La Llorona

Costa Rica and inner landscapes

He said he heard her cry, the woman at the river, when I asked of the mountains and the green memories. It was a night of friends who had all been raised in the concert of birds and wild creatures. They heard from them, as well as their mothers, how this land breathes, and how they must learn to decipher inhale from exhale.

This once child sits next to me now as a man explaining the ways in which Costa Rica is alive and full of reason, moving players, beauty. The role of teacher is now in his heart as he tells me of how taking a deep breath here is different than taking a deep breath there; and I believe him.

On a plane headed back to Jersey, I realize that in this world, people carry the/his tale of La Llorona as truth. The inhale is longer, drawn out, filled with patience, respect, and room enough for each person to enter. In my land, it is only a myth, one for entertainment and perhaps wonder; it is read through an exhale. It is rushed, not lived. It is something pushed away from the body.

“What is it to know a land of faith” I ask, “one of people that still catch the stories of nature’s exhale?”

He laughs, as if surprised. It’s as if I can witness his discerning of me: Is it that she knows how to breathe?

And he tells me how he heard the cry of the weeping woman, how him and his friends were silenced at the shriek. How there is not one person who doubts she is real.

But what is real? —a thought I’ll return to later.

And so is this story of La Llorona, he carries as a boy who caught faith in the wind:

Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992) writes that La Llorona was once a woman who had two boys by a wealthy man from Spain. She becomes crazed when he tells her he is leaving her for a new family across the ocean. The woman is so angered that she begins to claw at his face, and her own, shrieking wildly. She throws her two children into the river where they perish, and she dies along the bank in grief. Her soul does ascend to heaven, for her suffering was great, but cannot enter until she retrieves the souls of her sons. This is why many hear a weeping woman along the river, for she is searching for the lost souls of her children. This is why we are told to stay away from the river at night, for fear of La Llorona mistaking you as her own (p. 302).

My new friend agrees that La Llorona threw her child into the river out of grave suffering, but he was told it is because she had an unwanted pregnancy, or rather, one out of wedlock, with the man she loves. Like the one Estés shares, the man does decide to leave her, sending her into terrifying desperation and madness. As opposed to dying alongside the river, the woman follows her child into the water, possibly in regret, most assuredly, searching.

I want to tell this man that I’m not sure if I am worthy. I don’t know if I can hear this cry in the wind as he does or understand what it means for a mother to caution for fear and respect of a spirit who lingers. It makes me question what I know and if it is real.

Estés says that “Real is what has life,” and in this exchange I reconcile what is guiding the wind and why I am worthy of hearing it (1992, p. 314):

1)    This woman and child who died at the river, were once alive; and now, in spirit form, for energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed, they live on

2)    The people who tell her story are alive

3)    The land upon which this tale is told and expressed, and maintained, is alive

4)    This man and me, through engaging with this breath of Costa Rica, are both effervescently alive

This “aliveness” is what makes La Llorona real.  

A universal conversation of humanity, I am found in how it brings me back to my questioning of worthiness: Am I? I can be.

This story is told in various lands, not just Costa Rica, where cultures have their own spin on it—though withholding some integrity to its core. If La Llorona doesn’t belong to one land then, but many, why can’t it belong to my own inner landscape? In the way it does to this man’s?

There is a way to love a story that doesn’t belong to your peoples, and not dishonorably tarnish or steal it. I only mean to live with my heart, and that is the room I was welcomed into. “Leave logic at the door,” he might’ve said, “if only for a story’s length.” Allow yourself to settle by the fire, to hear that stranger’s mother which is the voice of all mothers. Humble yourself before the meal they offer you and ask what it is that you may offer in exchange.

In short, he explains what this land of faith is like.

In the sharp crystal blueness of his eyes, I can see the river. I can see La Llorona. I can feel the humid trees that night he heard the screeches, sweating, as the woman’s steps shape leaves into lily pads. I jump across. I can almost make out the ripples of voice that filter like a look made in water—forbidden access to the actual portrait; left to the mercy of light and what it chooses to project. She wails and sobs, circling chambers, enticing any soul who dares forget their mother.

Something mighty, I ponder thoughts of the same weight.

She threw her baby into the river to be carried off. Was this not both physically and spiritually into another realm? The river beneath the river? The “sweet slot, between the thighs of the earth” (Estés, 1992, p. 304)? The water carriers? Women?

In my channeling, I am often brought to such a world of lushness. Entering through a tree, I’m found amongst spirit. I’ve come to learn that each soul has their own river beneath the river, that there is a landscape specific to their being. For some it is forest, for others, it is ocean. I wonder if I can find this weeping woman there and help her? If I can find her sons?

That is when I understood what this man on the plane was really reminding me of: We can see ourselves in the water. Physically, we are made of it. Literally, when we see our reflection in it. Metaphorically, in how we move or are still like water, in how we shape rocks, in that we can be deep or shallow. I realized, in asking of worthiness, in questioning my capacity to comprehend, that it isn’t about my connection to the water, but rather, how water connects us all.

A land where people believe is a land where they can hear. What does it mean for him to know this woman of the river? The one who cries? Is he not a man who knows he once was that child? That there was a mother who found him? And how sad to never be found.

He glances over to me as we prepare to land, and I prepare to walk in a world of exhales once more. We take one breath together, as if holding on to the last bit of Costa Rican air. An inhale of a culture, extending time, proving it is malleable. We say goodbye. He walks ahead:

“Do you hear her?”

References:
Estés, C. P. (1992). “Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life” in Women Who Run With the Wolves (p. 298-333). Random House Inc.