Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom: A New Series

Above is the short, non-YouTube version. Below is the longer, YouTube version. 

I have been feeling better lately as far as creativity. The past year and a half, and honestly, the past five years, since I left for art therapy school in New Mexico in 2019, have been fraught with emotion and fear about my art and questions about whether or not I'll get back into it or if I have thrown away my dreams and steered my life car off track and over a bridge. Pursuing my art has been the most magical thing in my life. In some ways, I wish I had known earlier on how to really showcase what I was doing, like in the form of vlogging or whatever. I have kept up this blog the whole time (sort of), intermittently. 

I just think that, for me, the main part of all of it has been about the internal state. It is hard to put this into words, but people call that all kinds of things; the inner compass, the inner guidance system, heaven, your North Star, somatic experience, felt sense, alignment with one's truth. I just think, for me, there has been no greater magic in my life that that feeling. It's Mystical. It's the whole universe aligning with the feeling of joy and ecstasy inside my body, the law of attraction, manifesting. I really actually don't quite know how to put it into words. There is a sense of home inside my self and then everything around me in the outside world seems to want to support that in uncanny ways. 

Last weekend I attended a sweat lodge weekend ceremony in Cherokee. We had two sweat lodges, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I was so glad that I was able to be there for the entire weekend. I arrived late on Friday night and I left early on Monday morning. This was a sweat for Spanish speakers primarily, so there was lots of translating for the few of us there who don't speak Spanish, but some of it wasn't translated and I missed out on what was said. It was okay though because I think that just being there and being present with the whole overall experience was what was most important to me.

One of my biggest take aways was the talking circle time. I think about talking circles a lot. I often think about how opposite this concept is to our western culture. In western culture, we don't like talking circles. We don't like to give everyone a voice. This ruins the patriarchy. We have the opposite of talking circles. We silence people. We silence anyone who isn't white and male basically. In many ways we do this. I have felt this way my entire life, especially in my family of origin, but then also out in the world. I think this is why I tend to gravitate towards female only communities and environments. 

But last weekend I had a chance to speak while everyone listened. In fact, I was expected to speak. To me this is very meaningful and impactful. I feel the value of this in my whole body and I treasure it. I hold it within me. I felt it as I left and I felt myself being nourished by the good medicine of it. I spoke from my heart. I realized that there was so much I could say, so much I could share, and I had to pick just a little bit from my whole life story. I chose to talk briefly about my origins and also about my exodus from Christianity. Here's what I said,

"I also grew up in a dysfunctional family. with Christianity. When I was growing up, my prayer life was always very real to me. My prayer life felt real. Separate from Christianity. But Christianity was all I knew. When I was in my late twenties, I had a break down. I think of it as a break down. It was the hardest time in my life. But in retrospect, when I look back, I think it was actually my spiritual helpers pulling me out of Christianity. (I made a pulling motion with my hands and arms at this point). And it actually was very healing for me. 

I want to say one more thing. Recently, I was reading a journal that I wrote when I was a teenager, from when I was a teenager. And all over the place in it, I had written, 'I am a wretched sinner'. Just, every page, 'I am a wretched sinner'. I had a lot of compassion for myself when I saw that. I realized what I was learning about myself from Christianity. At such a tender age.

I don't believe that about myself anymore."

And then I sat down.

I think that many people there could relate in some way, that's why I felt safe to share that in that context. It felt very powerful to say it out loud to a group of people. The translator was standing beside me the whole time and I had to pause in between each statement to let her say it in Spanish. When I said "wretched sinner", she had trouble finding a translation for this, or understanding what I said, I'm not sure. Some other bi-lingual people chimed in and offered help. I'm not sure what they were saying. When I realized the confusion, I turned and said, "bad person." I don't know what eventually ended up getting translated. I thought about it later and pondered on how the phrase "wretched sinner" really is strange. It's one of those uniquely Christian phrases that one would never use outside of the context of Christianity. I'm told that the word "sinner" actually means, "to miss the mark". I have thought about this a lot recently for some reason. What mark? The mark that the church authorities have set? The mark that someone has interpreted something in the Bible to mean? No. The mark is inside our own hearts. The mark is within us. It is alignment with our own somatic inner authority. Sometimes we get off course because of social pressure or because of Christianity! There's no need for self shaming. Our bodies will always remind us by our inner body compass how to get back on course. Realigning with it is the most natural thing in the world. It is how we are made. It's our design. It's no different than the opossums and the raccoons and the coyotes living free and wild in the woods. We are the same as them. 

This living this way, this alignment with our most natural selves is what Jesus meant when he talked about heaven. This is it. There is nothing to be achieved, nothing to feel bad about, just living in our most natural way, the way our body cues us to live.