Acceleration

The time on Earth was intense. For those still fully in the dream, it was about struggle with a range of external conflicts. For those more ready to shift into a new story, the stumbling block was internal and stemmed from patterned conditioning and loyalty to mind as the only way to make sense of what was changing.

I came into this world to be Chris Carver, but that was only a half-truth and half-truths create confusion and an endless looping back of energy in an attempt to complete an interrupted circuit.

It's really all a game ... and when you find the answer to your primary question you are ready to move on to the next level of play ... Welcome to "the game."

The recounting of this story begins when I was a 16-year-old girl in foster care and I met a woman named Bree who saw through the protective facades I was hiding behind. One person who really sees you is all it takes to help you remember who you really are. Sometimes that one person just has to be yourself.

Meeting Bree

A lot of what goes on with me is internal and it's hard for people to get me to talk about it. I'm perceived as a loner, but being seen is a funny thing. I believe we all want it, and I also choose who I'm willing to be visible with, because not everyone is ready to hold my offerings as sacred. Where I tell my story is in the sanctuary of the spoken word, with brothers and sisters, related by the blood of a larger truth. We are kindred spirits with many combinations of DNA, listening to each other for the deeper meaning, which was previously glossed over for convenience. We are reclaiming the art of elocution to turn sound bites into full meals that truly nourish.

Words hacked to pieces in text-speak are like junk food that doesn't satisfy any real need, and so we keep our fingers compulsively grabbing for more in hope of connection. As a society we are dealing with the consequences of not having time for more.

Bree is one of the only adults to have really seen me since the separation from my birth family. We met because we both have a passion for "spoken word," and we hang at an old beat-poetry coffee shop in Berkeley called The Beat Goes On, affectionately referred to as "The Beat," which has a weekly poetry slam. The walls are lined with old paper placemats scribbled with the musings of well-known beat poets from "back in the day" when protest and percussion merged to form a new genre of social commentary.

While most of the people who sign up to present in a "slam" are in their late teens to early twenties, there are a few people who are brave enough to make their offerings alongside the rawly honest, perceptive brilliance of the seasoned "slammers" who can unapologetically lay down the "word" and twirl their tongues back into their holsters still smokin. I was a novice word-slinger at fifteen when Bree first came in.

She knew that she was out of her league, as a middle-aged white woman who probably grew up with a Hallmark version of poetry, and a picture of the world that matched it. We all appreciated the way she would push her own limits without worrying about whether or not she fit in. No one cut her any slack either in the judging round, but that didn't matter because there was a sense that none of it was personal. It was just about being real ... sharing truth without baggage ... and the overall vibe of a slam is respect, empowerment and fun.

In that environment we are all pretty transparent with each other. Bree's focused attention on what we all had to share made me feel more open to getting to know her more. We have since developed a close relationship because she has a quiet, affirming presence that I haven't experienced since my mom died. She also doesn't seem to have any agenda with me, even though she is now my acting foster parent, after six months of jumping through hoops to get me from the family I had been with for two years. It's not common for Social Services to allow someone to take a kid from an established situation without evidence of abuse; and being restricted to the basement and not allowed to eat in the areas the rest of the family did, because I might mess things up, wasn't considered abuse. Do you know what it feels like when someone is always collecting evidence of every little thing you do wrong in order to build a case against you? Do you know what it's like to never be seen for the things you do that are efforts to follow "the rules"? Do you get why we stop trying?

A family can say they don't want you anymore, but choice is never an option on the side of the kid in question. My last family was worried about some of the words I used not being "family friendly." What does that mean anyway? "Darn it" just doesn't adequately express the emotion that comes up when it's being pointed out again that you've screwed up somehow. In my experience, "family friendly" is an oxymoron and it makes my stomach turn every time I hear it.

Many families who have foster kids do it for economic reasons and so petitioning to get me was like taking someone else's income source. They make an exception if you want to adopt a kid, which Bree was willing to do for me, but she didn't qualify because she was single, had insufficient income and was too old, even though she is one of those people who are so vital that age never seems to come into question. I don't know how she managed to pull off getting custody of me, but I'm glad she did, because with her I know it isn't about the money. I can tell that she really wants to be with me and that's a first since being in foster homes. Kind of crazy, if you ask me, that the people who really love and want you have to pay to get custody and the ones with no real interest in you are paid to take you.

I remember my first exchange with Bree. She came over to me at the end of one of the slams and she looked at me with those blue eyes and her black hair streaked with silver, pulled back off her face in a ponytail. The giant oval abalone earrings she was wearing had the most beautiful iridescent pattern of blues and turquoise, which brought out her eyes. There was something about her that just penetrated right into me.

"The piece you did really moved me," she said.

One of the things I liked about her initially was that she wasn't trying to be hip by dressing or talking like one of us. She was just being who she was and the way she spoke was natural to her.

"Can I sit down with you for a minute?" she asked.

"Ya, sure," I said matter-of-factly.

Then, seemingly out of the blue she said to me, "Sometimes things just seem to grab my attention as being important to share and I've learned to trust it. This might seem like an odd question, but do you know who Helen Keller was?"

"Ya, I've heard of her."

She continued, "But you may not know about the background of Annie Sullivan, the...