A TRIBUTE TO PATRICIA G. HORAN 
Women and Wisdom Co-Founder and Co-Director 

1979-1987, New York City

 

Women and Wisdom Foundation sadly announces the loss of Patricia G. Horan to

Covid-19 in Asheville, North Carolina.

 

Patricia was a dear friend, a soul sister, an inspiring mentor, a talented partner in projects, a magnificent editor, a joyful companion and a Light to so many. Her writing was above all an offering to the Divine Mother.  She played a vital part in bringing consciousness of the Divine Feminine as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Women and Wisdom Center from 1979 through the mid 1980’s.  The Center was at the forefront in focusing on spirituality, feminine empowerment and personal growth in New York City. Spiritual teacher and author Gloria Karpinski, a close friend and mentor to Women and Wisdom, said of Patricia, “She was deeply dedicated to the mandate to restore awareness of the Divine Mother and empower women to find Her within themselves. 

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Patricia G. Horan was an extraordinary woman with a poet’s heart and a painter’s eye for sensing beyond appearances to the essence of everything and all.   She was a magical wordsmith, passionately transforming the mundane into unforgettable images with an instantaneous wit, a unique view of this world, and awareness of the preciousness of our fragile intertwined lives.  Whether writing plays, songs, creating poems, editing others works, she did what few people can, illuminating something not yet revealed; exquisite images that went straight to the heart, often taking our breath away.

 

Her artistry was about connection, linking words to feelings, insights, raw emotions, new ways of being, knowing, using all the senses, delving deep into the heart to capture both the ordinary and the spectacular. Her smile and infectious laughter were as unforgettable as this line of her last poem -- a benediction to all: 

“Mistakes are potholes filled in with diamonds.”

 

Patricia resolutely chose the Palliative Care offered at the hospital and faced the end of this life with immense courage.  She wrote her last poem on December 27 to share with her friends and by that evening breathing did not come easily. Her devoted friend and Medical contact, Lizzie and myself were able to be with her through her cell phone speaker in her final hours. She knew she was not alone. Her ticket to nirvana was at 6:45 pm on December 30, on the birthday of her beloved friend Nancy who was no doubt welcoming her to the peace that passes all understanding.

 

Patricia’s message to her lifetime of friends and her brilliant final poem follows:

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Notes on a Stay in a Hospital Quarantine Cell 

By Patricia Horan ©2020

 

Dear Beloveds,

I want you to know what it’s it like here. 

Even in this brutal and almost total isolation I feel your love.

I have never felt anything like the love I feel from you. 

I have managed to turn to my art.   I thank you. You have done this.

 

Patricia G. Horan   ~ December 27, 2020

 

Message from a Quarantine Room

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I swallow my pride and it tastes like honey and salt. 

The air has embraced my private body and has approved, and it quietly rejoices in its revelations and the liberation of its childlike spills and neediness.

How I reach to love it suddenly, this stranger I’ve kept in a fifties New Jersey suitcase, only removing it for one afternoon on a nude fire island beach.

 

Now it is truly liberated in a small windowless quarantine room in North Carolina.

 

The machines behind me beep, shining little christmas trees, watching my pulses, systems, and disturbances like grandmothers, occasionally clucking, unfashionably faithful through the night. I am pinned head to toe to a proud family of counters, weighers, and witnesses. This little womb and its divine protocols.

 

Shame is peeled from the human body when the body is wet with sweet tears and shocking love. It has suckers like snails and they make marks. The shameless body houses the soul proudly instead of shrouding it.

 

My mother tells me I began to walk on my first birthday. Today I took steps alone from the commode to the bed, to the applause of my caregiver. Eighty years has incensed up in a laughing swirl of smudge smoke. A laughing swirl of smudge smoke and ageless birthday courage.

 

Echoing a hated preachment, I see that my life is just where it belongs, that mistakes are potholes filled in with diamonds. If this dream goes away in the glare and blare of rough reality I will lovingly remember it the way I recall my dying mother squeezing my hand that is now identical to hers. My tenderness spills over in tears of recognition and reconciliation.   

 

Message from a Quarantine Room. Little womb of a room.     

Patricia G. Horan  ©2020

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