Dear friends,
it has been a few weeks since I’ve written. Once the glimmer of Christmas fell away I was left with winter, the sobering mother, that forced me to surrender to her quiet waters. The stillness only pierced by the harsh truths that surfaced during my reflections.
The new year came and went and all around me I heard whispers of goals and intentions, but I just sat there, tending to sick children, tending to unwelcome thoughts, feeling neither broken, nor quite whole.
Winter, she reached into my bones, she laid my roots bare and I recognize the time has come, a portal has opened, to step into a wide expansion once again. The sort of growth you feel coming on every few years or so. You feel it first in your heart and then slowly it spreads through you until you can’t help but to embark on the journey, wether you are ready or not.
More than a word, I shall call it my year of birds, as those feathery creatures have called on me and I am willing to explore to follow their guidance, inviting them in on my walks, on book covers, in all shapes and forms and no matter how they want to appear to me.
The wisdom of the owl, the free-spirited of the falcon, the divine strength of the eagle, the playfulness of the hummingbird, the magic of the crow, the beauty of the swan, the soar of the starling murmuration, the swallow tattooed on my wrist when I was in my maiden years, they are all me and they are all here to teach me something.
While I do not know where this will lead me and “though I’m not ready, I am simmering” (Mary Oliver), because the things that have come up in my reflections leave me unable to keep existing in my status quo.
A few things that I saw with an almost icy clarity these past few weeks were…
that the wild woman in me, the wolf woman, has all but died. Nine years of the mother-self have buried her deep down and she is itching, scratching, burrowing her hands deep in the mud to unearth herself once more…
that I have spent time and energy on friendships where the other women, if they were brave enough to face their honest truths, would have to admit that they think of me as not pious enough, if not downright sinful…
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