The Red Tent

Thursday, May 22, 2014

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.