Here is the news that melts my soul -- my dear friend and colleague, Tamara Slayton, died on Monday June 30th. She was the illustrator and designer for HYGIEIA: A Woman’s Herbal, CONSCIOUS CONCEPTION, and the founder of the Menstrual Health Foundation. Nan Koehler read this for me at Tamara's Memorial Service July 5th in Sebastopol, California. It was attended by hundreds of her beloveds.

How I first saw Tamara -- she was the beautiful, pregnant, redhead mother in a yoga class I was guest teaching in 1974 at the JC in Santa Rosa who spoke the question that changed both of our lives.

She asked me as my twin toddlers latched on to nurse, while I was in some asana (posture) or other, how long I intended to nurse my babies? I replied that it was a personal matter, yet since she had asked, I wondered how long she would have sex with her partner? Will she retire him when he is too old for that sort of thing and when might that be -- the age of 65, or 80, or ?

The query hung in the air for all to interpret, until I explained that breastfeeding was the culminating promise of ecstasy that the menstrual cycle held.

Tamara showed up on my doorstep with flowers soon after our first meeting at the junior college yoga class -- this time in Cotati, at the Center for Family Growth -- for Prenatal Yoga classes when pregnant with Summer and with dred-locked Zak in tow. She said simply, with her sweet smile, "Jeannine, you are a jewel." As usual, Tamara was projecting. She was, and is, the jewel -- how well the God-Us displayed this gem of a gentle mother to me almost 30 years ago. We fell in love then and I haven't once stopped loving her since, nor will I now.

I was witness to Summer's homebirth earthside, inspired by Tamara's subsequent freebirth of her daughters Leah and Heather (even before I coined the term to express it), and continually awed by Tamara's capacity to live her ideals as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a teacher, and an artist. As we say in the Southwest, she walked the Beauty Way.

Tamara showed the world what her love for life looks like, and for this, we remember and celebrate her passionate vision. She died with her family and was dressed in red -- this is the last image I have of my "girlfriend", Tamara, the "pushy visionary".

She fulfilled her destiny with grace and held a fierce loyalty to Spirit that inspires me to this day. Tamara Slayton walked the Beauty Way with her unique flair and open-hearted trust. I was honored to walk alongside my first apprentice in women’s mysteries for three decades. Now Tamara has walked over the threshold of mystery and is doing freedom’s dance. I have the feeling that we will dance together always. Blessed Be.

The last time I did visit Tamara was in Graton, California, in 2002. My 28 year-old twins, Cheyenne and Oceana, drove Halley and me from Santa Rosa for the reunion. Tamara had infrequently tandem nursed my twin daughters, along with her toddler Summer Glenn, way back when that sort of community living was more supported.

In 2002, Tamara had just had her mastectomy. Her peace was palpable during our visit and she focused on how she might serve my daughters with career advice. We talked serenely about our grandchildren, gardens, and our work -- also of dying, angels, and our ancestors. I cried, even before I hugged her goodbye, for what turned out to be the last time. Holding the new Amazon close to my heart again was an amazing moment in time.

I was with Tamara in the early 1970’s when her first home-born baby took her first breath. Unfortunately, I was not with Tamara as she took her last breath. Halley and I were instead with Gloria Lemay, about to fly from Vancouver to Las Vegas. We were on our way home after an amazing, if exhausting, event on Bowen Island with wise and wild women. I brought Tamara with me to that gathering and again saw how far her contribution toward mothers had gone.

Photographs taken by Joanna Marie Norman, British Columbia. Canada

Upon arrival in Las Vegas, I attempted to call the hotel where our caravan was parked to arrange the shuttle back. It took four calls on pay phones to get through and then another half hour to schlep luggage to the outback of the Las Vegas Airport parking lot. I was noticing how I made myself upset about the delays in getting back to our caravan so that we could begin the 6-hour drive home to central Utah that hot evening. So I investigated the feeling, for it was deeper than a simple impatience.

What came to me was first, Tamara had died, and next, that our caravan was missing. What a shock! Because I didn’t know whether this was a premonition or a crafty image to distract me from sourcing the root of my distress, I kept it to myself. I had already learned that when reporting my impressions to Halley, she takes them seriously.

The most recent example was in Vancouver that same day at the gate to board our flight to Las Vegas. Amongst the polite mob of passengers, there were ten young men from the Mid-East, some of whom wore turbans and had beards. I remarked in jest to Halley, either they were a baseball team, or they were terrorists. She didn’t laugh.

Instead, Halley was unusually quiet for the long flight. I considered the long day, added jet lag, plus it really was the end of an intense weekend on Bowen Island with an instant family of sisters, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers. No wonder she was tired. So was I – that morning I had done the last two astrology readings of the tour before we went to the airport. When we de-planed, Halley jubilantly remarked, – we made it! Our plane landed intact. Even the other passengers had cheered upon touchdown, though there had been scant turbulence.

We finally took the shuttle from the airport to discover that our family vehicle, our ’91 Dodge Caravan, had disappeared from the allegedly secure parking lot. What followed was quite an adventure, and at this writing is still an unsolved mystery. Par for the course when transiting Saturn crosses ones Ascendant! (More to come on this segment of the adventure -- filing a police report, making an insurance claim, how to get comp'ed a night at the hotel, and, most important, what not to do when renting a car.)

Other such Saturnine lessons and synchronicities abound this Summer.

As I’m talking with Rico today, who is calling from the reservation by Monument Valley, Susun Weed interrupts our conversation with her phone call. She is letting me know that the registrations (and for all of the workshops at her Wise Woman Center in Woodstock) are drastically down this season. Ironically, as she is talking, the Nettle root decoction that Halley and I are making needs more water. Susun, famous for her love of Nettles, is telling me it is too hot in upstate NY, the event is too close to the Women’s Herb Conference, and, all over the northeast USA, registration is lower than ever before. We pour out ideas about how to gather the wise women for my workshop COYOTE MEDICINE in August, if it is to happen, giving it a week before deciding if it's good to go. Today, I had just decided to cancel the event in October in Albuquerque – too close to Rico’s 60th birthday celebration in Chaco Canyon, as it turned out.

Possibly two more events are to be cancelled, unless there is dramatic increase in the registration this week! In ITHACA, Stephanie Scheck needs some serious commitments or the AUG 26th “Healing Birth: Healing the Earth” gathering is called off. It is the same for the following weekend at Susun’s Weed Center. If you intend to come or know anyone who is, now is the time to register. Please go to the EVENT page on our Freestone website to link to the sponsors in upstate NY for these August workshops.

No worries here about the TOUR Schedule lightening up -- the home businesses of Freestone Innerprizes, LLC, are thriving! Our website is selling CATALOG and FREESTONE BOOKS like never before. Hygieia College correspondence is abundant -- please note that after the Summer season, on the Autumn Equinox, tuition is increased for the Home Study Course. Please read about the ASTROLOGY Services we offer. We now have a new fee schedule for the season. Also note this summer is the ideal time for readings.

To be added to the EVENT / Tour Schedule coming in early June 2004 -- the California Association of Midwives (CAM) is having their annual conference, and I have already been invited back for the third year in a row. For a couple of decades, I have been addressing the same issues in terms of healing our Earth by healing birth. Seems the time has come when midwives and others who care about childbirth are able to hear my message. Good thing that midwifery teaches patience!

This last season brought Hygieia’s Word Medicine not only to Eden Hot Springs in Arizona for a Family Vision Camp (courtesy of Hygieia students Nicole Maillis and Lia Byrnes) but also to Indianapolis in early May for Mother’s Day weekend at Yoga Academy (via Sheryl and Justin Fiore). The Arizona event was magical – imagine a hot springs resort to the likes of Geronimo, Butch Cassidy (& the Sundance Kid), and the Rolling Stones -- all of whom were visitors there. The hands down favorite workshop was the one on Couples Communication that Rico and I did together. For the Possible Family to thrive, the original lovers’ open, trusting and erotic communication (communion) is essential. Deepest gratitude goes to Nicole and Lia for bringing their families together with ours in Paradise (Eden Hot Springs). We look forward to many more Family Vision Camps. So far, Big Sur, California is the next possibility, or perhaps B.C., Canada.

The next month, May, we flew to Indiana amidst tornadoes and delayed flights. It was a bit too thrilling to watch funnel clouds all around us. During the Yoga Teacher Training, we hovered close to the women’s bathroom, ascertained to be the safest “shelter” as the twisters touched down all around us. I did astrology readings at the Marriott Hotel when not teaching Prenatal Yoga to Sheryl’s students, a wonderful group of yoga teachers. Each day (and through the thundering nights). Halley and I enjoyed the vitalizing energy of the electrically charged and changing sky. Talk about a whirlwind tour! Another synchronicity -- while flying to this event, I read in The Mother Magazine from the U.K. some quote that I will paraphrase -- likening a labor contraction to a spiral sensation is like comparing a wind current to a tornado.

While in Sonoma County this early June for the CAM Conference, I was saddened to learn that Tamara’s health had declined to where she was hospitalized and unable to have any visitors except immediate family. At Rainbow’s End, Nan Koehler and I held a sweat lodge for Tamara, run by a Navajo healer and his pregnant wife. It was an awesome reunion with families in Sonoma County – I taught childbirth education for many years there. I also spoke at a Benefit at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park and was heartened by the many reunions with my dear old and new friends. Marilyn Milos of NOCIRC shared my talk and brilliantly inspired us all to be birth activists and intactivists to end circumcision. By far the most positive feedback I got was when I read Quinn’s essay, What is Freedom 2: The Roots of War (posted in the Spring Newsletter 2003 below).

At the CAM Conference in Santa Rosa, I was honored to have my students, now authors and teachers of midwifery themselves, be on panels with me and give their own workshops. A special delight was sharing a plenary with Laura Shanley, who also wrote about our experience at CAM ‘03 on her website. She showed cameos from the video in which we both were interviewed, A Clear Road to Birth, including the edited parts, much to my rapt interest. It really got home the point that freebirth is the most private, sexually intimate ritual on the planet (next to the erotic conception, naturally) – why else would we, the viewer, make ourselves self-conscious while watching the unexpurgated version of Judy Seaman’s documentary on unassisted childbirth? (See our CATALOG page on Freestone’s website for my review of Seaman’s full-length film.)

As usual, Dr. Michel Odent gave the most inspiring keynote at CAM on “De-Humanizing Childbirth”. He told me that he came all the way to California from Europe because it was the only place he could give this talk. All the other conferences in the world to which he had submitted the title had declined. Michel Odent also told me about the JAMA* review of his book, in which Hygieia College is quoted. Over all, I had a grand reunion with my sister midwives from throughout the country. (See the Hygieia College page on the Freestone website for the *Journal of American Medical Association).

Michel recently was kind enough to translate my poem, “First Fluttering: The Quickening” (soon to be found on the Online Articles page of our website). The poem was previously unpublished, as it was written in 1985 when gestating my “butterfly”, Quinn, on the Big Island of Hawaii. We had left hurriedly as both the volcanoes erupted during that pregnancy and the poem was misplaced for all of these years. I thought to share it with you as it was written with the gold ink of colostrum: May it nourish your soul this hot Summer 2003.

And as you drink deeply your next breath, please be grateful for your life and render a loving thought to the artistic vehicle for HYGIEIA: A WOMAN’S HERBAL – our beloved Tamara Slayton -- who brought to light the renaissance in the healing feminine arts and whose (wo)manifested work continues to carry us beyond.

The oldest tree on Bowen Island is named "OPA". The arrival day, we were given a tour of Xenia Retreat Center and the literal highpoint was meeting Opa. The owner of Xenia showed us the scars on Opa's trunk where the saws had tried to cut down the tree. Turned out we were in the last remaining old forest left on the Island. For an unknown reason, over a century ago, Opa had been spared the fallen state of many relatives, whose ancient stumps still held ground. Angelyn, our tour guide, makes it a point to tell us how the saplings grow especially well around Opa for having been cut. At that moment it came to me to ask the new women, who amongst us had a cesarean delivery? Only Angelyn had been surgically delivered, as it turned out. I then approached her and told her about cesarean being like a "near-death" experience, where one is initiated into the underworld and ascends anew with a spiritual body. I tell all cesarean mothers that they had a "near-birth" experience and therefore are the best activists and intactivists for healing the Earth by healing birth. Just like Opa, I envisioned Angelyn being able to help many other new mothers grow into their fullness. Angelyn's face opened up, her grin flying into the sky and I could swear I felt Opa chuckling beneath my feet. The vision came to ground us in the humble work of keeping mothers and babies whole, old trees standing, and us in between, connecting Earth and Heaven.

10 July 2003