“Because we know ourselves to be made from this earth.” -Susan Griffin

Well hello there. Yes, I am here. It’s been awhile. Since I last posted I haven’t written a single word. Not one. Not even in my journal.  I am not certain what happened, but it all went inside into a strange quiet and stayed there until just this minute.

Instead of writing, I have been listening.  I’ve been listening to Debbie Rosas talk about how women can been afraid of the sensation of life flowing through them. I’ve been reading. I’ve been reading books with various explanations of the sacred; the most recent one also addressing the flow of life, but in an entirely different way.

There has been a lot going on in my head and I haven’t been feeling able to put it all together. Sacred – Feminine – Pelt – this woman says it much better than I can right now (thanks to Terri Fischer for reminding me to open this book again):

“…now we stand at the edge of this marsh and do not go closer, allow them their distance, penetrate them only with our minds, only with our hearts, because though we can advance upon the blackbird, though we may cage her, though we may torture her with our will, with the boundaries we imagine, this bird will never be ours, she may die, this minute heart stop beating, the body go cold and hard, we may tear the wings apart and cut open the body and remove what we want to see, but still this blackbird will not be ours and we will have nothing. And even if we keep her alive. Train her to stay indoors. Clip her wings. Train her to sit on our fingers. Though we feed her, and give her water, still this is not the blackbird we have captured, for the blackbird, which flies now over our heads, whose song reminds us of a flute, who migrates with the stars, who lives among reeds and rushes, threading a nest like a hammock, who lives in flocks, chattering in the grasses, this creature is free of our hands, we cannot control her, and for the creature we have tamed, the creature we keep in our house, we must make a new word. For we did not invent the blackbird, we say, we only invented her name. And we never invented ourselves, we admit…” -Susan Griffin (more here)

I feel a story brewing.

xo

“the long work of turning their lives into a celebration is not easy.” – Mary Oliver

I’m full today. I’m full of potential and possibility. I am full of gratitude for unexpected time given and serious November weather. I am full of fire and energy to get on with my business of creation. I am full of doubts and fears about my place in that business. I am full of inspiration, but am greedily gulping more down, sitting with sites and books and oracles open on the table in front of me, unable to pick just one. I am full of the beauty of an orange pumpkin and gale force winds and sunshine streaming in a perfect square on the floor. I am full of despair at the loss of time and the confusion between believing that the world is unfolding as it should and believing that there is power in wishing for something. I am full of love and pride for friends as their lives expand in creative and powerful ways. I am full of envy for people who have been able to create their life as they want it. I want them to teach me their secret. I am full of joy that I am beginning to create my own life as I want it, and intrigued because even my own secret evades me. Maybe theirs evades them too. I am full of delicious food and just one tiny spoonful of Nutella. I am full of a rich, ancient, deep yearning for connection and knowledge: for women around a fire and a drumming that comes from my own heart. I am full of wild spinning and serious sitting. I am full of years of creativity that has been stifled, paintings that haven’t been painted, and dances that haven’t been danced. I am full of joy for the words that I have written and the books that will be birthed by me. I am full of love for my family, and full of hope that I will soon be back in the land of my birth. I am full of so much today that it feels like my skin is the only thing keeping me contained in this space. I am full of the whispers of my wild woman and today I am not afraid.

Roar.

“Be homesick for wild knowing.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(Grateful necklace from Bella Wish, and Joy necklace from Superhero Designs!)