As a recent graduate of the One Spirit Learning Alliance Interfaith Seminary in New York City, I often reflect on how fortunate I am to have studied with a diverse, compassionate, and knowledgeable group of scholars, deans, supervisors, and fellow students. I call everyone I met at the One Spirit Learning Alliance – “teacher.”  But  my first and most significant spiritual teacher is my mother, Yola Edith Edouard Dessables.

No matter who we are and what our current connection is to a biological mother, we all emerged into this world from the warm, billowy, aqueous cocoon of a womb. Remarkably, I have a cellular memory of being inside my mother’s womb, where I first experienced the sacredness of simply being alive. Everything I have experienced in that first molecular memory to my present-day circumstances has been a sacred journey birthed, nurtured, and reared from the woman I call mother.

My mother, who is the inspiration for my spiritual counseling practice known as Yola’s Child, was the epitome of feminine divine power, fearlessness, gratitude, and surrender. Born in Petit Goave, Haiti in 1928, she lived a humble life where she found joy in simple everyday pleasures such as the coolness of a Caribbean Ocean breeze and the sweetness of newly ripened mango. Hers was a life of material poverty and spiritual wealth. My mother taught me to listen to my instincts, trust my heart, and never give up on my dreams.

My biggest dream was to become a social worker. Yola was my biggest cheerleader and the person who ushered me into the social work profession. I fondly recall the day she accompanied me on a New York City Number 1 subway train to my first social work open house.

My dream came true in 1988 when I graduated from Columbia University with my master’s degree in social work. In the years that followed, social work became my greatest passion. I emersed myself in the noble profession that instantly provided me with a conduit for serving others, and today I still proudly call myself a social worker.

As a devout practicing Roman Catholic, my mother adored the image of the virgin mother and child known as Our Lady of Czestochowa or The Black Madonna. “Images of this famous Byzantine icon were most likely brought to Haiti by Polish soldiers sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to quell the Haitian slave rebellion. Polish soldiers remained in Haiti following the rebellion, and with them remained the sacred icon of the Madonna of Czestochowa.” (Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, 2002, pp. 109-110).  The Black Madonna is also the African Goddess Elizi Danto in the Haitian Voodoo spiritual tradition. Haitian people revere her as a protector and source of strength.

Our Lady of Czestochowa became my source of strength as I, like many of us, found myself navigating the highs and lows of life. One Spirit Learning Alliance further widened my perspective of what spirituality could mean for myself and gave me a greater appreciation of what spirituality meant for others. This included, among other things, greater awareness of an entire pantheon of cross-cultural feminine divine archetypes and spiritual figures such as Kali, Kuan Yin, Hecate, Mary Magdalene, Lilith, The Blessed Mother, Yemaya, Ochun, and Gaia, to name a few. I discovered that these and other Goddesses  offer profound and often overlooked gifts of wisdom, courage,  guidance, and healing. Living in a world where God is often gendered as masculine energy, many people yearn for greater connection with a more feminized image of the Divine. Sacred femininity brings a kind of healing balm to the world that includes work around compassion, forgiveness, grief, self-care, sensuality, transformation, and power.

Drawing from the memory of my mother as a source of inspiration, I strive to include feminine divine energies into my spiritual counseling practice wherever helpful and appropriate. I find that counselees, especially those who identify as female, are hungry to engage with sacred feminine figures that resemble their own body images, cultures, and experiences.

In my work as a spiritual counselor, others often ask me where my training as a social worker fits in. I believe that social work complements the work I do as a spiritual counselor in many ways. The social work profession has trained me to view the Whole Person, and my training in spiritual counseling has taught me to View the Soul in The Person. Both approaches are necessary, and both go hand in hand.

A spiritual tenent I hold to be true is the interconnectedness of all things. We are all a part of a larger intelligent divine system. Everything is sacred and everything is prayer. All life is a conversation with the Divine, and all life is a sacred dance.

With this in mind, our greatest joys, our most seemingly mundane tasks, our everyday routines, walks in nature, acts of kindness, and the process of living life itself are all prayers. Even the most difficult moments in life are prayers. Our challenges are sacred opportunities to learn, grow and transform into something new.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of the Feminine Divine is her symbolic cycle of birth, life, and death that is continuous in the universe and synonymous with Mother Earth. The Feminine Divine reminds us that all life is a process of arriving, living fully, and ultimately letting go. Perhaps this is the greatest prayer of all.

I am grateful to both my parents, John and Yola Dessables.

May your loving and supportive energies be part of the cosmic cycle of transformation that is all life.

References

Bashford, S. (2018). You Are a Goddess-Working with The Sacred Feminine to Awaken, Heal and Transform. Carlsbad, California: Hay House.

Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, M. (2002). The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.