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Spirit Animal

“We carry the lives we've imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk


My spirit animal made its appearance yesterday. Yes. I have a spirit animal - it is the hawk. The hawk makes its (I refer to the hawk as 'it' because I have no idea if it is male or female, I like to think it is gender neutral) appearance shortly after a loved one has died. My dear friend Charmian passed away last Thursday. No, I don't believe the hawk is the loved one. Thats not exactly how spirit animals work.

If you read my book 'Riding Soulo' you know I devoted a chapter to Spirit Animal. My friend Butch had just died in a motorcycle accident - I was devastated of course. I was traveling on Bessie and planned to embark on the Circle Tour of Lake Superior after visiting family. The appearance of the hawk on a desolate county road at dawn surrounded by cornfields was powerful medicine for a grieving soul. I felt an out-of-body experience, intensified by the morning chill. It was not the first time a bird of prey had appeared in my life during times of anxiety and loss.

“The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.”
― Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk

After returning home from the Lake Superior trip, over dinner one night I relayed the experience to my women friends, including Charmian.  "The hawk must be your spirit animal," she said. "What?!" "Yes, we all have a spirit animal and you are lucky to have the awareness. You should research this." I embarked on a journey to understand my spirit animal. Of course the Native Americans believed solidly in spirit animals (I have experienced a fire ceremony by a Shaman in a wolf skin - his spirit animal). From a variety of sources about spirit animals  I learned that when a hawk shows up in your life, you should be sensitive to the messages it may carry and be receptive to your own intuition. When the bird of prey appears in your life, it's perhaps time to be less distracted by details surrounding you and focus on a higher perspective.

I came home yesterday, dropped my things on the kitchen counter, fed the cats and headed to my bedroom to change into walking clothes. I stopped up short in my sitting room and the large hawk sitting  between the 7th fairway and the pond (we live on a golf course) caught my eye. I froze. The bird was facing me. We have sliding glass doors that comprise the back of the house so the view is open. I walked to the doors, slide one open - the bird remained still - walked out to the screened room and stood still as the bird and I stared each other down. 

The bird and I remained like that for several minutes, my breathing slowed, the universe became still and just like the hawk in the Indiana cornfield after Butch died, the bird dipped its head in my direction as if to say, "All will be okay," and took flight. My spirit animal is for comfort, reassurance, strength, courage, and a message that I am to focus on a different perspective.

“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps...”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

And I will grow around this gap as well. The hawk appeared on my ascent to Pike's Peak the morning my dad died by suicide (it was at this time I discovered Helen Macdonald's book as well). The hawk appeared one morning, still dark outside, sitting on the fence surrounding the cow pasture across the street, after my friend Ann died two years ago. Yes. I have a spirit animal. It is the hawk.

Debi Tolbert Duggar
is the author of Riding Soulo
part memoir, part travelogue part spiritual salvation

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