The Scars we Bare...

She was standing at the sink and mirror. I did not pay much attention to her as I walked into the bathroom. I was pre occupied with my own needs to release the pressure of my bladder. Even as I walked up to the sink, I did not pay much attention…then I saw the small pile of clothing tucked between the wall and the sink she was at…my eyes then saw the larger travel bag that sat at her feet. It was slouched open and held more clothing along with some personal items.

That’s when I knew.

I knew what she was doing there.

As I grabbed inconspicuous glances the story began to unfold and all the while she kept her gaze down and movements slight. She was making herself invisible, not wanting to be seen, not wanting to be heard, not wanting to be noticed in this moment.

“Are you alright?”

She nodded yes.

She barely raised her head to meet my gaze. Her eyes remained pinned to the bathroom counter.

Was she high, or coming down? I could not be sure.

One thing was sure the substance abuse was noticeable, hanging over her like chains…like a cross, heavy on her young shoulders…shoulders that were aged far beyond her years.

I felt my heart being tugged.

I was unable to move away….unable to leave without saying more…without reaching out…one sister to another.

“Would you mind if I gave you a hug?”

She shrugged…neither inviting me in nor turning away…she was tired, oh so tired.

I gently and slowly moved towards her, lifting my arms…

“Is this okay?”

She, still looking down, slightly turned her body to face mine, nodded yes.

I took her in.

I pressed my heart against hers.

I drew in all my energy and the energy of Divine Love into me and then I gently poured it into her …white light…the warmth of Love...like warm honey

Love that asks for nothing and gives everything

Love that has no face, and yet holds many

Love that sees through grace and compassion

Love that does not need to know the story

Love that does not need to be earned

Love that is because we are

Love that is so much bigger than those 4 meager letters

Love never ending

Consciously and with deep intention I released into her

She was rigid in my arms so I pulled her closer, held her more securely and whispered in her ear.

“I know you feel alone….I know you feel like nothing…but that is not true. You are a sister among many. I have sisters who stand with me and they are here with us now. You are not alone…please believe me, you are not alone. You are loved…so so loved….”

She holds on to me, her face buried in my hair, in my neck.

“You are not alone sister, what happens to you happens to me…you are not alone. You are held by a loving Creator…please believe me…you are not alone….even though you may feel that way, it is not the truth.”

I want to take her into me.

I want to take away the years of abuse that has brought her to this place….I want it all to dissolve and give her another life…but I cannot…so I hold her until I can not hold her any longer.

I say in my heart “Spirit guide me, give me the words to say…”

I stoop down to catch her down cast eyes.

“I meant those words…they come from my heart to yours.”

“I know” she mumbles, head still down.

I want to respect her space…I want to honour who she is in truth and not push too hard…

I gently lift her face and for the first time look into her eyes….I move quickly past the haze of whatever substance lingers in her body, past the shame, past the pain, past the bullshit and look at the pure essence that she is…a twinkle of recognition…her face in my hands I smile and say “thank you…blessings to you.”

I turn to leave…my hand is on the door.

“Are you a Christian?” she ask, putting force behind her voice.

I pause, not turning around…

I slowly turn, hand still on the door…

“I wouldn’t say that exactly, but I believe in God, I believe in Love and I believe that happens to one of us happens to us all in one way or another.”

She nods and we smile at each other.

I open the door and leave the quiet of the bathroom to enter the noise of the live music playing at the bar.

I watch the door now and again, keeping an eye out for her as she leaves.

I pray she heard my words and took them in.

I wish things were different.

Time passes, and she does not come out…it is getting time for us to leave…the band is done and it is late.

I have to go back in…I know myself, if I do not go back in I will have regret.

She is still in there, she is wearing different clothes.

I apologize for taking up her time, but I had to come back to say goodbye, to let her know I will not forget her.

I also apologize because I have been drinking and want her know that me talking to her has nothing to do with wine courage.

That gets a chuckle out of her…she smiles and says she knows that.

I ask her how old she is.

She is 23….I cannot tell.

I tell her she could me my daughter.

This time she is looking me in the eye more…still very hesitant, very guarded, but we have broken something down…she and I.

I am holding her hands talking with her when I look down…

That’s when I see…maybe more than I want to see, but I see it none the less

Her lower arm exposed..along with the scars…deep scars of her pain, her own personal hell

The entire length of her forearm covered…not one millimeter to spare…

Covered with the marks of her own affliction…

Self-Cutting

this was the closest image I could find to depict what her arms looked like...

 My breathe is knocked out of me for a moment…

I have not seen anything to this extent…but I quickly recover as I feel her pulling her arm away…I don’t want her to feel ashamed

I gently place me other hand over the scars, I gently rub my hand up and down her arm…feeling the ripples of scar tissue as I go.

“Oh honey”

I close my eyes and nod.

I understand this language and it’s suffering

Mine may have looked different, but the language…the story is the same

and I don’t need to know why or how

I exhale and pray silently

We stand there together…in this sacred moment…

Her scars exposed as I hold them and pray

I wrap my shawl around her…it is time to go…

“Wrap this around you when you need reminding that you are not alone sister.”

“No, no I can’t take this.”

“yes sister, you can, and you will” I say with a smile

“I can only hope I made a difference for you tonight…know that within the shawl is the energy of the sisters I have circled with…their love and light now goes with you….”

She struggles for words…trying to say something but unable.

I have to go.

She holds on to my hands and says quietly, “you have made a difference….today I prayed that God would send me someone or something to let me know that I am not alone…you have made a difference…you are my answer to prayer.”

I am so moved by this, by her…by her bravery to wear her scars as she does…that even in the lost life she is in that she still finds the courage to reach out to Hope…to pray…to allow good to come

All these things I tell her

And now I have to go

Another soul I will not forget

Another soul in which I see myself

I don’t know that she will be able to escape the life she is in

Generational brokenness is hard to get free from…

But in the end

This I know

She is loved…loved so much bigger than I or you could ever imagine

And when her time comes

She will be taken home…to a place of peace and rest

I do pray she finds some of that here, in this life…and I cherish the moments we shared…

Of course in true human form I go over what I could have done better, said better, been better…but I keep coming back to the place that what transpired that night, was a Divine Appointment…perhaps not packaged in what we as humans would see as divine but divine non-the-less.

Homelessness is growing in North America.

I see it all around both Canada and the US.

Something is not right….something is so wrong in the way we are choosing to live as nations…leaving our weak behind.

Is that who we are?

If we think this is going to go away, we are sadly mistaken…

I have seen the ramifications of not taking care of the less fortunate, in Medellin Colombia where over 75% of that cities population lives in extreme poverty…and we are naive to think it will not happen here…it IS happening

I am not saying this is an easy fix…not at all

But having no facilities for our mentally ill is the first problem…then there is generational substance abuse and abuse in general that is not handled well within our law systems or within our neighbourhoods as many "do not want to get involved"…the longer it goes on the harder it becomes,

to live a life past what is known and seen…

Be kind

Be gracious

Be loving

These things matter

Realize that as long as there is suffering within our societies we all will feel it one way or another…no amount of money, possessions or “success” can make one immune to the suffering of their brother or sister…be aware of the energy you are putting out into the world…toward your brothers and sisters…be mindful…help where you can, give when you can…be a giving loving soul…

When asked what the laws were that man needed to live by Jesus said, “Love God, and Love your neighbour as yourself”….simple.

Love people,

just Love.

Love and Light Lovelies...

The Cycles of The Moon...

She gutted me
like a huntress guts her hunted
She gutted me...
Opening me up and pulling out my insides
exposing all the insecurities
the uncertainties
the challenges
the struggles
She exposed them all
So there was nothing left but to feel each one...
to experience the tenderness that lies within...
to allow the grief to wave over me
again and again
The grief of desire
The grief of longing
The grief of hope
and
The grief of Love
Exposed under Her luminous light
prayers poured from my Being
as I laid it all out like never before
I let go like never before
I revealed what lay deep within my heart
in a way I had never done before
With tear, dirt and sacred gift
I lay down the prayers of my desire
I placed the longing of my blood
I exposed the hope within my bones
and I trusted, once again
in the Love of my soul
and the Love of The Creator
and the Love of The Moon
and the Love of The Earth
the Divine Love
that
is
was
and
ever shall be
I trusted
and I allowed the moon to illuminate
all that was exposed
the beautiful and the ugly
and I saw that it was good...
all of it
was good.
*
I desire healthy community
for myself and my family
I long for sisterhood
deep, rich and true
and am gratefulfor the sisterhood 
I am already a part of.
I hope for honouring
between all the human race
and I Love Life
I Love a life that is battered and worn
that is beautiful and broken
one that has fallen apart and been put back together
too many times to count;
One that is whole and complete
and fully thrives every day.
And I trust in The Great Mystery
that through it all
I am being held, loved, led and heard
I trust that my prayers of gratitude
and my prayers of grief
are heard
are considered
are important
I trust that all is as it is meant to be
and that there are something I can not
and will not see, nor will I understand
in my flesh bound ways
and that is ok
I trust that I do not need to understand all things
to believe they are real
I trust in the cycle of the Moon
and the season of the Earth
and in them I take comfort
that nothing remains the same
and there is a season for all things.

I trust what I am guided to do...
that I do not need to make things happen
instead I am meant to try less, trust more
to go beyond the normal
and to embrace the mystery.

and so...once again
I lay my Self and my Life down
to be a vessel for Love and Light...

...what is your prayer today lovely?

love and light

The Becoming that was... that is Summer

After Vision Quest Camp I was clear about the path I needed to walk this summer…it was to be a season of quiet solitude. Closing the circle around my heart; keeping it small and quiet. I made minimal plans, focusing on my little family, my marriage and my Self.

 

Going into Vision Quest I heard the whispering calling to me to follow this road less traveled.

I am a social girl, always have been. But as I grow, as I transform, as I become again and again and again, it would seem that my social ways are shifting to a more select way of living. No longer am I seeking out friends and friendships as much as I desire sisters and sisterhood.

So within this choice many things came my way.

It was like the space I created by making my heart world small actually made the world around me expand.

Possibilities thrived and dreams grew.

Remnants of my being, those small pieces of my once broken psyche had a chance to reluctantly come to the surface. Small but fierce where these pieces of me. Long over due to be taken into the sacred garden of my heart and be loved on by my higher-self. One in particular made me smile…a feisty little thing. Birthed during a time of adolescent angst when I made the declaration that I did not care anymore…I was around 15, frustrated and disconnected. She got me through with that feist, only now, in this season of my life, the fear from which she was birthed needed to be healed.

I know, deep within the marrow of my bones, she would never have surfaced if I had not given space to her healing, and my continued becoming…

Even when one does the deepest healing work, some residue clings for dear life, afraid of the change that the healing might bring…what will it mean? who will I be without the fight, the struggle, the suffering… will I matter? will I just fade away? will I no longer be? and if I do come our of this, who will I be?

She struggled with the love at first, she made me laugh…not in a mocking way, but because she was a child, a child unable to see beyond her childish sight and I joyfully gave her the vision of how things are now…without the fear. You see I want her feisty nature, I can still use it…I still want it…just not the fear…no thanks to the fear.

In the quiet it was revealed to me that I was not here to “make things happen”… I was told directly to Try Less and Trust More… I was guided to give to my self all that I have given to others the last couple years….sounds easy enough right? Honestly, it took me almost 3 weeks to find a steady rhythm within this sacred medicine.

Medicine Bag custom made by Susan Ferguson of WindRock Studios

The last two years have been big for me… big beyond words and there were pieces of me still trying to catch up and integrate, while other parts of me are wondering why  and what’s up with all the “rearranging of the furniture!!!!” Transformation takes time, integration 

sometimes even longer…

it is the process and everything is process.

She said to me “You have the strength of the Oak Tree….may you also have the flexibility of The Willow. Do not go back to your all or nothing ways, stay in the mud, do not put back on the comfortable clothing. This newness can be a whole new landscape, where it is not either or…no bargaining, no sacrifice…more fluid, while standing on an equal foundation.”

And so I let the winds of change breeze right on by as I stood strongly rooted in the sacred space that was me, and yet I was flexible, allowing the transformation to take shape within and around me…I was gently returning to Self and I prayed that Mother Earth would continue to keep me grounded in the gentle ways of deer-travelling lightly thru the forest as I returned. And I prayed that Father Sky would gently release me with grace 

as I pulled my wings close to land.

And then there was the marriage…a marriage that was strong in foundation and spirit…yet even within that truth needed attention. Many things looked over lacking the attention they needed as we grew a boy into a young man through the darkness of his mind…a marriage that needed tending acknowledgment. Old habits needed to be laid to rest and language needed to die…

time to re-birth this union into something new.

Who were we at this season of our union?

Who did we want to be?

For these answers and more I embarked on a journey into Chapter 5 of  Women Who Run with The Wolves…”Hunted-When the Heart is a Lonely Hunter”

“In wise stories, love is seldom a romantic tryst between two lovers. For instance, some stories from the circumpolar regions describe love as a union of two beings whose strength together enable one or both enter into communication with the soul world and to participate in gate as a dance with life and death.”

“…love does not mean a flirtation or a pursuit for simple ego-pleasure, but a visible bond composed of the psychic sinew of endurance, a union which prevails through bounty and austerity, through the most complicated and most simple days and nights. The union of two beings is seen as “angakok” magic in itself, as a relationship through which “the powers that be” become known to both individuals.”

In an ever ebbing and flowing relationship death must have her share….we cannot Love without our illusions of love dying…we cannot Love without our superficial expectations dying…in Love, psychically, 

everything becomes picked apart.

Illusion

Expectation

Greed

Beauty….must die.

“When one commits to love, one also commits to the revivification of the essence of Skeleton Woman and all her teachings….”

Thus I found myself untangling…once again…the mystery of The Skeleton Woman…sitting in amongst her bones re-learning patience, observing the process, embracing the beauty of the unknown and learning, once again to love that which is not so beautiful.

In my own words, Skeleton Woman represents the deeper aspects of life…in this case Love. Can we…can I be willing to allow death and challenge to continually rub up against my Love relationships as a way of strengthening them as opposed to the depleting and damaging choice to always insist on everything being “happy ever after” – without the expectation of tranquility only??? If I allow transformation-which always includes death-I allow a deepening of the love…the commitment. Not allowing death will cause my Love to starve and not thrive to it’s full potential. The challenge is to turn around and face death and begin to move with her, as opposed to running against or away from her. Without death there can be no life. Love requires sacrifice, bravery and commitment. True, long-lasting Love asks of me to take courage, to go the distance, to enter into the deep waters….deep dark waters. And I was forced to ask myself can I do this? Yes is my answer again and again..for this I know..we are both strong individuals…both of us clear on who we are and how we want to live this life…we would be fine without one another, but we are better together. That is a truth I know and trust; and this Truth calls me to accept any fears that I do have and allow them to be what they need to be, to sit with them, love them, cry over them, breath into them and over time heal them.

Within this untangling and reassembling shifts have happened, those shift that you cannot put your figure on and yet you see then, feel them, know them. I said to a sister it was like our relationship is growing up…yes maturing, taking responsibility for itself and thriving

As my Self integrated my heart’s desire made its voice clear…

I don’t want to do what

I am told to do

I want to do what

I am meant to do

I don’t want to do what is

polite or politically correct

I want to do what is

honest and real

I don’t want to live

to fit in

I want to live

to be uncommon

I don’t want to live

to make others happy

I want to live in a way

that causes my heart

to burst with Joy

My heart was not the only one to speak to me this summer…many a visit from many a guide…loud whispers, clear voices, sometimes just showing up with no words, just presence…Bear came and told me, “Move slowly with Intention. Be willing to be lead. Be willing to follow…be still.” Owl called to me from the forest by a lake and said “Trust. Spread your wings wide and Allow. Be Open to what is coming…be still.”

Through all of it…through this process of becoming I hear these words…

I create harmony in my life through 

Love and Acceptance

The journey continues…becoming is never ending…

Life is a wonderful mystery as is The Creator and all that lives in the heavens and on the earth below.

I am a mystery…as are you…

What a wonderful thing to be…

If you are still with me, share with me the mystery that is you…

What is the mystery, within your Self?

Love and Light Lovelies

“The wound is the place where the light enters you” - Rumi