“So this week …” Deborah explained haltingly “ … I am in doubt about how to help my daughter again.”
And that’s an understatement if there ever was one, she thought, and allowed herself to glance for the clairvoyant counselor’s reaction.
“Go on,” the other woman said with professional gentleness.
Deborah Sawyer pulled her legs even more up in the softly cushioned curving chair and attempted to look relaxed like this was a normal clairvoyance therapy session. On the other side of a small wooden table with a single candlelight on was Mieleeka Mountaindaughter seated in a similar chair. The latter with considerably greater regal posture.
“I don’t know where to start,” Deborah admitted.
Mieleeka nodded patiently “Start at the beginning.”
Deborah frowned. It was like she was having another bout of migraine, but what about those damn pills … ?
From outside the window came the sound of someone roller skating at great speed and someone else walking by and talking about where to eat, and a hundred other muffled echoes of life at Long Beach.
It made for a weird contrast to the incense-smelling room with all the crystals and Mieleeka’s oil painting of the Archangel Metatron on the wall behind the counselor. It was a channeled painting and Deborah had always thought it looked like a bunch of waves crossed with a lotus flower, but for years now she had had firm experiences with the seven Planes of Existence, so who was Deb to argue? She had long since accepted that not everything in the spiritual realm looked like a Hollywood movie.
Or what they force-fed you in Latter Day Saints primary school.
They were both women in their early 60s, Deborah still slender, dressing like she did twenty years earlier, short jeans and a top because it was Californian summer. She kept her curly hair long despite the silver cropping up every time she looked in the mirror. But that was one battle she had given up on early. There was so much else to fight for …
Mieleeka in contrast had cut her hair very short, and, Deborah suspected, still dyed it more reddish than it was. She was a shapely woman, who seemed to feel good about it, although she always wore long, flowing, sari-like dresses, which hid most of her curves. And then there was the jewelry.
Deborah thought Mieleeka probably had a ring or an earring or a necklace for any occasion, and for any kind of connection you’d want to make with the various planes beyond the material.
“You know almost everything there is to know about Carrie and my grandson,” Deborah said, at length.
“But I want to hear it again, with the feelings that are important to you this week.” Mieleeka smiled.
Deborah opened and closed her fists. “Okay, so the way I see it things have reached a point of no return for my daughter. She got clean, she married, she had Emma and Michael. But because of her … mistakes, she never got to do what she really wanted.”
“But now there is a chance.” A thin smile crossed the seer’s lips.
Deborah fidgeted with the only ring she had. “Yes. But it’s probably now or never. I finally got Marcus convinced to get Carrie in the Program, as a kind of special case. They could use it for publicity before expanding it and promoting it more heavily.”
Mieleeka nodded, “Ah, I remember: you get a certain sum up front and then you take part in one of their courses and see what you can make of it. Kind of like an angel investor situation, but for real people – with real needs.” Her lips twitched a bit as if she was about to say something more, but it didn’t happen.
Instead, she took a piece of spiky mountain crystal from her bag and put it on the table between them.
“I think we should start the session now,” she said. “What do you most want to know from our lord Metatron at this time?”
Deborah leaned forward in the curving chair. This was what she had been waiting for. Whatever you could say about Mieleeka she had an uncanny connection to the angelic realms. Deborah couldn’t count the clairvoyance sessions where she had walked away feeling utterly astounded by the insights Mieleeka had provided on her situation, via Lord Metatron and others.
Mieleeka also took a vial of white essence from her bag and put a few drops on her fingers which she waved in the air in a predetermined pattern. Then finally she put a drop on her brow and closed her eyes. “Tell our lord Metatron what is on your mind and in your heart.”
Deborah twisted the ring back and forth “Ah, okay … so it’s like this: I really wish my daughter would go back to drawing and maybe rebuild her art studio. But Carrie keeps … talking about how little she can do for herself, even with more money, because she has to take care of my grandson.”
“And because of Michael’s autism,” Mieleeka added, eyes still closed.
“ … Yes.” Deborah took the ring off and clenched it in her hand. “I’m tired of saying it, but it’s there and I have to confront it: There is no cure for autism … at least not something recognized by traditional science. So I was wondering … “
“What were you wondering?” Something seemed to glow now on Mieleeka’s cheeks.
Maybe it was just because it was noon and the temperature outside was pushing 80. Despite the shade in the room, and the droning of the air conditioning, Deborah felt her own jeans and blouse cling to her skin. She searched for the words.
“I, uhm, was wondering if there is some kind of spiritual … way to help Michael with his autism? Something we haven’t tried yet?”
“So your daughter could spend the money on that … ” Mieleeka inquired slowly “ … or so her son could get so much better, that she could get more time to spend the money on her art?”
“I guess I’m asking about both.” Deborah felt restless. She heard some tourists chatter in French outside.
God, how she missed Paris. Even the cobblestones…
“I’ll try to tune in …” Mieleeka seemed to stop breathing for a long moment.
Finally, she inhaled. “Lord Metatron says that … there are ways, but your grandson is not ready for them yet. Nor is your daughter for that matter.”
“What ways?” Deborah clenched her fists again. “And how long will I have to wait?”
“Lord Metatron is silent on this matter. I am sorry, Deborah. You will have to find out for yourself in your own good time.”
“I’m 63—I don’t have as much time as I used to, you know!”
“I’m sorry, but sometimes it’s like this,” Mieleeka said. “Like when you asked about your relationship with Marcus … ”
Deborah stood up abruptly as if somebody had placed a needle in one of the cushions. The chair almost keeled over, as she angrily fumbled for her own bag, which she had parked somewhere below it.
“I thought I could get something more … You usually give me a lot more.” She stared at Mieleeka with a mixture of desperation and despair.
“You are angry.” Mieleeka’s smooth voice stated it as a fact.
“You are right, I’m angry. That’s not good enough – that … that information. There has to be more!”
“There isn’t.”
“Well, great.” Deborah shook her head in disbelief, as she tried to position the strap from her bag so it didn’t bite into her naked shoulder.
“You have come here for a long time now,” Mieleeka said calmly, “getting free readings. It was part of our agreement. Most of the time you have been happy with the information you got, even though it was very little—as you well know can often be the way of the spirit world.”
The strap on Deborah’s bag snapped. “—Goddammit!”
“Deborah …” Mieleeka started.
“—I’ll say ‘goddammit’ in my own apartment!” Deborah grabbed the bag again and rolled the broken strap around one of her wrists like a whip.
For a moment none of the women spoke.
“I’m sorry … ” Deborah tried to breathe normally, but the stinging in her head was already getting worse.
“I will ask again,” Mieleeka said, closing her eyes once more.
Deborah waited anxiously, hoping there would be one last bit of advice. She had often prayed to Him, and some of the other angelic masters. Directly, personally, with all the passion she could muster. Maybe He would feel some compassion for her in this situation?
“He says you must have faith,” Mieleeka said quietly.
“‘Faith’?” Deborah was flabbergasted.”Faith is for gospel singers and all the others who take everything in their religion at face value. I want to know.”
“Sometimes you have to be ready to have a certain experience,” Mieleeka said, “to have a certain knowledge.”
“I’d better go now.” Deborah turned and headed towards the street door.
“If you want me to move out—” Mieleeka started.
Deborah stopped with her hand on the handle. “I don’t want you out. I just need … time to think.”
“When is your daughter coming to visit?” Mieleeka asked.
“I’m going to pick them up at the airport now.”
“I am sorry, Deborah. We have known each other for so long. I wish there was more I could do.”
Deborah didn’t answer that. She went out on the stairway and then down to the drive that ran along the beach where she was almost hit by another pair of skating youngsters.
Deborah gave them the finger and crossed the drive to the parking lot on the other side. Once there she zigzagged with defiance between moving cars to find her own SUV (well, Marcus’ SUV but … ).
She pulled out the keys from her damaged bag and started up. On a whim, she also turned on the radio.
They played an old pop song. She recognized the band from way back when she had lived with Carrie’s father. Carrie had loved that band. She had wanted to be like the lead singer. But it was a short-lived dream. The band broke up after a few years. Carrie the between-ager was devastated. No more singing with the hair dryer in front of the mirror.
They had even been to a concert in Glasgow, though Deborah had thought Carrie was too young back then, but one of the few good things Calum had done was to convince her that it would be great for their daughter, and of course, the girl had loved every minute.
Deborah let it play while she followed Ocean Boulevard like a hunter looking for the on-ramp to the freeway. Unlike Carrie, and her late stepbrother, Tim, she had never really been a super fan of any kind of popular music. In fact, Deborah took silent pride in being a bit of a pop and rock musical dunce.
However, she didn’t hate popular music, even if she had mostly been listening to chanting and the like since the early 1970s.
Music wasn’t an enemy, unlike certain religions. It just did not matter enough.
Except when it connected to something that did. Like Carrie’s happiness or that impossibly young singer switching to French after the chorus and reminding Deborah of the first time she felt really free.
No, all that mattered was change, and what you could do to change things. And there was always something. Marcus had chided her at the beginning of their relationship for being a dreamer, someone who’d rather sit on her arse and meditate until a new life manifested itself right in front of her.
Or just sit and feel sorry for herself, like she suspected many people did when they replaced the worship of religion with the worship of some artist or other.
But Marcus had learned soon enough that that wasn’t the truth about her.
Deborah Sawyer was a change agent. She knew she was here on Earth for a purpose. She had long suspected that it was so. Now she just had to find out exactly what it was, so she could fulfill it before it was too late.
And if there was one certain thing above all, it had to be that no purpose would be complete without the happiness of her daughter. Or her grandson.
But the angels just weren’t ready yet. Fine. Who could question that?
As usual, she’d just have to start it all herself.
- DEBORAH 11 JULY 2015
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Cover photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash
Crystal photo by Jason D on Unsplash
Paris photo by Shayan Ghiasvand on Unsplash
Woman on the road photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash
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13
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts, comments or experiences!
Comments
6 responses to “Don’t Liberate Me, I’ll Liberate Myself”
So we finally meet Carrie’s mother, Deborah Sawyer, whose dominance in Carrie’s life was foreshadowed in the story “One Step Closer” . I have ‘known’ this character for years but not developed her much beyond a few stories (more like, vignettes) about her life in the 1970s and 1980s. I always imagined her to be somewhat of a rebel without a cause, though. That she had a relatively strict (religious and conservative) upbringing, rebelled against that, was shut out by her family as a consequence, and then after much drifting around ended up with Carrie’s soldier-dad in Scotland. A marriage which was eventually doomed to fail, for reasons we can get back to.
But the substance of this story is, of course, the spiritual side of things. I am of the position myself that there’s definitely ‘more’ than the physical world, and that ‘more’ cannot solely be expressed through any organized religion. That position is maddeningly fuzzy, I know, but it is how I see the world, and perhaps that is not so bad when I have to write about it, because I feel I can get around all the perspectives. So while it may sound like I’m trying to write a story that positions Deborah as a somewhat misguided senior woman who just replaced one ‘irrational belief’ with another that’s far from how I see it. The clairvoyant woman might very well be correct in that she is not ready for a certain kind of knowledge, whether or not that assessment is hers personally or it comes from ‘above’.
I know it probably feels like a cop-out to some of you. You might want a clear answer – can we, or can we not, use anything from the spiritual world to cure / help a boy like Michael with autism? (In so far, as we believe in the spiritual world, or whatever you want to call that ‘more’ I was talking about … ) Well, can we? I wish I knew. Deborah is convinced of it, but she is also very full of herself and very impatient, so that’s why the story ends as it does, and as a character piece I feel it works well for that reason. I hope it does.
Next time I might take up a story from the archives, maybe with audio, but we’ll see.
All the best to you – wherever you are,
Chris
I wonder what kind of chanting Deborah was listening to?
[most of the chanting I know is the Gregorian chant and sometimes Hari Krishna].
[and on a different level perhaps the sporting chants!]
And I stopped to play I’M NOT SCARED which I had discovered back in 2019
[though it had been unconsciously in my life back in the 1990s and 2000s].
Loved the character Mieleeka as she gives other perspectives.
And all the reflections on music – especially the decision to take Carrie to the concert.
Now that would have been a leap of faith…
So Deborah takes her anger and reflects with it.
That’s good. Her anger is telling her what she values and what she is ready for.
Did Deborah first feel really free in Paris? or somewhere around Europe?
Or was it a more ineffable sort of feeling?
Like Michael and Carrie’s happiness.
This week I read about the Possibilitarianism philosophy.
Also, a great many bloggers and TikTokkers are Mormon and especially ex-Mormon.
The strap on the bag really showed the tension and the care – especially when it was snapped.
That first impression of Mountaindaughter and her regal posture.
And I have known Autistic mediums and psychics in the past and in the present.
They all have different ideas on what it takes to be ready.
Thank you for such a great reply. I’m away but in a few days I’ll be back to give a proper reply. Thanks again!
OK, I’m back, and once again thank you for your comment.
I’m not sure about what kind of chanting, Deb would listen to! I suppose it could be Hare Krishna, but she has been ‘shopping around’ all her life, so it would only be because she likes that particular kind of chanting, I think.
I loved that pop song myself, I’m Not Scared, back when I was a teen. I was into electronica and new wave and The Pet Shop Boys had written the song, so I think that’s why I discovered it. The PSB did their own version later on which is distinctly darker and less up-beat, and has samples of the May 1968 riots in Paris (which is the first time I became aware of them).
Mieleeka is a composite of some of the clairvoyant mediums I have known myself, or seen on the internet. I hope my portrayal of her came off as rounded. I didn’t want her to look like a ‘fraud’. She believes in what she does, and you never know …
The character of Deborah Sawyer was first thought of maybe 10-12 years ago, but I have done precious little to develop her, except for a few stories over on ShadeoftheMorningSun.com about her life in the 1960s and 1970s. I made two short stories (flash fiction) about her being in Paris in 1968 because her father, a rich Mormon business man, uprooted the entire family to go there due to, well, business.
I always imagined that that move to France causes Deborah to become aware of her freedom to do pretty much anything else than the life her parents had planned for her, because she witnessed the student rebellions firsthand. But she never quite gets around to figure out her path in life, and ends up not getting anything in return for her own personal ‘rebellion’ (e.g. breaking with Mormonism, trying different eastern spiritual practices) except … alienating her parents. And later on she falls for Carrie’s father, a Scottish professional soldier, even though she had always paid lip service to pacifism until then. And because the marriage eventually breaks down, she likely has another reason to be angry – with herself, too.
Anyway, I hope to have time to do some of those stories down the line, perhaps as flashbacks. They would go a long way in explaining why Deborah is so angry (like Carrie, she has never really excelled at anything or found ‘her path’). Like it says in the story, she feels she is here for a purpose, but it’s getting late in life and she still doesn’t know what it its, so she – probably – projects that onto Michael. If she can help him be ‘liberated’ (and her daughter, Carrie, too) then perhaps her life will have been worth it?
Phew, that was a bit long, but I hope it was of interest to you. Let me know if you any ideas about this, that I may turn into stories later on.
As for Possibilianism (?), I had not heard about it but checked the wiki page. It sounds like it could be part of Deb’s inner compass, even if she doesn’t know its name! 🙂
Thanks for reading.
Chris
Here is where I learnt about Possibiliarianism
Retrocausality and the Goneself – https://jeziorki.blogspot.com/2023/09/retrocausality-and-goneself.html
[there are 3 or 4 other posts in this general field – yours is the correct spelling and that is what Michael Dembinski does too].
Yes – seeing Liberation in anyone and everyone.
Pacifism was not one of her core values?
The student rebellions and their role in shaping Deborah are definitely another consideration.
https://jeziorki.blogspot.com/search/label/Possibilianism
The Pet Shop Boys I’M NOT SCARED is probably the one I know best – and the Eighth Wonder.
[I love all the collabs that Pet Shop Boys did – including with Dusty Springfield!]
[my first real exposure to Pet Shop Boys was through the rap/hiphop style of East Seventeen and WEST END GIRLS].
“Due to, well, business!”
Two Autistic mediums and psychics:
Emma Lucy Thomson – https://emma-lucy-thomson.net
[Diary of a Painfully Shy Introvert on Twitter and TikTok]
Carrie-Anne Brownian – https://carrieannebrownian.wordpress.com
One of her past lives was a Holocaust survivor who had died in a fire.
I still love electronica and new wave – from about the late 1990s onwards.
And then I think of Invictus and “The heart of Invictus”.
Rebellion and alienation do run together a lot.
I’d love to know more about the Eastern spiritual practices Deborah may or may not have gelled with over the decades and years.
Miekella really is very rounded for me. And three-dimensional.
And Lord Metatron too. He reminds me a lot of Bivalve and Hilarion who I met in Michael Edwards’s spiritual multiverse.
I do have lots of ideas about Deborah and her travels and the emptiness she may have felt.
I did get lots of ideas about the Hippie Trails and also Camino.
Liberation through movement[s] would be the BIG one.
About the Mormons – Meg Conley and what she wrote about holding hands and dust.
And the art that Deborah would have experienced in Paris and elsewhere.
A mate wrote about La France Profonde – that person is Esther O’Neill and she has just published I NEED TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING which is about 13-year-old Evie being abandoned by her family.
And then I thought about the only current cure being nonexistence.
And where “Liberation” would point.
Replacing beliefs – Louise Ganye on ACTUALLY JUST HUMAN [substack] has a lot of insights on that!
And Katharine Duckett from THE QUACK [another Substack] is a speculative fiction writer who “Imagines Accessible Worlds” – she has some workshop material which may spark you.
Also Joyce Reynolds Ward is another speculative fiction writer who really loves her horses.
I wonder if Deborah has been in any way connected to animals or plants in her past; present or future lives?
Thanks for getting back to me! 🙂
The title is actually a slogan from the French students’ rebellion in May 1968. I thought it was a good fit for how Deborah (still) feels about the world. Thank you for the links.
I think pacifism was a core value for her, like for most ‘flower power children’, but, you know, love can do strange things to you. And perhaps she thought she could ‘save’ Calum (Carrie’s father) somehow? I would love to have time to tell those stories at some point. I only have a couple of flash fictions up that indicate that Calum went to war in the Falklands but didn’t really see action before he was shot in the knee and then came home and started drinking, and Deborah – after 10+ years – saw that he was a lost cause for her. But she stayed, as usual, until very late because of the children.
“What Have I Done To Deserve This?” is probably my fave PSB song. It is timeless! 🙂
I didn’t think of Mieleeka as autistic but it is an intriguing idea. I think I might use it in a future story!
“Heart of Invictus” looks like something for me. I will check it out if I can!
Thanks for your thumbs up to Mieleeka 🙂
I only know the purported angels from reading online. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had what I thought to be personal experiences with them. I am interested in their history, though. There are some good sections in the Wiki as usual about Metatron, for example, and his original conception in Hebrew history, which has later been coopted by various New Age groups.
All your ideas about Deb’s journey – thank you, thank you! There is so much to unpack and research, but I will get around to some of it eventually. I am hard pressed for time, but now I have something to look forward to. It is my intention to write about all three generations of the family – from Deborah’s to Emma and Michael’s. And preferably also about some of their friends and relatives. For example, Deborah’s businessman / ‘New Thought leader’-second husband, Marcus Chen, who is from Hong Kong. I’ve started a story about him which may be published next week.
Deborah definitely believes in former lives. She is also kind of angry that she has never remembered one. At some point in the future I think it would be interesting if Carrie (who is a devout skeptic) might get (more) unexpected spiritual experiences, whereas her mother, who is a firm believer, does not. I can already see some of that coming now. But I digress! 🙂 🙂
Once more, thanks a bunch for following. I tried to get your blog into the WP.com feed, but it is a Google blog so it was spat back out again. Do you have any social media presences I can follow?