The best surprise of all
Solving the mystery of my birth and celebrating the light that lives in us all
Hello friends,
I love how the darkest time of year in the northern hemisphere is a celebration of light, with decorated homes and public holiday displays. It’s also the time of my birthday, which has always been celebrated against a backdrop of Christmas decorations.
My beginnings were complicated. Shortly after my birth at Cottage Hospital in Woodsville, New Hampshire, I was diagnosed with a rare form of anemia and was transported to the infant intensive care unit at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center 40 miles away, where I stayed for 10 days.
My mother did not have a car and had to bum rides from her sister to visit me every day. Cheryl raised me mostly on her own until she met my stepfather, who I immediately began calling Papa, so desperate I was for a father.
A big reveal
A year and a half ago, I discovered the identity of my biological father from a genetic test. He knew I existed, but had convinced (gaslit) my mother that I could not be his and died in 2008 not knowing that he had a third daughter. He was a British widower living in Massachusetts and my mother was the live-in nanny for his two daughters for three years. Her only commitment to him was as an employee who cared for his children, and he fired her when she became pregnant. With no place to go and four months pregnant at the age of 25, Cheryl moved back in with her mother in Woodsville, NH. Shortly thereafter, he moved to San Diego, California, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Had he accepted the idea that I was his child, I would have had a different name and likely grown up in San Diego with two older sisters. The presence of my mother would likely be the only thing about my life that would be the same as now; I would have known my extended family in England and had different stories to tell about a different father.
An accident that was meant to happen
I grew up with the knowledge that my existence was an accident. Yet there was someplace inside me that knew I was meant to be here. My memoir Escape from Nowhere explores this search for identity shortly after Papa came into my life and I learned about genes in first grade. In one scene, my six-year-old narrator reflects on the picture above (before I Photoshopped it with ephemera from my baby book):
I don’t know how it can be, because I was a tiny baby and must have had a tiny brain too, but I can remember being at Mary Hitchcock. They kept me in a little glass crib. Cheryl said that they covered my eyes and put me under special blue lights to make the blood problem go away.
In my mind I can see the room full of little glass cribs and oh, I tell you, it was very lonely. I wasn’t so sick that I was going to die, but I was so lonely that I wanted to die. I looked around the room and wondered why are all these babies in glass cribs with no mothers? I thought it was interesting and decided to stay.
Today as I look at this picture that was taken shortly after I returned from the hospital, I see a baby girl who has already lived through the first trial of her life. She knows what she is in the way that only a baby can know—a wordless space of sensory wonder; the light the we all share.
Beyond the personal stories
There’s just one more card left in this What’s Not in the Bag Series. I want to thank you for your attention these last few months as I used the rejected flag images as prompts to share personal stories from my past. Putting these words in public has, I hope, touched your heart while allowing me to look at and be seen for some of the things I experienced as a child.
The 12-part series was designed to lead to the next step for Flag Oracle—what’s IN the bag, so to speak.
In 2024, you’ll see an exciting change in format that will bring the flags to the forefront in “readings” such as the example below.
An Oracle card for the holidays
The sun gleams through the trees above the “Life Had Other Plans” flag just before setting into the Pacific Ocean. The flag’s imperfect patchwork and last-minute sewing mistake rendered a cohesive design by surprise. Here in the golden hour of a clear day, we are reminded of the essence of light that we are: pure, bright, accepting, and full of wonder.
Even in the darkness, you are connected to this light by virtue of your existence. This card is a call to tend to the essence of what you are and always will be, that eternal still place in unfolding now, however imperfect it may seem to your mind. The light in your heart judges nothing, accepts the place it finds itself in, and acts in the knowledge that everyone shares this same light.
INVITATION
Tend to your inner light, the still small place where you are at home in yourself and at peace with the world around you.
May you glow with light from within as you go about your holiday activities.
May you be warmed by the presence of those around you, accepting their light as a reflection of the same sun that shines upon us all.
Happy Holidays!
Love, Lee Ann
Hi Lee Ann, we work together at SR and I want you to know how much I respect the work you do there. I have also admired your personal blog and work as a seamstress. I was touched by your words and story and wanted to respond to something that you wrote. You are not an accident and I hope that thought is a distant memory for you in your adult emotional being. You were specially formed and called to do the work that you are doing today and touch the many lives that you touch everyday, you may never know who or how you inspire others. Like you have and do me. With much love and respect, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you and yours. Laurie.
It's good you ended and began with the light: the blue healing light of your glass crib and the inner light we all share, glimmering in the flag with the setting sun. That's a through thread and a wonderful one when faced with the harsh reality of your birth—almost a British /Victorian drama of the nanny and the lord. How cruel he was; I'm glad you never met him.
Happy Holidays, living in the light!