"I chose scents of singular note: honeysuckle, lilac, Hawaiian white ginger. At a dollar each from the Avon sales catalog, the mother-replacement was happy to provide an occasional gift or two to help bring me a date. I chose the creme perfume in sachet jars with dainty lids: white creme sachet, white jars, white dreams. Could I unpaint the past and make it white enough-purify the family karmic sponge with my little white pots of sachet?
Somehow it seemed a deep ritual of purification from my Native American roots, a type of modern smudge pot to hold in my fisted hand and declare purification for that dingy river town once known as "Little Chicago" in the early decades of the 1900s. I'd had thoughts of bringing down the dusty family Bible, evoking the angels from the book of Psalms. But not even that Bible could have saved us from family karma, from our pack of passed down trauma tied with a never ending stomach knot."
~ Freda M. Chaney, excerpt from chapter 1 HOW DIVINE, Memoir of a Motherless Daughter, (author copyright).
Somehow it seemed a deep ritual of purification from my Native American roots, a type of modern smudge pot to hold in my fisted hand and declare purification for that dingy river town once known as "Little Chicago" in the early decades of the 1900s. I'd had thoughts of bringing down the dusty family Bible, evoking the angels from the book of Psalms. But not even that Bible could have saved us from family karma, from our pack of passed down trauma tied with a never ending stomach knot."
~ Freda M. Chaney, excerpt from chapter 1 HOW DIVINE, Memoir of a Motherless Daughter, (author copyright).