Inspire

If words could conspire and converge on this page to express how I am feeling, I would stand in amazement. Perhaps, the fury burns within me to write now ...not only since it's been months but because I received a little notification in an email that some anonymous coward left a comment on my 18 second plea to males to grow up and take some responsibility on this issue of rape in our culture ....."nobody cares". And after the trials of the last few years, where my life itself had been called so deeply into question I stand in utter awe at the inhumanity that breeds in our people. This is the Kali Yuga. They said this time would be dark. I had no idea just how dark it would be. Yet, I pray to those who still carry glimmers of the true light within them ...let us have the strength to carry these burdens and remake our world. --Somehow I missed the comment a month ago about women who speak about rape only wanting attention, and I thank the Goddess for protection on that. Looking back in the place I was in. This is a sickness ...a global epidemic. I'm throwing the damn book now. Misogyny is real and rampant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ZTXre-E6k

It's interesting because I originally signed on here to delete this page entirely ...I am struggling deeply, for my own self protection to remove my online presence entirely ...but when it came to the task, I failed. I couldn't do it. It felt like I was allowing myself to be silenced ..forced back into hiding after taking so much work to stand and open these spaces. I'll remain. This could be the stubborness that people have used to describe me ...it feels more like steadfastness in the face of uncertainty. I still, unwaveringly, believe in a world that is safe ..that is free from war, and I believe we can and will create this. I also know it takes great courage.

God Bless us All.

Breathe

Maybe one day this site will get itself to the place I envisioned ..a place of guidance, resources, where I am writing articles around all the topics I have had the luxury to explore and discover ...until then I've determined I am using this as a tool to keep myself alive, I am writing for myself here. As I still have women writing to me thanking me, telling me how much I have helped them and inspired them to reach deep and begin to voice these things for themselves, I know I am speaking for so much more than me. I am speaking for the future generations that are crying out for us to get our shit together on this planet and reach deep enough inside the sacred fires to find a way to come to a point of unity where we recognize that whatever issues that are continuing to distract, deter and keep us separate are not important enough to continue to hold onto. That life itself is calling out to be held and protected now in a sacred way, and that is it. Our children need us --so whether it is racism, sexism, some difference in religious or spiritual belief ---we can all recognize that we need to lay our armor down and take up this task of maintaining life on earth.

I cannot tell you how deeply I need rest, how deeply I need to be blanketed right now and be allowed to lay down for however long it is that my body needs in order to replenish itself. I am on the verge of complete collapse ...taking nerve tonics daily, rescue remedy daily --all because my experience of life on this earth has traumatized me to the point of barely being able to function. But still, I carry on. Somehow. Salt baths haven't been enough to pull this toxic shit out of my body. And I am still sitting here, after moving into my fourth month of holding this home in this impossible situation I was left in praying for some miracle solution to bring itself in the door before it kills me. People are telling me to abandon ship --to just up and walk away, pitch a tent in the woods and breathe again. I do not however see this as a viable solution --as that will just incur court fees and being sued by a company that has me legally bound to being financially responsible for this property until the end of august. Something needs to shift here, and ultimately it is me. I didn't realize how difficult the task would be to actually believe that I am loved and supported and taken care of on this earth --I have had so many experiences that have solidified otherwise into my being ---its taking me to the ground to release these things and remember that I am love, that you are love, that we are love and that we are in this together. It's taking everything to surrender at this gate and to allow this deep healing. I came across a writing by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love ...and she says to be grateful for ruin, that ruin is a gift because it is the place of real transformation. I cannot wait to meet the woman who rises from this. She will be masterful and incredible. I'm almost excited that I'm the one that gets to be her --Lord knows I've suffered enough, and put in the work and that I deserve her. This incredible gift to the world that I know that she is. I pray I make it there, because as I have been experiencing, Elizabeth Gilbert also writes that this is a particularly dangerous place in which to exist, because you are not sure if you will live or die, but if you can figure out how to hold onto life strongly enough and pull yourself through you will be forever changed. I have fought like hell to stay alive in this world up to this point, and now with my body weaker than it has ever been all of a sudden I have to figure out how to fight harder than I have ever fought before ...and I am still trying to figure out if this is worth it --why am I alive in this world? Why I am risking everything and fighting so hard when I have been treated repeatedly so horrendously and inhumanely. As the world is still trying to choke me from speaking I have been turning to the words of Starhawk and Jimmy Carter to get myself through and to know without a doubt that effort is not without reason, and that this is justifiable and I am not imagining this and just being stuck in some victim role. Women are not exploding across the earth at the injustice of their treatment, because I am making this up. This is really happening. Jimmy Carter names the violence done to women as, inarguable, the largest unaddressed issue of our time in his book "A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power." Starhawk is writing about how she doesn't like to talk about the violent times, to dwell on the histories --to retell these horror stories, but she calls her own self out here --that she might just be avoiding these stories to escape the pain in her book "Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics." So I keep reminding myself of my warrior priestess self who has bravely pioneered through the dark, who endured the pain and the humiliation and is still by some damn wonder, alive. And I am so compassionately moving deeper and deeper into forgiveness for the women who have been trying to move to silence me ..because I understand how painful it is to feel this. If I could protect you from it, I would, trust me ...and we have to stop protecting our men in these spaces if they are ever going to rise into the fullness of who they are. So many women have told me in my efforts to reach my brothers and get them to speak this for us, that they just cannot handle it ...well guess what, we are women and we are forced to handle it because these are our bodies and these are our voices, our men are apart of us they do not get the luxury of not being affected here. And they must also be held responsible. This is apparently why men run from me, I hold them accountable --and half the time I do not have to breathe a word, it is all said in my eyes. I'm working on an article for my brothers so that they can hear that the way our society is structured it is, by its design, a complete denial and affront on womanhood itself. I cannot stress here the importance it is for our men to get this now so we can be supported in creating spaces where we can be women in this world, not forced to deny our female process and just get on with it --because all of life is being poisoned through this action, and we are being called to create change in the way we are living on this earth.

I'm working out some deeper things in this story that has greatly upset me with this man who has left me in this predicament I currently find myself in. I'm really trying to find gratitude here, for being pushed to the brink and forced to step fully into my power --I'm thinking there could have been a more loving and gentler way to accomplish this --but apparently my body only speaks in violent upheavals and incomprehensible abuses. As I find myself still enmeshed in confusion, I am hoping to write myself to a deeper sense of clarity --and perhaps maybe this story will move other women to not get themselves ensnared in similar traps. Ultimately, I cannot shake the feeling that this is supposed to be punishment. Punishment for being a woman who has stepped out from beyond man's control. Obviously, I'm out of my mind here ...because what woman really behaves this way? What woman refuses to tolerate this continuous cycle of violence, however subliminal.

I'm still having trouble accepting that this is who Tim really is ...an asshole with no care or respect, who walks the earth raping the lives of women. The wind has begun to whip in response to my ability to confront this. Of course, he is completely ignorant of this, it does not admonish his action and I will not make excuses for the continued abuse, shaming and humiliation of women. Tim, his name is Tim Rothschild, he lives in Tappan, NY, he is 28 years old and I remember from the beginning being concerned about his age, even though it mirrors my own, that he had not yet reached the emotional maturity necessary to be my mate. I'm speaking his name because I have about as much instinct to protect him here as he had for me the night he subjected me to vial treatment and left me to break down alone on the streets of new york city at 2am. I knew we had come together to end a cycle, I just thought we would be doing it together in a kind and loving way. Trust me that if I knew this man would try to kill me, if I had any sense that he was capable of the damage that he has done, I never would have allowed him back into my life, to which he begged to come. I should have known better. I never should have allowed him to pry his way back in. I have stood on my own --I have had to learn to rely on myself my entire life. I am perhaps one of the most resourceful and self reliant people alive on this earth ---until I take myself to devastated and ravaged places on this earth, and meet the women who are taking care of the children there and then I will have to change my opinion as my vision alters, which only direct experience can truly bring. I must be honest that I began this post some months ago, my situation is changing, food has been coming from all directions, I am so much stronger than I was when I began it --but it takes so much damn time to write in this blog, there is no way I am erasing these previous words, my time is precious, and that part of my journey still deserves to be documented. It's funny that I would come here now and find this post half written and unpublished because it is exactly where I wanted to pick up. I just got done listening to Tim's now ex girlfriend --the woman he jumped into a relationship with right after me --express their breakup in her podcast. In one of their fights they were laying on the couch, after sex and she was wearing a dress with no underwear and when she would move her vagina would be exposed and he flipped out and told her to put it away. I can't wrap my mind around this --why would you shame and abuse your lover this way? It's his shame for his sex, because on some level he knows what he does is wrong, and I am still certain that his excessive sexual use of women is overcompensating for the fact that he is, indeed, gay. Instead of allowing him to shame her, she pulled the lips of herself apart and fully exposed herself to him, and it terrified him. This is perhaps the most amazing thing I have heard in awhile. The only other amazing thing to hear would be that women stand up in their power, protect one another and stop sleeping with men like this. This man has jumped from woman to woman, taking whatever he wants --using emotional abuse and spinning these stories of "expectations" to explain away his failure and blame someone else, because he is not man enough or mature enough to take responsibility. It is truly inexcusable --and a great tactic, apparently --because I just listened to this woman buy into it --hook line and sinker. Women actually deserve respect, we deserve someone who is going to be there and show up when we need them --someone we can trust. Not someone who will use us, party it up, show us off and then leave us in the dirt. I'm not speaking this because I want to bash him, or because I hate him --I'm actually speaking from an amazing place of gratitude for him to give me this gift of being able to come here and speak and know this so clearly. He gave me my self worth back ---he called me to task to stand up and be the guardian at my own gate that I so desperately needed myself to become. Because this shit is tired and it is thousands of years in its cycle of abuse and I stand to end it because this man is not a great man. He thinks he is. He is a great sales man. I bet he thinks his cock is awesome. His cock is poison to a woman like me, and he knew it from the beginning when he initially ran. He hid from me who he truly was --but I could see and I allowed myself to be blind because I bought into what he was selling --and he devastated my life. Not because he left --no no, I know how to take care of myself, but because he left me in a situation where I could barely feed myself, almost lost my home and my car and my business (because I clean houses, travel with supplies like vacuum cleaners and rely on my vehicle to function) and am still 6 months later not entirely out of the clear, but my lease ends in a few days and I have options now. The hell I've been through with this property was the most illuminating journey of my life. I'm coming to this solid recognition that this is who I am, and I NEVER deserved this. He could come now begging, crying to get back in --but I will not let him, a few months ago, maybe I would have --and I am speaking this from a compassionate place, because through my dreaming I have seen him now ..clearly ...and I love him for his soul but this ends now, and he is not worthy, unless he makes the changes he needs to make and stops polluting, damaging and destroying women --which is a mirror of what is happening on this earth. Man, I place this responsibility firmly back into your hands, clean up this toxic mess on this earth, your little boys game is over. 8 years I've been working on this speaking and now I finally feel like I'm forming the clarity I need to really speak it in the world, although I would still love blankets, shelter, love and support. But I've promised myself that I will somehow craft the way to spend more time being able to focus on my own needs --as I am incredibly over worked and tired. I still get pain around my adrenals every few days if I am not careful. I apparently began writing the story of our relationship, although I am at a point where the story does not even matter anymore, I just want to get it all out, let go completely and really move forward, but I am keeping the story for you to read because it takes me deep into my work and I see that some beautiful things have come to the surface here. Thank you Timothy Rothschild, for almost killing me so that I could stand up and claim my life in the most ferocious way. I imagine in the future, if I see you, you will probably run. Not from anything other than your own terror of a woman who stands in her power. My prayer is that we see a true reckoning and balancing of power on this earth. I just dreamed the other night that there was an emergency in the neighborhood where I was cleaning. When I went to leave, I couldn't get out of the neighborhood, all of the roads were blocked off --so I got out of my car, picked it up over my head like it was a box, and walked it through the road block til I got to the otherside. If that is any indication of the strength I have needed to summon to get myself through the last 6 months. It's been ridiculous. 

Now for the story,

We met over a year ago now, at an ayahausca ceremony at my girlfriends retreat center in Milford, Pa. I'll never forget this ceremony, because it was particularly special to me --after doing so much work around honouring the bloodtime and restoring the moonlodge --clearing out the centuries of violence, shame and humiliation and the hatred that these attitudes breed regarding our deepest and most sacred female processes, my blood had asked to be in this ceremony. Anyone who is familiar with the protocols of ayahausca, knows that bleeding women are not permitted to attend, but this was special circumstance --as a blood priestess, my blood had specifically asked to be present with the medicine. So I had to write to the organizer and explain the situation and make my request, who in turn passed it on to the shamans tending the ceremony. It was decided that because by the day of the ceremony itself I would be on my 3rd day of bleeding and because I would not be sitting in the full power of my bloodtime --which could potentially overtake the ceremony and disrupt the processes of the other attendants --I would be allowed passage, and received permission to attend.
I arrive right before the ceremony is about to begin, so I do not have time to talk to and mingle and go right into setting up my space and sinking into what I had come to heal. The organizer introduces us because we are "neighbors" (sitting next to one another) and as we shake hands I take him in as a jock, wondering what the hell he is doing at an ayahausca ceremony and no connection really registers.

So there I am sitting in my dark corner, opening up my deepest sexual spaces to the Grandmother and allowing the medicine to interweave within the matrix of my womb's blood, praying it through my motherline, and I am in deep ecstasy. Inviting it to soak into my vaginal walls, letting it nurture the tissues of my cervix, breathing it in and out of my womb --where I had worked to remove so many painful memories --generations of rape and trauma. When I first broke my consciousness into my womb space, years ago, it was torment, it was a dark space filled with centuries of war, held deep by the chains of shameful disgust. These were the memories and feelings holding in the energetic matrix that made up the living tissue of my womb. This was horrifying to me, that this place from which we were creating and birthing our children was filled unconsciously with so much violence. It quickly became my life's work to heal this, for all of us really ...and since I have been doing this work, many voices have joined the chorus and more and more women are finding their way home. Scientific studies are proving the nourishing and regenerative qualities of the menstrual blood --the only blood carrying the mitochondrial DNA --which is like the seed cell that replicates itself over and over and over again through out all life --it is the connecting force in the universe it is held within the woman's menstrual blood, and is passed only through the mother line. The woman actually holds the tapestry of life together --but our women are being destroyed, so all life hangs in question now. Can we move to a place of balance where our women are being remembered and honoured again so that life can nourish and heal as we do or do we continue to beat them down and choke them until there is just no life left. These are the questions now. I could write a whole chapter on this, but it will have to wait for the book.

Back to the ceremony, back to the man who can take absolutely no responsibility for the damage he has done, and for the damage he will continue to do until he learns to take responsibility. To the man who cannot even apologize for being an abusive asshole. The story of many men can be recorded here. After the ceremony I began to realize that whenever this man came near me an intense heat would start to radiate through my body. And it doesn't hurt that he is good looking, so I ask him to hold me, and he does --for an hour. I began telling him all about my work with the womb and the blood and the temples. I find out he and his friend had wandered into the red tent my girlfriend holds as a permanent space in her lodge, the red tent that I had originally brought to the land. Of course they were asked to leave, and explained to that it is held as a women's only space. But he confided in me, as many men have that not only does he want but need a similar space. So I have actually been working on bringing the men into this movement, but of course at this point, I have no fabric left and am half dead in exhaustion so this won't be happening anytime soon, unless someone wants to fund this project and I can afford myself a 3 month vacation. What I feel the men really need to understand is that, ultimately, their red tent is within the woman that they love, as the red tent is built as the representation of the womb herself. So from the place where I am writing, where I can sort of move in and feel where we are at right now on this planet --is that we are all wounded here and we all need care and love to fill these spaces which have been abandoned for centuries in the arts of conscious sexuality and conscious conception. We are breeding a wasteland in our haste, and we all need to come home. When the woman can erect herself again as the home and be honoured in this place --the woman herself becomes the source of man's nourishment, the place where he goes to pray and to cleanse his soul. So when a man makes a commitment to love and nurture the womb of his partner his place of healing will actually be within her, within the container of their relationship. This kind of partnership takes maturity, it takes respect, it takes utmost honesty, and it takes two people who really take responsibility for showing up and doing the work. Someone said the other day there is no difference between a secret and a lie. This is true. We see this movement right now on the planet of women reclaiming their goddess selves --our priestess ---in short, we are reclaiming our spiritual authority on earth and learning how to live in our power as a living breathing connection to life. A man can look at a woman or a woman can look at another woman and say "Oh she is Goddess" but can they see the living connections to life that she holds? This is what needs to happen. We need to look within the woman and know without doubt that because she is breathing life is breathing. So let us walk with that honour and respect for the connection to life that women hold. When men learn to really honour and love the women again in this way, his love will actually disspell the thousands of years of trauma buried in this deep place of woman --from which we all suffer, and trust me that these memories are within all of us --whether they are conscious or not. Many argue here, because they want to escape the pain ..and systems of denial are erected here at all costs to avoid getting wet. Time to get wet. And we need to bring the divinity back in our men. Goddess knows, we need you. And this is being spoken from a woman who should by all means hate you, but has somehow grown beyond the shadow of her abuses to hold enough compassion to pray for you men. I will not deny for a second that I am not still angry. Furious even, but that will be your test. Because so many of you, deserve this. My rage has thundered this earth in hail storms, did thousands of dollars of damage to cars (sorry --hope everyone had really good insurance) but it is necessary. 

This is as far as I got with the story, and I could go deeper but its exhausting to rehash the past. I could talk about the treatment, but I'd rather relax. He lost his ability to speak to me like a human being --I became some sort of doll to him, just something to throw around. He's immature. His friends are too. It was a joke. But by all means, in the Temple of the Goddess to which I have dedicated my life to Restore. By Her Law --I still find him guilty of rape, theft and attempted murder. One day he will have to face those crimes. There is no longer excuse for this behavior, and I hope more women start to stand stronger on their own and stop making excuses and protecting these men. We can still love them, but we can no longer enable this destructive behavior. 

(Do you have any idea how grateful I was that when I came to write this, it was already written, and so wonderfully)

And if you are wondering, reading this, if I still need money --fuck yeah I do. I'm either staying in this home or moving and this has sucked me dry on so many levels. In that statement I can feel this shift on the planet --we're giving up, yeah in a way --but we're not. Those who come, will come. This planet can not feed this wasteland that we are creating, so she's going to get rid of us. I have ideas of what this will look like ...and who knows what the timeline will be. But we are going to need one another in the future. To be able to trust one another with our lives, with our children's lives ..we should already be living this way, for it is sacred law to live in harmony with creation and our people have broken that law and have been at war, destroying now for so long.

In Peace, I Surrender to what my future brings. Perhaps a man, someday who is brave enough to stand by a woman like me. Strong enough to take the onslaughts of criticisms he will be receiving just for being with me. Someone who will know and understand these sacred relationship and connections to life, and understands that we bridge them and heal them together --not run when things get tough. And he will lay his semen to the earth, before he lays his semen inside me. Until then, I will continue to build this foundation on what feels like sacred worth. 

Reflections of a Lantern

Today was a day of completely melting down. I've realized that if I am going to make it through this I'm going to have to write ..to keep speaking this, for myself. I'm collapsing. It was verified by a healer, I don't know if that makes the situation any better .... it just makes the reality of it more severe. "It's as if you are collapsing in on yourself.", she says to me. "You really need to focus on building up your power center and keeping your heart open." I want to scream at her, shake her even ..but I don't. I know it's not her fault ...I'm not here to blame anyone. Although, I believe that it would be the repeated attacks on my life that have created this situation. It's a funny situation ...a feeling of suspension, really. Of not knowing if I am going to survive this ..where is my community? Where are hearts and hands and unity? As I am breaking down today I am wondering why I am crying alone. I've been through so much ..and I've been able to keep myself alive --I'm fighting for my will to keep going. I do not fear death, I have met its gates many times. So I just keep surrendering.

I know I am a bright light. Because of the experiences I have had, I learned at a very young age how vital bringing love into the world was --so in spite of everything I was able to maintain this heart centered way of being and people on this earth do not handle that very well. I become a mirror for every one's shadow.

Reckoning at 28 years old, that I have learned to survive off virtually nothing. I never really ask very much of anyone. I've always worked hard, I've always taken care of myself ---but the last 2 and a half years have been painstaking ...I need rest.

What I know: No woman ..or man for that matter should have to fight as hard as I have fought to stay alive. A year and a half ago I spent 3 months eating out of garbage cans and stealing food because I had to in order to keep myself alive ...I spoke to many in my community that I did not have food, and repeatedly people turned their backs. Its hard to forgive these things. Why do people not care? I see other people helping other people, but when I need nothing comes. How am I creating this? What level of responsibility must I take here? I will never forget how it felt to be starving ...it is a terrible feeling, an animalistic beast comes forth to claim her space in the world ---I really felt like I had to have that experience in order to awaken these instincts. Instincts to protect, nurture and survive. We all face an uncertain future ...no one can say for sure exactly what it is going to look like. I am positive of this: we are going to have to come together as a people once more and truly care for one another and keep each other alive. We are not doing this. I can bare witness. I look at our society --and for survival within it one is forced to focus on oneself primarily --establishing one's business, image ..whatever else. Its very very hard for me to concern myself with these things --I believe it to be why it has been so challenging for me to form a business in this world. I clean houses, for now ---it gets me through, it is certainly not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

Rape, it's sort of like a terminal disease ..it infects your whole life. Blinds you to your beauty --tells you that you are filthy and unworthy ..that you are whore ...that you deserve it. Then I look at society and how predominant those messages are in the world for women and I can't help but see this issue of rape as really being a bit out of control. Trusting people --forget it. It hurts too much. I can't tell you how much effort it took --years of therapy, of breaking down to rip this layer of disgust off of me so I could begin to see myself again. Why are we damaging one another this way? Why do we live in a world too terrified to confront these issues ..because if we would stand up, this would end. It really would. Sexual dysfunction seems to be a rampant case --I've traced it through many cells and many bones --we all have work to do here. Standing up, getting clear, claiming our place, knowing we we are again. I believe we are all suffering from amnesia of the soul ..we've lost the inner mechanics of who we are, forgotten how to read the maps of our own hearts ..and because of that our souls are lost.

Sandra Ingerman diagnosed the world with mass soul loss. I agreed with her. We are all terrible fractured --a mirror, of what we are doing to our land right now with this hydraulic fracturing --it's nuts really. How many holes can you put into a wall before it ceases to be able to hold the ceiling up ..this is what we are doing to our earth. And these are not surface wounds we are inflicting --they are deep, puncturing things like livers and lungs and pumping thousands of gallons of toxic waste into her body. It feels like murder. Deliberate? Or simply ignorant?

I have a deep affiliation for this mother that I know as earth --and maybe it is because I had to rely so deeply on her for my own mothering, it is how I have become connected to so many ancestors, because I had to reach so deep inside to keep going that I met these places within that are abandoned and forgotten in most. I treasure them --I find them more valid than the waking world --as it is from these layers of human experience, which most are numb to that we create our waking world. The aborigines call it the sacred dream time. I honestly believe, that it has been my connection to this space that has kept me holding onto life here on this earth ..because as I began to really write in my last post my treatment on this earth has been disgraceful and utterly inhumane. I remember about almost 3 years ago now I was coming out of a dream ...in the liminal space between sleeping and waking where we can really consciously travel ...I was met by grandfathers, there were 2 and they were very excited to show me something ..they said I had earned it. They took my hands and led me through the forest ..I remember walking up hill for sometime and then we stepped out into a clearing that was on the mountains edge and I was looking into the most magical ravine I had ever seen ..an entire valley sparkling and green and clear, absolutely beautiful. They had told me that this is what we were doing here, we were recreating the earth for the children. That when we restored the sacred hoop of our people that this world would be born. I carry that image of that world that I was shown inside me. And instead of being cared for, nurtured, protected --I have been raped, repeatedly, mocked and humiliated, kicked and beaten down --and I am tired, and furious but still in my heart I find this deep well of compassion because I understand that there is just so much fear here. So much fear in the children. It doesn't help to live in a world where most would call me nuts for what I just wrote here. "just delusions" right ---those worlds of our ancestors do not exist, right? Well, where do you think came from my child?

My Birthing Cry

Literally, I'm having a conversation on facebook minutes ago with a woman who is trying to launch her own blog voicing from her vagina ... my blog inspired her, I am grateful. I make the comment that I'm the woman who cannot write without a storm ripping through the valley to hold me --as I send the message, thunder cracks --and now there is a storm here, holding me. I will take this invitation. Let's see what comes. Rain just did --pouring in just that moment, cascading off my windows. I love this inexplainable connection to Nature that I have been able to form by the consciousness I have been able to weave and awaken. It has been painful, difficult, humiliating at times. But I am still here ..sometimes I have no idea how. The amount of abuse I have had to endure in this female body --hail is slamming the window now. I am rage. FUCK. This is so sacred. I wish you could be here to experience this moment with me. I would not believe this, if I were not sitting here witnessing it. I have become a voice for this earth, and I just need to take a step back right now and be here.

Alright, now that I screamed, drummed and sang that one out --this really needs to be addressed. This rape of the feminine ..this harassment that has become customary, that so many would like to deny. It is a travesty. We fear women's power --women, fear their power. For generations. The hail sounds like drumbeats off my house. I've been working so deeply with the blood, I'm moving into understanding the full cycle. The full circle of life. This is what I mean when I say women hold the ceremonies --the original ceremonies, that man has tried to replicate by stealing her knowledge and her power and beating her into submission so that she would just forget.

This happened.
There is no more denying this.
There is only healing this.

My life prepared me to see this, to face this, to make me strong enough to stand against this, to have the courage to speak this. Regardless of how many masks I might wear, or snakes that dangle from my hair. I just picked up my drum and beat into this fierce storm that I will stand, I will stand for my children --even if my body is beaten and bleeding out on the ground. I will not stop. This is why I am here. Most of you cannot understand this. Maybe you just don't know. How precious life is ..and to hear it crying when it should be singing is so sad. I do not want to spend my life in grieving ....

There is a heart beat in the womb, I discovered this years ago --when I can really be in that space and nourish it ..my belly swells, all pregnant with life and I can feel that connection. My breasts get heavy, they know the ground, they become like antennas tuned into the trees, they feel the subtle shifts of the wind. A womb connected, is a womb at peace. A womban in harmony with Life itself. When women live like this again --we will see great healing spread across the land. But as long as our women are beaten down, left traumatized on the streets to fend for themselves, starved off --literally, by men who just cannot stand that there is a woman who can hold her ground. I can't tell you how hard my life has been, because I am still a bit choked here but these chords of fear are loosening.

I'm looking at this:
"World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not mere absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion."

God Bless this storm. I needed you to hold me.

I'm terrified right now, I'm saying it's just not safe --and I have not been able to release this story, that is mine, but it's coming now ...and I have to let her out, I can't hold it in anymore. It's crowning. And I'm trying to distract myself already, no ...I can't let them see me vulnerable, shaking inside. Hungry in this darkness.

I woke this morning with a golden sunlight in my womb ..illuminating my everything and I knew it was time for this ...

So here it is, this is where I came from: I have a mother who was a violent alcoholic when we were growing up --I have siblings, a sister and a brother who are 6 and 7 years younger. We all, in our own ways learned to grow in our own care and nurturance --to which our mother, from her own experience was rendered incapable of giving. She married a man when I was 5 who shortly after began molesting me, physically penetrating me. My mother worked nights, its was always when she wasn't home. His sexual inappropriateness never ended --but the physicality of the sexual abuse did when I was 12 --puberty struck my little woman's body and he decided he would switch to violent beatings instead. Punched. Thrown around. Head slammed off walls ..by a man easily 3 times my size. I learned to go numb, I learned to play dead. Fighting back always made things worse. I got really good at hiding. It was how I survived. To this day, I scare people constantly because they cannot hear me approach --I've learned to walk silently, mask my presence. I had a father who was never there for me, I learned early on that his relationships with women took a higher priority than me ..and he brought so many of them through my life. He ended up bringing a woman in who would later become his wife --she had 4 children, her story is hers to tell --but she was recovering from abuse ---she was another incapable of nurturing. She was jealous of me, as a child --it took me years to understand this --but I was a threat to her, 'the other woman' in my fathers life. So she did an inexplicable amount of damage to me, doing everything capable to destroy my image in my father's eye. I didn't speak to him for 4 years --for my own health. 

I didn't know the feeling of safety until I was 20 years old, and it took me 3 days to figure out what I was feeling as I was on land with only women at my first women's gathering --and it changed my life. I found the sweatlodge that year, I found the red tent, I found myself. I had already been well on my healing path ... working through this incredibly damaging life I had been forced to lead. On some level, I understand that I chose this, I chose to come here and do this work. To perform this healing. There is so much that can be written in that story --and the sun just came out, the storm has passed.

Do you know how impossible it is to write when you do not have the tools and support that you need? I heard once that true love is found in someone who protects your solitude. I believe this. I know how important it is to be alone. I've been alone for a long time ---but I experience loneliness very rarely. It's just when my back is breaking and my feet are aching that I cry out for support. Not everyone chooses the road I have walked, I am pretty sure it is reserved for the strong and the brave --cowardice does not bring you here.

I hear people wonder how these connections I claim to have can be ..and how do you find them? Spend time alone, and listen. Learn to rely on yourself --I had to, I didn't have a choice. I raised myself I say. I spent a lot of time in the woods, mediating as a child, although I had no idea that is what I was doing --I was just being --plain and simple. Until I learned to hide all those beautiful things because this world calls them crazy. You hear voices? --Why yes, thousands of my ancestors speaking. I am only alive here today because of them. I will never forget the many times I did not have the strength to stand and feeling arms that I could not see pick me up and carry me.

I'm an incredible woman, with an incredible story that really wants to be written --but I've been finding it impossible to create that space on my own. I'm tired. I've lived for years with severe post traumatic stress --my nervous system has been carrying the impact of so many rapes and so many beatings, I need to heal them ...but its very hard to do alone. Therapy is very expensive and when you are trying to keep a roof over your head, and food on the table and it is very hard to make space for this type of healing on your own. Everyone I talk to says when you are trying to build something, support is very important. So I stood up about 2 years ago --after really falling, saying I need support! It's important --only to be met with blank stares and ohh I'm so sorry and ohh I wish I could help, or the best one: you really need to learn how to support yourself --which is a hard one, because it's like hearing: "actually, you really do not deserve love or care from this world." But I know they do not know my story, so I forgive them. A friend of mine, a gentle man who is so much still a child, but I adore him --he tells me that it is as if I am building the empire state building by myself --if you ask my body, she will tell you that it feels this way. My arms are locking up again, my lower back feels split open after having a man come and horsekick me to the ground who claimed to love me who claimed to want to support me who told me I could trust him ..and I was so weary, and it was so hard, but I did ..I opened up and I let him. Can you imagine how hard it is for me to trust? That story will be written, but it is not time yet --because that will be raw and bare boned. I will only say that this inhumane treatment of woman must end, only because I want to stay focused on my current situation ...

I had moved in with a woman and her 5 year old son, we had great plans that we talked about for this beautiful 3 building log cabin property in the middle of town --a healing room, an office, a home business and then she bailed and I was doing it alone, and my back started to really hurt because I was going out of my way to hold this home for her and her son and was not being met with any support in return, so after 4 months of this I stood up and I said I am moving out --only because I would never tell a woman and her son that they had to leave. I was the one that was unhappy, so I was going to go --and I was struggling financially --and that is a whole other story of the ancient patriarch and his beautiful inn that he is running into the ground ---I've solidified that I just cannot work for men in this world, they are not yet evolved --and I have no tolerance and their behavior is detrimental to my health. Compromised as I was in being able to afford my rent in this battle. But I'm not going to get too side tracked here. So I am moving out. I was going to rent a room from a friend, but my mother convinces me to move back with her, save up money and get my place that I can afford alone. My housemates sister and her sisters boyfriend are moving in to take my place on the lease. The situation was resolved. Then this man, who I thought was such a beautiful man --and now I'm just convinced he was a really good sales man. Really it was a very serious case of man child. And looking back, a very bad decision. He lived in new york, I lived in pennsylvania --so I did not really know how he was living, we didnt get to see each other often --so when he posed, with no prompting or prodding from me to come in and take over my housemates half and to stop her sister and her boyfriend from moving in so that we could build the space that I craved --my permanent red tent --after asking him about 30 times if he was sure, I agreed --because I really really wanted this. I had no idea he was so deep in his shadow that he couldn't see his way out. I had no idea he was drinking every night beyond oblivion --escaping almost every weekend into mushrooms and calling it healing. He told me he had a bad ayahausca "trip" --you do not trip on ayahausca --you journey. I should have known. I thought I could heal him --I saw the man in him, that he was too terrified to be. I read shortly after he was gone, that the ayahausca will only bring you bad journey's when she is angry --which means he has no respect. I kept telling him he was abusing the medicine of the mushroom --he didn't understand, obviously there will be much growing on his behalf before he will ever become the warrior he claims to be. I was vulnerable already, tired already ---he bailed on me 6 days before rent was due with $200 in my bank account, and in a really bad way. I have never seen anyone so effectively destroy a relationship in one evening. To that I will give him credit. We had agreed that he would lay down all of March's rent so that I could save up and then we would split. I guess there is no way to really avoid speaking this so I will just dive into it. So I'm falling down because I sense him not supporting me ..I feel him bailing ...women know things, my back knows things. So I fall down, I get fired from my job for calling off an hour and a half before my shift --I literally couldnt walk, and then fell asleep for 8 hours. But my weekend was free --so I call him, and he's all excited that I can come up and he's going to some comedy show and the club where he runs his podcast out of in nyc ...I'm tired, I really don't want to go --I get there, I see him --he looks like a guilty child, but one of his friends was there --a young kid, college frat boy --I call him his minion --it was a bit ridiculous --so we didn't get a chance to speak privately. He's playing the game really well --but his energy his off and I really should have just stayed home and rested, but I said to myself "oh how bad can this be" --I had no idea, I had absolutely no idea how terrible that night would be. Shortly after we get there he distances himself from me completely --goes dead and cold. Every time I tried to speak to him he would look across the room and treat me like some inconvenience ---so I'm confused, I can't reach him --it gets progressively worse --and we're drinking --and then I'm drinking more because I have no idea where he is and I know where this is going ...I've been here before --I thought I was done with this. I've prayed over this so many times --and I was told that I keep attracting these things because I need to speak them --so I need to start speaking so they can stop happening --because I do not know how many more devastating blows my life can take. I asked him to take me back to my car ---which was outside of the city at his mother's house --where he was living ---#1 red flag --lesson learned --NEVER date a man who lives with his mama --no matter what story he gives you --which was his grandma was sick and he was moving in to support her ---nope, he's still living there I bet, breastfeeding daily. He refuses to take me to my car. So I erupt in front of everyone --which are all of his friends, and none of mine. I know no one --so this is a really great night for me ...I exploded and I said "You mean to tell me that I have to take myself out on the streets of nyc to get myself home right now" and he said "yes" --smug, satisfied --like his hidden little plan had been a success. He launched this all just to get out of moving in with me ---and thank god it happened, no one has to try to convince me that this was for the best --I already feel so much better without his energy connected to mine. He claimed to support me --but he fed off me, and choked me --there were warning signs, I didn't heed them. So I'm on the streets of nyc --furious and ready to have a break down --I grab a cab --the ride is over $160 and he knew this ---my debit card got denied 3 times before I got back out ---put my back against the wall and shattered silently --I tried to call a few friends, no one answered --so I had to go back to him. Now he wants to go party at his friends house in brooklyn ---I had to argue with him to take me back to my car. He's still dead and cold and now he's yelling at me because I'm too needy or something ..heaven forbid he think of me and that I might need some level of care. And then there was this dawning for me --that there are a lot of women who would tolerate that --those must be the women he is used to --the ones that sit all pretty and pretend to be content --they sit with their legs crossed --REAL tight, and smile. Good little girls ---women have no clue what they are worth or what they are capable of ---but they are trained right so they get treated right (that's debatable). Then another realization dawns --IF I would only just give up everything I have fought for ---everything I've plowed through just to become who I am --GOD my life would be easy. men would probably be serving me. Shit ain't gonna happen. There's a quote that really stuck --"Once you know you can't not know." It's true.

But let me tell you this. I was left 3 months ago paying over $1300 for a property I cannot afford on my own ---in a ridiculous condition ---I was ready to put myself in a women's shelter when I came back from nyc because I just cannot take any more abuse --but I couldnt get out of the lease ---held me rock solid as financially responsible 'til the end of the lease --which is the end of august. So i'm trying to make it through. That man had sucked so much of me --my left nipple caved in ---do you have any idea what it is like to watch your nipple invert from lack of care, nurturance and nourishment and too much abuse? It's devastating. I cant tell you how much I cried. I've been working to get roommates --I can't tell you how hard it was to have to be that vulnerable and invite strangers into your home. The whole thing felt like a violation. I have one now --he pays me $400 for a room --I need at least one more to sustain this home. Its tricky because the only bathroom is in the main house --so I need someone willing to walk in to use the bathroom and the kitchen. Not so easy. I am incredibly impressed with myself for making it this far ...I've been barely staving off eviction ---I just had to borrow $300 from a client as prepayment for services to halt eviction this month. That will be $300 I will not be bringing in next month. My car payments I can no longer afford ---I clean houses for a living and model, although I am retiring because I'm tired. I need my car to keep my business. So the big thing is I have been sitting here taking responsibility for the fact that I let a man come into my life and do this much damage --my home, my car, my business, my health.  I am thankful for this man for returning my self worth and everything is changing.

But I am asking for help --this is the hardest thing for me to do --but I am falling down, my nervous system is so taxed I am not receiving nourishment from the food I am eating because there is too much cortisol in my system. I need rest --not another job, which I considered going for today but then I see a hospital in my future and me there for exhaustion. I figured out how to add that little donate button from paypal to my blog --there was a tutorial (thank you). Many $5, $10, $20 donations add up. If you can offer more, bless you. 

I would love to be asking you to fund my moonlodge project, but I am too tired to raise that right now and am asking for money so that I can take care of myself please --because this has been a ridiculous ride. I haven't even shared with you the last 2 1/2 years --I think there was some hidden theme like let's drill Karly to the ground --- I can't even think of telling that story, its exhausting. Silenced in the talking stick ceremony, saged out of my own temple, and it's sticky in those places where we have to hold the women responsible --because I know I have said this before ---if we were really nurturing, caring for and protecting one another ---this situation on this earth would never exist. That one might be a bit harder to speak --but I will get there. 

Written but never published

This blogging thing is more difficult than one would previously imagine. Consistent effort is needed, time and well functioning computers. I'm pretty sure this is the first post I am writing not inspired by some fierce storm wreaking havoc through the valley. It feels so much that the depth of my rage when I confront the injustice of the world can only be expressed by deep thunder, pouring rain and flashes of lightning. I'd say I've been in a period of self reflection since July. Everything has sort of just stopped moving and I've been sitting here, letting things go, opening deeper in some aspects and letting things like love and support move in. In so many ways I have been sitting here with this "What the fuck happened?" question burning inside me, aching for a deeper sense of clarity and purpose, and a full release of that which has been bringing to me doubt and confusion.

I try to reflect on the life that I have been living, and no matter how hard I beat the drum I keep coming back to this one place. This place that was home. This place that is Mother. And I'm on the ground, looking up at the sky, scratching my head and wondering how this daughter was born, from what genetic material was my life made, when I look at the women who share my line. Did I come from the whispered or silent prayers in dark corners when no one was listening or watching of the ones that came before me. "Please tell me, one will come forth with the courage to break this cycle. Make her strong, strong enough to hold, and please God, support her voice and her vision."

How do I even begin to describe the strange magic that leads my life? The synchronistic events, the dreaming, the visioning, the way I pose a question to the universe and if I just open the answer always comes. How hard it's been to travel into the depth of these ancient ways of woman and life and try to translate those experiences into a modern world that has nearly all but forgotten. How does one clearly articulate the violence of the times? How to translate the spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical effects of that violence? How does one look back through thousands of years of tortured history thinking she has the power to create some sort of semblance of wholeness from a torn and tattered tapestry. Stories bleeding out from my bone. Generations of trauma coming up now to be released, from my marrow. Living calcified in the bones of my mothers. Women's stories, burned from history's pages, but lying deep, and some still dormant in the black earth belly of this great mother. I've always said you can erase the truth from history, but you cannot erase the truth from the earth. She holds it all, everything that has ever happened upon her. But who looks at a stone and sees a library? --I do. 

I've resolved that to deny shamanic reality is to further the continued denial of woman's power. When we bleed, we are in trance. Defining trance as direct communication with spirit. When we birth, we are in trance. When we are making our babies we are co creating with Spirit to bring forth this new life, and we need that space to communicate to these realms. Modern society disconnects us from this realm of the sacred from which we create, so life that would be birthing or born or made within these parameters --our creation is being disrupted, you see --and do I need any sort of explanation to describe to you the degeneration of our times? No, what I am doing is providing you with the remedy. When the women plug back into the natural pulses and rhythms of life through the reconstruction of the moonlodge within society --our whole world will turn from this place --the place of humanity's birth --the womb. I've completely transformed my relationship with my blood and my body, and within that my entire relationship with life. I should not even begin to try to describe what that was like in this one post, I may even have to break it down into very small pieces. I joke about being a 27 year old grandmother --while I can experience immense gratitude for the teachings I was able to reclaim and the space I am able to hold because of that, I have not been able to sink fully into anything joyful, I'm having trouble even being proud of the work and the journey I have undertaken --I just keep mourning the loss, and its so devastating. I can feel through thousands of generations of still unhealed women. I walk the streets and I see the devastation. Women who have never used the words power and blood in the same sentence. Wombs are speaking all the time, whether we have an ear to hear or not. Most of them, just do not know, they just don't know.

But still I have faith, so I am operating on "Those who have ears to hear will listen", and I am going to keep speaking, because I know people are watching and I know without doubt that the work I do is shifting something --its creating change. Even if I can't quite see it. Women come up to me on the street, in the grocery store, or wherever I happen to run into them and they say "thank you, for what you post on facebook." and they always lean in and whisper --like someone or something might be listening that they do not want to hear, I hate to tell them that they are right. I'll never forget the night I am standing outside a local tavern with a few friends and this woman runs up to me --I've never met this woman in my life, I know --it's so rare for me to forget faces. She runs up to me like we are old friends and embraces me, calls me by my full name. I'm standing there feeling awkward, apologizing ..."I'm sorry, but I don't remember you." She is like "oh no, we never met, but my friends know you --you do the work with the sacred feminine, thank you. Thank you for doing that work, I have great respect for you." Let me tell you, it's been women and rare occasions like that, that have kept me going, because most days it's just really hard. I'm going to have to go really slow in opening up this door and speaking. It's really just been frustrating, and a bit traumatizing. Is it jealousy that drives other women to viciously attack other women? If women are so good at tearing other women down, imagine how good we will be at holding each other together. Lifting each other up. I will endure. For over four years I have been attempting to raise a woman's temple in the lehigh valley --and for about 6 months I succeeded, a couple women came through the door, but I could not find one other woman who could commit to helping me hold the space, and without support I couldn't hold the space alone, so I fell, and I fell hard. But I will tell you that within the last year I have formed the very first relationship I have ever trusted in my life and it has been with the ground. When I need to fall down, the ground is always there. It never goes anywhere. When I need it, it always shows up. It's been like making peace with the ground of my own being, and its been hard but good work. Maybe it's that I have just become so accustomed to living my days with this low throbbing pulse at the base of my spine and the feeling of my hips feeling like they are going to unravel and fall apart from the lack of support, or genuine expressions of care that I have been receiving in my life. It led me back to the earth in a way I never would have discovered had I not had to walk through this. I came to a point where I sat with my ancestors and I said if you want me to continue to do this work, I need you to support me fully, so they led me in these ceremonies a few months back where I began "singing my bones awake" ---clearing out the debris, so that the spirits of my elders could infuse into my being and help me hold myself up.

Who knows when I wrote this ...well over a year ago at least, and this is where I was then. Wow. Good Good work. Words recovered on 5/22/2014 with only slight editing. 

Shadows dance me into wholeness

Oh....... it is nearly 4am, I find myself under the moon again. Waking ...deeply, ancient archives embedded deep within my thighs ..arching my spine, opening, moonlight penetrating me.

Destiny, unraveling me. Opening me. I thirst ...I wait.

And still amidst what I can only describe as calamity ...this thunderous storm that has become me ...black clouds, dark ancient rage pouring down on me, ripping me open to a bodily hunger I may never be able to fully disclose ...I find myself filled to the brim with gratitude. The lightening itself drawing me to ecstasy. I amaze myself time and time again that I can always return to this place, deep well of compassion. Lotus blossoms (they are pink) for hands. Sacred woman following me in the shadows ..revealing herself, slowly. The power, ancient magic held deep within her hips. Lighting the soul song that flows through my outstretched arms into the world, my deepest prayer, my sacred dance. My love, seen.


Exploited.

I built a temple for woman. It was my home. Everyday, thank full for body, for rest, for soul. For honouring myself in a sacred way.


Then to walk out on the streets, no honouring, no recognition of what it is I hold. No respect. And I am supposed to just laugh, role over and play dead, no no, this is my battleground, and it is a battleground because I have chosen to speak to this. The way men violate women on the street, everyday I watch this, if it is not my own experience. There seems to be this teaching that if you are a man you have every right to put your hands wherever you want on a woman. That you have every right to violate her space when you approach her, and if she says no to you, then you have every right to humiliate her and even to physically harm her.


Now I might step a little deeper here and say that, as women, we are about a hundred years out of living as man's property here in the united states, in many other countries women still need man's permission to speak, to open the door to their own homes. Women still having their clitoris cut off and their vaginas sown shut so that on her wedding day her husband knows she is pure. She is his property after all. He has the right to abuse her, to use her, to kill her even, if she ever decides to, I don't know, fend off a blow. Wow. I'm just going to move down into this and hold this right now. I do not have the knowledge of what my grandmothers fought for, laid their lives down for, for nothing. The women who have fought before me so that I could have the opportunity to sit here and speak this, to pursue work in any field I desire, to own property, to live my life independent of a man and to claim my sovereignty. I honour them. Less than one hundred years ago my great grandmothers fought with their lives, they were jailed, attacked, murdered, tortured ...and today women, where is that spirit? Have you become so complacent with the lives set before you or have you become so numb that you cannot feel the violation.

Oh, Goddess ..it pains me to write this ...these ways in which I have been attacked, humiliated, robbed of these ancient robes of my soul --sold into a slavery that mocks my power, tears my throat out and fucks my body with no consideration for health, for safety. Where is kindness? Empty shame waste basket lying on the floor ...holding all the clothes of past lovers, is this my shame ...no no, these men who came to claim me. A little smile crept on my face, whispering me into silence ...they should have known better. No man can claim a woman who has already claimed her throne. And writing this, makes me happy. This deep centered place of knowing. I wish I could sit here everyday and just breathe and expand. Letting go..... How do you let go of thousands of years of rape, murder, war, destruction, the absolutely disrespect of life ..climaxing on the world stage at the brink of our human extinction, self created hell on earth --all because we choose to still deny the living breathing magic that creates unity in our breath, that beats in the hearts of you and me. Linking us eternally together.


Can we hold hands here? Breathe together here? Unify with our creation, heart, mind, body and soul?

My throat is actually raw from typing this ...allowing these words to flow from this deep, heavily armoured space. As I breathe into it ...I follow this into the dreamtime --that place where the sacred merges within the physicality of our world, I step into my 300 foot spirit body and I can feel the chain loosen and the heavy weight that used to shackle my feet hangs down from my vulva, swinging between my legs wide open, becoming the wrecking ball that this world so desperately needs. Tearing through cities, hunting misogyny in every corner of the earth, tearing out plastic playgrounds ---molding, shaping, loving, laughing in raw earth to hand to the children ---here is pleasure, here is fantasy, here is livelihood, here is the magic of this beautiful creation that is your birthright.


Purified of filth. Purified of hate. Cleansed of the blood of war. Nourished with the blood of life.


Never in my life would I ever dare teach a child of mine to hate, to judge, to mock. Never in my life would I want my child to grow up being taught to hate another child in another country. My children the only enemies you have are the ones that you create.


So when someone wants to speak to me, to try to play manipulative mind games and get me to second guess the enormity of the damage done to the collective soul body and psyche of woman --I will say this: women for hundreds, thousands of years have allowed this. Have found pride in raising their children for war and sending them off to murder or be murdered. And I stand and say, where is your instinct to protect life? Where is your ability to honour, to nourish, to feed in a healthy way. Buried under thousands of years of trauma. 

And this is where I'm going to have to stop myself, because I can't seem to navigate here without revealing my own story ...and that will be one painful gift to write. 

Finally, I understand the decent, why it's here and what it is for. It is a journey into wholeness. The dance of the seven veils --it's not luxurious or seductive --all thought it can be at times. It's bloody, it's painful, it rips you open raw --straight down to the bone, and when you get inside the bone you realize that there are these little particles like stars that make you who you are.

So I am hung on the peg now, staring my dark sister in the face, in the place of inanna, ishtar, astarte, ancient goddess who has brought me here on my knees, bleeding my life into the ground, I feel like I should be terrified but I've been tested and tried so much that I am losing my fear.


So I let my intestines fall to the ground, knowing that my life will continue on. And I pray for the medicine to come that will teach me not only how to restore my life, but all life on earth.


I just felt eternity slip through this hour glass and I'm sitting in the sands of time watching the waves wash in and out. The sun is rising now. All I can be is present with this day. And I pray to all great teachers, to all ancestors that stand in support of me that you shield me with your wisdom, and guide me into the forgiveness that I need to heal.


Aho! Sacred woman has returned. And I will continue to spiral deeper into this. To voice this. Because this is madness stampeding on earth.

Ancient Mother Dance Within Me

"I learned to give voice to the thunder and lightening within my own body..."-Ana Forrest, Fierce Medicine

I sit here, absolutely and utterly exhausted, watching another storm prepare to rip through the lehigh valley. The first bout of thunder came from within me. I felt the energy gather within my belly ... This is how I feel ... Like a powerful storm. Ready to threaten the life of anything that would dare threaten or harm the life of my children. 

I am like an ancient birthing woman. All I can do is rock here, deep in this place. I cry out here. For the love, honouring, nurturing, recognition of the sacredness ..the treasure that exists here, in this body of woman.


Goddess, this is so hard to write. I pray for the focus and determination to face this contamination of life, and speak this for the purpose of healing.


Women. Women. Women. In the past month of my life, I have witnessed a pregnant woman be harassed and bullied by her doctors, fighting to have the birth she desires. Insurance doesn't cover home births. She can't afford the $4,500 for one of the ONLY midwives in about a 3 hour radius of the lehigh valley to attend her. I have watched a woman almost die, poisoned by the medical system, and 1 month into her recovery out of the hospital has had her baby taken away. They say she's "unfit" ---so they have taken her rights to see her child from her.


Back in March I was in a play ...this was so much more. I stood up on stage and read Alice Walker's poem "To stop the violence". I chose this piece because when addressing rape and violence against women we tend to focus on the men. But when we do that we are leaving out a very valuable and juicy piece of the whole picture: The violence that women perpetrate against other women. Do you think that we would have a world where rape existed if women were protecting each other? It's time for women to take responsibility in this space. We are sisters. Let's start acting like it. And then I could start speaking of the way mother's tear their daughter's down and try to live vicariously through their sexuality and youth. (I'll leave that MESS for a later day) All this tearing down of woman ...who is building woman up?


I write and speak a lot about the sacredness and power of woman. But for one second do not think that I would dishonour the sacred power of man. Somehow the penis has singlehandedly (? as it doesn't really have arms, I'm sure a better word can be inserted here) divided women. What do women tend to fight over? Men. That's powerful. Very powerful. Women hate, strangle and trip each other to earn men's affection and approval. It's kind of crazy to watch it, I've participated in it. I understand what's happening. It is so very rare to find a man capable of nurturing, so many of us are physically and emotionally and spiritually starved for the real love of a man. So starved that we would rip each other down to get what we need --hmmm, there must be a better way.


When I was preparing for this play through January and February, rape had sort of consumed my life ...I began to see it everywhere. To hold this, and walk through this took so much, so much strength, patience, energy ...by the beginning of march I hit the ground. I was sleeping in my backyard just to be close to the earth. I said "Mother, please there has to be more, why have you taken me here. To kill me? No ...to teach me." Never had I allowed my heart to become so vulnerable and open to this planet. To live with her. To form relationship with her. To figure out how to turn my life so I could support her. She gave me a dream ...I had these large full length mirrors in my living room in which I was standing in front of, there was me -my reflection, and another me, a higher version of myself --but she was only in the mirror. She glowed this beautiful golden light and she said to me that I must allow myself to be seen. I looked in the mirror and I wasn't wearing pants, I was completely naked from the waist down. So I'm standing there awkwardly trying to pull my shirt down to cover my self but it's not long enough. I look at her and ask "Don't you think this is revealing a little too much?" She laughed! And then I woke up.


And as I just took a break to go sit with the pouring rain I understand where I am supposed to take this.


So I hear this often Karly, why are you doing this? Why do you put yourself through this? Well, to be honest. I can't seem to stop. Tearing through history's lies to discover the truth within my own being. I do this because I want to become a mother, and I do not want to raise a child and birth a child in a sea of unconsciousness. So I had to consciously enter the deepest spaces that make me female and capable of creating life. I do this to cleanse the violence and shame from my body, so that I can heal these spaces, fully feel these spaces, and reclaim them as my own.


I do this because I do not want the layers of trauma and abuse that have run through my family line to touch one hair on my child's head. 


I understand that I do this work for everyone. But it is knowing that when I do become pregnant that my child will be conceived consciously, in love. That my child will have a safe space, cleared of ancestral violence and filled with love that keeps me going. I am doing this for the children. Because our children deserve our protection. They deserve to be raised in healthy wombs and healthy relationships. Healthy, conscious wombs birth healthy, conscious children. It is so very simple. (And still I cannot touch on the subject of birth, because snakes will most likely shoot out of my head, and I just do not have the energy to express that violation right now)


So when I explored the depths ...there are many stories, but I scraped the memories of rifle butts being shoved up my vagina off my cervix. Being raped not by men, but by hate, by the absolute disrespect of life. I understand that these underlying patterns remain unconscious until they are made conscious. It takes an incredible amount of time and energy to bring these things to light and face them. But face them WE must.


I do this for the little women, who have little vagina's that deserve to be protected. In a culture that bullies, rapes, exploits and disrespects not only women, but life itself on every level I say it is time for change on a global level.


I understand how this is to be done. I have dedicated the last 4 years of my life to trying to make this happen ...and all the way I have been criticized and beaten down. Every woman I know who is doing this work needs support right now. (and probably as much rest as I do) I've poured everything into this. Fought like hell to protect my bleeding time and create a nurturing space for me to heal, rest and dream. I've even battled women on this field. Women who have said we can either have equality or special treatment, not both. This is not special treatment, and where is equality? Because if someone else is seeing equality I must have missed a chapter ..or seven. I am stronger than most men I meet, not always in physical strength but that is often the case. It takes a real man to admit that a woman who is barely 105 pounds and 5ft4 is stronger than him. I am not a man. I am a woman. My body is different, therefore my needs to care for my body is different and those needs deserve to be honoured and protected. NOT exploited and abused. So when I say I need to sit down and bleed. To pray. To offer my body as a vehicle for spirit to come through me into this world then that is what I need to do. Because when I am present with my bleeding, I am present in my life. When I attune to these cycles of life I am attuned to the cycles of life. (makes sense, no?")


As women, our blood is powerful. It is the blood of life. It has been used as a weapon to harm us for centuries and now we must turn it back into the medicine that it is and use it to heal ourselves, our families and our communities. We have the power to restore life, but that life and that blood needs to be honoured. Because like anything else that is not cared for ...it rots, it's power dies. So when we bring the women together, get them to bleed on the earth together, to care for each other, we heal together ..not only as women but all life heals through us. This is where it begins. So I have a dream where somehow money just gets funneled into this project: Restoring moonlodge in every community. Because women need these spaces. And we need the men to honour us in this space, protect us in this space. It is so valuable. The richness and depth I have discovered within my own body. There is a little myth that there is gold in a woman's blood ...I have spent 4 years sitting on the earth, bleeding ceremoniously and I will tell you I am very close. My womb is the birthplace of creation and for thousands of years I have tolerated this disrespect. I have been made a victim by my own mind. Inducted into slavery. Well, the time is mine. And I choose to write a different story. I'm claiming my own. My own body. My own spirit. My own truth.


I asked myself what it might look like to be a Queen on this Earth. In my opinion it has been thousands of years since we have seen a real queen touch her foot on this planet. A Queen does not sit high on her throne expecting life to serve her. No. A Queen is at the forefront of the battle, fighting alongside people, leading her people. She serves the needs of her people. It is her duty and responsibility. To hold that container. A Queen serves Life.


As for the King ...we have lost a valuable lesson. That all men who were given the power and gift of life was given so through a woman. It is the woman who initiates the man into Kingship. If he claims Kingship without having gone through the necessary initiations, then he is a liar and serving more injustice. If you can't honour that your life and your power came from woman, and comes from woman. Then well, to be blunt you are an asshole who rapes life. And I will never apologize for making that statement because it is the truth.


I watch "men of power" get on microphones and spew their hatred for women, their desire (they even think they have the right, and organize their laws to ensure that right) to control women. These men have children and wives. It is very very sick.


So many women are carrying such deep shame and traumas. I'm just that rare woman who talks about it, because I understand that shame itself is a weapon to silence us, to rob us. Well shame, I'm not going to carry you any longer. I have been raped as a child and as a woman and I have been in terrible pain because of this. My culture would rather shame me. Tell me its my fault and just punishment for being a woman. But you know what, I'm not going to believe that. I'm going to continue to beat these doors down and find the strength and support I need to continue to voice this, and to mend this. Because it won't leave me alone. It is asking to be spoken. It is asking to be healed.




This story is far from being done.


I watch the laws rolling through Congress right now. Stripping women of the rights that our grandmothers laid their lives down so we could have. But then to look at them from the place where I stand, and I tell you women when we are in our power we do not need artificial hormones to control our reproductive cycles. No conscious woman can unconsciously take a baby into her womb. So again I turn to the moonlodge. This is the medicine our world needs. This is where women are finding their power to turn this world upside down --which is really right side up. 


I've been a pioneer, a warrior and I take my role as priestess on this earth very seriously. This is my work, this is the child I have nurtured on my heart for many years. Now, as I am being called to turn within because I do not have the strength left to do what I have been doing. With so little support, with no other hands helping me. I am hoping that the seeds I have planted within my community are strong enough to grow on their own. Right now, I feel like a mother who has given all she has to give and has nothing left. So I give to myself now. I'm going underground. Praying for the nourishment and rest I need to replenish my life force. Because this has all been very hard. But I like hard work, it builds character. If my life was easy, I would not be the woman that I am.


So I will close with a prayer, that the hearts of all people be open to receive the Goddess. That they hear the voice and prayer of the earth and respond to her need. I pray that She is no longer mocked, ridiculed, discarded ..rather heralded, just like the Nu' Sun that she brings.



 

Release

Over a year and a half ago when I stood within the center of a sacred circle of women and declared that I would create this site I had no idea what I was asking myself to do, I didn't realize how hard it would be to move into this place and open to my ability to speak from my vagina. But somehow, by some grace of spirit I managed to complete the task. I found my true voice, I felt my cervix and my throat open and close in unison. And the day after my throat was sore for days, excruciatingly so. And the congestion came and has been here for weeks.


This is the poison.
These are the lies.


That I seek medicine for in these times.


I am really not sure where to begin, or how to write. But I will sit here and open the best that I can.


What I see is rape. What I feel is the devastation of that rape. Genocide of humanity. What I hear is children crying. The earth wailing. The machines of man droning out the cries of spirit. Me having to move deeper, work harder to continue to hear, to be connected to the living energies and web of life. This is life in the city.


What I know is that I went face to face against a demon that is older than time. I looked evil in the eye, and survived. Somehow. What I realized in this near death venture of spirit is that fear, hate and anger fuel this monster. So somehow I must become the ultimate alchemist and take that hate and anger I feel at the devastation of the land, of the raping and mutilating of child, woman and man and turn it into a force that will awaken and fuel the deepest love within me. Because that light within me that light within us all, is the only thing that will banish this darkness once and for all. Also, I must become the ultimate warrior and banish fear from my heart. I look at all the ways I was taught to fear ...and I can be gentle here with myself, so I have been picking up the feather and burning the sage and the cedar and cleansing the fear from my heart, asking my ancestors for their prayers of protection. And their guidance ...because this world needs the voices of our elders. These voices that have been silenced by men with ego's the size of Texas and holes in their souls the size of the Atlantic. Who use bombs and guns to extort life and exert illusionary power, all in effort to hide the tremendous insecurity, powerlessness and helplessness they feel deep within them. I have no respect for guns. I shot one once. I could never put my feet in the shoes I wore that day again. The vibration they held made me sick. Guns are not power. Guns are for the weak man to believe he has power. Power is in your ability to love. Your ability to nurture, heal and give love. Love is your best protection and defense. I'm seeing this broken stream, so to speak as I write ...where one may see love as weak, but I tell you that love is strong. When the threads of life are broken, it is love that mends. It is love that heals.


I know that my life is equal to the salmon in the stream, the cardinal in the tree, the spider on the web and the bee that teaches about sacred harmony as it sips life's succulent nectar from the neighboring flower that grows from the ground. Opening only to offer her beauty and give her life for the continuation of the life cycle, to last a few day ...to close and die to become food for the next flower in the form of her seed. This is life. In this way we are all equal. In this way flower, feather, rock, tree, bee, bird, panther are friends.


What I know is that I do not have much energy left to debate this. This is the destruction of life. It is the only issue that sits on my table and it is not up for debate. It is here and we must form solution. Too tired to argue, I am. You cannot see? I pray that you awaken to harmony, that you remember the lost ways that are ancient and carved deep into your living genetic memory.


What I speak has been blasphemy for ages ...that spirit lives its life within me. That there are male and female faces of that Spirit that emanates within all things. When the man and the woman live in harmony on the earth once again, life will come into balance. We have lost our sacred ways as a people. We have lost our dignity, our pride and our honour.


Rectify. How to do this? I wish I had these answers ...I have no desire to "save humanity" what I do desire is to save my own soul from the fires of persecution that mark our history. I understand that I can only become a living example, so I do the best I can. I weave the sacred teachings of my ancestors into my life and live them the best I can.


I receive a lot of criticism. I am blessed to have received this, for it has pushed me to the edge. And I sit here now sitting on the rock that I have become for myself staring into the vast spaciousness of life. And I am finding peace. If I can reclaim this, so can you.


So I will take the message I received a few months back:


Walk.


And so I will.


Right now my feet are being called to the fire, so I will go once again. This time, as I walk across the hot embers of my soul, I pray to find the clarity I seek. So that I can become the full embodiment of my living prayer.


 I will share a story,
About 2 years ago I stood in a sweat lodge ceremony on a bright summer day, no cloud in the sky. A strong wind blew through our circle carrying the words "Rain is coming" ...I hear the wind, this is nothing new ...I have been speaking to trees since I was a child. I shared this with the group, I spoke the words aloud. They looked at the sky, then back at me as if I were crazy and asked how do you know? I said the wind told me. Again, I was met with looks of disbelief, my words were disregarded. Until a half hour later the dark clouds rolled in and a pretty steady rain began to fall. No one spoke. I knew. I didn't say anything. I didn't need to be right. But what I was concerned about was here are people, people supposedly older and wiser than I, people that I have come to love, respect and admire and be thankful for in so many ways that have been living these traditions for many years but had never heard the wind speak? And then doubt the woman who does.


I do not remember where I heard these words, but they have stayed with me. They were the words of an African man. Actually, as I sit here I cannot recall his words, only my interpretation of them: The dance, the song and harmony of life is within the woman, when the women are closed in fear all life suffers. When women are choked in their expression, when their words are not respected or even listened to you know a great crime has been committed, a travesty has occurred. We are living in the reverberations of that crime. We are living today, as products of that travesty. When women live in a world where rape exists, we know it is not safe to be a woman. To even walk the street. How then, are we supposed to be open and allow these sacred songs of creation that we hold deep within us to emerge?


Solution: Women come together and create sacred space to heal and nurture. I am involved in a circle of many women who are doing this work. I do this work. We call it "Red Tents" and "Moonlodge" Many of the women I know that are doing this work create these spaces for one day in their homes and invite the women, what I have come to understand is that this work and this healing is vital to the restoration of the land and to the soul of humanity. So I am petitioning that somehow women are able to find the resources to have permanent moonlodge or women's temples within every community. Worldwide. This requires a global network of women to get on the same page. I do not know how this is going to happen, but I know that it will. And it will take time. So I sit in my dreaming and I weave these prayers and I can only sit and hope that I will see the day it manifests on this earth.


This also means women reclaiming their sacred power on earth. This requires courage to go within the deep spaces and feel and heal and bleed out the old stories so the new ones can come through.


There is no more denying the crimes against women, the crimes against the earth, these are crimes against all of humanity.


It is late and I need rest, but there is so much more to write.


I will leave you with this:


I invited rape to my table. I wanted to know why it existed. It came. It said it was here to teach women their power. Then I move into the place where I was told by a woman who has become a great teacher and guide for me: That when women are in their power, rape cannot exist because she would have the strength within her yoni to rip the cock off any man who tried. This is true. But we must reclaim that strength. We must honour that power. That is ours and use it wisely. We have the power to end rape. The rape of our bodies as women and the rape of the earth. And one day I am going to have the strength to sit here and open and write in a very cohesive manner that will be very easy for both man and woman to understand the way we, as women are intrinsically linked to the planet. That the body of the earth IS the body of woman.


As a woman who has reclaimed this understanding in her life, who has taken the time to weave her energies back into the planetary field and let her consciousness rest there, I will say this:


When you poison the waters of this earth, you poison my body. When you cut down the trees you are taking away my ability to breathe. When you dig holes and dump toxic waste and let this garbage sit within the earth, I feel it as if it is within me.


And it hurts. I will tell you that I have suffered. I will tell you that I have worked with many women over the past few years ...and the amount of pain the women are in is ridiculous. It is a crime. And these crimes must be punished.


The law that has been broken is natural law, it is sacred law ...these laws of man, mean nothing in that realm.