mind’s eye. 

I didn’t like this word God, but I was going to stitch it in the space nonetheless. This was painful for someone like me, a lover of words and their sounds and accompanying resonances, but a) I had to finish the piece and b) I knew what I meant by my word choice. Even if nobody else did – what the fuck, I knew that very few people were actually going to come in my room and see it. We were beyond show and tell at this point. It was only three letters and over pretty quickly. No more overthinking now! -I was relieved. I set the piece on my wicker tchotchke wall hanger and let my existential burden lay with it. 

ii

“I guess I’ll be seeing you in the battle between heaven and hell!” was said to my son a couple years back at school. At that time, my son was really bothered by kids getting in his spiritual business. God bless him! My partner became notably irked when we conveyed the story to him later that day, upset that other kids were finding something different and odd about our son. “What are you teaching them about god?!” he implored. I was aghast – everyone knows I hardly ever use this word, and I defended myself with this fact. “Why don’t you teach them what you want them to know about god?” was my closing statement. I’m pretty sure I went on a diatribe about religious freedom and the importance of tolerance; and, if tolerance was expected out of all the other religions, why did it seem like it was never taught to Christian children? 

It wasn’t like my kids didn’t know about Jesus. I realized one day while they were under five that I had taken to saying “Jesus Christ” quite a bit as a way to let off steam. Although I’m a foul mouthed, whiskey drinking dame, I held my tongue (and ingestion of spirits due to breastfeeding) during the language building years. Can’t have toddlers parroting potty words, right? So, JC became a suitable replacement for the time. When we moved to rural Colorado, I realized that the amount of white Christians everywhere signaled that it was time to teach my kids a little about Jesus so they didn’t come off as total assholes. The lesson went something like this: “Some people believe that a man named Jesus lived a long time ago and was so incredible at love and forgiveness that he changed the world and became someone people wanted to remember and celebrate.”  

One day a few years after this memory, my son made some comment out the blue like “Man, that Jesus guy must’ve been pretty amazing.” I replied, “Oh, did someone teach you about him in class today?” and he said “No, you did.” I was most impressed – thanks for listening, buddy! We had a conversation about it, and he could understand Jesus as a historical figure but also appreciate why we didn’t subscribe to the lord and savior bit. I mean, there’s others besides Jesus, and I glazed over a few of these, not to mention the unknowns. Besides, Mother Nature was our leader, especially at that point in childhood. And while I can appreciate Jesus and even get a little misty eyed thinking about his massive affect, I get equally misty eyed thinking about how the Christian religion totally fucked women over, and I will never get on board with that business. 

But here I am, about to get a little confusing, because just the other day on a brief junket out of town, I found my old, sent-from-a-penpal virgin Mary statuette sitting just outside my daughter’s backpack. What is this doing here? -I’m pleasantly surprised that my daughter would select this to accompany us on our journey, a figurine representing love and protection. This Mary statuette was buddies with the success Buddha when the kids were toddlers. They liked to stroke her robes and tickle his tummy. Around this time, I’m embarrassed to admit it took me this long to realize it, I could finally see that Mary’s robes and hands pressed in prayer hinted that this is a yonic figure. Why did it take me bearing two children to realize this? 

Full disclosure about me: To myself, I refer to myself as ‘undercover undercover.’ That is, I’m a double agent of undercover information, seeking to solve the deepest mysteries of my life through memory recalls and word ruminations. I’m constantly wondering, ‘why did they say it like that?’. I do tend to believe that the divine speaks through people’s word choice and seemingly random anecdotes. For instance: A few years back, we acquired a new vehicle and when it hit time for an oil change, because it was synthetic my oil-changing partner bade me to take the car in to a lube joint in town. I comply, the kids and I hang in the office during the change and when it’s time to pay up, the owner of the joint – a lithe, older man with an unkempt beard holds decent eye contact and starts off with a slight apology: “Not to assume your religious persuasion, I couldn’t help but notice some Buddhist items in your vehicle, and … have you ever been out to Tara Mandala?” I smile immediately because I’ve known of this place for years and always meant to visit. I say as much and, holding the deep eye contact he says, “It’s incredible. There’s some really intense feminine energy out there. My wife and I go, and the feminine energy is really intense.” Coming from a lube guy! I say, without thinking, “I’m gonna have to check that out.” Instead of poring over his words, I’m left thinking, why did I say it like that?

Years later, and still without a visit to Tara Mandala, I ponder the timing of my conversation with this guy. Our interaction was during a rough period in my relationship, in my home. Another full disclosure: My partner isn’t the most keen on divine feminine energy. It’s easiest to say, ‘he was raised in the South’ as a sufficient explanation.  He can make pejorative comments about women drivers or, worse, say something like, ‘where did you get that idea in your head?’ when offended. Yikes. How does it take a decade to bring out the worst in your baby daddy? I know he’s conflicted between his acculturation in the South and his escape from southern acculturation, but come on, why would you choose a woman who doesn’t shave, doesn’t use the g-word, and doesn’t believe in marriage if you weren’t willing to shift out of southern man fourth gear and into full feminist overdrive? How can a Boomer lube dude with a ZZ Top beard be more evolved than my Millennial long-term BF? 

Tara Mandala was founded by North America’s first Buddhist ordained, female lama, Lama Tsultrim, and her husband. I came to find her book in a fire-code offending, used bookstore in Durango during an escape from the emotional instability in our house. Daddy was mad, so I made a day-trip to another town with our fiery-tongued daughter. We stop by the bookstore to get kids’ books, and when I find myself in the Buddhist section, I wonder if one of her books is here, and Bingo! Indeed it is. What timing. The introduction hits every raw nerve, every secret hurt that I am holding in as the partner of a conflicted southern man. She talks of Dakini – yes, I know them, they came to me during my trip and helped me see that we weren’t as separate as I initially thought: I saw a woman dancing, and thought ‘how enchanting,’ and the mushroom voices said ‘you, too.’ And I was like, ‘nahhhh’ and they were like ‘yeahhhh!’ and I was like ‘woahhhhh.’ Pop Sugar found this out, somehow, and started getting their belly dancing workout video in my YouTube feed within a week of this. Bought a skirt off Amazon a few months later.

iii

I read the biography of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain around the time that set the first paragraph. I don’t know what led me to it – an algorithm, honestly – but I knew I had to read it at first glance. I never thought I cared about her story, but there was so much for me to chew on, so much for me to admire in her courage, not to mention Mr. Twain’s own convictions. Even though her faith was framed by the Catholic church, I could find a common bond between the two of us: a belief in love and an ability to hear voices. For while I’m uncomfortable with the g-word, it’s not like I don’t believe in anything or even that I believe in nothing… I believe in the meaning coming through nature. It’s people whose words and intentions seem to be a little unbelievable. And if only Joan was a little more suspicious, like me, she wouldn’t have turned around from her path home after her initial success. 

I’m not a martyr, not trying to be, but admittedly I wasn’t very aware of the mother-martyr connection until I was waist-deep in it. I believed that choosing love and giving the most was the walk for me, as myself and as a mother. I don’t really know what else to choose or espouse to, nothing else sounds right. Bjork’s lyric “women like us, we strengthen most host-like. When in doubt, give” repeats in the song and in my mind. While I now know that I’m not to give too much to the wrong people, I’m going to look for the signs and listen to the voices to bring me in harmony with the one to whom I can give most. Oh, god… was that too much?