the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

90 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
Washington, D.C, he studying law, and she, physics and chemistry in night
school. They married in the late ’20s, Jew and Christian, radical for the time.
Their families didn’t quite shun them, but certainly didn’t approve, not
giving them the support that such a partnership would need then. After they
parted in the early ’40s, my mother journeyed through all possible Christian
religious forms. I listened and saw, with curiosity. One of my father’s sisters, a
humanist, Zionist, Conservative Jew, took me under her wing, shared elegant
Jewish family Friday night ceremony with me when I visited my father, gave
me a sense of belonging to them, mentored my searching through letters.
There was no way I could choose one of these traditions over the other.
In my bones I was both, neither, and all. Rebelling as an early teen, I stood up
in front of the Methodist youth fellowship to complain about the lack in the
church of real tolerance and respect for other religions. “I cannot think this
way any more,” I said, and walked straight from the room in a huff.
Much as my mother had done before, I went on a journey to find a
better spiritual place for myself. I found the Unitarians, broad minded and
intellectual. Agnostic, uncertain, most of my life, I waited for something else,
much larger, more inclusive.
I’m still an East Coast agnostic despite the experiences I’ve had here in
the Pacific Northwest. I can’t fathom the story about another life a thousand
years ago that could affect my daughter’s health now. It is beyond me, outside
anything I understand. I’m a mother hen covering the chick with her wings
in protection. “Nobody is going to mess with my daughter in this life or any
other!” I think to myself.
She is thirty-something; she will make up her own mind. If she sets
herself to do the ceremony the shaman recommends, I will be there for her.
My life, rocked by the stroke, has already loosened its tethers to the ordinary.
I already walk in strange landscapes.
I speak to my daughter first, and then ask the shaman on the telephone,
“Can I help?”
“A parent has never asked me this before,” she replies in surprise. She
is silent for a long moment, then says, “You can’t come into Lakota ceremony