Grandmother Sarah

Grandmother Sarah opens the conference in Udine with a ceremony. Since her luggage has been lost in Paris, she is unable to set up her altar and sage us. She is deeply distraught, but also calls on each of to find the altar inside ourselves, which I find to be what is most needed for me in that moment.

In every one of Grandmother Sarah’s ceremonies/talks, she expresses a great amount of gratitude, nyaweh, which she often linked to thanks for the sun and also the sun that shines from within us. I find that the Italian culture is also very fond of expressing gratitude—a large amount of time at the beginning of each event is devoted to thanking everyone from the individuals behind the logistics to the state of Italy. Grandmother Sarah spoke about how we each must take the initiative to speak to our ancestors, to contact our grandparents. She described how life is embodied in the figure of the turtle—the tail is the beginning of conception, 0-7 are the formative years, and up and up to the head, the spiritual realm.