Dream healer: an initiation

This is an interdisciplinary piece, at once speculative fiction, poetry, and remembering.

Last night, I dreamed

I was a little brown girl in a loud forest

at night,

going through a ritual of becoming.

I leaned back

on a white quilt covered table,

legs splayed

wide open.

Toned muscles taunt

and heavy.

as layers of bright

rainbow tulle

were stuffed into

my private creases

by the two strong, extended fingers

of a dark-skinned medicine woman

who was here to lead me

to my inheritance.

As the medicine woman pushed the pink layers into

my bleeding

sweet place,

she told me parables and stories

of my mothers

and fathers…

and elders like them,

and others like me.

She finished stuffing the cloth

and moved to my crown,

blessing my hair forehead,

and scalp

with anointed oil,

as my head rested on the lap of

a beloved celestial elder.

The medicine woman then sat down

and sifted through her bag

of gifts.

She tossed one small sack aside

the second one too.

Till she stopped at one bag

meant for me,

looked up and said,

“Baby,

this is the one for you.”

The magical sack was bursting and

overflowing,

full of good things, dreams,

and blessings.

I reached my hand inside

for a sweet thing,

the bag still in her outstretched hand, not

yet knowing

the whole bag was mine.

My elders had collected these blessings over

time.

storing them here

and there,

for just the right moment…

for me,

for me,

for me.

and for those who come after;

my connection to God

through my seed.

The final rite

combined an art

of needle, ink, and blood.

It offered also

rest, and a few

stories of new and old designs…

voices calling through symbols of space and time, to

show your feet where and how

to stay grounded

and to thrive

in community,

in unity,

and all in due time.

When I got up from there I

was transformed;

initiated into the

rite of my

grandmother’s kin:

wild women

and bastard making, blind men.

These transfigured kindred a

collision of holy past

and iridescent reflective imaginings of

Black futures

and possibilities yet to come.

I came up from that table,

hand held tight

by the medicine woman

now with the face of my grandmother, dear.

She led me outside,

in the deep of the night,

and left me under

the white quilted blanket

speckled with indigo, thread, and blood stains, that

somehow perfectly

mirrored the stars.

I closed my eyes

and when they next opened, I

was laid out,

in the bed of an old, green, wood paneled

Chevy station wagon.

I was laid out like mom ‘nem used to do,

in old country drive ins

as kids,

curled up with snacks

canteens,

homemade sandwiches and old blankets.

Next to me, on either side,

was an elder

and a blood child yet to come.

Both were my age,

a youthful grown state

laid out,

chillin’,

reeeaaall cool like.

We passed a green, rolled blunt between us,

blowing smoke out the lifted

trunk window hatch,

protected and easy in our little cave of wonder,

listening to music on the radio

and breathin’ in

cool, crisp, early spring air.

An Epilogue:

This poem is the culmination of two dreams I had during the summer of 2023. I knew as soon as my eyes touched the light of day that they were meaningful. I knew straight off they embodied a transition, a ritual of becoming, one that I’d never witnessed or known before. I wrote the first poems in a sunny coffee shop window. I had recently graduated from my graduate program, earning my doctorate, ended a relationship, and transitioned in my gendered identity and self-expression. I was still in the thick of healing from the emotional turmoil that had come with each of these changes.

That summer I had started a remote position regarding the quilt traditions of Black communities. That summer I also visited the gravesite of my maternal ancestors for the first time, alongside my grandparents and an older second cousin. The gravesite was in a tiny rural Kentucky town, next to a white one room church once attended by my great great grandmother. During the trip I took pictures, meditated, cried, and prayed. I took as many notes as I could and later shared them with my cousin Candace, a fellow memory keeper and doctoral scholar of our family who was working on a collaborative family genealogy project with me at the time. As I learned about and shared the stories of my maternal ancestors and cultural craft elders, I knew their legacies were inseparably tied to my own. It was from that space that the pages of this poem were born.

This poem embodies and honors my elders and ancestors. This poem embodies the living out of my wildest dreams, alongside ancestors I never knew and blood kin yet to come. This poem embodies healing and being, held in the hands of Spirit and the unknown.

Liv Furman, Ph. D. (they/them) is a Black nonbinary womanist artist, educator, and researcher currently working on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples at Michigan State University. Their work currently explores the significance of engaging culturally informed literacies of dreaming, journaling, storytelling, and the arts within conceptualizations and practice of liberatory teaching, learning, and research. Their primary mediums include multimedia and digital collage, ceramics, quilting, and the written and spoken word. Liv is also an avid gardener, skater, singer, musician, and yoga apprentice. Liv is currently a Post-Doctoral scholar in the Department of African American and African Studies, and Assistant Project Director of the Quilt Index's Black Diaspora Quilt History Project at Michigan State University.Liv Furman, Ph. D. (they/them) is a Black nonbinary womanist artist, educator, and researcher currently working on the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples at Michigan State University. Their work currently explores the significance of engaging culturally informed literacies of dreaming, journaling, storytelling, and the arts within conceptualizations and practice of liberatory teaching, learning, and research. Their primary mediums include multimedia and digital collage, ceramics, quilting, and the written and spoken word. Liv is also an avid gardener, skater, singer, musician, and yoga apprentice. Liv is currently a Post-Doctoral scholar in the Department of African American and African Studies, and Assistant Project Director of the Quilt Index's Black Diaspora Quilt History Project at Michigan State University.

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