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by Nancy Clemens (Author)
My Holoholo Diary Summary
Loving Hawai'i and having repetitive dreams of the Volcano Goddess, Kupuna Pele, brought Nancy to take a mid-life journey to the Big Island of Hawai'i. With her partner Paul's agreement, she embarked on what she calls "a sabbatical between being a mother and a grandmother."
My Holoholo Diary records her adventures, mystical experiences, and challenges while living in the Hawai'ian culture. Nancy's colorful stories bring local Hawai'ian people "to life" with their pidgin English, native wisdom, humor, and warm Aloha.
Most especially, this Diary is intended as a tribute to her spiritual guides Haleaka Iolani (Auntie Aka) and her mother, Kalehuamakanoe (Auntie Fern), and their Ohana. They encouraged Nancy to write down and share these invaluable ancient Hawai'ian teachings, wisdom, and customs.
During this year, she had valuable training in Lomilomi massage and the principles of Ho'o'ponopono, met sovereignty activists, and a captain and crew members of the trans-oceanic voyaging canoes.
Nancy shares some almost-unbelievable supernatural experiences she had and the ways they catalyzed a change in her world view. As many kahunas say, including Aka and her mother, "Imagine what we could see if we could lift the veils."
Having come many times before to the Big Island on vacation with her family, this time she arrived alone, six days before the New York Twin Towers attack on 9/11, 2001. She immediately witnessed the Island of Hawai'i come together as a community, as people lost their jobs, due to the shutdown of airports and the sudden halt in tourism. She joined the local people as they met to dialogue, to problem-solve, and renew the old self-sustaining ways of their ancestors, and to kokua (help) each other.
Her Diary sometimes reads like a travel guide as she lived in four different parts of the island, and is full of stories of her jobs and colorful local people, who shared culture, humor, music, feasts, and stories with her. They took her on treks to sacred sites and brought old Hawai'i alive through sharing family stories, history, ceremonies, hula and chants. Many stories illustrate the impact of colonization on Hawai'i.
Lyrical passages in this very intimate diary record her ongoing inner journey of initial loneliness, doubts about this journey, purification, mystical experiences, spiritual opening, and change. Aka and her mother, Auntie Fern, offer guidance and teachings about how to function as a "receiver" in this world.
As the creator of the Dolphin Divination Cards and A Guide to the Dolphin Divination Cards, Nancy eventually became an advocate of "armchair surfing" to help protect the well-being of the dolphins.
She hopes that, through these stories and teachings, others will receive an infusion of the Aloha and inspiration she was blessed to receive from so many local people. As Auntie Aka always said to her, "If you receive a blessing, the way of Aloha is to share it, in some way, shape or form."
