Browsing Tag

sacred

fire, sacred

Glowing Coals

July 21, 2014

Remember, you are not here to play it safe. You are here to start fires. – Sera Beak

 

A few months ago I went with three friends to see a Shaman. In one of the sessions she referred to us as the four elements. Somehow we all instinctively knew exactly which one we were. As a Scorpio/ Wood Tiger, I am technically not a fire sign. But Fire resonated so deeply with me that day, I’ve not really been the same since.

Fire.

I have always been afraid of fire. My mother’s house burned down when she was a little girl, and somehow that must have made it into my psyche, because I slept with all of my most precious things (two stuffed animals and two rag dolls) clutched in my arms – so that if a fire broke out, I could save them. Shortly after we moved here, we had a very scary chimney fire. I am also responsible for fire safety where I work. Fire as a theme is very much a part of my life.

I have also been feeling the negative qualities of Fire: burnout. Much is changing in our lives, but I can’t talk about it on here yet, so I feel torn between the decisions we are making and living honestly. I’m working full time, trying to write, trying to move my body, trying to learn a new language, trying to keep up with friendships, trying to be healthy, watching my 40th approaching in a matter of months; burned out and dry and brittle would be the words I would use to describe the situation here.

But Fire. Fire isn’t leaving me alone. The voice I hear inside of me is insistent. Fire is asking me to know it. To reclaim it. To nurture and tend it. To allow it to burn away what is no longer necessary. Fire is asking me to gather women around it. Where my vision boards of the past have been full of whimsical, magical, sacred images – now they are fierce and full of fire.

And I am not alone. Today I opened up Unabashedly Female and found this by Julie Daley:

As I wait, I hear a voice inside, an insistent voice, a fiery voice that is clear about what she wants. Shake it off. Shake everything off that is not true. Strip me bare of everything that hides my nature, that hides who I really am, like concrete laid out in large archaic patches across Mother Earth, keeping her bound, her bosoms unable to rise and fall with those magnificent in-breaths and out-breaths she takes as she prepares meals for her children. -Julie Daley

Fire.

There is a part of me that is still very afraid. Going into the flames is not for the faint hearted, but On Fire feels so much more powerful than burned out.

I am ready.

 

 

 

Lineage, Wild Woman

My Wild Grandmothers

February 2, 2014

The breaking of the bond between a woman and her wildish nature is often misunderstood as the intuition itself being broken.  This is not the fact.  It is not intuition which is broken, but rather the matrilineal blessing on intuition, the handing down of intuitive reliance between a woman and all females of her lines who have gone before her – it is that long river of women that has been dammed. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes  

mama lion meghan genge

Lineage. Matrilineal lines. Ancestors. Those words have been finding me a lot lately. I admit that I haven’t been paying attention to their call.

Then I read this quote this morning on Ronna Detrick’s site and looked it up in my own battered copy of Women Who Run with the Wolves. Sure enough, I had underlined it. The colour of the line tells me that it first attracted me back in 2003.

I missed my Great Grandmothers even then.

I’m lucky. My relationship with my Mom and my Grandmothers is and was very good. But it occurs to me as I write this, that they never really told me stories about their Grandmothers. I have heard a few, but it doesn’t take very long even for my Oma – who, though in her 90s still remembers everything – to run out of stories about the women who came before. My Mother’s family immigrated to Canada when she was three. She never knew her Grandmothers, so neither do I. Their stories were not passed on.

But I know it goes deeper than that. There is a reason that women’s stories stopped being told.

This post and I have spent several hours together as I waited for inspiration on how to end it. I wanted some great stroke of insight that would tell me where to go next, but the truth is that I don’t know. Part of me wants to simply hit delete. But there is a knowing deep in my core that is telling me to sit with these questions. To put them down and sit with them and then listen for the next steps.

And so I will.

xo

 

 

 

 

 

emerge, gratitude

Grateful December

December 1, 2013

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” – Thornton Wilder

peeking through red meghan genge

I dug deep in November. Deeper than I thought I was going to go. I now know that the Redfox Retreat – everything about it – changed me on a cellular level. It gave me a glimpse of my superpowers. I allowed myself to open to who I am and how I can be in the world in a totally different way.

I’ve always had a strange energetic connection to things. I get shivers up and down my back when I connect with something. It’s like the feeling that comes “when someone walks over your grave”, but it’s deeper inside than that. Up until recently I had turned it off. The only time it got through was when I was overwhelmed with the force of something. Watching the London marathon every year, for example, leaves me weeping. The sheer positive force of all of those people is something I can’t block out. And Remembrance Day services? Forget it.

At Redfox, I made the decision to allow myself to be fully open. To be present. To not block the connections. I thought I was going to be overwhelmed, but instead it was a lovely, gentle connection to the women who were present.

That is, until the night we lit the cauldron.

I won’t go into the details because they are private and sacred, but as each woman stepped forward and said her piece, I was shivering and shaking uncontrollably. Luckily, there was a grounded and gracious soul holding me up through the whole thing; keeping me present and safe enough to let it continue.

The shift that happened when I let myself feel those feelings pushed me to explore everything more deeply in November. I looked at who I AM, not who I wish I could be or who I would be if I was different, or even who I am at my worst. I tried very hard to present myself – not future me, not past me – present me. Now.

I looked at who I am in this exact moment.  And what I found is astonishing.

In Care of the Soul Thomas Moore says, “Observance of the soul can be deceptively simple. You take back what has been disowned. You work with what is, rather than what you wish you were.”

I always thought that in order to move forward I needed to have a plan to change myself in some way. I realise now that this is complete bullshit. What matters is where my heart and mind are right now. I know that that is not new or radical, but for me it is enormous.

So I am dedicating December to gratitude. For me, gratitude is about being fully present. it’s about really seeing the treasures and the connections and the sacred in all things.

Today? I am grateful for the warm hand that held mine at the cauldron, and for all of those women, and for the months between then and now. And I am grateful for you. Thank you for being in my life.

xoox

 

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