How to Safely Remove your Husband's Skull

The Jawara Tribe in the Andaman Islands has fought off nearly all attempts by civilized people to penetrate their domain.

- Alan Cohen

As a result, this primitive culture has retained its customs for thousands of years. Yet a few visitors have been accepted, returning with remarkable footage of a kind of people nearly otherwise decimated from the earth.

I saw a documentary that introduced Jawara women who wear the bones of their dead husbands around their necks.

In some cases, the widow totes the man’s skull. The documentary’s narrator suggests, “Imagine trying to make love to a woman who is wearing the skull of her dead husband around her neck.” While the comment is odd, it struck a realization within me. In our culture many of us also wear the skulls, bones, or remnants of dead husbands, lovers, family members, business partners, or friends around our necks—not physically, but energetically. We hang past memories, resentments, and upsets over our hearts such that we keep other people from getting close to us. Clinging to the past, for better or worse, manufactures a psychic armor that new people, events, and experiences cannot penetrate. These skulls might be “treasured wounds” or even treasured positive memories. In either case, history overshadows the present and delays us from stepping into our highest destiny.