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.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
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.
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.
Friday, July 6, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, March 12, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Lessons of Love and Life
I say now that I have loved to have lost, to love again and lose again to love again. And each time the love comes it remains a little longer, it feels stronger. And in this process of loving, I see this process of loss as the beginning teacher of 'letting go'.
I sit here open, thankful, that these lessons have revealed themselves to me. Finding myself sitting here unraveling my concept of relationship, so that I can define it solely for me. I find, for me, the biggest challenge in relationship is maintaining a personal level of integrity, otherwise defined as 'holding my power'. As a woman I am taught to give and give and give and ask for little or nothing in return. Where is the sense and the value in that? I see this cycle spiral through my genetic line and it sits now here with me deep in my belly. I am here with it. I am holding these lies and stories of many women ...knowing that we are worth it. That we deserve more and that our daughters need new stories and they are for us to tell, as we create them now in our lives.
Sitting with this awareness I am brought deeper into my work, seeing it is my relationship to my own personal power that needs mending. No one else can do this work. So I follow my breath into my center and I hear now the words whisper "You are Sacred" And then I sink a little deeper, feel my breath catch and hear the fear sitting in my lower intestines speaking "But how can this be true? How can I, as a woman, be sacred?"
For it has been so many hundreds, thousands of years ...where women have been believing it is a curse to be a woman. Where women have suffered, and undergone inhumane treatment simply because they are women. This is my portal into the suffering of the black man, and the black woman. I come here, into this place, with compassion in my heart and the intent of healing held in my sacred, loving hands.
And I fear being beaten for speaking. I fear being raped for being sensual, sexual and powerful. How dare I be assertive? How dare I assert my wisdom, power and grace in the name of anything? How dare I claim wisdom ..when I am just young and naive ...a girl. How dare I stand in the center of my power and know peace, feel love and be safe.
My ancestors were burned, raped, brutally tortured and murdered. For believing in love, magic and power. For living life as it was meant to be lived. Naked and open. Bared to the elements.
This recent storm was powerful for me. A great teacher in lessons of holding power. I stood in my center, winds raging, rain pouring over me. Challenging the Gods ..is this foolish? I have called Council with the Gods. A friend tells me, they will laugh ..and I say let them. I sat there until the experience of being the rain and the winds and this storm ripping through our inner valleys came ...but I couldn't hold it, I ran away from it. And fell into my patterns of despair. The tools I use for escape when it feels like things are unsafe. They have names: Self neglect, self sabotage. Again ...Who dare I to command respect, to be powerful? I have no right. No voice. I should remain quite, not cause such a stir ...that's just me being dramatic. There is a long use of this word: hysteria.
Self neglect is a weak voice. She feels she is unworthy. She says 'I don't deserve love, money, power, prestige' ...she believes she must remain small and weak. She has no sense of entitlement. She doesn't deserve happiness, because someone did a terribly good job at convincing here that she is inherently wrong.
Self Sabotage is a different story, entirely. She's a mess. An angry mess. Her story is "I don't need love" She likes the word fuck ..and she uses it a lot. She says "Fuck men." "Fuck women" "Fuck the world" and "Fuck yourself while you are at it." Her sense of entitlement is extravagant ...she lives beyond her means. Her practical sense of reality is fragmented.
I've become the mediator between Self Neglect and Self Sabotage, and my work here with them is to create some peace and love within them. I can call the baby that will be born between them: Self Esteem.
I share this because I want to communicate that it is always your relationship to self that is your highest concern ...life moves through you in a way that will provide mirrors and tests for where you need healing. Partners are gateways into your deepest self. Do not get stuck in them. Move through, deeper into you.
I used to view love as a sickness, a weakness ...I tried to avoid love at all costs. For however it served me. And served me it did ....but this process I find myself in now is about opening to love, seeing love for what it is, and coming to know my own love within me. What I have learned is that Love is potent medicine, and I mean REAL LOVE, the kind that comes into your world, stirs you up and knocks you flat on your ass so that you can sit and reevaluate everything in your life. The kind of love that does not just pulse deep in your groins but whispers in your heart and magnetizes you to what will deepen your experience and understanding of Love, if you choose it. Do you know that silent pull? It requires surrender of your mind to your heart, and just letting go. Choosing trust. Making the conscious choice that maybe there is an innate intelligence stored deep within that really does know what is best for you ...and even if your conscious mind tells you that you are crazy and can make no logical sense ...I say life is so much more than logic. Life is the wild chaotic force that I call Magic. Magic is that sense of joy that comes and spreads through your entire body for no apparent reason other than you are open and you believe.
Love can be a bloody battle, because if you choose to drink the medicine and let it soak into your being, it calls you to pick up arms and fight against everything that lives within you that is not Love, that is not your personal truth. Do you have lies living within you? Love will make you work. Love is compassionate, but it is relentless. (Hence the agony) Love came to me, I thought, via the heart of a man. The incredible strong, loving, gentle heart of an incredible man. But you see, I had this little fire burning in my belly ...and my flame called out to another flame ....asking to be lit stronger. And the blazing inferno erupted to every corner of my life ...every path ...every horizon was filled with more fire. I walked in this fire for weeks, with no rest ...because there was no where to lay down, lest I be devoured. And I was not ready to lay down my life. But now I see that I was just afraid, I was still running from the change that was here for me. And it is in the allowing of the fire to engulf and consume me that I am transformed. So I lay it down now ...my past, my struggles, my trials by fire (literally). To fall in Love, is, in essence, to die. And I accept this death.
I will leave you with this: If Love comes to you, do not run from it. Open to it. Yes, it is going to hurt ...it may just be the most painful thing you ever come to, but let it come ..because love will hold you through it all. Love is Medicine for your Soul. And do not get caught in the illusion of relationship ...this doctrine that we've all been taught that says "I love you, therefore you must love me. And I will build a cage around your life, blocking you from the river that needs to run through you in order for you to be healthy and whole. And I do this in the name of love." But this is not Love, it is fear of letting go, fear of being alone. Fear of the dark parts of who you are, which we all have, but this knowing ..this finding all of you ...that only love can do. It's what brings you home. Love is a gift, and it is everywhere, so let it come. It's not going to be found in the face of another, a child, a mother, a new job or a new town. Love is within you. Love is your passion and love is your power. Let Love devour you. It might be the only thing that is ever worth it.
There is still a fog here for me, but it is lifting and I will know clear skies ahead. Love, this sickness that I thought you were, you bring me health. Because you show me all the places that need healing, all the spaces where I need to bring breath and love, my love, my care, my sweet nurturance. Because any lover that has ever revealed themselves to me was just a mirror of the love that already exists within. And how long can I deny myself? And would I choose that denial over the love that I am?
My Love is a bird with broken wings, but I have already sewn the stitches that will mend, and as I nurture these wounds I will teach myself to fly again.
I dedicate this post to every man I have ever known love through. You have brought me closer to Self, and for this I am ever grateful.
I sit here open, thankful, that these lessons have revealed themselves to me. Finding myself sitting here unraveling my concept of relationship, so that I can define it solely for me. I find, for me, the biggest challenge in relationship is maintaining a personal level of integrity, otherwise defined as 'holding my power'. As a woman I am taught to give and give and give and ask for little or nothing in return. Where is the sense and the value in that? I see this cycle spiral through my genetic line and it sits now here with me deep in my belly. I am here with it. I am holding these lies and stories of many women ...knowing that we are worth it. That we deserve more and that our daughters need new stories and they are for us to tell, as we create them now in our lives.
Sitting with this awareness I am brought deeper into my work, seeing it is my relationship to my own personal power that needs mending. No one else can do this work. So I follow my breath into my center and I hear now the words whisper "You are Sacred" And then I sink a little deeper, feel my breath catch and hear the fear sitting in my lower intestines speaking "But how can this be true? How can I, as a woman, be sacred?"
For it has been so many hundreds, thousands of years ...where women have been believing it is a curse to be a woman. Where women have suffered, and undergone inhumane treatment simply because they are women. This is my portal into the suffering of the black man, and the black woman. I come here, into this place, with compassion in my heart and the intent of healing held in my sacred, loving hands.
And I fear being beaten for speaking. I fear being raped for being sensual, sexual and powerful. How dare I be assertive? How dare I assert my wisdom, power and grace in the name of anything? How dare I claim wisdom ..when I am just young and naive ...a girl. How dare I stand in the center of my power and know peace, feel love and be safe.
My ancestors were burned, raped, brutally tortured and murdered. For believing in love, magic and power. For living life as it was meant to be lived. Naked and open. Bared to the elements.
This recent storm was powerful for me. A great teacher in lessons of holding power. I stood in my center, winds raging, rain pouring over me. Challenging the Gods ..is this foolish? I have called Council with the Gods. A friend tells me, they will laugh ..and I say let them. I sat there until the experience of being the rain and the winds and this storm ripping through our inner valleys came ...but I couldn't hold it, I ran away from it. And fell into my patterns of despair. The tools I use for escape when it feels like things are unsafe. They have names: Self neglect, self sabotage. Again ...Who dare I to command respect, to be powerful? I have no right. No voice. I should remain quite, not cause such a stir ...that's just me being dramatic. There is a long use of this word: hysteria.
Self neglect is a weak voice. She feels she is unworthy. She says 'I don't deserve love, money, power, prestige' ...she believes she must remain small and weak. She has no sense of entitlement. She doesn't deserve happiness, because someone did a terribly good job at convincing here that she is inherently wrong.
Self Sabotage is a different story, entirely. She's a mess. An angry mess. Her story is "I don't need love" She likes the word fuck ..and she uses it a lot. She says "Fuck men." "Fuck women" "Fuck the world" and "Fuck yourself while you are at it." Her sense of entitlement is extravagant ...she lives beyond her means. Her practical sense of reality is fragmented.
I've become the mediator between Self Neglect and Self Sabotage, and my work here with them is to create some peace and love within them. I can call the baby that will be born between them: Self Esteem.
I share this because I want to communicate that it is always your relationship to self that is your highest concern ...life moves through you in a way that will provide mirrors and tests for where you need healing. Partners are gateways into your deepest self. Do not get stuck in them. Move through, deeper into you.
I used to view love as a sickness, a weakness ...I tried to avoid love at all costs. For however it served me. And served me it did ....but this process I find myself in now is about opening to love, seeing love for what it is, and coming to know my own love within me. What I have learned is that Love is potent medicine, and I mean REAL LOVE, the kind that comes into your world, stirs you up and knocks you flat on your ass so that you can sit and reevaluate everything in your life. The kind of love that does not just pulse deep in your groins but whispers in your heart and magnetizes you to what will deepen your experience and understanding of Love, if you choose it. Do you know that silent pull? It requires surrender of your mind to your heart, and just letting go. Choosing trust. Making the conscious choice that maybe there is an innate intelligence stored deep within that really does know what is best for you ...and even if your conscious mind tells you that you are crazy and can make no logical sense ...I say life is so much more than logic. Life is the wild chaotic force that I call Magic. Magic is that sense of joy that comes and spreads through your entire body for no apparent reason other than you are open and you believe.
Love can be a bloody battle, because if you choose to drink the medicine and let it soak into your being, it calls you to pick up arms and fight against everything that lives within you that is not Love, that is not your personal truth. Do you have lies living within you? Love will make you work. Love is compassionate, but it is relentless. (Hence the agony) Love came to me, I thought, via the heart of a man. The incredible strong, loving, gentle heart of an incredible man. But you see, I had this little fire burning in my belly ...and my flame called out to another flame ....asking to be lit stronger. And the blazing inferno erupted to every corner of my life ...every path ...every horizon was filled with more fire. I walked in this fire for weeks, with no rest ...because there was no where to lay down, lest I be devoured. And I was not ready to lay down my life. But now I see that I was just afraid, I was still running from the change that was here for me. And it is in the allowing of the fire to engulf and consume me that I am transformed. So I lay it down now ...my past, my struggles, my trials by fire (literally). To fall in Love, is, in essence, to die. And I accept this death.
I will leave you with this: If Love comes to you, do not run from it. Open to it. Yes, it is going to hurt ...it may just be the most painful thing you ever come to, but let it come ..because love will hold you through it all. Love is Medicine for your Soul. And do not get caught in the illusion of relationship ...this doctrine that we've all been taught that says "I love you, therefore you must love me. And I will build a cage around your life, blocking you from the river that needs to run through you in order for you to be healthy and whole. And I do this in the name of love." But this is not Love, it is fear of letting go, fear of being alone. Fear of the dark parts of who you are, which we all have, but this knowing ..this finding all of you ...that only love can do. It's what brings you home. Love is a gift, and it is everywhere, so let it come. It's not going to be found in the face of another, a child, a mother, a new job or a new town. Love is within you. Love is your passion and love is your power. Let Love devour you. It might be the only thing that is ever worth it.
There is still a fog here for me, but it is lifting and I will know clear skies ahead. Love, this sickness that I thought you were, you bring me health. Because you show me all the places that need healing, all the spaces where I need to bring breath and love, my love, my care, my sweet nurturance. Because any lover that has ever revealed themselves to me was just a mirror of the love that already exists within. And how long can I deny myself? And would I choose that denial over the love that I am?
My Love is a bird with broken wings, but I have already sewn the stitches that will mend, and as I nurture these wounds I will teach myself to fly again.
I dedicate this post to every man I have ever known love through. You have brought me closer to Self, and for this I am ever grateful.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
I wonder what was heard
As the deepest layers of my being are responding to some sort of universal call. I am merging my cellular structure within the framework of the infinite matrix. It is time, you see. This calling of home. It is time to come home to myself. The work I have been set to do is laid about before me. Yet I am fearful, nervous, sickened to the core and the deepest recess of bone.
My vagina has become a door. Something better left to remain shut, some would say. But I cannot fathom this betrayal. As I sit nursing these feelings and deep longings I feel sheltered in some ways, exposed in others. Opening to new dimensions of thought, form, feeling, spirit. Creating a container for my soul.
It is nearly 5am and my spirit will not allow me rest. There are things that need to be addressed.
I can thank the man that pissed me off for the inspiration to write this post.
Let me explain; I posted a picture on facebook from Seattle's 'Slut Walk', where a man persisted in tearing down this movement. He calls women involved in this idiots, and says that by standing together against rape and violence under the name slut we are devaluing our cause and taking attention away from the core issues. And here is a direct quote "all I'm saying is attract the right kind of attention and stop acting like sluts if you want peoples respect, walking around half naked and flipping the bird is not going to shock me or make me think any more about your cause, I'm going to view you as an uneducated douche bag with no sense of moral responsibility and I will not subject my children to or support your cause" He persisted to say that my anger was useless and wasteful and that I should be addressing these issues of rape and violence politely, and with a smile. I wonder is this a joke? I will note that not one woman in the photograph that I shared was dressed like a "slut".
To which I responded creatively with this:
While I found this video to be entertaining and suitable to the moment in response to this man it did not leave room, and neither did he for the deeper emotions to be brought forth and addressed. I became enraged and even now as I attempt to write I feel a knot catch in my throat. You see women are not allowed to speak out and up, especially in regards to man's actions or behaviors. But you know what. FUCK IT. I'M PISSED OFF. Angry doesn't quite cut it. Boiling, seething, raging mad ...its getting there, but still cannot fully encompass the rage of emotion that strikes my chords.
I will sing this song. And it is a song of death. Death to all that would bring harm, and the birth of new life.
There is hatred here, within me for the pain that I have had to live with and the world that I grew up in. I'm not ready to take this dive, feel the depth of this and resurface alive. Invigorated with and for life. I know it will happen soon.
I will say this. In defense of 'Slutwalk' and all women and men brave enough to come together, with united purpose and common intention to take this stand and do this healing work, it is so profound. I am honoured, as a woman, not a slut, to stand with you.
No one had to explain it to me why they chose the name "slut" for this walk. Women have had to carry these labels around ...men and women both throwing them around like daggers, words meant to disempower and harm. Why not go for the source, and find empowerment? Makes perfect sense to me. Inga Muscio gets it ...she wrote Cunt for the same reason. Black men and women get it, calling each other Niggers in non derogatory ways. Us white folk, are obviously way too uptight. So little of us actually "get it". It might cause us to have to unravel our previously held notions and beliefs ..just a little.
Rape has been silenced, sort of like women's voices. We just don't want to talk about it. Most would rather pretend it doesn't exist. But those who have been directly effected by it, can't choose that option. It invades their lives. Destroys their self esteem. Makes them vulnerable and susceptible for more violence, more rape. It taps the energy of their core and feeds off them.
It stops here. Women are uniting in chorus and we are saying "NO" and men are singing with us. Join the voices and amplify the sound.
Take your negativity and your judgemental attitude and literally go fuck yourself, so that you are occupied, so you do not get in the way of the people who are doing the real healing work on our planet.
Maybe one day I'll actually get into how the way women are treated is a direct reflection of the way our planet is treated and vice versa. Hopefully someone will listen....
My vagina has become a door. Something better left to remain shut, some would say. But I cannot fathom this betrayal. As I sit nursing these feelings and deep longings I feel sheltered in some ways, exposed in others. Opening to new dimensions of thought, form, feeling, spirit. Creating a container for my soul.
It is nearly 5am and my spirit will not allow me rest. There are things that need to be addressed.
I can thank the man that pissed me off for the inspiration to write this post.
Let me explain; I posted a picture on facebook from Seattle's 'Slut Walk', where a man persisted in tearing down this movement. He calls women involved in this idiots, and says that by standing together against rape and violence under the name slut we are devaluing our cause and taking attention away from the core issues. And here is a direct quote "all I'm saying is attract the right kind of attention and stop acting like sluts if you want peoples respect, walking around half naked and flipping the bird is not going to shock me or make me think any more about your cause, I'm going to view you as an uneducated douche bag with no sense of moral responsibility and I will not subject my children to or support your cause" He persisted to say that my anger was useless and wasteful and that I should be addressing these issues of rape and violence politely, and with a smile. I wonder is this a joke? I will note that not one woman in the photograph that I shared was dressed like a "slut".
To which I responded creatively with this:
While I found this video to be entertaining and suitable to the moment in response to this man it did not leave room, and neither did he for the deeper emotions to be brought forth and addressed. I became enraged and even now as I attempt to write I feel a knot catch in my throat. You see women are not allowed to speak out and up, especially in regards to man's actions or behaviors. But you know what. FUCK IT. I'M PISSED OFF. Angry doesn't quite cut it. Boiling, seething, raging mad ...its getting there, but still cannot fully encompass the rage of emotion that strikes my chords.
I will sing this song. And it is a song of death. Death to all that would bring harm, and the birth of new life.
There is hatred here, within me for the pain that I have had to live with and the world that I grew up in. I'm not ready to take this dive, feel the depth of this and resurface alive. Invigorated with and for life. I know it will happen soon.
I will say this. In defense of 'Slutwalk' and all women and men brave enough to come together, with united purpose and common intention to take this stand and do this healing work, it is so profound. I am honoured, as a woman, not a slut, to stand with you.
No one had to explain it to me why they chose the name "slut" for this walk. Women have had to carry these labels around ...men and women both throwing them around like daggers, words meant to disempower and harm. Why not go for the source, and find empowerment? Makes perfect sense to me. Inga Muscio gets it ...she wrote Cunt for the same reason. Black men and women get it, calling each other Niggers in non derogatory ways. Us white folk, are obviously way too uptight. So little of us actually "get it". It might cause us to have to unravel our previously held notions and beliefs ..just a little.
Rape has been silenced, sort of like women's voices. We just don't want to talk about it. Most would rather pretend it doesn't exist. But those who have been directly effected by it, can't choose that option. It invades their lives. Destroys their self esteem. Makes them vulnerable and susceptible for more violence, more rape. It taps the energy of their core and feeds off them.
It stops here. Women are uniting in chorus and we are saying "NO" and men are singing with us. Join the voices and amplify the sound.
Take your negativity and your judgemental attitude and literally go fuck yourself, so that you are occupied, so you do not get in the way of the people who are doing the real healing work on our planet.
Maybe one day I'll actually get into how the way women are treated is a direct reflection of the way our planet is treated and vice versa. Hopefully someone will listen....
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