Turtles Do Too Talk

The sub-title says a lot, this is a story of how I lost and found myself. A discovery of who and what I trust, and why I feel like an alien.

Turtles Do Too Talk

A Story of How I Lost and Found Myself

 

The dappled sunlight streams through the dense trees illuminating my world in a magical way as I lay in the lush grass of my front lawn.  Puerto Rico is a wondrous place to explore when you are a three year old child.  The lush tropical climate nurtures magnificent plants and animals so diverse and beautiful, they mesmerized me as I wandered the tiny world of my yard.  This, my tiny little world, seemed so immense and it presented endless spectacles for me to delight in as I explored the exuberant life all around me.  Each day I would find myself eating as fast as I could just so I could get back outside to continue my encounters with paradise.  My mother, ever watchful of my health, would try to slow me down, but my thirst for adventure would not be quenched my mere admonitions.

I laid there on my belly watching the sea of light and shadow dancing around me as the trees swayed in the breeze.  Tiny bits of sunlight popped through the shimmering leaves while sparkling beams of light danced their way across the lawn.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something moving under the oregano bush just to my left.  I stared intently as the most stunning creature popped its head out from under the bush.  This animal was so very different from all of the others; this animal moved slowly, clumsily, and with great effort, and more importantly, this one didn’t run or fly away when I turned my head to get a better look.  All the other animals taught me to stay very still because whenever I moved they would flee and quickly disappear.  There was a brilliant glowing light all around her, I guess you could call it a shade of aqua, if you had to try to name it, but the name really cannot capture the intensity and pulsing glow.  I wanted to watch her as long as I could so I didn’t move, barely breathing as she crept closer and closer to me.  As the creature got within a mere arms reach of me, I heard her say, “Hello beautiful little girl.”  I was thrilled, the other animals had never spoken to me before so, I said, “Hi, who are you.”  The animal replied, “I am turtle and I am so happy to see you here; I am looking for the soft beach where I was born, I have come to place my children in that safe place till they are ready to join me in the water.”  “Can you help me find it? I know it is near here somewhere I can smell it, I must find it soon” I smiled and said proudly, “Sure, I play there with my mommy a lot, it has the softest sand and it is next to the big water. “It is right over there”, I pointed, “right by the tall coconut trees.  She thanked me as she pushed her way back toward the big water, but before she left she put movies in my head.  They were like if her eyes were the camera and the undersea views and animal encounters she had in that place were the movie she showed me in an instant. I watched hypnotized as the turtle slowly moved toward the ocean; thrilled by my encounter, with this my new friend turtle, my mind raced as I recalled the encounter.

Suddenly, as if to break the spell, my mother came out onto the porch and called out, “It’s time for dinner sweetheart, come on in now.” “Oh mommy, I don’t want to,” I moaned as I got up and headed for the house.  When I got inside I was so excited about my new friend I said, “Mommy, I talked with turtle, she was so nice, she was looking for the big water and…" She cut me off in mid sentence as she headed me toward the bathroom to wash up for dinner and said, “Oh silly little girl turtles don’t talk.”  Those words burned their way through me like a white hot poker through butter; the pain seared its way deep into the very depths of my being.  I didn’t understand it at the time; I couldn’t comprehend why, those seven little, seemingly harmless words caused such an ache inside of me.  I became very quiet and very distant for the rest of the night and my busy mother who was consumed with the task of caring for my baby brother not only didn’t notice my deafening silence, but probably welcomed the unusual quiet of this life changing night.

I laid there in bed quietly crying to myself that night.  “I love my mommy and I trust her”, I thought to myself, “But I was there; I know what I saw, and I know the turtle spoke to me.”  “She said turtles don’t talk”, I brooded to myself.  I was so very confused, because I know what I had seen and heard, but my mother said it could not have been so.  Who do I trust?  I woke up the next morning and ran out as soon as I could to look for my new friend turtle, but I couldn’t find her.  I searched under the oregano bush and everywhere I could think of to find her, but she was gone.  I thought, if only I could find her I would show her to my mommy so she could see that turtles really do talk, but I never did find her again.  This was the first time, I knew with every fiber of my being the actual truth, but allowed the outside world to convince me that I am probably mistaken.  Days and months passed and I spent much of my time on the quest to find my friend turtle, to prove she really did talk to me.  Eventually years passed and we left Puerto Rico for New York, and I was quite simply devastated; I knew my chances of finding my friend turtle were gone forever.

I tried to settle into life in New York, but everything was so difficult for me to understand.  First, ripped away from the paradise I will always call home in my heart, and then catapulted into a world where I was unable to understand a word anyone said to me.  Unable to recognize the painfully few plants and animals around me, unable to feel at home in the fast paced concrete jungle filled with monstrously towering buildings, and throngs of shouting, angry people, always in a hurry.  I really began to disconnect from the part of me who had talked with turtle under the Puerto Rican skies.  I began to dream of returning and spent hours recalling every single animal, bird and insect I could remember. Sometimes, I swear I could even smell the pungent scent of the oregano bushes.  Eventually, I learned English and felt more comfortable in this new concrete jungle, but never, never really at home.  I truly felt a stranger in a strange land.

One day my teacher gave the class an assignment to write about something special that happened to us.  All the way home I wondered what I could write about; “something special”, I wondered.  What has ever happened that was special to me.  I go to school, come home, eat food; nothing seems very special to me.  I looked back on my time so far, “I rode on a plane from Puerto Rico to New York and that is kind of special”, I thought.  Then it dawned on me, “Turtle!” I screamed silently in my own head. “I can write about my friend turtle, meeting her is definitely the most special thing that ever happened to me”, I decided resolutely, I am going to write about her.  The words of my “special something” flowed so smoothly, and before I knew it, I was satisfied with my recounting.  Confidence filled me as I walked up to the front of the class to read my story.  As I read the paper aloud I noticed the sounds of some giggles going on in the room, and when I finished, I looked up from my paper to see most of my classmates laughing at me.  “Why”? I wondered.  “What is wrong with me?” “Did I say something wrong”? I thought to myself.  My teacher turned to me and said, “That was such a nice story, but we were supposed to write about something real that happened, and we all know that turtles don’t really talk.”  With my head down, choking back tears I walked back to my desk past the giggles and sneers of my classmates.  I know, oh so completely, exactly what I experienced, I was there, but this was the second time people challenged the validity of my meeting with turtle.  If I doubted myself and the truth of my experience before, the doubt has now increased by 30 percent because there were at least that many of us in the class that day.  On some level, as the years began to pass, I guess I began to doubt the validity of my own experience more and more.

Years passed as I began and ended school years one after the other.  I began to learn more and more about the sciences, biology, anatomy, and physiology which taught me on a profound level, “for a fact” that a turtle’s brain is missing the part which processes speech, they don’t have vocal cords, and their tongues and palates are not shaped to be able to produce speech.  So, whatever I may have thought I experienced, the truth must be that turtles don’t talk, and no turtle could have ever talked with or understood me.  The cumulative message about myself rang loud and clear, I am not reliable and all the things I knew to be true about myself, my potential, and what I would “be” when I grew up, were all silly childhood dreams, dreamt by an ignorant little girl with a vivid imagination.”  My acceptance of the worlds premise began to erode my ability and willingness to trust myself, my intuition and my memory on a profoundly deep but subconscious level.

The world’s message to me was clear; I am unreliable, but my experiences kept telling me something else.   Turtle was the first animal to speak to me as a tiny little girl, but she was in no way the last.  I continue to hear the voices of the animals and plants around me.  It seems that all of my experiences continued to show me how very differently I experience the world compared to what seemed like mostly everybody else.  For instance, after my initial meeting with “Turtle Woman” that is what I call her now, I began to see pulsating, vibrant light around every living thing I saw, just like the lights I first noticed around her.  People glowed, plants glowed, and animals glowed with pulsating light, even rocks glowed.  I eventually discovered that no one else seemed to see the light around living things as I did.  So, I tried to ignore what the lights would tell me; I tried not to acknowledge their presence in my field of view.  What I did do was to seek medical explanations thinking there must be something “wrong” with my vision.  The lights would vary from moment to moment in each of the living things I saw, which is sort of how they would tell me things.  When looking at someone just as they received very bad news, I would see dramatic shifts in the strength and nature of the light, which over time taught me about a correlation between the light and truth.  My hungry dog glowed very differently than my sleepy dog.  If someone claimed to be fine, but were sincerely worried, the in-congruency showed in their light; happy light looks…well happy, bright not dark and cloudy.

The more this ability developed in me, the more evidence I found in the world to challenge the sanity of my experiences.  Lights around living things are not the only result of my meeting with Turtle Woman; I also began to see what I call light beings and yes, also dead people.  These light beings would sometimes speak to me, sometimes intervene, when I would listen, to assist me at a crucial crossroads, and warn me of potential harm.  Okay, let’s go over all this once again; this is important, only think of yourself as a Psychiatrist asking questions as you listen to my answers.  Do you see things that others don’t? “Yes” Do you hear voices? “Yes” Do the voices tell you to do things? “Yes” Is my struggle starting to make sense yet?  Basically, the world says I have mental health issues.  The world tells me it is not natural to see lights around every living thing, not natural to see dead people, and especially not natural to see beings which don’t exist in the world, and nobody can speak with animals.  If anyone says they can do any of the above, they are either delusional, dangerous, or charlatans.  Hey, I learned very quickly to keep my mouth shut about my experiences, and tragically I began to question my own sanity.  How many times can you hear that your experiences are insane before you begin to embrace the idea completely?  I have been hearing that my experiences could not have occurred, except in my head, in one way or another every single day of my life.  On the one hand I lend a certain amount of credibility to the worlds assessment of my abilities, while on the other hand I am the one who was there, I know what I see and hear, logic and science cannot erase or diminish my abilities just because they cannot explain them. 

My turtle story marked the first of many events in my young life which began to unravel my confidence about reality.  I believe there are many people, like myself, who share an experience or sequence of experiences which taught them the erroneous lesson that somehow their perception cannot be trusted.  You aren’t supposed to see Auras around living things, you aren’t supposed to know what will happen before it occurs, you aren’t supposed to see dis-ease and heal it when you do, you aren’t supposed to get messages from God or the divine if you will, and you aren’t supposed to love unconditionally.  Angels don’t exist, and if they did they certainly wouldn’t talk to people.  Only airy fairy freaks believe in spirit guides who help them develop their individual gifts.  Deceased family members, friends and kindred spirits who lived in the past don’t come to us as helpers, teachers and comforters in our lives.  Animals are just dumb, soulless creatures with nothing to offer people save a potential meal.  And the cancerous, faith stealer…”The odds are against you.”  The earth and all of the life on it is just random coincidence and nothing and no one is interconnected; we are all islands unto ourselves, and only the strong should survive.  People on the other side of the world are nothing like me and therefore unimportant.  My needs are far more important than theirs, and if they are thirsty, starving or oppressed it is either their own fault or at the very least their own problem.  I am not responsible to anyone but me, and I am not really even responsible for me because I am a “Victim” of circumstance.

These were some of the messages that life tried to shove down my choking throat since my early childhood, and after years of bloody battles with society as I experienced it, I gave up exhausted.  I bought the phony bill of goods, turtles don’t really talk and magic doesn’t happen, “s**t happens.”  I let life convince me that even though deep in my heart I knew the truth, I must be wrong.  Clearly, I saw that every individual life is inextricably connected to every other, all the animals, plants and minerals included.  I always knew that if my neighbor was sad, my happiness would be in jeopardy, and if they were happy, their happiness infected me.  I understand the natural state of each and every one of us is one of creative excellence and helpful contribution to the advancement of all of humanity, left unencumbered by preconceived notions about truth, each individual excels.  We are each unspeakably beautiful creatures capable of unimaginable greatness, but many of us have bought a phony bill of goods.  We are intimately tied to our environment and all the life which shares this planet with us.  My wellbeing is theirs and their well being is mine.  The animal, plant, and mineral worlds have much to offer us as teachers and guides of how to “be” in the world.  The struggles of the sea which surrounds me are my struggles.  The health of the rain forest is directly tied to my own health; without maintaining the delicate balance of the Arctic I cannot maintain complete and lasting balance in my own life.

Due to some of life’s generally negative, disheartening messages, I felt like an outsider for most of my life.  When exposed to religion I recoiled away from it.  No matter the brand, they never felt quite right to me.  Something always seemed to be missing, something crucial, but I couldn’t really put my finger on what it might be.  Now, upon reflection, I remembered what I call “God” as tolerant, compassionate, loving, creative energy which filled me, and felt positive and all life affirming.  Yet, many with whom I interacted, who talked of God in the context of their personal religion, showed me judgment, anger and negativity.  Many horrors have been perpetrated in the name of many religions, and as a young person I thought maybe I was wrong about God too.  Maybe the closeness I felt to what I had always known as God was just a fantasy dreamt up by a hopeful little girl.  Maybe, as science tries to demonstrate, there is no such thing as God because we have no proof.  Maybe angels really are merely a social construct born of the necessity of having something to believe in and share with other like minded souls.  Yes, maybe my angels were just another figment of my imagination, even though I know they exist.

Many people, I believe, have lost faith in themselves like I had.  Some, like me, responded to life’s erroneous messages by becoming outsiders, living on the fringes of society; forced, in a way, to take part in it, but called outcasts by it, strangers in a strange land.  Some lose faith in their own abilities and become counted among the worlds extremely impoverished, forever branded as useless drags on society.  Some, act out violently against their society, and attack that which doesn’t accept them.  The worlds and especially my corner of its prisons are filled with these broken souls, who have lost their connection to humanity.  Some, like me, respond to the lies with illness and dis-ease; society’s assumptions and ideas about an individual’s own potential, literally makes that person sick.  I would guess that the majority of those who have been affected by a misunderstanding of their true nature are living out their lives in mediocrity and blinding sameness.  They are the people, like me, who merely exist; they go through the motion and dream of the ocean.  They know something important is missing and try as they might they can’t seem to find “it” anywhere “out there.”  We shout in unison, “If only I had more money, a better relationship, health, or a car then I could be “_____________” , happy or fill in the blank.  We search aimlessly outside ourselves for something to fill the hole.  We jump from one object of our affection to another.  The trouble with this endless ceremonial dance we dance is the utter disconnect from our true self; the only thing which fills the hole and welcomes fulfillment is already there, not something to be acquired, but uncovered and freed.

 

Author's Note

I would love to hear what anyone thinks on the subject.

Reviews

[Chris]

Auras are long proven... labels have been assigned (in place of understanding) for most of the others...and some touch without touching.

[Veronica Chandler]

Oh so true and I appreciate having my gift recognized, acknowledged, and valued. I believe it is humanity's natural way of being in the world. "We" have lost our way and forgotten what we know.

[Robin]

I understand - completely

[Veronica Chandler]

Oh Robin...I am so completely glad to hear your year old word in response to this. I hope all is well in your corner of the world...I just returned from a year away from the cafe'. Those three little words you offered are the most beautiful words I have ever heard in my entire life!...I really needed to hear them today ...Thanx

[Siobhan Welch]

My animals save my life daily with their words of encouragement, compassion and gentility. I know they speak the truth to me; most humans, I doubt heir words. Keep writing because it's lovely.

[Veronica Chandler]

Thank you...your words of encouragement help me!