RED BELLIED WOODPECKER: HEALING THE HABITUAL PATTERN OF GENERATIONAL SUFFERING THROUGH THE ECHO OF WISDOM

Recently, I was helping a neighbor by doing some tree trimming. As we stood before the maple, a red bellied woodpecker landed a few feet away. While sometimes a woodpecker is simply a woodpecker, this felt different. I felt that sense in my being when my Soul is speaking to me. The beauty of my practice in life is to have the observer and creative sight in place to listen deeply. The manner in which the colors of the bird, its dramatic landing and the immediate turn of its head toward us screamed “pay attention to me and this moment!”

This experience occurred just prior to me beginning to watch the TV show Echo. I had heard an interesting NPR feature on the show and the excitement it offered Indigenous peoples in having a Marvel character that is Native American and female. In the show, the red bellied woodpecker is a recurrent catalytic symbol for change and growth for the Choctaw protagonist Maya. In Choctaw creation storytelling, Stone People, from within an earth mound called Nanih Waiya, are transformed into the first Choctaw with the arrival of the red bellied woodpecker. This first human is of a lineage of women to serve, at times of need, to lead the people through challenges and trauma. 

At this point it's important to share that the notion of superheroes has always been a challenging one for me. In childhood I struggled in finding superheroes whose choices and actions felt resonant to me. Two vague notions came out of early childhood around what I wanted to emulate. One took form as martial-artist Kato from the short-lived TV show The Green Hornet. The second grew from books about Native American leaders like Geronimo, Red Cloud and others. Since neither Kato nor the Indigenous Chiefs were seen by the larger Western world as superheroes, the idea felt displaced inside of me. What I knew is I wanted to learn more and more about Indigenous Culture and whatever it was that made Kato feel special to me. 

Flash forward twenty or so years and I am opening a bookstore in Ellicott City focused on Native Americans. We flow in life into the 1990s and I’m studying acupuncture. Clearly Kato and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee had played a role in my life. And yet, the truth is there was never a superhero whose depth and complexity matched up for me. This is not a complaint and I’m sure I am not alone in this perspective. The absolutes that exist for a superhero really don’t show up often if at all in the real world. 

Which brings me back to the red bellied woodpecker and Echo. To the notion of a red bellied woodpecker pecking into the depths of self as a potent and heroic symbol for healing generational trauma. And here it is…the spoiler alert. In the climatic scene from Echo, where the hero Maya faces her nemesis, Wilson Fisk, she doesn’t fight him. Instead, through healing, she transports him and us back to a pivotal moment where young Wilson becomes his shadow self, Kingpin. Where he kills his father with a ball peen hammer to prevent his mother from being beaten. And Maya offers Wilson a choice; to not kill his father. To make another choice. And then we flash forward in time with Wilson, on his knees, shouting at Maya, “what did you do to me?”  Having an Indigenous Female superhero offering Healing & Growth, rather than opposition and violence to resolve a conflict, models a form of authentic heroism. Something rarely seen in our ascension culture’s celebration of violence. A healing salve for the generational trauma that we face in our collective lives. Maya’s offering is a symbol of the divine feminine. A form of divine expression that is neither male nor female in gender but a deeply  soulful response to the chaotic challenges we all face in our daily lives.

How will we choose to practice our lives? Through the Echo of Wisdom that rests within the stillness of our being…or through the habitual patterning that ensures the repetition of generational suffering…