Natural Healing
Natural Healing
November 1974. Formal instruction in Transcendental Meditation. I breathed deeply and absorbed the pungent incense and the dusky wood smoke from a recent fire. Quiet breaths and the vibration of my mantra. Thoughts came and went. My newborn son swaddled in white cotton. . .The endless stream of tears. . .Swirling the pastel pills with my index finger. . .All things in transition. . .From the roots of thought I see the universe unfold. . .And the moon makes the phosphorous shine. I glided out of the front door into a sparkling new world. The ambient light approached midnight blue in tone and in the cool linger of twilight, the nighthawks began their day.
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June 1977. It began, as it always did, in the Duke Forest. I was dressed for an eight-hour tripping expedition. Cargo shorts, long-sleeved T-shirt, Earth shoes, no socks, backpack with the basics: sunglasses, water, fruit. A half tab of acid under my tongue. I walked to the woods. My attention began to detach, wander, and small details of the landscape jumped out. The leaves on the basswood shimmered. My field of perception became spherical and much larger. Must continue deeper, to hear the dampening effect of warm, moist air at my feet. A tangible presence, it lives amidst the understory and detritus of the forest floor.
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Could a mother ever forget her child?
1969 in pre-Choice America. As the lonely, only child of upwardly mobile military parents, after our eighth move in my thirteen short years, I longed to have lasting friends, to feel settled. Our latest move had landed us at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia. Military kids are raised to be resilient, and as an officer’s child within the insular domain of the military base, I bonded with a group of nomadic kids and enjoyed a singular year of discovery in a land of sail boats and destroyers. I grew tanned by the pool, tried my first beer, and fell in love. The handsome sixteen-year-old lifeguard, hair tinged green with chlorine, nose zinc-oxided, arm and leg hair sun-bleached, was a military-world soulmate.
Eighteen months later, my parents would make the decision to banish me to a “home for unwed mothers,” where I was given a fake name, identity erased. I was required to give up my baby for adoption at birth, and it was made clear that the only way I would fully be allowed back into the family fold was if I pretended that my pregnancy, my son’s birth, and his relinquishment never happened.
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How does one heal from trauma, especially trauma that goes unacknowledged? As I began to craft my memoir, I realized that my college LSD use, decades before guided psychedelic trips, along with my Transcendental Meditation practice, had initiated my healing – though I didn’t realize it at the time. LSD expanded my perspective, showed me the interconnectedness of all things, and let me understand that I was greater than my pain. Meditation encouraged thoughts without judgment, permitting me times of escape from my guilt and shame. And over the course of many years, those gains were interwoven with the natural world as my steady companion.
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Our wounds aren’t strictly emotional or psychological – they can be organic, as organic as earth, loam, and roots connecting to roots. And healing can begin in the dirt, sending up the baby green shoots that signal a new phase of rejuvenation. As I look back, being outdoors were the times in which I was truly fed. The trees and creatures of Duke Forest, a magnificent magnolia on campus, and the fragile yet surprisingly strong, resilient, and resourceful birds in my life, all served as my guardians.
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I began to walk in the Duke Forest every day, all day. I had dropped out for one semester, no classes to attend, so why not? I experimented with exploring the forest drug-free. Would their absence impair my perceptions? Would it be boring as hell? To my surprise, the lake was still window clear and the bullfrog croaked baritone. One afternoon, I surprised a sharp-shinned hawk on a low branch, and it flashed through the trees, beckoning me to follow. I kept walking into cold rain and snow. I got lost more than once and barely made it out of the forest without hypothermia. My eyesight grew sharp, and I could see the bats and nighthawks in the near dark.
In the gathering twilight one evening, I thought I heard his then seven-year-old-voice. I stopped to listen, knew this couldn’t be real, but with crystalline clarity, understood he was out there.
..
Tracy Mayo lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and Flat-Coated Retriever. Her memoir, Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self will be released by Vanguard Press on March 28, 2024. www.tracymayo.com
CHILDLESS MOTHER: A Search for Son and Self
“In her courageous and beautifully rendered memoir, Childless Mother, Tracy Mayo breaks ranks with the institutionalized secrecy, shame, and silencing that shattered countless pregnant girls and young women prior to legalized abortion and open adoption.” — KATE MOSES, author of Wintering, A Memoir, and Mothers Who Think
1970, pre-Choice America. After their eighth move in her thirteen short years, the lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, Tracy Mayo longed for a normal adolescence — to have friends, to feel rooted. What she got was a pregnancy at fourteen and exile to a maternity home. There, she bore not only a child but also the weight of the culture’s shame. She was required to surrender her baby boy at birth and pretend it never happened. Twenty-two years later, her longing undiminished, Tracy set out to find him — and perhaps, through her search, to reclaim her self. Are we moving back to a world where women have no agency, stripped of control of their bodies and their futures? More than fifty years after one frightened, grief-stricken young mother was ordered to forget, Tracy’s story is even more important to remember.
“Mayo creates a compelling nonfiction narrative that effectively conveys her feelings as a child and as an adult dealing with the fallout of choices her parents made…examines the complexities of reuniting with children given up for adoption — including birth parents’ acceptance of, and by, the families that raised their children — in a nuanced and insightful manner.” — Kirkus Reviews
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Category: On Writing
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