For the last two years, I have been in a slow carefully held container of decent into the places that would bring me back to myself. Revisiting. A guided self-study. Clearing out physical spaces the home of my familial lineage, while simultaneously clearing out, learning from the stuck places of my soul. Revisiting so many places of pain. The pains of my childhood. The pains of my teenage years. Not a skip over, but instead a being with. Leaving gifts in the physical places. Allowing grief to move through. 

A turn toward. Rather than an override.  

The feeling of closedness from life moving me at 16. The closedness of being warned about AIDs, of the dangers of sex, of not touching. A tight Christian restriction, the shame I imprinted. Closing myself up. The harm of traumas closing me from my womb, my s/x, my p/ssy. Not wanting any of that trouble again. Creating a caution. A run from. Creating a life as a protection against life itself.

As I went into this for myself, the land here, strong, bountiful and wide is juxtaposed by collective carrying my personal fear patterns, same time acknowledgement of a great divinity is wound into every thank you, every ma’am, every loving eye gaze, every knowing word. There is a weaving, a changing, a growing. There was never a throw-away of anything to happen. It was instead a weaving of pieces of things. A learning from the love that is here as well as an alchemy. A deep drop into the darkness required. A look at the lost ones, the parts of me left behind, the hurt and pain so difficult and heartbreaking. Just be there. There is a reconciling of relationship to a world that would allow these things too. And time required spent there. Grieved there.

Creating a core. A steadiness. A training of the gifts within. The gifts below. The heart and love and bounty always present. A reclamation only possible through the conditions present here – a soul-call followed.

There in the center of voicing concern, I was birthing my adult woman, learning my essence, the beginning of opening. Of seeing the well-worn patterns of not worthy, of under-the-radar, of the terror of reveal. All needing to be felt and acknowledged as real. Honing the listener, the speaker, the truth-teller. Opening my heart so that I could know who I am.  

Was I willing to feel again? To trust again? So much time required like the gentle sanding of a masterpiece. One stroke. One stroke. My heart, by womb, my p/ssy, my voice. I found even there restrained in the face of the safety and conformity is potential for love, is an understanding of truth for the willing to hear. There is no right/wrong correction. There are simply truths revealed. Amends. Kindness. And they come from sources all around me even as they still live from safety as love. I learned patience for myself as there is a pace and way revealing. And supported by the great trust in a larger thing here. Weaving through always. I believe it comes from a shared history where life or death leaps of faith were required even in the face of mental limitations – the heart shines through. From a required-soul-open-spread-wide after nothing of the mind would do. That’s in my cells and bones too. 

To punish no longer but to reveal. To be opened and allow my brilliance to dance even in the face of potential obstruction will be one step at a time. I will be honed slowly here too. It is about the new trust to hear and accept as I go. 

And so, this slow deliberate journey of grief and love and truth reveals the beginning of coming from the essence of my being with love. A well-honed humility calling me back to trust in me again. To open and re-enliven the life and creation within me. My essence within, and learn to dance willingly with the divine energy that is carving me through. Lineage.

Thank you, Perri Chase.