I only had one assignment from my writing coach when I left Pittsburgh last week to spend 5 days in Belize at a women’s retreat. My intention was to step away and have some time for reflection, but our project is at the place where we need to establish a launch date for my upcoming book. Since the woman who was organizing and leading the retreat is a numerologist, my writing coach Amanda suggested I consult with her in choosing that date. I appreciated that encouragement as it helped quiet that ultra-analytical voice in my head that tells me that this plan is way too “woo-woo.”
I do trust my friend and advisor, LaVerne Baker Hotep, whom I’ve known for 17 years, and her 30+ years of study and experience in understanding the ancient language of numbers, spoken, and understood by numerologists in all the world’s cultures. When the 9 numbers or symbols configure and reconfigure with the symbol 0 they provide us with a deeper understanding of ourselves and the cycles and times in which we are living. Laverne’s way of explaining it is that numbers are symbols that inform us about vibrations, and if we want something to move, it helps to be in alignment with our own vibrations and those of larger realities. As a person who has suffered from what my daughter called, “being ahead of my time,” my intention for this new creation is for this book to enter the larger world at the most opportune time for it to flourish and reach its intended audiences.
Laverne and I are seated at a table on a covered patio beside a pond with a view of the green overarching canopy of the Belizean rain forest. Butterflies, dragonflies, and sounds of bird calls flutter in and out of our awareness as we converse. We each have a large beach towel on our laps, partly to wipe away the sweat dripping down our faces, and partly perhaps, to provide us some encouragement, that when this consultation is finished, we will be able to put our toes, perhaps our whole bodies in the pond’s cold, just down from the mountaintop water.
In the workshop that preceded our conversation LaVerne had shared the characteristics of each number by using the analogy of planting a flower. #1 is the start, the seed is planted. (The book is written,) #2 It’s about relationship. All is in the dark, but a lot is happening in relationship to sun and water and to the person who weeds. It’s about relationship, and (about the collaboration with the village it takes to get a book out.) #3 is the joy bringer. Something comes up out of the ground and begins to spread out.
We learned that years have numbers. We are all in a 7 year now which is a going inward time. Retreating, renewing, as we women Laverne has gathered together are doing now. We can confirm this by adding all the numbers that make up this year’s date. (2023) 2+0+2+3=7. I get excited to realize that next year, 2024 will be an 8 year, a taking on of big things by empowering others, a balancing of material and spiritual elements. (2024) 2+0+2+4=8.
Starting with the practical, I suggest that February and March seem strong potential months for the launch given, that by then, we’re past the holidays. “Several people have suggested, February 14th, Valentine’s Day,” I tell Laverne and we both laugh when I remind her “you know how I hate those lacey heart-shaped valentines and the reminders of grade school, and all those hurt feelings when somebody got left out.”
Months have numbers, as do people, and combining them, Feb is the second month, and my number which LaVerne calculates is a two throughout all of 2024 means 2+2 = 22 then adding those 2+2 =4. The coming month of February for me becomes a 4. “That’s a great prep month where you are getting things done on the material plane. Laying a foundation, it’s a “get-her-done” month,” Laverne says.
Moving to the next month, she says, and I write it in my journal, “March is a 5 month.” Just then, a yellow butterfly swoops down low enough to touch LaVerne on the top of her head before flying away and I look again at what I’ve written. I say, “My daughter Corinne’s birthday is March 5th, and when I say that– a shiver, a movement moves upward throughout the trunk of my body. Doing the numbers on March 5th 2024–comes to a ten – the ultimate number.
Now its handy that I have a beach towel on my lap so I can wipe at the tears streaming down my face. The tears are propelled by remembering that I had placed a butterfly jewelry piece on the altar as we started the retreat, that it had been made by an artist using the drawing of a child being treated for cancer at MD Anderson, remembering that Corinne had given it to me on my birthday, 20 years ago, after she had traveled the entire length of the hospital campus pushing her infusion pole to the gift shoppe and back in order to purchase it. I will honor her and the anniversary of her 62nd birthday by launching The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Live Our Best Lives Now on that day.
LaVerne and I do eventually get our feet wet in that cold water, while a dragonfly lingers and lounges so long on a nearby leaf, she’s able to get several photos of it. Turns out Laverne and I are both #7s which in the language of numerology means that in order to bring things out that are hidden, we rested.
