Wilumina and the Well

Foreword

I met Jennifer shortly after I published my book The Awakened Woman. She attended a small weekend workshop I held in New Mexico in 2018. Since then, our relationship has grown into a friendship. At that workshop, when each woman spoke of her dreams, Jennifer spoke about writing a book—this book.

She said to me, I want to write a book that will tell a story and teach the reader. I want to write the book that I need to read. One about healing, personal growth, and spirituality. Lord knows I need more of all three of those things!

I said, Many people have learned from teaching stories or parables for thousands of years. What will your story be about?

She said she wasn’t sure exactly but drew a picture for me of a woman blowing what looked like breath or air across many faces. She handed me the drawing and said, This.

Looking at the drawing, I didn’t quite understand. So, I asked, What does it mean?

She answered, I don’t know exactly. But I can feel it, Tererai. It’s a story growing in me, and I birthed the idea for it right here with you in New Mexico. Thank you. She went on, When I complete my book, would you be willing to write the foreword to it?

I said yes, knowing that she would one day call on me to do just that.

Today is that day! Wilumina and the Well is a gem! It reminds me of A Wrinkle in Time. The best part of the manuscript is how she cleverly weaves key lessons through the story without being preachy. I foresee this book becoming a staple on every therapist’s bookshelf. Wilumina and the Well is a survival guide for trauma recovery and a story of enduring love. I hope that every person who may be feeling lost, scared, or alone finds love and courage to heal their own story through the eyes and bravery of Wilumina Florida Pearl.

Jennifer weaves together all the aspects of story, fantasy, and practicality into a tale of a sacred journey. Just like she said she would. I am so honored to write this foreword for Jennifer and to be the woman who inspired the dream of writing Wilumina and the Well.

~ Dr. Tererai Trent

Author’s Note

I am so happy you have found this life-changing story of Wilumina and the Well. Because you have picked up this book and decided to read it, I already know that you are brave. For only the brave are able to really spend time with theirs or anybody else’s shadow. And as you will come to learn, the path to the light is through the dark.

There are some scenes in this book that could be triggers for you. I suggest that you have a reading buddy or someone to talk with as you are moving through Wilumina’s story. We are not meant to heal in isolation. Perhaps you would like to start a reading group so that you can read this book with a group of people and discuss it along the way? Another suggestion (if you are in therapy) is to ask your therapist, mentor, or adviser to read this book so that they can support you while you are reading. Want to read it solo? That’s totally okay too! You might want to have a journal nearby to jot down notes. You might even want to write down questions for your own inner guide for greater insight and answers to some of your own stories.

I have a general resource page at the end of the book. These national US resources are on a larger scale, but they are a good place to start looking for support if you or someone you know is struggling with any of the issues that we will be exploring through Wilumina’s adventure.

Mostly, I just want you to know that I am so proud of you that you have gotten to the place where you are today. You are not alone, and you are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. Keep reading! Keep going even when things get hard. The way to the light is through the dark. It’s all sacred, and it’s all necessary, and so are you!

There’s something magical about wells.

I’ve always believed that wells hear our wishes.

Even the shopping mall wishing wells have some connection to magic.

They hold our secrets and our desires.

Each person who throws a coin into a well secretly or openly believes the same thing.

It wasn’t until I came face-to-face with my special well again that I understood

the true magic a well can perform.

Funny thing is I grew up with a little well in my backyard.

Our little house was across the alley from the church where my dad worked.

I had forgotten…

~ Jennifer Dawn Maddox

Wilumina and the Well

Lu, I think she’s going right now. She was so calm. My sister had been sitting at my mom’s bedside for the last thirty days, praying and willing her to wake up from her coma. I had been willing and praying for her to die. My sister had just given the final nod to remove her from the ventilator and feeding tube a few minutes before. The doctors said it would take at least three to seven days for her to pass. My mom had other plans.

I remember, before I left her bedside for the last time, leaning over just like she used to do to me when I was a kid. I whispered in her ear, Mom, do you want to get out of here? After the question, I drew back to search her face for answers.

I swear she made a face that said, Yes! Her eyes weren’t open, but it sure felt like she said, Yes! Get me out of here!

I leaned back over her and said, The only way they’re going to let you out of here is if you get up and start eating and talking, or you have to die, and they’ll take you out in a body bag. She let out an exhale and fell further into her coma.

It was a horrifying thirty days. Here was this beautiful, complex, amazing soul strapped to her bed because when they unstrapped her, she was violent and thrashed about. Was that her saying, Get me out of here? The doctors said it was involuntary muscle responses to her coma and that it was normal for coma patients to be tied down. My mom? Tied down? No. She deserved to fly. That was why I wanted her dead.

Now, sitting in my car on the side of the road as I tried to figure out how to get back to her bedside , my sister said those words: I think she’s going right now. We were on the phone confirming my travel plans; my brother was already on his way to her.

I was like, Wait, what? Now?

So I shouted to my sister, Put the phone to her ear! Put the phone to her ear!

She did, and I could barely hear my mom’s rattling breaths over the phone.

I shouted, I love you, Mom! I love you, Mom! It’s okay! You can go! And then I was silent. As I breathed slowly in and out, calming myself, I listened to my mom’s breath slowing, until it stopped. I don’t know how long I sat there.

My sister came back on the line and said, That’s it, Lu. She’s gone.

Just like that. The greatest force in my life and the giver of my life was gone. I am forever grateful that I got to hear her take her last breaths and be with her in that way as she left this world. In my car, on the side of the road, I closed my eyes, and a strange thing happened. I smiled. My mom was finally at peace. No more fighting, no more demons, just love.

I had a dramatic realization as I opened my eyes. I’m still here! My mom had passed away from this earth, and I was still here! Coupled with my crushing grief I was filled with an overwhelming sense of love, responsibility, and joy for my own life. In the midst of her leaving this world, I came into my own just a little more. Or maybe I had a sense that I understood my life a little more now. I don’t remember anything else about the call or even how I got back home for that matter. It was all a blur.

Once I got home, grief took over. I searched for something solid through my tears as grief hijacked my nervous system, setting my body on autopilot. Get the girls organized. Cry. Go to the grocery store. Cry. Push the shopping cart through the produce aisle. It didn’t matter who might see me crying, and there was no sense in being embarrassed; I was powerless to stop the tears. Through the screen of salt water, I picked out SpaghettiOs, and then back at home, I packed my clothes and kissed my girls goodbye. I got on the airplane through a silent veil of tears. Somewhere I understood that for me to heal, I just needed to let them flow. In my dreams, I heard a distant voice. Wilumina, my dear, water is the way. Waking up to tears on my pillowcase I became obedient to those tears.

We hadn’t planned for her death. She hadn’t planned for her death. It came as a storm. It came as an act of desperation for peace and quiet. Her passing didn’t come from wanting death but from craving peace. It all went wrong. How was I ever going to live without her? It was so hard living with her, but now she was gone.

On the day of her funeral, I felt death gripping me. Even though it was more than three months after her death, and even though I was there with the love and support of my daughters and husband, I felt scared. I felt waves and waves of grief. Her leaving with so many questions unanswered left a gaping hole in my heart and mind.

The funeral took place at the church where I grew up, where my father had proudly served as a youth preacher. The church was across the alley from our little house with the well in the backyard. I hadn’t been there in over twenty years. It was a lot to take in.

As her memorial service was ending, I knew I needed to get out of the chapel. I needed to get away from all the guests, all the pomp and circumstance, all the people telling me they were sorry for my loss when they knew neither me nor my mother. My head was pounding, and my spirit wanted to escape. Visitors from my childhood who I never planned on seeing again, men who had molested or assaulted me, people who had been complicit in these crimes, and the old streets and alleyways that held those energies came rushing back in. They brought with them ghosts of the past that I didn’t want and couldn’t fully recollect. They looked at me with their own wet tears. I felt preyed upon, like these ghostly, hungry souls wanted a piece of me to take with them as a souvenir of my mother’s life.

Oh my, how you look just like her.

Whisperings of suicide…

It was an accident!

One ghost looked me up and down and said, You are just as beautiful as ever, trying to snake his way into the dominion of my soul. No! Why are you here? Why are any of you here?

I could see them salivating at the opportunity to soothe my pain by saying the right thing. Nothing they said was right. It all made me sick. I could feel the saliva rising in the back of my throat. I couldn’t spend another second listening to how pretty I looked or how sorry they were. Inside, I was screaming, and my spirit was telling me to fly. I needed to get away. But where could I go? There had been so much flying and fleeing in my life. Where to now? I knew the voice inside telling me to run was my mother’s spirit, and I had to answer that calling.

I searched the crowd for an anchor, eyes that loved me. Marcus, where are you? Through the crowd, I saw my husband talking with an old woman with wet eyes. He turned, as if he knew I was searching for him. I mouthed, I have to go.

He made his way over to me and said, Okay. There’s a lot to clean up. It’ll keep us busy for at least a few hours. Don’t worry, babe. Find a place to lie down. We’ve got it from here. You’ve done your part. It was a beautiful eulogy, Lu.

Seeing Marcus and me speaking, my girls stepped away from their chore of collecting the discarded service bulletins from the chapel pews. Sensing my weariness and the concern on Marcus’s face, my girls approached gingerly. I told them that I was feeling a little sick and was going to find a place to lie down. I just needed some time alone.

Okay, Mama, my oldest said. I loved that even though my girls were teenagers, they still called me mama. We’re going to help clean up when everyone leaves. You go rest, she said.

I kissed them all on their foreheads, including Marcus, and whispered, Thank you. Squeezing Marcus’s hand, I turned and started walking to the back of the church. I just needed to breathe for a second and wrestle with this strange sense that my mother was somehow communicating with me. Was it rude of me to go? We had dinner plans in a few hours at a nearby restaurant with all of our extended family. Could I even return? Would I ever want to go back? I couldn’t shake the feeling that my mother didn’t want me around all those people anymore. She wanted me somewhere else. There was something more important she was pushing me to do.

The little church I grew up in was gone. This church was nothing like I remembered. It had grown and expanded beyond recognition. The grounds, which were once charming, were now a polished maze of manicured walkways and small contemplation gardens. There were arbors and benches dedicated to the church from people long past. The flowers and trees swayed in the breeze. Birds chirped, and insects buzzed. Out of nowhere, images of my mother’s discontentment flashed in my mind—breaking glasses at the dinner table, unloading rage on me in my teen years—and it made me momentarily want to tear the neat rows of flowers out of the ground and smash the life out of the birds and insects. This rage came on unexpectedly and without my consent. Perhaps my mother’s rage had as well. Was that what she wanted me to know? It didn’t feel like that was it. So, I moved on.

The grounds were immense. The once little old church was more like a campus now. They had, in fact, demolished a street so that they could grow and expand the church. They tore down the street where we used to live, way back when I was four or so, when my dad was a youth pastor at this very church. The grounds were now so much bigger, but the construction was still incomplete. There were still more meeting halls to build and rows of plants and trees to be planted.

In a secluded courtyard, I saw a shady spot to sit down. I stopped to look at a beautiful three-tiered fountain with water spouting out the top. The pennies and coins that all the wish seekers had thrown into the wishing well were glistening. I reached in the pocket of my dress and found a solitary coin. I tossed it in and made a wish. It was the wish of all wishes.

What does a daughter wish for at her mother’s funeral?

Standing there, I started to cry again; it was the kind of cry that came from the inside of my being, the kind of cry that felt connected to the pain of the earth. I had tried to stay quiet all day, to stay appropriate. But now I couldn’t stop it. I fell to the ground right next to the fountain and let my grief flow out of me.

That’s when I heard it: There, there. Let it out.

The voice came from the other side of a construction fence that was plastered with images of the church’s new auditorium and other buildings that were coming soon. I got up and went to look over the fence and saw nothing but an abandoned lot with piles of rocks and lots of weeds.

No one was there. I set my foot in the bottom rung of the chain-link and hoisted myself up a little higher to get a better look. Then I set my other foot in another link a bit higher up than the first. A surge of excitement hit me just as a breeze ruffled my skirt. I took a deep breath in and hoisted myself up and over the fence as if it were the most normal thing to do, lifting myself from one world to another. As I walked around, the place felt eerily familiar. Was I a trespasser or a welcomed guest?

The space stretched half the length of the church. It had the sense of something wild. The land was sparse and felt like something used to be there but had been long forgotten. It’s interesting how the earth always comes back to claim her place. Was there something I needed to claim as well?

Just then, something unthinkable happened. And even though I was there, it made me question the validity of my memory. Such is the case with people who have experienced trauma—they’re not able to recall distinct