My Triple Goddess

This is my image of the Triple Goddess.

My Nannie Fannie on the left. My Mama Roz on the right. In the middle, a little girl who had no idea what she would one day become.

As I look at this photograph today, I am struck by something I could not have understood when it was taken. I stood with these two strong women who raised me with love and nurtured me with stories, music, and creative arts. We stood on a playground that day in our favorite park. I can close my eyes and return to the joy it brought me. Now I see it representing an idea that the world can still support me in areas of play and fun.

There I am, a mini-me version of myself. A child standing in the liminal space between two worlds. In this photograph, I have one hand clinging to my mother. On my other side, my strong grandmother who saved people from a burning building, birthed babies, and escaped the horrors of a country turned sour when she was only nine years old. I feel her spirit radiating to me from the spirit realm and know that she still has my back.

As an author of stories woven with mythology, I often speak about lineage, ancestry, and the threads that shape us. This photograph reveals more truth than a hundred pages of theory.

My grandmother, whom I affectionately called Nannie Fannie, was my first roommate. We shared a room for years. Her stories, her habits, her voice, her laughter, and her love became part of the architecture of my inner world. Long before I understood mythology, she taught me what it meant to belong.

My mother was equally remarkable. During the Vietnam War, she stood on street corners holding a candle in protest. My father and I would bring her food and water. My older brother, facing the draft, went into hiding. Ours was not a family that taught violence. We were taught to question, to think, and to care. For my fifth birthday, my father bought me my first camera, a Polaroid Swinger. I unwrapped the box, and as he showed me how to load the film pack into it, he said, “Shoot cameras. Not guns.”

On a weekly date to our neighborhood bookstore, my mother gave me one of the greatest gifts I ever received. We had an agreement. Once a month I could choose a book to take home and have it live with me. That day I wandered out of the children's section, went all the way to the back of the store, and found a small box wrapped in cellophane. Inside was a book and a deck of tarot cards.

She tried twice to talk me out of it.

On the third attempt, she squatted down, looked me in the eyes, and asked if that was truly what I wanted.

“Yes, mama. This is what I really, really want,” I replied.

She inspected it and must have thought, This has a book, so it is within our agreement though she had no idea what tarot was. It was from her mother that I inherited my fierce spiritual path. This was a mother honoring her child's curiosity.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that moment was one of the first visible signs of my road ahead.

The little girl in this photograph grew up to study mythology, yoga, meditation, astrology, comparative religion, consciousness, healing, and the power of the human voice. She would write books and teach. Decades would spiral in a dance as she continues to ask what it means to be human.

None of these accomplishments appeared out of nowhere. Seeds were sprinkled and nurtured.

Today I spent time reflecting on a conference I was a part of as a presenter and participant, where the word liminal was spoken again and again. The more it entered my ears, the more I smiled, realizing I have been exploring "the in-between" for most of my life. Decades ago, in a song I wrote to open ceremonies, I included the words:

“As above and so below us, within the in-between.”

At the time, I did not know I would one day encounter a room full of academics using the word liminality until it vibrated through me and still echoes. I have always understood that there is wisdom in the space between things.

I teach and research the pause between breaths. The silence after a sound. The place where opposites stop fighting long enough to listen.

As I look at this photograph, I see another kind of in-between. In it is a child standing between generations. She is a bridge between memory and possibility, a living thread connecting past and future.

In my first book, a novel entitled Lilith, I wrote the line:

“You are the myth your ancestors told around the fire at night.”

That line could have sprung from this photograph. It could have danced out from my grandmother's stories. I am sure it also came from my mother's courage and my father’s care of nature and living things.

As I continue to grow, I understand that our lives are not built from isolated moments. They are built from countless acts of love, trust, guidance, sacrifice, curiosity, and presence.

My grandmother gave me roots. My mother gave me wings and encouraged risk.

Together, this Triple Goddess planted a cornerstone in the foundation of how I see the world's potential.

Today I call in the energy and power of my Triple Goddess and their love, which continues to echo through every story I tell.

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