BBSH In Touch

BBSH In Touch

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In 1996 I graduated from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. People often wonder about that, because I have a ritzier intellectual pedigree than I deserve–Yale BA and Columbia MFA–considering what an American mutt I am. Considering that my mother was a high school drop-out and my grandmother was an itinerant crop picker who didn’t make it past third grade. And I went after traditional learning with an unholy passion.

But my mother cherished education. She got up every morning before 5:00 to read, and still does. She went back to obtain an equivalency degree. She did Lifelong Learning work and amassed a number of college credits. My grandmother read the newspapers every day and kept abreast of everything; she was one of the shrewdest people I ever met. She was also a font of folk wisdom, which she had pre-sifted in her mind to separate the chaff from the wheat. She would make some claim… about cod liver oil, or how healthy beans were, or UFO’s, or how it meant something when geese flew a certain way… and my mother and I would roll our eyes at her. A year later, Granny Bee would turn out to be right. Five years after her death, my mother and I are still discovering the truth in some of her outlandish claims.
This is all by way of saying, the BBSH is the Ivy League of healing schools. Admittedly, there aren’t a vast number of healing schools out there. Hands-on or spiritual healing is still a niche field. That is slowly changing; there are Brennan schools now in Japan and Europe, as well as the US. 
What makes the BBSH so great is that it is well-organized (with military precision, if a Navy brat says so). There is a close attention to both detail and purpose, and there is an unswerving and radiant intention for integrity. It’s a mystery school with a left brain twist for the modern age, a crucible, a psycho-spiritual boot camp. Not that it’s a perfect institution. I have some serious criticisms of the school, perhaps for another post. But then, neither Yale nor Columbia were perfect, either. But all three were great.
All three institutions gave me something, some core part of myself that I wouldn’t have experienced if I hadn’t passed through their doors. I am grateful.
And to any BBSH healers who might read this: Salve, welcome.

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In my next lifetime

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In my next lifetime, when I come back, I will ski more and worry less.
I will begin every dinner with dessert, and it will be dark chocolate,
or something gooey
and coconut.
I will choose dresses for color and not for whether or not they make
me look slim. I am thinking yellow,
purple, and butterfly prints
in chintz.
I will start using sun-block when I am 12, the same age
when I will begin practicing
yoga,
because it makes me feel so peaceful and good.

In my next lifetime, when I come back, I will choose
a comfortably upper-middle-class family to host my wandering
soul. I’ve seen that great wealth imposes anxiety
and demands of its own. Too little to work for
ruins people. So does poverty, my old scourge.
The lack of money–for graduate school, for good doctors,
for guitar lessons, for the occasional porterhouse steak and soul-ravishing
trip to Paris–
is one of the great evils that besets humanity.

In my next lifetime, and I hope the Earth isn’t ruined before
I make it back, I will play outside more, which can mean lying
on my back beneath an oak tree and reading something
luscious
like Dickens
or Yeats
or a cheesy romance novel. I will spend more time staring into the sky
and no time at all on a therapist’s couch.

I will say
“Yes!”
more often and do the dishes only when they’re piled up to the ceiling.
I will turn off the TV but go to every sci-fi movie
that opens. I will choose more friends who understand
that I’m originally from
the planet Xetron
and that this beautiful blue and green orb
is just a way station on my peregrinations. They will laugh more with me
than at me and they will understand the value of
spontaneous dance.
I have only a few of those kind in this life.
I miss them all the time.

In my next lifetime, since
I’m not enlightened
and I will have to return to complete the balance
I will say “I love you” to the people I love:
on the hour, every hour. Even when I hate them.
And especially when they hate me.

In my next lifetime I will be
the luminous me
I always wanted to be now, and somehow fell short of.
It wasn’t for the absence of an open heart or effort.
Rather, I tried too hard, and let gravity weigh
me down. So in my next life, I will let my
open heart lift, and shine me to everyone I meet.

Traci L. Slatton

Videoclips

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Yesterday I was in Austin, Texas filming little clips about my novel IMMORTAL for youtube and internet TV. It was good fun; I can declaim at length about this book. The bio clip was harder. Talking about myself seems so much less interesting. I don’t know why it should be when that is, essentially, what I do in this blog. Do I prefer my opinions to my self? The inconsistencies of my own narcissism?

Mother’s day sentiments must still linger in my house, like the happy scent of sunlit oranges in a bowl. My middle daughter left a sign for me on the door: “I love you!! I will see you when I get home.” So good!

Mother’s Day

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I love being a mother. But it often sucks.

My three daughters are great kids, who’ve caused me endless trouble, anxiety, heart-ache, and sorrow. They’ve also made me proud many, many times: proud of their good grades and accomplishments, proud of their generosity and kindness, proud of their moral choices. And they’ve given me bountiful love, the kind that seeps in and exalts the heart. Best of all, they’ve provided me with so many opportunities to love. I love loving them, and how that has made me a better person. I try to be the best Traci I can be, because I want the best for them.
But it’s never easy. I’ve got a fraught situation with a difficult former husband. And, like many other mothers, I have to deal with therapists and sometimes even teachers or guidance counselors who think they know my kids better than I do. They don’t. 45 minutes once a week on a therapist’s couch is not the same, and never will be, as 24/7/365 of a kid feeling free to be her worst, most demanding, most selfish, most regressed self. One of my daughters is a master at seeming to be the most reasonable, most mature, most insightful young woman in the whole entire world. She’s fooled some shrinks with that act. Note that these are shrinks who do not have kids of their own. In some real way, it’s not an act; she is that reasonable, mature, and insightful. However. She also throws tantrums, lies, distorts, manipulates, demands, etc. She falls apart or otherwise engineers a disaster and expects me to pick up the pieces–and I usually do. I’ve come to believe that anyone who hasn’t seen her throw a tantrum doesn’t know the real kid. 
And I am very skeptical of therapists or psychiatrists who don’t have children of their own. Until you’ve been there, day in, day out, every minute of every hour of every day for every year since this child tore her or his way out of your womb (or you adopted!), there is simply NO WAY to understand the relentless mental and emotional and physical burden that is parenting. It’s thankless, bone-wearying, soul-crushing, all-consuming, and never ends. Because having a child changes you in ways that are irrevocable. Even when a parent is 80, they would still do anything to save their child; an 80 year old mother will still say, if her 60 year old child dies, that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen.
All this said, I consider myself lucky to have my children. Despite everything, I not only love my feisty, opinionated, dramatic, high intensity, high maintenance girls–I also like them. They’re funny and smart, lively and inventive. I enjoy being with them. My life is far richer and sweeter because of them. They’re blessings, sometimes the kind of blessings that rend the heart, sometimes the kind that mend it. Happy Mother’s Day to me.

No School Prayer

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I belong to a listserve that connects present students and graduates of the healing school I attended. This connection is dynamic and wonderful, and I’ve both given and received support through it. People post stuff, and it circulates among us; it’s often as thought-provoking as it is supportive. 

Recently one of the healers posted a speech that was supposedly from a father whose daughter died in the Columbine shooting. This father urged that prayer be re-instated in school. Here is the response I posted on the listserve.
***********
Dear Fellow Healer:
Thank you for posting this passionate speech for us to read.
While I certainly do regret the moral relativism and spiritual desiccation of our current culture, I for one am very glad that my three children do not have to pray in school. I am a deeply spiritual person who prays several times a day. I have encouraged my children to form personal relationships with the Divine, and to pray regularly, since they were toddlers. I am doing that all over again with my 3 year old.
However, I most explicitly do not want my children praying in a state-sponsored way in their school. The notion of folded hands, bent head, and silent prayer is a Christian one, and I am a Jew. Jews davven. We stand and rock and chant when we pray. That is not the only way we pray, but it is at the heart of what makes us Jews, and what differentiates us from other religions. I do not want my children to pray as Christians because they are not Christians. Mandating state-sponsored prayer in school is not a way to create unity, but a way to intensify feelings of alienation in people who do not belong to the prevailing religion, which is Christianity.
It is my understanding that Muslims pray by kneeling on a prayer rug. I took a year of Arabic in college and this is what was taught to me at that time.
I have a keen understanding of the differences between Christianity and Judaism because I was born and raised Christian and converted to Judaism as a matter of choice. I have made a profound, lifelong study of religions–and their historical excesses, prejudices, and intolerances–and it has helped me to be very, very grateful for the extent to which religion is kept out of secular institutions such as schools in America.
I do not believe that praying in school could have prevented the shootings at Columbine. To my mind, that is a fantasy with which a bereaved father is comforting himself: “If only….”
It would perhaps be useful in schools for students to begin each day with a moment of centering themselves and considering what their purpose is for that day. Even with that broad a definition, I have serious concerns about individual teachers hijacking that moment to press their personal religious agendas.
But thank you again for posting this; it gave me much food for thought.
Traci L. Slatton

Having optioned IMMORTAL

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Yesterday I signed the papers:  TwinStar Entertainment now owns the film rights to my novel IMMORTAL. 

It’s exciting. My novel may be a film! What will that be like, the experience of sitting in a darkened theater and watching the credits scroll up, and seeing, “Based on the book by Traci L. Slatton”? It’s a stunning thought: a dream come true.
It’s also scary. They can do anything they want to the story, for film purposes. ANYTHING. Oh, yeah, turn my main character Luca Bastardo into a transvestite lounge singer, or an airline pilot, or a crack addict. I guess those things aren’t as bad as what he actually is: a thief, a killer, a prostitute. But still, in MY novel, he’s the thief, killer, and prostitute I delineated. 
And I now officially have no leverage to get anything else I want. Like first crack at the screenplay, which I was really drooling for. I’m not the world’s most famous screenwriter, and I absolutely want what’s best for IMMORTAL and maybe a big muckety-muck screenwriter is that, but I’ve been living with this story for four years. I was eager for the challenge of the three act structure, chomping at the bit to set aside the experience of the novel and re-envision this story for the medium of film. I knew they’d fire me after the first draft and bring in someone else. That’s common in Hollywood with novelists. Unlikely, now.
But the good news is that I trust TwinStar. They seem honorable. And smart. And creative. There’s a powerful vision there for this novel. I’m proud to have my baby situated at TwinStar. An option doesn’t mean that a film will definitely be made, but I think the chances are better than average that IMMORTAL will go forward into cinematic history, and it will be done right. A few wishes linger, but mostly, I’m happy and grateful. And lucky. Very, very lucky.