Unraveling... Holding Our Stories & Our Bodies Gently.
A winter Solstice post.
Taking a deep breath into the viscera that has been tightly wound and unsettled for days, my fingers touch the keys and I prepare to send these thoughts to you.
Do you feel it?
Do you feel the “threads” of various stories seeking a place to live and die inside your body right now? It’s a bit awkward, honestly. Who are all these people with their various desires and derelictions? They are me. They are you. They are us. Our barriers are dissolving.
We are unraveling.
Whatever your conscious thoughts about current world events, or even personal ones, the body tells its own story. Can you hear it? Can you hear the people who came before you, who you once were in another life singing songs through your bones, your womb, your DNA? Can you feel the sun’s energy, the plasma rays bathing the earth? Can you feel the trembling in Her bones? The Body of the Mother shaking off something… something artificial and restrictive, something parasitic and invasive like a cling film with teeth that long ago sunk into Her body and obscured Her view.
Can you feel it?
With winter solstice only a few days away it feels like my body is both heavy and light—bubbly at times!—and then sleepy, sleepy, so sleepy. My actual sleep patterns have been downright erratic. I passed out from pure exhaustion for no real reason at around 6:30pm after eating a small steak dinner, woke at 1:30 that morning and was awake until the following day at around 10pm. And so it went for several days with my belly “bucking back” at me for whatever offense I had committed against it.
Waves of “weirdness” friends speaking of worries, speaking of strange dreams. Speaking of “belly surfing through layers of feelings, maybe lifetime’s worth.”
In my own body it feels like my internal poles are flipping. Perhaps yin is becoming yang and vice versa—swirling into each other even as they maintain some sort of distinction between them. Is the “southern pole” preparing to become the “northern” one? They have done that on the planet before. Some say it is happening again.
We can lean into catastrophe at times like this, a familiar if uncomfortable place for many of us, or we can find that still place within. For me right now that place is my heart, womb, and belly, although my belly has been misbehaving. Or has it?
When our bodies begin to do things outside of our “normal range” it is common to interpret that as a “problem to be solved.” But we are soft ecological beings—not machines with mechanized components which need to be oiled, removed, replaced, and refurbished.
I wonder what mentality has infected us so terribly that we view our bodies as components instead of “houses” for our souls or even our souls themselves? I wonder what soulless sinistration has seeped into society to label our lives as numbers that can be approved, denied, and evicted when convenient as opposed to sentient, sensitive creatures co-existing to support each other’s evolution.
We are still in an epidemic, but it is a crisis of conscience and compassion. This is “coming to a head” and many of us can feel it. Will there be a revolution? If so, it will not be televised. It will come in layers. Those of us who watch “patterns” have seen it coming for many years, millennia even. There are signs and portents that relate to planetary movements for those who follow astrology, but for those of us who do not, there are whispers from the dream world as well as bellows from the Mother’s body.
What is happening?
It can feel tempting and sometimes “comforting” to attach our disillusionment and unrest to specific tribal affiliation and for times it can help us to navigate uncertainty by donning the trappings of various cultural, political, and religious identities—but we are more than that and each of those can only take us so far into the outer world before we are redirected to our inner terrain, to something ancient, volatile, yet still and unchanging.
“Breathe,” says the silk banner hanging above my desk, and I once again “drawn” to the image of the yin and yang symbol: Defined stillnesses within constant motion.
The thoughts I wish to convey are regrettably less pungent than the roiling in my belly. So, it is to the roiling we turn again.
“I am part of you and you are part of me,” an ancient voice murmurs as old as tree roots in old growth forests, places that need to be treasured and protected. Signals from fallen giants that travel through subterranean mycelium signals. “Man down!” The tree's roots tremble through piles of composted leaves that were once their own bodies that have now become the soil into which they root.
Where are our roots?
Down… the roots are always down.
As drones like gnats harass townships and people setting their minds into a spin, sink below the noise and chaos into the deep, dark, quiet soil. Come back to the place to which we will all return—the body, Her body, our body, even the body of the collective. Belly to the earth, though in many places it is frozen right now, this is also a place we go inside ourselves to find calm, peace, stability, and to ease our weary hearts and minds from the ceaseless stresses and disappointments. To tend the raw, aggravated hurt with cool mud. Take respite from the wind and for a time crawl under a rock or into a pile of blankets.
How then do we strip, how do we bare souls if we are not sheltered, if we do not feel safe? Slowly, layer by layer, wrapping our layers, our furs, and tails tightly around us.
Regrettably, sometimes violently and without our consent as well. Ouch. Yet, that too needs to be felt because we have all been violated and we all continue to exist in a violating society. These are the stories that are coming up to be sung by the fires that we call “social media”. We once sang them by real fires to eyes and hearts that knew us and our tales of terror were maybe a bit lessened by being heard and held. And not only the fear, but the joys as well. Heart ache as well as heart song can be celebrated when we are supported.
Joy is an intimate exchange, one that we are sometimes leery to trust given so many difficulties and disappointments endured and carried throughout our lifetimes. True joy can be as much of a surprise as a trauma for some of us believing we can once again trust it is like a child who caught their parents under the tree choosing to believe in the Christmas spirit again.
As we wind towards the shortest day of the year, it is natural for the dark to tickle at the edges of our consciousness. There is so much afoot in the world and there is so much that is unknown. To manage and explore these layers of feelings we seek solace and celebration with people who care and perhaps a warm fireside to cast our concerns into.
We are calling for these story-sharing spaces again and we are recreating them in the ways we can. So many of us have lost touch with our ancestral practices and yet even in our modern world we instinctively have the desire to gather together and tell our tales. To strip and be bared to ourselves is being born again and again in our hearts, wombs, in the world Herself. The hope that we will find safety in exposing ourselves this way is just so delicately, resiliently, and relentlessly human it both warms and breaks the heart.
This is what we feel “whipping” about us and churning within. This desire to strip, to be seen, to be held, and cared for to know our stories have homes and that they matter. To know we have a “place” to go when the world feels unwieldy, unhinged and unsafe. To dare to be happy, joyful, and excited about being alive even when it sometimes feels like we may be dragged down by life’s burdens.
To descend, to be buried, to struggle towards the light and let the rain cleanse us. To rest as sap freezes in the trunks of trees, having the wisdom to know when to conserve their energy in their roots and when to surge their life force into leafing and blooming this is the wisdom we yearn to recapture.
Take a breath and follow it inwards. Let your attention float for a moment and then allow it to settle within you somewhere you feel safe. If it feels right for you, close your eyes and place a hand on the outside of your body from where you “dropped into” internally. Take a few more breaths and feel your connection to yourself, to life, to Earth, to each other.
In and out bringing the outside world into you, your inner world forth from you and into life.
Sometimes being stripped can leave us feeling raw. Sometimes it can be refreshing. Sometimes we can spend years wandering down a path not noticing much change just putting one foot in front of the other. Stumbling. Sprinting. Crawling.
Then sun comes up a certain way and we notice the terrain has changed or maybe we have and our stories change with us. We feel softer. Held. And somehow we just know that things are going to be okay.
Lotsa love,
~Justice
Join for a free Story Holding Circle on Monday at 3pm MT. We will honor the ending of the calendar year, set intentions for the new moon and hold space for each other’s stories. This event is open for all to attend, the recording will be available to my paid subscriber only.
So beautifully written, friend. I feel and hear these "stories" during the holiday season. I felt sadness that wasn't mine and even burst in tears. We share so much with everyone else, so feeling and letting it all get processed is what we need. I love the picture choice. ❤