In Hawk Space

Welcome to Hawk Space!
	What is hawk space? Hawks work in spaces between Earth and Sky. For me, hawks evoke a sense of transitional space…a space in which things new things are created, or existing things transformed. Many years ago I had a significant hawk dream: I was walking to class on a large university campus when another student ran out of a science building to find me. With great excitement he said, “The information you requested from Notre Dame is here!” We both ran into a computer lab and I began to download the information on advanced life sciences that I had asked for. Instead of printing out on paper, the information transferred directly into my being. When I walked back outside, I was so energized that I was bouncing in long arcs above the ground, as if levitating between each step. When I came to an open space at the edge of the building complex, I levitated onto the branch of a huge tree. I looked up to see some large birds flying above me. One of them -- a hawk -- flew down to a spot next to me on the branch. (Aren't dreams wonderful? You can perch up in a tree with a hawk and it all seems perfectly ordinary!) The hawk's powerful presence was exciting but very intense – so much so that it scared me a little. The hawk looked straight into my eyes as if to the very core of my soul, and I woke up from the dream.
After having this dream, I began to play with “Hawk” as self-identity, at least in my mind. It was not a new name for me. My little sister had called me Hawkie—her best shot at saying Cathie at a very young age—and the nickname stuck. It was a private name, shortened to Hawk most of the time, and used only within our nuclear family…at least I don't remember being called Hawk by any of the grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors or school mates. I didn’t mind the name, but neither did I think of myself as Hawk – until I was in my thirties. By that time I was a Bird by marriage, a freelance naturalist of sorts, and newly conscious of my path of spiritual transformation. My hawk dream released all of these pieces of experience for reconsideration in a new light of being. Still, it’s only in the past 10 years or so that I’ve embraced my hawk possibilities. I am Hawk in translation. My play in this transitional hawk space has brought me into a new relationship both to my professional studies and practice in psychoanalysis and to my growth and evolution as a spiritual being in temporary human embodiment. And these are the areas on which I’ll focus In Hawk Space.