I will be joining in with some earth sisters on this ecourse from Moondaughter with some crafts and sacred space adornment. I welcome you to step over to Marissa's blog to find out more details and sign up for this course. It will be full of personal honoring of the elements from some amazing women. Join us!
THE WILD MYSTICS
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves
You know how in the movies, when a little girl enters a shadowy forest alone, the music grows dark and she begins to hear hissing, whispering voices from all sides? So she starts to run and branches tear at her hair and she falls and her dress catches on thorns, leaving a path marked by tatters and threads as she moves deeper and deeper into the woods. Tears streak her face. She hears footsteps, but sees no one; hears a cackling laugh, but she can't pinpoint from where. Her world spins. Night falls. She is cold and shivering.
Anytime you do something unconventional it can open the door to your shadow side. Anytime you leave a well-marked path for that which only makes sense to you you can find yourself poised for descent. Whenever you embrace all that is unknown it can thrust you into the wild.
I plunged into my mine this week as I left the conventional world of steady paychecks and glistening corporate ladders to crash into the dark wild forest otherwise known as “the rest of my life.” What I didn't expect, as I gulped sweet, heady breaths of liberty, was instant resurrection of my shadow.
In a recent letter to my tribe I shared an exchange with a friend.
“What does it mean when you can't handle it anymore?” I said, talking about leaving my job but really talking about the sneaky shame which flares up anytime I rebel against imaginary conversations with people who sound like my internal mom. “I mean, for some people there comes a point when you really can't handle it anymore. And then what? Do you have to start slicing up your arms to prove it?” ... Now I'm backed into a corner with a mob of angry, imaginary conversations spitting words into my face: Wait, you're in debt, you have bills and you still quit? What, you're a little baby and you can't deal when life gets hard? You think you're too good to put your fingernails in the dirt? Well, news for you sweetheart: other people do hard things every day. Other people don't bail when life gets tough. Other people sacrifice their dreams because they act like adults and do what needs to be done! Who do you think you are?
Sharing the way shame slathers me with guilt as I take steps to burst into my own living is vulnerable, but I want it to be known. Because shame has reared his head again. Shame says, “I can't believe you told them about me. You talk about helping people and yet here we are! All that soulwork you do? All that “healing?” (Insert exaggerated “air-quotes” here.) What kind of healer are you? You call yourself a soul-doula ... what is that, anyway?!”
Right now I'm staring out the window as a flirty breeze makes love to my windchimes. Before me is a glass jar filled with fresh flowers: cheerful gerbera daisies, long wild grasses, perky leaves with sweet little peeks of magenta tucked in. My husband bought them for me. Every couple of weeks or so he comes home with a new bouquet, sometimes with the “reduced for quick sale” label still attached.
I have to trust this. I have to trust that I'm worthy of fresh flowers. I have to trust that I'm loved.
On July 6 I'm going dark. I'm intentionally seeking descent into this vicious onslaught of shame so that I can dig through its sordid roots. My friend Mandy Steward and I have created a way to do so through our intense, guided eCourse called Into the Dark Night—A Guided, Creative Descent into the Shadowlands of the Soul. I need this right now and Laura has graciously invited me to share this with you in case you might need it, too.
As The Wild Mystics, Mandy and I see ourselves as wild women of the wilderness. We have dreadlocks and feathers in our hair. We follow the seasons of the moon. The night air whips our skirts into chaos until they shiver like prayer flags in the wind.
Love, consider this your invitation to join a gypsy tribe, a motley gathering of the poet and the prophetess, of artists, dancers, seers and mystics, earthen sisters unafraid to mine the seasons of life / death / life and seek the wanton truth packed in our bones. As your wild gypsy guides through the shadowlands we are here to hold a mirror for you to peer into the wild fields of your Self. We provide an array of soul-prompts and assignments to help carve your truth from the wildlands within. We gather with you in provocative ritual. We press our knees to the earth. We light incense and howl and listen to the wild.
We plunge into the dark forest together, so we each are not alone.
Hillary Rain is a gypsy mystic who sees her life as a shadowy bohemian tale of mystery and grace. “I want my own language,” she says. As a writer and artist she considers herself a soul-doula who bears witness to the renewal of life and the holy-hush fleshing out of soulskin.
Hillary is the founder of Wild Mystic Magazine, a holistic lifestyle magazine for the feminine mystic (launching late 2014) and the co-founder of The Wild Mystics. Her writing is featured along with a soulful Bohemian Collective of gypsy artists + moon sisters and she is co-mama of Soulsigh, a sacred experience for women designed to honor the creative feminine through ritual and rebirth. She writes about sensuality, spirituality, and the shadowed nuances of her creative life at spiritsoulearth.com.
BREAKING SILENCE
I love the water by our house at sunset. We came here after an emotionally upsetting afternoon the other day. We came down to our river access to dump our trash and I asked James if we could take a quick walk by the river before we went back home... I felt like I just needed to be close to the earth a little bit longer before going back to our house.
Earlier we went to my parents house to clean out a shed that we will be moving to our house, and almost immediately after arriving to their land I felt myself well up with anger. James asked me what was wrong within a few minutes of being there and I couldn't even look him in the eye or talk. I was boiling. He finally stopped me, made me look him in the eyes and tell him what was hurting me. I burst into giant tears and finally expressed how angry I was that we were selling my parents home. Up till then, I had only expressed sadness, but this was sadness and immense anger mixed in. I told him how angry I was that everyone in my life has told me that we need to sell the place and that we shouldn't live there. I know that hurt him, b/c he is one of the people. But I couldn't hold it in any longer. He held me and let me cry on his shoulder for as long as I needed to. As much as I didn't want to release that, it felt so good to.
I took this photo down by our river on our walk afterwards. I loved the way the sun was shining through my tear stained face. The past year has riddled me with knowing what to do with my parents house. My heart has been so torn with what I desire and what is feasible in reality, along with not being selfish with just my own feelings in the mix, b/c I am not the only person in my world. Money has been an issue. Emotions of my dad's suicide has been an issue. But losing this piece of my heart has also been a big issue.
People tell me all day long... its just house, your memories are in your heart. just take lots of photos. that was your parents dream, make your own. the list goes on and on and on, and honestly... none of them make me feel better. some of them even piss me off. Im probably alot more attached to things than alot of people, I'm sentimental as $%&*. Losing my parents was out of my hands, I couldn't control that. And now even though I feel like I should be able to, I can't control this either. It's been a long process, and as we really prepare to put the house up for sale, its becoming ever so real. Moving the shed for some reason feels final. It's a huge shed, and we are having to put up a good chunk of change just to get it to our house. It feels like once we do this, there is no turning back. I know that is not truth.. but there has to come a point where I feel content with this decision. I need to get to a point where I can walk away feeling a weight lifted, a freedom, a release. Right now, I just feel rage. That is the best word I can use. When I think of selling their home I feel my body clench and I want to put my fist through a wall. (and this is not a feeling I feel about anything very often)...
This may look gruesome to some... but these are some treasures I found while exploring in the woods while we were there. I had to check out for a bit while we were cleaning the shed, so while James finished up I took a walk through the woods. Everytime I do, I feel like Im in a magical world Im just discovering for the first time. I keep finding spots in the woods I never knew growing up. Or at least don't remember. And trees. Oh the trees Ive been finding. I could get lost in the woods for hours. I feel like my spirit bursts open when I'm in them.
I wrote this on my facebook wall the day we went out there...
"Since I cannot afford the dream of living in the magical piece of the world that was once my parents... Today I start the dream of manifesting a new magical piece of the world that I can call my own. I dream of one day living in a home surrounded by the woods with places of wonder that I can go to reconnect on a daily basis. A place where my one day children can roam and learn about nature. A place where I can feel truly free to just be. I may not be able to afford it now, and I am opening up a HUGE hole in my heart by letting my parents property go... but I will one day fill it back up with this dream of mine."
I feel like this is what I have to hold onto right now. This dream. There has got to be another side to this story.
MOON MAPPING
I am feeling a deep void returning to my bones. Maybe its just a seasonal cycle I have not yet brought into my awareness. It's been amazing watching my moods and longings shift with the moons patterns. I haven't been disciplined enough to really keep track of it, but the times I have made the connections, I find so very interesting. For as long as I can remember I have felt the pull of her tides, like I have always just known she is holding my hands while guiding me through the oceans of life, sometimes with huge waves crashing down and sometimes beautiful calm waters with sunny skies. All with their own purpose. Yet in my humanness, purpose seems to not feel so wonderful in the moment. Sometimes its hard to see through the salty waters stinging my eyes to know the tides will go back out. Having my Planet ruled by the moon, feels like an ever-changing flow of emotions. As if while floating down a river, everytime I come to a rock that bumps me, or the waters flip my body upside down, I am on to a new emotion. It is common to feel a wide range of emotions all within an hour for me. And it is the same for how I feel about people, places, ideas, etc.
I just spent some time mapping out my next month so as the moon moves through each sign I will know what house it is affecting at a glance. I'm learning to do this through the Transit Reading class with KV and I'm loving it! She has broken it all down so it is so simple to understand. I can't wait to go back and see the connection to my emotional states during certain times in the cycle. Its also been fun to look up the specific placements in my birthchart and re-read them to see how it is connecting with me at the moment. This process is never-ending and ever-evolving, I love it!
(The photo is just from a lunch yesterday while reading my chart, snacking on some yummy fruits...)