The Body Mothers Her Home
“Do you know why you’ve avoided being in your body in this lifetime?”
“Why?”
“Because of the deep pain and fears that live in it.”
hello,
soft, wise, animal body
It’s true. I have immaculately, insidiously avoided inhabiting you.
I don’t know when I learned you weren’t a safe place to be.
Perhaps it was when the body whose womb we lived in found out she was dying.
Maybe it was when we entered the world and were met with grief-stricken eyes, shaky hands, and incongruent psyches. People seemed happy to meet us, but how do you celebrate new life while simultaneously watching the bringer of that life die?
I viscerally remember feeling you were not a safe place to be when we began to meet physical, verbal, and emotional abuse.
Why would I inhabit a vessel whose every day was attempting to escape or bear harm?
I learned that laying upside down and staring at clouds was a direct portal to leaving. I was so disconnected from the ground I believed that I flew—everywhere.
Fantasy worlds were safe—books and movies were such an intense merging that it would sometimes take weeks to return from the place and characters I had become a part of.
And spirits, oh spirits.
My trusted shimmering allies were always welcoming of me, body or not.
How many years did it go on like this?
Too many to count.
I relished spacing out. Surfing the waves of consciousness. Meditating for hours is easy when you’re floating above your head. Large doses of psychedelics make sense when you’re more spirit than matter.
But — you were always the end game, body. The north node. The bright star in the night sky waiting, leading me to the manger.
You sang me back like the selkie goddesses on the beach drenched in moonlight.
Descend, descend, descend.
Just a toe dip of meeting you, and I am simultaneously swimming in pools of pain and intoxicated by the nectar of thousands of honey fairies.
They say being in your body feels good.
While this has been my experience—so has the opposite.
Being in the body can also bring unfelt terror, repressed pain, and stores and stores of back-logged emotion.
meeting the body is entering the Holy Wild
Root. Home to the fear that I am not okay. No reference point for safety. How did I get here again?
Root. I am safe. My body is a safe place. I belong here. I am good. I am allowed to be here. The Earth is my home.
Hips. Chambers of solidified trauma. Always in some sort of pain. You can’t be magnetic. Stop spiraling. Shut up. Sit down.
Hips. I carry the power of the feminine. Soft, subtle, shimmering, interdependent. All-knowing, all-seeing, all-understanding. Delusions die here. You can’t control someone who belongs to herself.
Womb. Temple of the belief that it is not safe to be a woman. It’s not okay to hold the same power as Mother Nature. Stuff it away. Get drier. Become smaller. Stop shining. Repress.
Womb. I am Life. I am Death. I am Woman. I am expressed. My sensuality is for me. My sexuality is sacred. My devotion is to the Mystery.
Belly. Carrier of protection and houser of rotting repressed power. Holding, bracing, encasing. Dim your fire. Binge. Starve yourself. Wither away. Throw up. Restrict. Control. Don’t digest.
Belly. Perfecting power, embodying wisdom. Home to my etheric fire that eats pain and transforms it into nutrients. Metabolizer of Life. My rhythms are fucking gorgeous. I have an identity, a personality. I have an ego. I want full-spectrum humanity. I am alive.
Whether the descent is a toe-dip or a plunge into the deep end, I am always left feeling similar.
I have been longing for this my whole life.
To leave the realms of disassociation and have my spirit make a home in matter.
Nothing is lost here, body.
Now flying is my walk—bare feet to the Earth. Calves, knees, and thighs held by the etheric roots that stretch deep into the Mother. Hips, pelvis, belly, womb, and root—wise innocent realms of creation, sustenance, and destruction—my very flesh and bones. Transformers of pain. Carriers of Life.
Fantasy worlds are no longer out there. They are right here. Boundless and seemingly infinite. That which helped me to escape now sings me home.
And spirits? It feels as though entire realms patiently waited for me to contact you, body. It’s all right here. Physicality and psychic gifts merge. Roots determine the health of blooms.
“Treat yourself like you’re two years old, just learning this body. Innocently and tenderly exploring matter. Don’t rush to progress. Don’t compare. Just tend and befriend.”
I am 30 years old and feel like I am just learning what it means to be with and in a body.
I am discovering that I, in my entirety, require a longer, slower, and gentler pace than I ever imagined. My Crown may move fast, but my Root moves slow. Honoring your rhythm is a courageous act.
When I’m in my body, I don’t have to try to stay in my own energy or not pay attention to things that don’t matter. It just happens. I am paying attention to and astonished by the life before my eyes. Your life is art.
Everything I thought was a gift, or a role pales compared to the wellspring of healing that emanates from simply inhabiting myself. Lao Tzu says, “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”
My body reminds me every day you are good, whole, and enough exactly as you are. Relax, child.
The young one who learned this world and her body wasn’t safe slowly rebirths…
