While I deeply desire to share with you all the miracles and enchanting synchronicities that strung together like a strand of sacred pearls guarded by dragons on a holy isle, Death has a way of reordering one’s focus. At least it did for me.

Three weeks ago I was embarking on my first soul adventure since the pandemic hit. The winds of synchronicity were blowing. My heart was following an ancient dragon song of soul and sea to the islands of Maine. In fact, my last message came to you when the only thing on my mind was the question of which island should be explored first. From that point on, the deepest magic and most profound story—of which we were lovingly etched into—unfolded.

However, mid-trip I received the phone call I’ve long dreaded. My mother was on the other end, saying that my grandmother was being transported to the hospital.

My only remaining grandparent, she is like a second mother to me. Growing up, she always lived with us, helping to raise my brother and me. She has been such a strong and constant presence in throughout my entire 38 years.

We hung up, my mother having assured me she would keep me updated on my grandmother’s status. She encouraged me to enjoy my trip.

And I did. Because that’s what my grandma would want.

That story that unfolded so magically and powerfully will have to wait for another time however. . .

Because when I finally arrived home, it was to the news that the prognosis was not good. Within a couple days my partner was booking me a flight to Atlanta. Bless him. For I was so distraught I could not manage the details myself.

For four days, I sat by my grandmother’s side. Talking to her, regaling her with tales of my travels—she loves that sort of thing—, reading to her, singing to her. All the while she remained asleep. But I know she could hear me.

On the fifth day that I came to her bedside, I anointed her with a sacred essence potion I’d created specifically to support me and her during this time. Placing a few drops on my fingertips, I touched her third eye, then her heart. Next I touched each wrist, taking care to not disturb the crystal beaded rosary clutched by her small crumpled arthritic hand. She had never been religious, but just before the ambulance took her to the hospital, she’d uncharacteristically asked my mother to fetch the relic for her.

As I offered this holy sacrament of anointing, the ancestral forces whirled around us. My great-grandmother Rose, my grandma’s mother was strongly present.

In that moment, my grandma Gloria and I existed simultaneously in two worlds. One was the softly lit hospice room of the mundane world. The other was within a space in between, an otherworldly clearing within a perfect circle of trees.

It was within this place of spirit that the trees of cedar, pine and oak surrounded us, while spirits of mushrooms and birds of death sang their medicine songs to help her remember. Indian Ghost Pipe, one of the essences in the potion I made, emanated his medicine codes— a haunting threnody of love and letting go.

I opened my eyes to my great horror. There, only inches from my feet, crawling toward me and my grandma at impossible lightning speed was a large AF centipede. In the hospice facility!

Where had it come from? How did it get in?

But I knew all too well where it came from and why it was there.

For years, the appearance of this particular bug has triggered fits of terror and paralysis in me, for they are connected to a past life trauma that has been my one pesky unresolved issue. You know what I mean, right? The one issue you work and work on healing, but always another layer seems to reveal.

These creatures trigger this trauma each time I see them. However, for me, they point to a much deeper message—wielding power and magic and my subconscious fear of what happens when one shares it with the world. The full details of this story will be revealed in my soon-to-be-published book. Suffice it to say, my relationship with these creatures is complicated, but I have come to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are my shadow allies.

In my terror and shock, I knew that the multi-legged creature carried a message. Our death lamentation was being answered.

It was only after I’d stepped out to grab a quick bite that I received the call. My grandma had made her transition. I wailed in anguish at the seeming unfairness of it. I should have never left. How could I have missed her?

But I didn’t miss her. She had waited until I departed the room. The pill of her leaving was no easier to swallow.

My maternal grandmother Gloria DeLand left her body on July 5th. Since then, I have been in a cave of mourning. I have not wanted to receive any visitors, return any text messages, or really do much of anything.

And rather than comfort me, all the spiritual niceties really irritate me at the moment. I don’t want to hear how she’s in a better place or it’s the circle of life or she wouldn’t want you to be sad or she’s with you. Of course, I know all those truths. But they seem so irrelevant to this emotional current, the human process of grieving the loss of someone you hold so dear, that is coursing through me right now.

Since her death, I’ve found comfort in puttering around my garden, drinking nourishing teas and working with my essences. I have cried a river of tears. And the essences have once again been profound allies for both me and I believe my grandma as well. I know they helped her make her transition.

What I love about their support is that, while they are like magic, they certainly don’t magic it all away. There’s no pollyanna-ing or love and lighting it all better. They simply hold me in an etheric holy healing temple while reflecting to me the deepest layers of wound so these tender places can be loved into healed wholeness. Inviting me deeper and deeper into embodied presence.

Throughout this difficult time, I have felt held: by my soul sisters from afar (they know this human requires space for processing and grieving), by my beloved partner Curtis who has been a rock at my side, and by the sweet and profound medicines of Gaia. My emotional wounds are being tended with the sweetest holy codes of flower and tree. My emotions are touched into, encouraged to keep flowing, keep moving, keep feeling. Even though I feel the deepest sadness, I feel safe to FEEL.

I know that you may not be going through the pain of losing someone at the moment. However, as we are in Cancer season (the sun is in cancer for another two weeks and this past Friday’s New Moon was in the sign of Cancer), we are all being invited to FEEL.

To allow the emotions to flow. To rediscover how we can nurture ourselves. To tend to the inner child. To offer presence and breath to the old family patterns from early childhood that might be being activated right now. To ask yourself what makes you feel safe and give yourself that.

A little known fact is that my grandma bought me my first essence set almost 15 years ago. She had no idea what essences were. She just knew how much I loved them and wanted to work with them, so she wanted to get them for me as a birthday present. We share the same birthday of October 10th.

Now 15 years later, not only are essence an integral part of my life, my healing journey and my spiritual practice, but I have my own essence line. How special is that!

To my most beloved Grandmother Gloria, I love you. Goddess-speed.

Diomira Rose