NEGLECTING THE BABY

After my son died, I had years of dreams in which I would be tending a baby, then called into some other activity, then would remember the baby and not be able to find him. My subconscious was working on overtime with guilt.

My relationship with MEDICINE ROCK sort of parallels this process. It has been my baby, birthed in February, that I've been tending every day which includes sending out copies, setting up readings, trying to get book reviews and entering "first novel" contests. The last two weeks has seen a lull in the activity as I continued training for a mental health center position, and concentrated on some health issues. And yes, guilt is arising. I know from Sun Bear, and subsequently from my own life, that if you don't water a creative project, it just don't grow!

I'll be in Billings, Montana, on Saturday to say hello to the Independent Bookstore there (Barjon's), but the time frame was too short to set up a reading. (Maybe they'll buy a few copies.) And I'm setting up readings in the Flathead area in late August. Our local "health food" store asked for a display, which I thought was so lovely of them. And there's always the web, of course.

When Sun Bear would come to a standstill on a project he was invested in, he would start going around stirring up information. So my next phone call will be to a book agent who works on an international scale. A visit with her should give me a jump start. And perhaps contacting the two Bear Tribe folks in Spokane who contacted me but couldn't come to the reading.

The fertilizer for doubling my effort is in the amazing feedback I'm receiving from my readers. The most common: "It brought back so many memories of that time." Or "I couldn't figure out how you were going to end it, because obviously your life goes on!" (But of course, we have phases, don't we?) And another one cropping up is how different that era was from our current political climate. As if yeast and honey had been dropped into flour and water, the culture was bubbling up; the bacteria were gobbling and growing in the women's culture, in minority cultures, in awareness of the environmental issues we had created, in sexual morays...EVERYTHING in motion. And we all thought the lasting changes would be made within five or maybe ten years. That was adolescent thinking!

Here we are with a President who refused to bring race into his campaign, with an environmental spill unprecedented in history, with a planet undergoing catastrophic changes, with women still being raped, with children still being abused, with aging baby boomers who don't want to attend meetings.

Do I feel the pangs of guilt? Perhaps we should be called the guilty generation even though many of us have worked long hours in various political and cultural efforts and still do. We didn't create this, but marching or not, we are deeply committed to creating the new paradigms that will move us all forward.

In the meantime I sent books to Wind Daughter to sell at the North Carolina Medicine Wheel Gathering in July. I've sold well over 100 since March. And I'm going to keep on keepin' on towards compassion, justice and book sales!