Do we have the ability to influence our ancestors? Or our future descendants? On a restless night several years ago, I found these thoughts changing the course of my novel.
I started out inspired to write about my Great Grandmother Emily who settled during the 1849 Gold Rush in the Sacramento Valley. But I didn’t want to write yet another biography of a head-strong, determined western woman. The book shelf’s already full of those! So I stepped back to look at the larger landscape.
Of course…we’re all spirit, and if time transcends the here and now, we all have access to each other’s lives. What if I could slip back into my great-grandmother’s life and tell her what she’d need to know that might ward off future ecological devastation? Or hear my great-granddaughter imploring me to build now what she’d need to survive when she returns to our abandoned homestead in the far future?
And what if we’re all connected by the vision of an ancient woman of wisdom who saw it all? Shima’a found a portal that transcended time. From the heartwood of an oak tree (that as an acorn grew from her heart when she died), a small oak writing desk became her means of inspiring women to gather their power and create new ways of living together. The old, aggressive masculine constructs have run their course. If earth and humanity are to survive, the feminine has to ascend.
© All materials copyright Shirley DicKard, 2012 – 2013, except as otherwise noted.
Shirley DicKard 