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September/October 2001 Living Now
Ancestors Calling

by Paula Noël, Ph.D.

Paula Noël, Ph.D.

I recently moved back to Portland from the Bay area. I was had been assisting at a university and I was going to be teaching students in a master’s program with a concentration in Indigenous Mind. In the midst of finding myself in a very ideal situation as a recent doctoral graduate, my health took a turn.

After two MRI’s and several tests, I found out that my brain is in the process of demyelination and that I possibly have MS. This means that my white blood cells are attacking the myelin sheath around the nerve cells in my brain, essentially my body is attacking itself. While just settling down into the life at the university I was asked to return to Portland by my family to seek out the care of a neurologist and be close to home. I had found my calling, but now I was to let go of the job and the salary.

While working with a chiropractor in the Bay area, she told me that my primary prescription is to rest. One day while in her office, I heard someone coming up the stairs. His steps were staggered and his gait rough. When he made it to the top of the stairs I could see that he was walking with crutches. As he pulled himself into the room and made his way to the front desk, I sensed he had multiple sclerosis. When the doctor called me into the room to work on me, she told me, “It is important that you rest. The man in the waiting room has MS. He was in a wheelchair and now can walk with crutches, but I am not sure how much further he can heal. You have an opportunity, because you caught the demyelination in time, which you can reverse and heal if you rest, take the supplements and follow through on your therapies. You can heal yourself, but you must rest.” Rest? I had ideas, plans, things to teach…rest? I have so much energy that I don’t know what to do with it at times. I even find it difficult to sit still and meditate.

A couple of nights before I left for Portland I had a conversation with a fellow doctoral student, Fania Davis. She told me that in the African tradition, illness is initiatory, a calling from our Ancestors. That night I had a dream and was visited by a spirit that was very familiar to me. He whispered in my ear, “It is time to come home.” I asked him, “But why now, I have everything that I have worked for?” He said, “You have something else to do. It is time to come home and rest so you can listen and hear what it is.”

Reluctantly, I packed my belongings and made the trip home with the help of my family. My parents sent me up to our cabin on Mt. Hood to rest. The first few days here, I began reading about a medical intuitive called Mona Lisa Schultz. In her book, Awakening Intuition, she writes that people with MS are “responsible for creating their own lives. Persons or objects that had given their lives meaning and structure were suddenly removed, and they were forced to reevaluate and redetermine their purpose in life. When they couldn’t do that, they succumbed to MS.”

When I found a medical intuitive locally, I went into the session with the intention finding my purpose in life. He told me that it is very clear that I need to “write, write and write. You have a story to tell and you have to rest, listen and hear the story, then write it.” This sounded familiar. As I listened to the words repeat in my mind like a mantra, “write, write and write” I began to let go of the job at the university, the salary, and all the things I thought I was supposed to be doing with my life. I told him that this is what I have always dreamed of, being a writer. I have just been too afraid of what other people think, that it doesn’t pay enough or isn’t a reliable “job”.

As I think about writing I reflect on the genealogy of my lineage, the MacDhuibhshith’s of Colonsay. My Ancestors were the scribes, writing down and recording the genealogies and the stories of the islands, including the holy isle of Iona. It is my Ancestors who are calling me to rest, heal my body and write everything down, as they have done for hundreds of years. So I give to you my story and my words, that I may honor my Ancestors who have called me home.

Paula Noël, Ph.D. is a recent graduate of the Integral Studies Traditional Knowledge Degree at CIIS. She lives locally in Portland writing articles and is translating her dissertation into a book. She can be reached at: 503.285.7011, email: paulanoel@yahoo.com