By Elyn Aviva

I write my name in black ink on a small piece of notebook paper and carefully fold it. I place it in the center of my altar, along with several other names written on folded pieces of paper that have rested there for days, bathing in my daily prayers and healing meditations. Now I have added my name to theirs. I also need healing. Healing from the anxiety that surges through me in waves and threatens to overwhelm me, that makes my heart pound rapidly and my body tremble, that wears me out and wears me down until I just want to curl up into a ball and huddle in the back of the closet with the door closed.

I sigh, and tears well up in my eyes. I blink, and they drip down my cheeks. “Why me?” I wonder. I sigh again, this time with gratitude. At least, at last, I finally have a handle on the source of it. On the overpowering sense of not being safe. On the nearly uncontrollable need to flee.

I remember that I felt like this once before, a few years ago, when we lived in Catalonia, an autonomous province in Spain. The Catalans had scheduled a much-contested opinion poll, related to their drive for independence. The Spanish government considered even the plans for the poll illegal and threatened to come in with military and national police to forcibly stop people from voting. The Spanish government even leased a vacant cruise ship in the Barcelona harbor and started bringing in troops. The Catalans responded with wile and trickery, hiding their polling plans and ballots in ingenious ways that only served to infuriate the Powers That Be further.

As the tension built, day by day, I knew I had to escape. I was terrified. I did not want to be in Catalonia during this event. When my husband, Gary, saw the line of National Police lined up with rifles on the bridge next to our apartment building, supposedly to ensure peaceful demonstrations, he agreed it was time to leave. So we scheduled a getaway to an arts retreat in a Spanish town in the far-off province of León, eight hours by train away. 

As our departure day drew near—and the date of the opinion poll came closer—I felt more and more anxious. I would startle awake in the middle of the night, shaking with free-floating fear. I began to worry that the Spanish government would stop our train at the border of Catalonia. Gary tried to reassure me, asserting that the government wouldn’t stop the national train system from running. Rationally I knew he was right, but emotionally—at the gut level—I was terrified we would be trapped, unable to escape.

I knew this terror of being trapped made no sense. It was not my own lived experience. So where did it come from? I reviewed my ancestral history. My father and his mother fled Vitebsk, Belarus, in 1923 to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. Dad was only nine. They left behind their wealth, their heritage, and my father’s father, who had been imprisoned by the Bolsheviks. (He died in prison.) My dad and his mother managed to make their way to Italy and board a passenger ship leaving for the USA. 

My mother’s family fled Ukraine in 1912, during pogroms and rising sentiment against the Czar. My grandfather had been caught passing out communist leaflets, and his future was at risk. Besides, he was Jewish, and his opportunities were limited. My grandparents made it to the border but were stopped. Something was wrong with their papers. Somehow, they managed to get out anyway and slowly made their way to the USA, where my mother was born. 

And then, of course, there were the other family members, members I’d never heard of when I was growing up but learned about later, doing genealogical research. They were members of the following generations of my family—mothers, fathers, children—who had not gotten out in time. Instead, they had been shipped or carted or taken by train (details are sparse) to Siberia, where they all died on the same day in 1941. When I saw the death date, all on the same day, at first I didn’t understand. What could have happened that they all died on the same day? And then, and then I understood. Siberia. The Gulag. Mass murder. My family. Dead. And I hadn’t even known.

And then, again of course, there are all the other Jewish ancestors I don’t know of who were forced to flee, or didn’t flee in time, or lived in terror of being discovered and burned at the stake, or….

So maybe it’s no surprise that now, during the political chaos and pandemic that has spread around the world, I feel afraid. At some deep unconscious level of my psyche, political chaos equates to personal threat. I am terrified that something bad is going to happen to me. I want to flee to somewhere safe, even though I am at no apparent risk. I feel trapped, and my mind spins around like a hamster in a cage, running itself into exhaustion.

Gary keeps reminding me that we are probably as safe here in Cottonwood, Arizona, sitting in our back yard, enjoying the velvet black night sky filled with brilliant stars, as we would be anywhere. In fact, probably safer than a lot of places. Our neighbors—and Arizonans in general—are gun-toting conservatives, but that might actually make us safer if there is violence after the elections. And as to Covid? Well, we wear masks, socially distance, buy our groceries online and pick them up curbside, and only eat out occasionally at a restaurant with an outdoor patio and high hygiene standards. We talk to people a street-distance away and have been told by our kids in California and Colorado not to come for a visit. We pretty much self-isolate. So I guess we are safe, as safe here as anywhere. But I don’t feel safe. I feel trapped.

As I sit in front of my altar, I am reminded of a poem by e. e. cummings. The first line is, “Somewhere I have never traveled,…” Cummings wrote the poem as a love poem, but it is the first line I remember. “Somewhere I have never traveled….” I realize that I don’t have to have traveled “there” to experience the dread and terror my ancestors experienced. The history of generations of uprooted Jews flows through my blood and expresses itself in my genes. I don't have to be personally at risk in the here and now—I’ve had ancestral lifetimes of being at risk!

I sigh again. Somehow, knowing what is triggering me helps. I can see, now, that it’s “ancient history” that drives my dread. I can try to heal my present, if not my past. So I put my name on a piece of folded paper on my altar, I light a candle, I take a few slow, unsteady breaths, and I ready myself to move into stillness.

Elyn Aviva is a transformational traveler, writer, and fiber artist who lived in Spain for 11 years but now lives near Sedona, Az. She is co-author with her husband, Gary White, of “Powerful Places Guidebooks.” To learn more about her publications, go to www.pilgrimsprocess.com and “Elyn Aviva Writes” on Facebook. To learn about Elyn’s fiber art, go to www.fiberalchemy.com. Elyn’s latest novel is, Melita’s Quest for the Grail.

Photo credit Viktor Bulla via Wikipedia