Shaman

(A talking cure, the healing power of Shamanic dialogue).

Little girl died.

Shaman heals
Dead little girl's mother

by hearing dialogue
from the little girl.

Dead little girl arrives
from the underworld.
"Mother, where are my
gold noserings?"

Shaman says, "They
burned in the funeral
pyre."

Dead little girl says
"Mother, you were
mean to me. You
scolded me and
called me Scar-girl,
Leper-girl. You didn't
feed me."

Shaman says,"She didn't
mean it."

Dead little girl says, "I
want my necklaces ... they
were my only friends ... I
used to cripple around
bent over.  I couldn't
stand up straight.  Why
can't I have my nose
rings?  I have to go
digging, and leveling
earth (in the underworld).

"My mother gave it to
me in her womb, it's in
all of our family.  I came
out with scars all over.
The illness was passed
on to me."

Shaman says, "Then don't
pass it on, don't you give it
to your mother and little
sisters."

Dead little girl says, "If I pass
it on, I pass it on: that's how
it goes."

Shaman says, "Your cough, your
choking, your scars, your wounds,
don't pass them on."

Dead little girl says, "My mom
doesn't care enough about me. (returns
to the underworld).

Dead Little girl's mother is devastated.
The Dead little girl reproaches a mirror
image of what is the mother's own
self-reproach.

It is the evolution of the Shaman's
dialogue that comes the healing power
of Shamanism.

Cruel conversation matches feelings
of the mourner.

Eventually Dead little girl underworld
will forgive her mother and her illness
disclined to pass to her relatives.

Copyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist