I’ve recently realized that the promise of new life opens your eyes to the blood ties of the past. When a new person is coming into this world before your eyes, and you see them form into their own individual self with bits and pieces of you and the people that came before you, you start to realize that those people still breathe the same air you breathe through you. Their hearts still pump because yours is pumping. Their veins are full of life because they are your veins and before you couldn’t see it, because you hadn’t been shown how the connection worked yet. But when new life comes into the world before your very own eyes, when new souls begin to form and grow into people, that’s when you realize that you’ve always been connected to those of the past by the sheer act of breathing; living.
Linda Hogan explains it better than I ever could in Dwellings; “Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” And when you realize this, that the ones that came before you gave everything they had for the promise of you and your joy and your life and your greatness, then you start to want to make them proud. You want to prove them right. You want to give them life once more through your work. You want their stories told. You want their struggles acknowledged. You want to mourn them and love them just the same.
Just like the promise of new life opens your eyes to the blood ties of the past, it also makes you crave a bigger, better and brighter future. You want to pave ways for those that’ll come after you. You want to make their road a little less bumpy, and a lot sunnier. You want to give them all the opportunities not afforded to those who came before you and all the support they placed in you without your knowledge of it. The younger generations become your hope while the elders were your strength. And all of them course through your veins at once. They all breathe the same air as you at the same time. They go through what you go through together with you, they fight and win and lose with you. That is how they live on and that is how you get by.
Thank You,
Carmen Hernandez-Candelario