Should you ever doubt your passion? Why I did, but don’t any longer.

In Conversations with God, Book 1, Neale Donald Walsch asks God, “Is there such a thing as reincarnation? How many past lives have I had? What was I in them?”

The reply, “It is difficult to believe there is still a question about this. I find it hard to imagine. There have been so many reports from thoroughly reliable sources of past life experiences. Some of these people have brought back strikingly detailed descriptions of events, and such completely verifiable data as to eliminate any possibility that they were making it up or had contrived to somehow deceive researchers and loved ones.

You have had 647 past lives, since you insist on being exact. This is your 648^th. You were everything in them. A king, a queen, a serf. A teacher, a student, a master. A male, a female. A warrior, a pacifist. A hero, a coward. A killer, a savior. A sage, a fool. You have been all of it!”

No, I’m not going to claim that I was this week’s woman of the week in a past life. (That’s her in this lovely picture from 1911.) BUT…

Last summer, when I featured the American suffragist Lucy Burns as “woman of the week,” I became obsessed with her story, especially since she is almost lost to written history. I began a quest to research and write about her. I started going to the library a few times a week, reviewing old microfilm.  After a couple of months, I got really sick with migraines and a cold, and stayed home for a week or two. But, I recovered and headed back. I got sick again right before Christmas, and with holiday travel and school vacations and unexpected family emergencies, I have not been to the library in 8 weeks.

During the past 8 weeks, I’ve had some discoveries, and I’ve had some doubts, about this project.

Discoveries
First, I will say that I’m no stranger to researching the past. I was in graduate school for 6 years, and learned Old Church Slavonic (OCS) for goodness sake! (OCS is the root language for all the Slavic languages, that was spoken in the first century of the current era.) But, the feeling I get when researching the suffragists is different than anything I’ve experienced before. (I think my frequent sicknesses are related.) And, when I’m immersed in the research, I start having odd synchronicities.  Plus, random people have started joking with me that maybe I had been Lucy Burns in my past life. I must say the thought had crossed my mind once or twice!

And, then, it crossed my mind once or twice a day and then, an hour. No, I was not Lucy Burns in a past life. But, I have discovered, and have had it confirmed by three separate people, that I was a suffragist. I was not American. But, I did know Lucy. I even have the name of who I was. I’ve read about this woman.  After I had this revelation, an acquaintance of mine, with no knowledge of any of this, sent me some pictures that she took while abroad. They were of a statue of HER (me?).

Doubts
My intense passion suddenly made a lot of sense. But, I started to wonder if I was trying to live in the (distant) past. In my astrological readings, I can get a general sense of someone’s most recent past lives, and also, can advise clients on ways to keep growing and to not get mired down in “playing it safe” by trying to do the same old, same old. I wondered if I was “playing it safe” with this book project?

My other doubts have been about my writing ability. Most of the work on the American suffragists has been academic and dry. None of the women’s passion and fight is present. Will I be able to write something different? Will my writing be worthwhile? Will it connect with the reader?

Cue this week’s theme
I was doing research on this week’s “woman of the week,” by reviewing “this day in history.” I had a few potential candidates and then, among the people who died on this day, I saw the name Alva Belmont. To answer Monica Wilcox’s questions from her post, Is Your Calling Serving You? – “Does it make you smile and tickle your heart? Does it make you hoop and holler around the house? If so, you’re on track.” YES! Just the name Alva Belmont made me hoop and holler!

Alva Belmont was one of the American Suffragists that fought with Lucy Burns.  She had great wealth due to an earlier divorce from William Kissam Vanderbilt and funded large portions of the suffrage fight. (In another “synchronicity,” I still am paying off a student loan for the BA I got at Vanderbilt University…)

In my research, I have read many of Ms. Belmont’s letters and viewed microfilm of her scrapbooks. (She appeared to save every article that was ever published about her. And as a member of “high society,” she was in the papers almost daily.) I feel as if I know Ms. Belmont. (Ok, I think I technically did.)

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that “I’ve long suspected that I chose many of my life events, so I could write about them.” Who says the events have to be restricted to just THIS CURRENT life? And, I’m not reliving an old passion, or staying stuck in an old “rut,” because I’m not actually out there organizing protests and going on hunger strikes. (Did I really go on repeated hunger strikes? Makes me wonder if this information I have is accurate!)

As for my doubt about my ability to write this book, well, that sounds like an internal censor to me. I can’t judge the work before it’s even down on paper! (See yesterday’s post.)

I’ve kept Ms. Belmont waiting long enough! Presenting this week’s “woman of the week”…

Alva Erskine Belmont (January 17, 1853 – January 26, 1933), née Alva Erskine Smith, also called Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896, was a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the women’s suffrage movement. Known for having an aristocratic manner that antagonized many people, she was also noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention. She was married first to William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and secondly to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont.

Alva Vanderbilt shocked society in March 1895 when she divorced her first husband, at a time when divorce was rare among the elite, and received a large financial settlement said to be in excess of $10 million, in addition to several of the estates including Marble House in Newport. The grounds for divorce were allegations of William’s adultery, though some believed that William hired a woman to pretend to be his mistress so that Alva would divorce him.

Alva married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a man five years her junior, on 11 January 1896. Oliver had been a friend of the Vanderbilts since the late 1880s and had accompanied them on at least one long voyage aboard their yacht the Alva. He was the son of August Belmont, a successful banker. Oliver died suddenly in 1908, upon which Alva took on the new cause of the women’s suffrage movement after hearing a lecture by Ida Husted Harper.

She gave strong support to labor in the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist makers strike. She paid the bail of picketers who had been arrested and funded a large rally in the city’s Hippodrome. She brought this experience with picket lines and arrests to her work with the suffragists. In December 1917, following the November “Night of Terror” at Occoquan Workhouse (when many of the suffragists – including Lucy Burns – were beaten and abused), Belmont chaired a mass meeting at Belasco Theatre, attended by thousands, at which the newly released prisoners were honored for their service to liberty.

She suffered a stroke in the spring of 1932 that left her partially paralyzed, and she died in Paris of bronchial and heart ailments on January 26, 1933. Her funeral at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City featured all female pallbearers and a large contingent of suffragists. She is interred next to Oliver Belmont in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.

(My source was the Wikipedia article but I found some inaccuracies in it, which I have either left out or corrected.)