I was sitting with this stunning Hyacinth Macaw on my knee, scratching her head, reading about parrots, cuz I’m meta like that. I was reading about their classifications and history and then the next section was about the pet trade. This is clearly something I’ve known for a long time. Reading it was not new information but somehow it struck me so differently than it ever has before:
Every parrot that is a pet in someone’s home anywhere in the world descended from parrots that were trapped from the wild, often in tubes or shabby crates, transported across vast distances in this condition and then forced to start living a life of captivity.
I have often cried from feeling the horror they must have felt, the fear, the knowledge that so many around them were dead or dying on their journey. Parrots are unbelievably smart, sensitive and feeling beings. Most of them are smarter than your four-year-old and many of them have a more developed emotional depth than many adults walking around. So, the thought of them having to endure the lives they lead in captivity, not to mention how any of them got here in the first place is almost unbearable. But this was different.
I looked down at the Hyacinth Macaw, Echo, and she looked into my eyes with her sweet smiling face and I was hit with a wall of feeling. My whole body felt restrained, felt terror, felt sadness, felt despair. My eyes welled up and began flowing with tears that didn’t seem to be mine. I was overwhelmed and I just let myself feel it fully. I looked at her and I kept saying out loud, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” I was apologizing for humanity, for people that did unspeakable things for money. And then it struck me. I need to apologize to her ancestors, the ones that were taken as well.
Still sitting with the upwelling of feelings and tears, I went inward and took several deep breaths. I sunk into myself and out of myself. With Echo’s help I was able to locate a place where her ancestors lived in the Other Place. Their spirits came to me when I called to them. Echo’s male relative spoke first.
“What are you doing here? We’ve never seen one like you before?”
“I have come to ask for forgiveness from you. What people did to you was wrong. We should have never taken you from your home. We should never have hurt you. I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry. Please find it in your heart to forgive us,” I replied.
He and his wife were beautiful blue spirit macaws, large and ethereal, glowing with otherworldly light and magnificence. I was small and humbled before them.
He raised his eyebrow at me.
“No one has ever come here before from your kind.” He paused for a while. “I can feel you are genuine. I know you are sincere. We thank you for your apology.” Another long pause where they looked at each other and she nodded slowly. “We forgive you.”
“Thank you. With all of my heart, thank you,” I said. I bid them farewell as it was done. I came back from that place and breathed and opened my eyes, which were streaming with fresh tears. Not ones of pain, but of a relief and a slightly lighter load of emotions.
At this very moment Echo began to make a noise I had never heard her make before. She started almost purring/cooing. It was the sweetest, most calming sound ever. She was serene and relaxed and was thanking me with her whole being.
My next thought was that I have to do this for Sam. If anyone needs it, it’s my little African Grey trauma baby. I had the opportunity to sit with him quietly the very next day when I was back home. I took him in my lap and started deep breathing and diving down into the other place. I feel like once your psyche knows where to go in these realms, it can find the exact location pretty quickly, like your saved locations on the Google maps app. So, there I was.
Instead of being in the presence of two large spirit birds, I saw two captives, one in a sort of makeshift cage and the other in something that looked like a sock. It was clear that one was older, or from a slightly different time than the other which led me to believe that his ancestors came from Africa at different times. Regardless, they were both still in those awful contraptions. My spirit body released them immediately and two terrified little birds rushed forward and flew onto a nearby branch high above me. I wasn’t sure if anything else would happen, but I waited and gave them time.
After several long moments, they flew a little closer. I could sense they were coming back into themselves and leaving their terrified bodies behind. There was already such a release and sense of shift in the ethers. Then, gradually, the two little birds flew toward me and as they did, they shifted into an African Grey version of the large, beautiful spirit birds that I had seen before. Tall and ethereal, but strong and commanding, shrouded in grey with a swirl of crimson red at their feet.
During this whole, Sam had been preening and not really paying any attention on my knee. At the very moment they landed in their new form before me, Sam stopped preening and bonked his feathered head into my stomach. This is his move for head scratches, connection and reassurance. I gently put my fingers in his head feathers and softly scratched his head.
I greeted the beautiful spirit African greys in front of me. I could feel they were projecting a mixture of emotions, from confusion on what on earth I was doing in this space to gratitude for finally letting them out of their cages. They went with gratitude first.
“Thank you for releasing us. We have been in there for a long time,” spoke Sam’s great great grandfather. His mate nodding knowingly.
“I came here to ask you for forgiveness. What my people did to you is inexcusable. I am so very, very sorry.” I cut right to the chase.
They regarded me for a moment.
“We never expected to see your kind here. But you came and showed us kindness as well. And now you ask us to forgive you,” spoke the masculine voice.
He then proceeded to tell me his name to introduce himself, an articulation of bird sound I cannot even try to reproduce in text and her name was in the same tongue. In this place I was with them, I not only could understand it, but I could repeat it and still can to some extent in my memory.
“It is such an honor to meet you both. Sam is what we call your great great grandson. I don’t know if he was ever given a real name fitting his kind. I love Sam very much and he is safe forever with me and my family.”
“We can see that. Thank you for caring so much for him,” he said. They looked at each other then he said simply, “We forgive you.”
I bowed with gratitude and thanked them with all of my heart.
“Sam will want to be in touch with you. I hope we can meet again, and I can bring him next time,” I offered.
“Yes, we can reach him now and it will be good for us all to be together here again soon.”
“Thank you, again,” I said, and I bid them farewell.
As they turned to go, I left the other place. I opened my eyes and saw little Sam on my knee all tucked in and relaxed. He had his beak in his wings, which he hardly ever does when he’s sitting on me, not to mention that he rarely does it at all. He was in an altered state I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. My little trauma baby had relaxed some deep part of himself and I could sense a shift in his whole demeanour.
It’s been several days since I contacted and healed his relationship with the ancestors. There have been significant changes in Sam’s attitude, body language and personality. He is actually eating all of his food I give him which is completely out of character. He seems more light-hearted and less haunted than before. Essentially, he seems more relaxed, confidant and happier. I cannot be more thrilled. And I fully intend on growing the relationship with his ancestors and providing a psychic bridge for them to communicate and interact. I am sure this is something that’s natural to birds in the wild. But having been cut off from the traditions and culture that he would have grown up with in the wild, Sam needs help connecting into his ancestral flock.
Sam deserves to be freed from trauma. Every parrot in captivity does. He did not choose to come here. None of them did. Yet, here they are, in our lives. Yes, many parrots you buy today come from breeders, but the birds that those are bred from were trapped from the wild and survived horrible traumas. Trauma is genetic. It is for them just like it is for us humans. I often feel so much of my own journey in life is to stop the forward motion through time of my family’s trauma of war, of assault, of being refugees, of abuse going back generations. I am not only healing myself, but I am healing them as well, so it doesn’t go any further past down the lineage.
Perhaps this is another way I can be of service to the feathered beings I love so much. Humans are often cruel without thinking and more often cruel with full intention. Our need to own shiny and impressive pets has led many people to do things for profit that are unspeakable. There isn’t a way to stop the situation. The best any one of us can do is to provide a safe, happy home to the best of our ability to a group of creatures that has been around on the planet longer than we have and will probably out live us. And maybe we can help to heal their wounds just like their bond with us can heal so many of ours.