February 1, 2024
This morning when I was supposed to be getting dressed for work, I got the sudden inspiration to move my bedroom furniture around – still, I was able to get to work right on time, amazingly. Not sure why, but it feels empowering, so we shall see if the answer comes as to why. I had to shut my star lights off this morning, but turned them back on because I missed seeing them. So I reprogrammed them to no pattern and they stayed that way til it became too bright to see them. Then I started moving furniture. I even vacuumed – how crazy!
This morning when I was mopping the floor at work, feeling quite rejuvenated, I had a very clear thought about my parents. Although I have expressed this before, it just seemed so clear this morning. I don’t want my parents to be the people the world knew. It was because of them I suffered so much and lost my life to sorrow. This was what became so apparent when I was in the little school house where papa died, feeling the tragedy, but also the terrible hate inspired need to eliminate the threat he became. I understood the reality of the danger I represented and how much easier it would have been had I not survived. I did survive and it is up to me now to live the balance of my life in the manner I choose. I want to go back to having the parents I knew, let the world have who they were outside my circle.
I believe what I have been struggling with the most was living up to the expectations of someone else because they assume I will be like my father. I am my fathers daughter, but we are not very much alike. Not many really know who my mother was, nor do I speak much about her, she always seems to be in the background. It has been my father walking beside me, so in reality I do not really know my mother, she has been largely absent in my life, dead or alive. My father has been my biggest influencer, it is his image I feel I must live up to. Perhaps it was reading the story about his son Ernesto who lives in Cuba, definitely under the shadow of his father, which helped me realize my own isolation. It was felt in La Higuera also as I looked upon the faces of his family knowing I would never join them. I have been trying to live up to the expectation others would have for me to be like him, to have his interests, his passions. But I did not grow up in his world, so how can I step into the role similar to his public image?
I am his daughter, but my father was not the man known to the world, he was just papa. Losing him meant losing everything, so the struggle for me is to try to not step into shoes others might expect of me, but to walk in my own shoes, tell my own story, be myself, the little hummingbird who lit up his world. Although his children grew up under the large shadow of their father, they were also protected under the umbrella of Castro. They were not punished for who they were. The road I walked took me to very different places than his legitimate children, so this is what I must remember. My journey has and always will be different from theirs, possibly never intersecting.
When this chapter of my life began, it seemed the most important thing to make known who I was, be part of history. As the Bolivia experience slowly seeps through my inner being, there is realization my story is important in its own right, I do not need his public persona to identify myself. Could it be as simple as knowing the trip to Bolivia was about me seeing this reality. Let go of who he was to the world, just remember what he was to me. Live in the world of that love.
To think of it now, I understand how traumatic it must have been for me to see images of my father during the last years and in particular months of his life. He was not a soldier to me, so how could I have understood what was shown to me as he walked through the jungle carrying a gun, killing other soldiers, then in the end being shot himself, ending his life. Would I have been able to recognize him as my father? What a horrible impression for a child to have of her father to live with for the rest of her life. To take away all the beauty and love I knew, as I watched him get shot over and over, then thrown in the ground, gravel thrown over him like he was some kind of animal. How does a 6 year old comprehend such cruelty? It is no wonder those images were locked away with the hopes of never recovering them. It is no wonder I preferred walking beside my story so I did not feel the truth.
I believe this was in part why there was so much difficulty for me to connect to my story, walk beside it as I have described. In my mind, as the pieces came back to me, my father was two different people. I did not understand who the soldier was or why I was being shown how much violence there was in his life. My papa was full of love and happiness, so these two images conflicted. Just as there were people who hated him enough to kill him, there were others who loved him enough to follow wherever he led, loyal to the end. I must remember, the amount of time spent with him was such a small fragment of my my life and his. We barely knew each other, yet the bond has proved unbreakable. Bolivia was important because it brought the two images of him together as one for me to feel the truth of my story. Knowing this truth and feeling it – two different things. His name was papa, now I must let go of Che, because he was not the man I knew or understood, yet he was.
Papa wants me to tell my own story, not his – the world already knows the different versions of his story. He wants me to appreciate the importance of what happened to me, share what I learned because of going through it and thereby discover the strength which has been there all along. I was mistaken about him needing to tell the story for his sake. Learning who he was and following the path to Ecuador and Bolivia became important because this journey helped me to identify my own strengths and weaknesses and of course my determination to understand the truth of our connection. The dragon was awakened and would not be satisfied until I recognized this truth. I am not telling my story so people know who my father was in the world. I am telling my story so people know I am my fathers daughter – she has been asleep for most of her life, but awake now and determined to find her way, show others it is possible to escape the life of being a victim. The beauty can return if we allow it.
There is understanding I was lured to Bolivia with the hope of finding proof of my heritage. The dreams and visions led me to believe and hope beyond measure there were items left for me to ensure this, but this did not happen. Although there was a measure of disappointment, something deep inside me understood from the beginning this would be the way of it and so acceptance was not difficult. Change my pattern. This was the message received from the annoying programmable lights in my bedroom which have been changing every day, without my help. Today the are silent as I write, so reflection tells me I have learned what I was meant to. During my first years, the pattern was one of joy and happiness, a perfect world. The next pattern was one of darkness, living with the hate and fear of others. The most recent pattern, once I walked away from my abusive relationship, has been of dependency on what I felt I was supposed to become because of my heritage. Today I begin to shape a new pattern, resembling that of my first years.
February 3, 2024
Years ago when we lived in the cabin near New Denver, we met a woman who offered to help me. She was an intuitive and when she saw us at the market in Nelson, she stopped by to offer me friendship. She did some energy work right there in front of all visiting the market, quite to my surprise. She told me I was so loved, so, so loved, which of course made me cry. The only other thing she said which I can remember now is that I must start wearing lots of color, something I was very shy to do. The last thing I have ever wanted was to be noticed. Wearing bright colors would attract attention, but it struck me at the time how similar her comment was to Grama Grizzly’s, who said I had to be seen, be more in the world. I cannot remember the name of the woman met at the market, but I see now how her comment was related to my fathers name for me. Mi pequeña colibrí, my little hummingbird. So in other words dress like my name. This is quite special to at last connect this dot, seeing the importance of enjoying the colors of life. Eventually this one suggestion would open the door to what I have now become.
February 4, 2024
No dancing lights now for the second day, very interesting! The book is ready to go to the printers today which is also incredible timing, considering what I wrote yesterday. As I scanned the revision sent to me last night, I read some fragments which caught my attention, one of them being the time when I was told to “write the book, you have the time”. And here we are going to print. There is definitely a different feel attached to the book and what it represents. The story has great power, I understand this now. An unbound copy will be sent to me this week sometime, giving me the opportunity to get a peek at how it will look. This is important because for the first time, my story has been shown the professional respect it deserves, so the inner glow has returned after a long absence. I am content to sit here watching the snow fall knowing another chapter has been finished.
February 5, 2024
Third day – no blinking lights.
I began thinking about my difficulty speaking spanish, thinking I would have been fluent in the language as a child. Then today, I realized how I would have only been 2 1/2 years old when I was taken, so how much would I really have learnt. I was trying to think about my children at that age and how many words they had learned. This is one of the little details which have been bothering me, why I could not pick up spanish easier. But a child of 2 does not have many words in their vocabulary. Yes, this has made me feel better! Such a small thing, but it shows how much I expect of myself.
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