“Come on. Come on! Let’s go!”

One of our dearest friends did just that this past week. She did it. She crossed over. And while I am always glad one gets the final wish, I’m still having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. One moment, I’m talking to her sister, Mickey, on the phone; the next, I’m on a plane to Hawai’i, and we’re saying, “I love you” nose to nose in a hospital on Oahu with her phenomenal ohana (family) all around. “Let’s go,” she said again as my tears spilled into my wave, drawing backwards to the ocean door. “Come on. Let’s go!” she repeated as she tried putting her feet over the side of the bed, willing this whole thing hurried along. Her son rubbed her back to soothe her. Her daughter and sisters arranged her blankets. Her niece tried to smile. My hand danced, “Not yet.” There was more work to do. More laughter to share. More family to call in. We’ve done this before. Couldn’t we body surf this back to the shore for another ride?

Love is pulsing through the grief, dredging up so many happy memories with these tears. Whatever happens in a Dancing Hands Circle is between Source and the soul. The intention is always our dance for the best and highest good, with anything less going to the light. In service to the best and highest good of one and all, I know it’s not up to me, even when it comes to a friend, even one as dear as this one. But I am very human in this now. I love my friends. We all love her. I have known her through many dimensions far past the 14 years since we met on Oahu. Goodness knows we ride the big waves of the astral, but my human side is feeling it all.

Those who have traveled with me since the Braco days know Pat Ganaban as the funny, honest, sassy, loyal, and brave Hawaiian kumu (teacher) from Oahu who famously stepped up to the microphone and shared the story of her beloved grandson who at the age of four or five still hadn’t spoken a word. That day, however, she related after she’d seen Braco and returned home, her grandson shocked her by running to greet her, calling out, “Grandma!” It was 2010, one of our first live stream sessions in Waikiki, and I was so struck by the music and energy of her miraculous “talk story,” I rushed over before she’d even finished sharing, knowing I had to meet and ask her if we could interview her for our documentary. 

I hugged her many times at events in Hawai’i over the next few years. She even surprised us by flying over for my final live stream on Kauai, diving into the waves at the finale with me, both of us fully dressed and saltwater-soaked for the changes at hand. She was there when I next helped produce Mas Sajady’s events in Hawai’i. He had also seen her remarkable gifts and lineage, and then, she helped with Abdy, too. But best of all, over time, through all these “healers who don’t call themselves healers,” somehow, she and her smile kept showing up. 

Pat was a special bright light of encouragement when the Dancing Hands opened. Nearly nine years ago, as I was learning about this gift coming through me, her lineage of healing and trust in the protection inherent in our protocol unlocked something new. Even back in Skype days, my hands would somehow drum ancient rhythms so hard on my desk in California to her in Hawai’i that they would become red and sore, yet the rhythms spoke to her frequencies. They reconnected her own gifts that had long laid waiting. When the Language of Love poured through me, the voice would greet her with oli blessings—so loud and direct she’d fly out of her body to meet the assembled ancestors, with tales to tell when she “returned.” We discovered this Mother Tongue/Language of Love was no mere Tower of Babel babble, as I liked to joke. For her, it was transportive.

She’d laugh even louder a week after our sessions, recounting what had transpired in its wake because she often preferred not telling me why we were dancing first via Skype, then Zoom. She’d wait until after she got medical confirmation of a big shift, like a mass disappearing when they cut her open in surgery or her blood work suddenly shifting positively. She didn’t want to muddy any intention for her healing by telling me what was up, so she told me nothing until after our session, and it already shifted. No less dramatic was her emotional healing from her traumatic days serving in Vietnam. Surprising us both, what came through the gift was a share that was so personal she said no one else in her life could have possibly known about it.

Her subsequent transformations were, and remain, some of the more miraculous. She’d told many (but not me until later) that she’d been on death’s door before I arrived on the island for our first Aloha Rising Retreat, but when I arrived at her bedside in the hospital on Oahu and quietly danced, she turned the corner. It was during this time I learned that her sacred Hawaiian name, Pūlamawai, means a treasured and cherished source of light that nourishes strength, a perfect name for her, for she certainly lived and inspired it in me and others, and from then on, we only called her that in circle. With the occasional honorific that the keiki (children) at her school also called her—Mama Aina (Mother Earth), we all love how she encouraged all to tend the ‘aina, so that all gardens, this precious Earth, and each being gains strength. 

In all the Dancing Hands Circles she could attend (and she was there through all the Health and Peace, the Conversations with Source, the Quanta Circles, two more Aloha Rising Retreats on Oahu and Hawai’i Island, and more), we saw Pūlamawai tilling and tending not just others but her own gifts. She showed up for her sacred questions and profound epiphanies. Every group that had the joy of her in online or in-person circles experienced the remarkable gift of her healing talk story. How I loved the way she blessed us with her words of wisdom to help wrap up each circle. How I will miss our long calls as I drive from N. CA to LA, singing and drumming on my steering wheel because her soul’s journey loves to dance.

How many times did her courage and conviction of faith take her to the beach to hold up her phone and share our Zoomed circle with ohana, or new friends she’d just met who “happened to be there,” sure she could help? Would I ever have been so brave had she not been so excited to share my gift, too?

Before the gift of the Dancing Hands danced into understanding, 16 years ago, I confided to my pastor, Rev. Michael Beckwith, when he’d come to Hawai’i, that I seemed to be called to help at the bedsides or with the families of more than a few loved ones crossing over. With his own gift, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re being called into one of the highest positions of spiritual midwifery. Helping a soul cross over is as sacred an honor as bringing a soul in. You’re a spiritual midwife, Jane.”

I didn’t really know what that meant. But somehow, Pūlamawai and her remarkable ohana invited me this past week to perhaps the deepest spiritual midwifery I’ve ever experienced. I never felt anything less than her perfection as I peered into her eyes. I never saw anything but love surrounding her with leagues of earth and heavenly angels in support, too. At her bedside in Oahu and then via Zoom as she began to “Let(‘s) go,” I learned more than I’ve ever learned about how important it is to be present in and to Life—to all of it, not just the fun, the comedy, romance, or light woo-woo, but the deep, contrasting, harder parts, too. It’s all sacred.

Most of us have very little experience with death or slipping through the veils. But she reminded me/us not to be afraid. We all have scars, and some of us have become really good at pretending otherwise, but this life/death/going home part calls out the holiest-who-we-really-are at our core. How will we show up?

The reassurance that resonated this week: We can do this. We can live as is, or we can let go into bigger love. We can be alright. We can also be sad. We can also be cranky. But then, we can reach for the light. We can grow. We can tell the stories that touch us. We can be vulnerable. We can be tender. That can make us stronger. We can hug longer than we used to. We can even cry rivers of tears, but showing up—that’s the e-ticket for the best ride ever.

We show up with love for this body temple and the connections to All-That-Is because this is the BEST of who we are. This is part of why we came here. To live, love, and let go. This is who Pūlamawai is still beaming in all the dimensions now x a billion. So much phenomenal, magical, mystical, marvelous aloha. I hope you can feel it, too.

Can we all love without wincing?

Last bit.

I know this is long. But I need to share this, too, because this is the part, I wish more of us could learn earlier.

I was blessed to be there for the final three hours. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such familial grace. I’m crying again as I write, but each member gathered around her bedside and brought majesty and honor to her whether they prayed, sang, joked, kissed her cheek, played music, or wept from afar. Every breath was sacred. Every handhold was divine. And her grandson, Dylan, whose story brought us together all those years ago… Oh my goodness, never could a grandson/young man have come so full circle, and spoken so eloquently than he did in that beautiful threshold—lifting her home with his joyous and weeping talk story of all his favorite times with her. I was so proud of him—of all of them. She was, too. I can still hear Pūlamawai’s whole-soul laughter echoing with love for every beat of her entire ohana’s heart song.

She and her ohana are gifts forever to this world. I will later bring ways that you can send love to them if that is your wish, too.

I am eternally grateful for those who moved heaven and earth so I could be there as her friend and sistah, and hold her hand. Thank you, Boosalah, for booking that ticket to help me move more quickly. Mahalo, Pūlamawai and your ohana for letting me dance in your circle of trust for her, for you, for all the souls at “home,” so excited they got this back on a cloud of maile and aloha. Mahalo Ka’imiloa for all your protocol and for transporting the lei of love from all of us. Thank you, Violet, for covering me in these deep blue ocean tides and to everyone sending prayers knowing something was in the mix but trusting… LOVE and aloha are rising.

Mahalo, if you made it this far. You are a blessing, too.