That 70s Girl & Me: Homily and Homage to Her Heart

That 70s girl... I've been thinking a lot about her. I know the best things I've done in the last 10 years have been about returning to everything she knew by heart.

That 9-year old stopped in her tracks fought so hard for her free spirit to stay alive but life seemed to bury her by 12. It is true, too, that the year she was 12 so many things converged to set her free in time—her soul's deep remembrance of a story larger than life and all the reasons she would make the breathtaking choice to choose to come back to life in time.

While it has been anything but easy, I see now at 56 how she is everything to me. So this is my story. This is her story. In a way, it's our story. So I share it here with you. To honor the recreation made possible because she lived and will live, forever free, in me. And to honor all that is alive in you.

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As you read her story and mine, consider your own. Then share something of it with us in the comments below! 🧡

What does your soul remember? What is your homily to all you knew by heart and dare to remember now?

What story of life is alive in you? How will you give homage to the whole of who you are set free in time?

Homily and Homage to That 70s Girl and the Home She Made for Me

She was always alive in her truest nature and nature was her heart. Her friends mocked for loving lions and going on and on about how we were indeed born free, speaking from her truest heart torn apart by those bemused by her audacity. Though misunderstood by others, such shares were from her soul and meant as a gift, born of the bold heart the One Life returned to her in time and offered up with only love.

A pure, pristine river of life flowed in her and through her into the larger me, the most authentic me who longed to be born to life again but was trapped inside and wrapped in fragility. She saw always with the heart of a child. It was this teaching she left here in me that led me to see through the eyes of my own child and simple moments that what was true could not be taken from me.

So she spent her money on funny hats she promptly lost on the mountain train to the top of the Zugspitze or somewhere in the white snows through which they skied cross-country. I can see her sashaying down the winding trail near Neuschwanstein, racing with her little brothers who promptly sped past her, as if this fairytale castle was their home. In nature was the only place she ever felt safe and there she came to life. There she saw flashes of the most beautiful light, the One Light, like the promise of a dream to come, like the memory of something that was also here and now.

Her penchant for strange keepsakes, like the funny hats and charms and her prized stamp collection, and her preference for peace in the odd moment where nature brought her back to life was no anomaly. She was living true to her soul through some vast courage called forth when she dared to dance with the winds that threatened to take from her all she held most true inside. Her body had been violated, her mind was ever spinning out of control, her spirit it seemed had been crushed to powdered bits, and still she laughed like a song on the wind. Though all seemed lost, she somehow dared to awaken the world within. Because of her, the seeds for life I share through 90 Days to Life and other soul journey experiences, have brought me and others back to life. Because of her, I could hear the birds bring forth their morning song for this turn in time.

Dawn at 9 Cade's Cove at Home in Nature, One with the Wind

So, though she did not feel at home playing the good girl girl scout and was torn to bits by what really happened there, she wore her environmental badge with pride, traded Wacky stickers, watched the Fonz, listened to John Denver and Olivia Newton John albums, played her favorite game of Wildlife and dreamed of making a difference someday—like Jane Goodall perhaps who brought her love to the chimpanzees or perhaps by decoding DNA like Crick and Watson and helping others to see the structure of our shared humanity. Her beloved Grandma thought she would cure cancer.

And while none of this has come to pass, still I am glad she believed.

Because she dared to defy the deafening roar of death and believe in life I have believed. And in my heart and soul, despite all evidence to the contrary, I still believe. Without means much less means to any end, because of her, though I have no idea where I am or where I am going, I rise up each day and I begin. Her love of the land and her vision for all things brought to life led my to on my Heartland trip and the soular systems were her vision for a flourishing humanity. Only because of the way she saw could I see and believe the energetic perspectives and all that was coming into place in our time and know my true identity.

Dawn Hiking in the Swiss Alps Happy and at Home in the World

So she was afraid and pretended not to be, but still she stood in service though no one else could see. It appeared she paid no attention to the castles and was oblivious, tuned in to Wolfman Jack on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on her Walkman as they walked among the ruins and riches of civilizations that were anything but civilized. All the while, she talked to angels but knew enough to never say as much. Her bravery was beyond my own, and yet I know she lives in me. And because of this, I am set free.

She, the one I saw as Little Girl Lost, the first to splinter from my soul, was not lost at all. It was she who volunteered to stay to help me make this turn toward home. It was she who knew it all along, who held the pieces and walked alongside the Teacher, who knew to call out to The Innocent and all the ordinary angels who have met me on the way. {Note: see my 1999 memoir Sacred Wholeness for the backstory. Only from here, 22 years later, can I see how it links to the story of life I am and all that is yet to be—all held as one together here and now.}

She is the reason I left it behind and walked into an Irish wood and was wrapped in the grace of a resplendent light. Because of her I believed in me and so I followed the river in France. And so I stand upon this mountain today.Though others saw her as out of touch and out of step with the times and the way it all should go, she was listening.

It was her attunement the love that has ever seemed so hopelessly out of reach and it was her abiding with the One Love who is and evermore shall be that led me into a conversation on redefinition I never thought I would dare to have again, much less share.

So she, that 70s girl who dreamed a dream larger than life and had in many ways a soul-inspired childhood even as she seemed to be so lost and lonely and devoid at times of any life at all—she was the one who I stepped forward for. She is the one I give homage to. Hers is the story that lives in me right alongside the story that lived so large in her heart.

On any given day you might have found her locked in a room writing poetry (even then I loved Emily Dickinson) or wandering aimlessly among the trees (the willow was my favorite and reminded me of me). Sometimes, alone, she sang a song whose words did not belong to this place and time. Other days she skipped and scaled fences she was not supposed to scale. She tried and tried to get it right—the way things were supposed to be done here, but she never really understood the rules. She talked to the rabbits and had a gentle heart but when then when someone tried to fix a lie to her she rose up like a lioness and would neither concede nor condescend.

At school she felt a modern misfit, too big for her body, too small for this world and essentially forgotten and uninvited, erased from memory. At home she felt out of reach, swept out to sea, swallowed by her soul's remembrance and all she could not find the words to say. She loved the little moments—her mother's birthday parties, her father's kind eyes and most beautiful heart, her brother's antics, the trips they took together. She loved learning and playing the clarinet and planning the middle school dance, where she got very mad at all the girls making fun of Frankie (they called him Frankenstein) and so, despite her extreme shyness, she walked up to him and asked him to dance. It cost her her popularity and that didn't phase her a bit.

In the morning she often looked disheveled and dismayed to be here, a stranger in a strange land. In the evening she longed to be one with the setting sun. She truly did not understand the ways of this world. On her birthdays when she blew out the candles, she never dared to say what she really wished. At Christmas, she grieved what she lost had been lost forever, not knowing then this truth; not only had she been found, but because she searched for herself in every experience and held fast to the love she knew she came from, she became the bridge for me. And then there was Easter and all things held within her heart—things she would not dare to speak.

And so the years passed and the storm of this life raged on and I held on to the only thing I knew for sure: that I belonged to life and that love was the very substance of that life that moved through me. Even when others told me then I was not light, not life, not love and I retreated, faded even, I did not believe them. She was fierce. She was free.

Here and now I stand and bear witness to that love—to the love that was alive in her and the life that was everything to her. Here and now I vow to give the life that lives inside of me to honor her willing sacrifice and the way she walked through those years. She and I are not merely mirrors, reflections of the One Light. We are sisters meant to join with all the other sisters. She is my mother and my daughter. She is the Spirit of Life that runs through me. I am the Spirit of Life that was born in her. This is what my soul remembers. This is the story of life that lives in me.

What is your homily and how will you give homage to the whole of who you are set free in time?