The Only Antidote to Fear

is finding faith in the dark

[art: John Atkinson Grimshaw]

I am never more mean and humorless than when I am frightened. Last week I was in the hospital for a fairly routine procedure that I had nevertheless postponed for years. My husband Clark was with me, chatting with the nurses, while they took my blood pressure and insterted an IV. I snapped at him, on edge, terrified about what the doctor might find, long-neglected, hiding inside of me, discharging my panic by lashing out at the living person I most trusted in the whole world.

Because I work with the dead, I know that there is no gaming death. Death’s perspective is always long and wide, taking in the whole vast complexity of our souls, our comings and goings through deep time. One life may end abruptly so that another can begin on time. The tides go in and out. The moon waxes and wanes. Worlds vanish and new worlds are born. The planet itself inhales and exhales over epochs too vast for us to imagine.

Such thoughts were not comforting. Still, I reached out to hold Clark’s hand. “I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch. I’m scared.”

“I know,” he smiled. “I’m here.”

I began to remember that I wasn’t alone. I called on my father the surgeon, my mother the caregiver. I called on Our Lady of Rocamadour, the ancient mother of my soul. I called on the nurses and doctors who were friends of my father’s at the hospital, I called on my grandmothers who had both lived to old age. I called on the dead. I remembered that I wasn’t alone, that when I went under, when I was out of control, they would step in to guide the hands of the living. I cannot see in the dark but the dead can. The dead can hold me when I am scared.

The nurse wheeled me into the operating room and I began to pray. Hail blessed mothers full of grace and love, I am with thee….I am with thee…I am with thee…I am not alone.

The doctor did not seem concerned when she woke me up from the procedure although I am talking with her about it all in a few days. Inflammation of course. We are all inflammed these days with one thing or another. And fears are still rising up unexpectedly. But each time they do I call on my grandmother the gardener to heal my gut, my grandmother who lived into her nineties to guide me to longevity. I call on the dead to do what I cannot, to see in the dark, to lead me where I need to go.

These are dark days. We will be able to see less and less going forward, to understand or make sense of even less still. Many people are whirling and raging inside their fear, clutching at small bits of righteousness as they descend into the abyss. We are losing our sense of humor, our sense of intimacy and play, our gentleness and our kindness. We are forgetting how to reach out for each other’s hands.

The only way I can remember that I am not alone and that I am not in control is to summon the dead. All the dead. By name.

Only faith can vanquish fear.

Faith in the unseen world. Faith in the dead. Faith in all of the mothers who have loved us since before the beginning of time.

Today I called on Cesar, a friend of my mother’s, a childless man who was the best mother I ever knew, who died too young of AIDS and even as he was dying knew how to bring joy and revelry to those who were with him. He died in 1986 but today I found for the first time his obituary online—and discovered that he had died on my birthday so many decades ago. I hadn’t known. Across the years, he reached out to me to know that he was my mother still.

I am calling today on John Lennon. He was never my favorite Beatle (the mystic Harrison for me) but a chance encounter at the grocery store with a man who had been at the Dakota the day he died reminded me that his death day was my daughter’s birth day. One of my favorite students, Nancy Senior, who passed two years ago, used to zoom into class with a giant poster of John Lennon like a medieval saint behind her with the words painted in neon, “Imagine.” Today I am calling on John Lennon to bless my daughter with unimaginable healings in the year to come.

I am calling on a friend of my son’s who suicided to guide him through his Saturn return. I am calling on our wild tabby cat who died on the solstice ten years ago to help us accept the darkest mysteries of all. I am calling on friends and teachers, relatives and family and those I only know from their names on tombstones. I walk over to a grave as I pray for my husband and I to enjoy many more years of marriage together and discover Tony and Grace Celucci, married over sixty years, married on June 16th, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Woodstock. Tony reminds me of a saint and I pray to St. Anthony to help me recover my lost health. One soul on the other side leads me to another soul on the other side and I am woven together again into the fabric of this world.

When we are frightened we are dangerous—both to ourselves and others. But the only antidote to these fears is our radical faith in the dead to hold us and guide us.

Today, reading this, let us notice an anxiety, a fear, a worry, or a concern. Then, today, let us give it to someone on the other side to hold and manage. When we feel mean or edgy or righteous or opinionated, let us see what is really frightening us, and turn it over to the dead who are frightened of nothing.

Most of all let us step into the dark, surrender in the dark, to the guidance of the dark.

Clark said I was very silly when I woke up out of my twilight sleep. Cheerful and funny, relieved and generous. Of course I don’t remember anything after the nurse inserted the drugs into my IV but something happened there in the liminal realms that vanquished all my fears. The dead were there to hold me.

Every day, every night, every moment I have to remind myself the dead are there to hold me. The dead are there to hold us all.

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In 2024 I am offering a variety of workshops to help people connect with those on the other side—their ancestors, the saints, the dead of deep time, our mothers from past lives, and all mysterious souls entangled with ours. Some are month-long introductions and others are full-year intensives. Please reach out if you have any questions. You can find out more about my offerings at: https://takebackthemagic.com/

Also, if you want to open a conversation about the dead with your friends and have me zoom in for a Q & A I will do so…if you order ten or more copies of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World from my local bookstore The Golden Notebook. Copies will be signed by me and the bookstore will let me know about you order.