Walking with Destiny on One Shoulder, Death on the Other
Those of you who have been with me for a while know I’m interested in the questions that live underneath the work I teach. Who are we becoming? What is ours to give? What happens when we listen beyond what we already know?
Earlier this year, when Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, Wendell Berry and Dr. Larry Dossey died within days of one another, I wrote about the medicine of their lives and the gifts we might claim and carry forward from their lives. [When Elders Become Ancestors: Claiming Gloria, Dolly, Wendell & Larry’s Medicine]
Now the question of medicine has come closer to home.
Dr. Craig Weiner 1961-2026
My friend Craig Weiner, DC died suddenly in his mid-60s, fully engaged in his life and work and expressing who he was with enormous joy and generosity. And then he was gone.
A few days after learning of Craig’s passing, I was with Stephen Jenkinson, the Canadian author, teacher and storyteller whose work explores death, grief and eldership. Stephen has been visited by what he calls “the rough gods” with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s. The capacities that have carried his work into the world are changing before us.
Stephen said the good days take care of themselves. That left me thinking about the bad ones. The good days allow us to enjoy the life we have. The hard ones are where our souls ask us to grow, enlarging the perspective from which we understand life.
Stephen is the consummate storyteller, and even the stories about receiving a devastating diagnosis and the treatments he explored were tinged with hilarity amidst the stark humanity and humility of his condition. The fact he calls his body “the bone house” demonstrates his capacity to meet even mortality with humor in the most harrowing circumstances without diminishing their gravity.
As I listened, I found myself thinking about Original Medicine. For years I have taught that each of us carries Original Medicine—the gifts and qualities uniquely ours to express in the world. If we don’t express that Medicine, it is lost to the world for all time. Our medicine is not what we do. It is what we bring to all parts of our lives when we show up at our best. It can find many forms of expression over a lifetime.
When Elders Become Ancestors: Claiming Gloria, Dolly, Wendell & Larry’s Medicine
This morning I woke up to the news that Gloria Steinem has died at 92.
The Washington Post quoted historian Christine Stansell describing Gloria as “to the women’s movement what Martin Luther King Jr. was to civil rights: the galvanizer.”
What a life. What a force for evolution.
This photo is from a writers’ retreat (at Hedgebrook for “women authoring change”) where Gloria and I were both guests in residence nearly twenty years ago. I remember how much fun we had, how soft-spoken and kind she was, and how naturally she asked good questions and listened. She even admitted she didn’t love public speaking! Listening was part of her genius, the capacity to hear what women were experiencing and give voice to what needed to be heard. It was her work that paved the way for me to create the first TN Women’s Career Convention in 1979 where 4,000 women from 16 states gathered for 3 days to hear inspiring speakers and meet 100 employers who wanted to hire them. It changed my life and led to my being named the first women to be the SBA TN Small BusinessMAN of the year!
I talk a lot about Original Medicine—the particular gifts we each carry that make our expression in the world distinctive, undeniable, and necessary to the whole of life. Gloria’s medicine was unmistakably hers, expressed in naming what others couldn’t yet name, challenging structures that diminished women, and helping millions of women see themselves and their possibilities differently.
And now, in little more than a week, we have lost Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry and Dr. Larry Dossey as well, four extraordinary human beings with three completely different expressions of Original Medicine in service to the world.
Damn, it’s hard losing these elders.
Gloria disrupted what needed to change.
Dolly disarmed what kept us apart.
Wendell never let us forget the natural world of which we are a part.
Larry invited us to take seriously what we cannot see—and helped bring the mysteries of consciousness, healing, and prayer into conversation with medicine and science.
There are so many ways to evolve a world.
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