Open Letter to a Deceased Friend: Lise Lillian Nickerson (1953-2013)

Dearest Lise Lillian,

It was with a shock that I heard of your passing on Thursday, September 12 with only a month to your 60th birthday.  At our visit in the hospital the week before, you seemed too well to leave yet.  I think of the grief of your daughters, grandchildren and recent partner Ken.  You affected many people with your grace and incredible beauty, inside and out.  We mourn your presence.

After an intense experience with your energy a few nights ago, I would like to write some personal words about you and us that may be useful to others.

I feel partly responsible for your early death Lise.  When you were at the centre helping create and facilitate retreats, you asked for help with your work.  I responded with the standard New Age cheerleading that you could do anything, have a large income and work with big groups of people, heartily supporting you in taking various workshops, courses and webinars led by people who had “made it”.

When a friend called to say that you were in a coma and expected to pass any hour, I later realized that I had pushed you when I should have helped you see and accept yourself as the exceptional woman, healer and artist that you already were.  Not to strive to be more “successful” but to continue to live the humble and graceful lifestyle you were already living, to give yourself the space and peace to continue developing your strength from within without so many worldly expectations.  And then to grow outwardly from there.  I see now that the striving depleted your subtle energies.

It gets worse.  Over the years I have not been totally comfortable with you Lise, often pretending to be more affectionate than I felt—with occasional moments of deep, open-hearted connection that I struggled to maintain but that kept closing up.  Now I know why: I felt acute distress in myself around your fragile vulnerability because that is how I am myself and didn’t want to admit it, always wanting to push that reality away.  And so I pushed you away too.

Recently I have come face to face with my own fragility, learning to accept it and love myself not in spite of, but in the middle of it.  When I saw how we could have been such close friends if I had only been able to stay open, my heart burst into love for you and tears poured down my face in recognition of this lost opportunity.  I cry as I write this and hope you are hearing my sorrow and regret even as I know that it could not have been otherwise.

You already know why I’ve written this in an open letter.  We are not alone in this struggle…so many women and men caught in the shoulds and devaluations of our culture, not being able to manifest our gifts or bloom into our destinies.  I imagine you on the other side, free and colourful, dancing and full of light, having shed the earthly body, glorying in your new/old self.  I deeply hope that the work you did on this side moves you forward there.

We will remember you Lise Lillian: dancing the dance you held for generations of native women; your rich art; your words of grace when opening a retreat that were surely channeled from beyond; your healing touch; your kindness and gentleness; and the beauty you continually brought forth wherever you were.

We will honor your memory Lise Lillian, with drumming, singing and dancing in community on your birthday.  And we will name something after you, something that reminds us to respect ourselves exactly as we are.   Something exquisitely beautiful.

Much love

Katherine and the Ecowellness Centre staff who were fortunate to know you.

The Following Workshop Series was given by Lise Lillain Nickerson

Life in Transition ,July 23th Heart Circle with Lise Lillian July 23

Happy Summer everyone! Come and join us for our next Heart Circle for Mid Summer creativity.  Mid Summer is the time of the maturing what is growing in our lives and the first harvest of showing what our inspired actions are manifesting.  We will be decorating a stick that you have found or you can look on the property at Carp Ridge for one. Please bring items to decorate your stick. I will be supplying you with paint if you want and a few other items. Our power stick is symbolic of stepping into our more authentic selves and claiming this identity through the group ceremony in September.  If you can’t come in July you can do this on your own and have it ready for the next session on August 27^th.  We will be also focusing on sustaining changes in our lives and deepening our Heart Circle community.

The Results of the Workshop are Noted in the Following Article

Life in Transition Heart Circle News

Our Heart Circle gathered on June 25^th to celebrate the beginning of Summer.  We are half way through this year’s journey and we are now reflecting on where we are in the adventure that we began in January of this year.  The Life in Transition Heart Circle is set up in a way that anyone can join at any time because it is cyclical, meaning that the process is like life, it continues to circle around with each turn of the ‘Wheel of Life’.  I invite people to join us whenever they are able.

It has been a wonderful journey together since January.  We began with calling our gatherings Meditation Days as we use guided meditations as part of the process.  We created an ‘Initiation Gate’ leading into the North towards the Yurt just outside the Learning Centre building.  It was decorated with artwork, chimes and other things that made it a magical threshold to pass through along the path into the woods.  I remember how it triggered emotions for us as we walked through with our intentions for this year.  We shared the dreaming phase together to envision how our intentions were going to unfold.  The circle is a safe sanctuary for us to explore together, in an amplified field of energy, that we generate together with compassion and encouragement for each other.  We use music, movement , Yoga and art to help us to spark the creative juices and access our body wisdom.  I shared the ‘Eastern Cherokee Sacred Dance to the Four Directions’ as a way to embody our experience, honouring the sacredness of all life in all directions. Our group sharing in circle is a very profound way to deepen our friendship and sense of community.  Without this we can stay stuck in patterns that don’t serve us without any feedback or support to move forward.  There is also the use of ceremony to heighten our experience and make it special by creating sacred space.  We use songs, chants, smudging ceremonies and share stories to create this.

We continued to dream together through February and created our first mural that would be used for the Spring Gate.  We were feeling our way through the gestation period of Winter.  Our process was very gentle with slow movement and a nurturing environment.  It was a preparation time to regenerate our energies and get ready to birth our dreams with the Spring. We were all moving through our own transitions, but felt our connection and the loving support of the group.

In March, I registered for a course in Accelerated Awakening through Heart Intelligence, with Christian Pankhurst.  His work is based on Tej Steiner’s, Heart Circles.  It is very much in alignment with the Earthwyse Journey vision to connect with the evolving consciousness shift that we are all going through at this time on the planet.  We are moving away from reacting in fear, isolation and despair to responding with open heartedness, cooperation and community. We are moving into a new era on our planet in which we live in harmony with all of life.  Heart Circles can support us through this transition and help us to survive and thrive together.  They give us the tools to live our life purpose and create joy in every moment through the awareness practices.   They give us a social safety net to receive what we need to continue this extraordinary shift.

Hence, Life in Transition Heart Circles were born with the Spring gathering.  We all walked through the Spring Initiation Gate with what is was we were birthing.  It was a magical sunny day and the Gate was in the East leading through some trees as a birthing canal.  We were greeted by a Grandmother Tree by the spring.  The spring was thawing and there was an opening letting us see the birthing waters.  We sent our prayers for the new life emerging with the waters. Then we crossed the bridge to our new life and went to sit on the Mother Rock and were greeted by Earth Mother and Father Sun.  What a glorious day.

In April and May we created another mural in preparation for the Summer Gate in June. We explored the natural protective defense strategies that come up whenever we start something new and doubts surface.  It is a time to nurture our new endeavors like a newborn baby.  By May we were moving towards accessing our inspired actions that would further our progress.  It is like weeding and fertilizing our gardens and doing some spring cleaning.  Everyone was doing so well to clear these blocks by shedding light on them and embracing the different parts of ourselves.  Then we could use the contrasting energies of what we did not want(the weeds) to fuel(fertilize) our forward movement.  By shifting our attention on the longing of what we do want, we spark the passion and imagination to create it in our lives.  We symbolized this through planting some seeds in the garden.  Next is to connect with our authentic essence to find the inspired actions needed that are not connected to our addictive patterns.  Then those patterns will gently fade as we strengthen our true identity.

So now we have entered Summer and past through the Initiation Gate that we created at the threshold of the garden in the South.  All of us decorated the gate with hanging discs that were painted in May and the two murals that we have done together.  We affirmed our inspired actions as we past through to the most active, growing time of the year.  Witnessing the growing things was reaffirming also.

For the July 23rd gathering we will be finding a special stick to decorate, which will be our power sticks.  Everyone will be putting on meaningful items and maybe painting them and adding favorite colours, beads, feathers or whatever strikes their fancy.  If someone is not able to attend this day, they can create their own at home.  We will use these as part of the ceremony for the Autumn Equinox Gate in September.  We being empowered by the process of the group and the sticks symbolize this. They will be a reminder of our community sharing.

Our gathering on August 27^th will be a further preparation for the Autumn as we mature our projects and begin the harvest of our creativity.  A big part of summer is that of filling up our energies with play and sunshine, so we will make sure that this is happening as well.