On the winter solstice of 2015, I participated in a “sweat” in a forest in southern Georgia. I was in a bad mood that day. The night before had been cold and sleepless and I had my doubts about the sincerity of the people I was with.
My mother died one spring morning in 2010. I was by her side. The windows had been opened so that she could hear the birds singing. I remember so clearly the arrival of dawn’s chorus. My mother had been in the process of dying all week and was heavily drugged with morphine to ease the pain of her disease.
When I was a child living at home, my mother and I were able to communicate without words—we just knew what the other was thinking. Moments before she died, my mother communicated with me again in that way. She told me that I had better get dressed and ready because things would go quickly afterward. I got up and left the room to dress. As soon as I came back, she was ready to go. I held her head in my hands as the last breath passed from her mouth.
Once the fire was hot enough for the sweat, we all squeezed into the lodge. It was an intense sensation. At some point during the ceremony, I felt a breath come up from my belly, through my chest and out of my mouth. It was not my breath that I exhaled. It was my mother’s breath that I had been holding. Letting it go was a tremendous release.