(Approximate reading time: 5-6 minutes)
Shhh…do you hear it? You have to get real quiet. Not just your body, but your mind…and your soul. Agh – there it is again. Do you hear it? No? Well, that’s okay – I didn’t at first either. With all the voices of our culture, the sound often times gets droned out, muffled into the background as just another noise. But keep trying…keep sitting here with me and keep trying to listen for it. I’m sure it is there for you too just as it was for me. Actually, maybe instead of asking if you hear it…maybe I should ask you if you feel it???
This last year I have spent quite some time trying to hear. Yearning to hear…straining to hear. Listening for something, for anything to hear …but for what? For that still small voice in the “wind”? Or is it that small voice in my head? Or is it something inside of me?
It began in May 2011, kneeling by the edge of my bed one night trying to make the then biggest decision in my life: to divorce or not to divorce? To go against what I had learned was not the will of God in the Bible…or to follow that voice inside of me that was confirming I was to move towards a divorce? I didn’t understand it, the voice I felt inside…not then. But I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was True and Real and I was to follow that voice, that “sound.”
THE STIRRING BEGINS
Now it’s May 2012. I have the privilege of working with Anya from Anya’s Practice – a Healer in every sense of the word. She entrusted me to manager her “baby” – the Women’s Healing Conference held at the fabulous Hidden Villa. In a way I was glad to be working instead of attending. I was still too sold out to my fundamentalist Christian roots and felt a tad bit uncomfortable even being at something that made the voices of Christianity go wildly off like sirens in my head.
However, the women I encountered that day were AMAZING. They – like me – were eager and yearning for this type of an event. Most of all – many of them possessed something I didn’t even know what I was missing. I could not have even labeled it back then. I just remember a thought floating gently in through one side of my head and out the other: “What does it mean to be a woman?”
It was the beginning. That thought was. It was the beginning of the “sound” that I had heard a year ago — the beginning of it growing louder and more prominent. I looked around at this group of women and longed to know what it meant. Actually it amazed me that here I was – in my mid-30s – just realizing I didn’t even know what it meant to be a woman. A yearning was birthed inside of me that day. A longing to be told from the generations that went before me that this is what it meant to be a woman.
Some how – do not ask me how because at that point I had no idea – but some how I sensed that this type of gathering by women, that this had something to do with what being a woman was all about. But what – I did not know. All I knew was that women being together, letting their walls down – stopping the gossip and living the tears and the fluidity of their lives together – that this was part of the sound that I had been hearing, part of the sound beating a path for me to find my way.
A PATH TO HONEYROOT
I walked into Anya’s office for a treatment 2 weeks before HoneyRoot was to happen. Two weeks before that is what I will call my “jolt” out of my sleep. Labor Day 2012.
My “jolt” had served to finally give me the connection I needed to ground myself in my body, to allow me to claim my womanhood as my own precious gift and to fully own it’s deed. However, my soul still longed to be found as a woman amongst other women. I was still lost as to what my rich heritage of “womanness” is all about and I was on a quest to find it. Sue Monk Kidd in her book Dance of the Dissident Daughter had done it by finding the ancient Goddesses, by going on retreats, by performing rituals, even by going to England and Greece to visit ancient Goddess ruins. I wanted this same experience…this same type of Grounding experience.
In walk I to Anya’s office – and out comes all the information about HoneyRoot. Even before she could finish I told her I was in. I eagerly searched their website – seeing verbiage that had been bouncing around my head for the last few weeks. Verbiage that seems to be a calling to women who make the journey out of their deep slumber most of us are in for a great part of our lives.
By this time the sound I was hearing was playing louder, more constant…reverberating not just inside my head – but within my entire body, my entire soul.
Boom….Boom….Boom….
Would HoneyRoot help to answer my questions about what it means to be a woman?
Boom….Boom…Boom…
Would this weekend steer me closer to the new picture of the Divine I had been finding – one that embodied me as a woman and my experience as that woman?
Boom…Boom…Boom…
LOST AND FOUND @ HONEYROOT
To say I was completely out of my fundamentalist Christian comfort zone at HoneyRoot would be an understatement. If I would have gone to this retreat just one month earlier….well I do not think I would have even attempted to go.
Yet, go I did go…lost as I was…leaving with a little bit more found:
~ I found acceptance and warmth, love and belonging.
~ I found nurturing for my soul, openness for my heart and confidentiality for my pain.
~ I found what it means to come from a “tribe” of sisters: how sisters love and provide for one another that was never supposed to be replaced by men. As one sister put it, we found “intimacy without sex”.
~ I found my mother, after 25 years of separation, has been standing right behind me all along, supporting me and loving me…and my children.
~ I found my Mother, who is full of Life and sustenance and nourishes us all as we transverse this planet.
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| Union of Shiv (Male) & Shakti (Feminine) |
~ I found my Shakti…and will continue to discover and find Her strength in order to bring beauty and creativity, warmth and healing to this world. I will NEVER let her go again!
~ I found answers as to what it means to be a woman and acceptance to be this free spirit that is me…as it is part of all women. No more shaming for my powerful emotions…only honey-sweet acceptance!
~ I found answers as to what it is to allow a man to be a man.
~ I found others who were willing to face the Shame. I found others who could say “me too.”
~ I found healing through my tears. I found grounding through my dancing.
Most of all, I found the source of the sound…of the one that has been calling me forward ever since May 2011.
Boom…boom…boom. Boom. Boom…boom…boom. Boom…
It is the sound of the Goddess’s helpers beating on the drum, paving the way for all of us to come out of our present “Hell”….to awaken out of our slumber…to repossess our treasures from the 7 gates and to join Her in our rightful place in this world. *
*Guess you will have to come next year if you want to know where this myth comes from!
