The turtles are crashing in to one another, demanding my attention as the winds gust and the gray clouds over the bay threaten to move in and drench the Earth. The 5 wooden turtles are the hanging ornaments on a wind chime that dances in my front yard. They hang from a thin log on varying lengths of jute cord, their constant, intended collisions offering up pleasantly hollow percussive beats. It was purchased, and hung, in honor of my mom who had an unexplained love & fascination of turtles.

I look up Turtle in my Animal Spirit Guide book and see the following excerpts and possible connections — “seek self reliance, slow down and pace yourself, you may have an increased sensitivity to the earth’s vibrations, shield yourself from distractions”. I contemplate the shamanic characteristics of my mom’s favorite creature. They make sense, my mom having bore eight children, subsequently becoming a grandmother to 17 and great grandmother to 18+. She was not left too much time to answer her dominating creative callings. Pacing herself was near impossible, and distractions were constant. Her sensitivity to the earth’s vibration were apparent, reflected in her demand to be in the woods and on the lake every summer. Our ritual of traveling north to escape the city every summer mingled with her need to be closer to God.

Upon random sightings I often consult my Animal Spirit Guide book to see what revelations might lie on the page. While some people find them BS, I don’t and, in fact, I seek out connective meanings in the characteristics of the animal sighted, or dreamt about, and the proposed mystical meaning the animal has historically represented to the seers and the shamans that sought spiritual guidance from nature’s bounty, specifically in animal encounters. I would not say the passages are concretely prophetic, but most of the time they shine a light on an avenue of insight I would not have considered, revealing a strong, sometimes remarkably prescient, bolt of coincidence surrounding my immediate emotional and/or physical circumstances.

My mom didn’t need to know what the meaning of the turtle was to a distant shaman. She was a clairvoyant herself though not many knew this. She trusted she was guided. She loved watching turtles in both, the fresh water north woods lakes of her summer home, and in the waves of the Atlantic ocean that she, for a while at least, dove into yearly around the time of Spring’s arrival. She connected to them on a spirit level and her ability to flow through any body of water with a grace unparalleled made a possible past life camaraderie come alive in my mind.

I have inherited my mom’s draw towards mysticism. I strive to define this life in non-physical terms, seeking spiritual meaning, often futilely, in everyday occurrences. My mom knew when I was conceived, then born, that we were spiritual peers. Because I was a “late” baby I grew up in a different way from my 7 siblings, if only defined by the time I spent with her one on one. Many evenings we sat at the table overlooking the lake, just the 2 of us, sharing a meal discussing how it feels to be a soul in a human body. We covered heaven and what might happen when we leave the physical body. She revealed her frustration with the patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic church that had formed, then dominated, her God connection soaking her in notions of shame, guilt and projections of what evil may arrive should she not follow their teachings. I knew it was the time of my conception that shifted her. Another baby, but this one would be the symbol of her crumbling religiosity and of her own true spiritual birth. Her connection to God would no longer be defined by another human. It was now all hers.

Some might interpret these conversations too heavy for a young person, but I understood. It was a sharing that I knew was a freeing up for her, a stating aloud that which had before been trapped and festering. I felt the release. For me it was permission to think outside the confines of an organization and create my own distinct connection to the divine. When the number of people in our the house would swell I would sit on the giant boulder that sat adjacent to our house in the trees, hidden from all eyes and I would find calm by watching the lake lap at the shore and my imagination would soar. My appreciation and respect for the random animals that would trot through our yard grew as I began to see them not as things to fear or dominate, but as beings to share the Earth with. I read about the callings of the original Americans, the indigenous peoples of this land and their perspective that animals lead us towards the deeper parts of ourselves, the non-tangible part, the part that has, since the time I landed on the Earth, been my north star.

I consider the wind chime turtles demanding my attention this morning a sign that my mom is with me. She is in the turtles, in the wind, in the rippled waters, the gray clouds hovering and the blue sky beyond. She is calling me to that place deep within, as she has done ever since I can remember,
“C’mon in Trish, swim like the turtles, the water is beautiful”

Tricia Schwaba May 17, 2020