All about the Roots

My am I red right now; in my root; rustling around in the basement clearing things out.

As this blog is a metaphorical baby then at 3 weeks gestation it is little more than a bundle of cells on pilgrimage down the fallopian tube to make it's home in the uterus. The sex of the baby at this point is set but as yet unknown. The variable factor which determines the sex is the father's chromosome - how interesting!

The genetic code is there but it is yet to take form. Yep... that describes this blog for sure!

What is being cleared out of the basement at the moment is all ancestral stuff. All about the Roots.

I was amazed to hear from my Aunt today - she was reaching out to me from my paternal line - I wept with joy to hear that she has been doing family constellation work and healing - I thought it was just me, on my own, living out the psychodramas of that part of my past. What a relief! And how interesting.

I don't know my wider family. I don't have conscious roots. Trying to BE in a place, space, community, society, world... in relationship, intimate, vulnerable... trying to be me - without those roots - has been an uphill struggle.

What a joy to make that connection. And to feel again that signpost and waymarker that I am on track... and on track to the Womb it seems.

Maltezer Healing

I was really disappointed today to spot a maltezers packet on my front path. This new house of mine is so precious to me after so long without a home of my own that I had a flashback to the daily rain of rubbish that would come over my yard walls in Saltney as people made their way home from the pub. The contempt that people seemed to have for my boundary lines that I never drew. 

As it turned out it wasn't rubbish on my doorstep but an actual packet of maltezers and a milky way - tied together with ribbon - left by a trick or treater I presume as I hid in my bed on Hallowe'en keeping my germs from the populace.

I cried, actually. I concede to being an emotional wibbly-wobbly at the moment but it seemed such a sweet significance that people had not only respected my boundaries but left me a treat.

There is such a longing in me for community and home and acceptance and to feel that I am safe and secure and nothing is going to attack me or displace me. This small gesture by someone I will probably never get to thank healed that in me. I begin to trust.

I am so in my root chakra right now! 

(No surprise to those who talked me into getting an obsidian yoni egg ha ha... it's still there!)

Oh... and as most of my friends know I don't actually eat chocolate so there's some maltezers in the fridge now for the first person to come by for a cuppa! 

Love xxx

All Souls Afterwards

So... the All Souls Ceremony was lovely. A certain weight has lifted from me. I followed the plan outlined in the previous post with a couple of lovely additions - I was given some consecrated oil as gift by the amazing Pearl Kilkenny and I used it to anoint myself after honouring and releasing the spirits to the Light - it was like a baptism anew - free from those bonds. I also made space for and called in healing for my family still alive and prayed for us all individually and as a constellation.

All Souls Ceremony

I feel them pressing on me. I have spent much of the weekend exhausted from being ill and in some kind of liminal state. I heard Snatam Kaur chant the Akal mantra on YouTube yesterday and I felt an immense detachment and release from my heart; I howled and wept. I feel my ancestors with me. And the presence of those unhealed and trapped with me. I tried to "be" with them today but all day people wanted to talk to me - so much for being off sick! When I did clear time to rest my heart was pounding in my throat. I put on my boots and coat and went for a walk in my pyjamas; the first time I have left the house in 3 days. I walked along the Pilgrim Way. I had seen on the map that there is a well nearby and I went to look for it. I couldn't find it but I found a perfect rock to hunker down on to watch the hillsides picked out in bronze through the autumn fog. I breathed. My eyes closed I breathed and called deep on the Mother to sustain me. When I opened my eyes they stood before me in various stages of opacity, like dust turning and twinkling in half light... I focussed, they faded.

I have moved to live on the Taith Pererin! I didn't even know that when I took this house. When I walked it last year I took a variant on the route at this stage. I am obsessed with pilgrimage. It is, for me, about reclaiming and assimilating my catholic/celtic heritage that was not present in my liberal spiritual upbringing.

They are pressing upon me today. All Souls. I am planning to do a ceremony later and it will go like this:

I will gather images of my ancestors and a candle and create an altar

I will light the candle invoking my God and all that hold and guide me

I will smudge myself with sage and lavender, and the house

I will welcome all those to me that are present and I will inform them they are dead

I will recite the Ho'onoponopono 9 times for them

My guide will take them to the Light

In honour of my catholic roots I will recite the Hail Mary

I will then play Akal and chant along

I will smudge again and blow out the candle to close acknowledging, thanking and releasing all those that came to hold the safe space

Healing the Wounded Mother

I dreamt of someone I have a grievance against. I tried to tell her I was making a complaint. She turned and walked away as I was explaining the complaint wasn't really about her it was about them.

The "them" in this scenario are real people - as was the person in the dream. As is the grievance real. 

"They" are people who I might perceive as having created the space and opportunity for an abuse to take place.

I wake up in complete and utter pain. Physical pain, soul pain. I see straight away that "they" were playing the parts of my parents in a psychodrama. The patterns I hold onto replaying in my world.

I journalled it out. I used the step 4 matrix Who do I resent? Why? What it affects in me? What is my part in it?

My mother came in for a lot of schtick. But if I cut to the chase here is the most important bit... what is my part in it all? These are things I can see I could do differently...

1 As an adult I am choosing to relive these dramas

2 I am not practising compassion or forgiveness

3 I am stuck in the role of victim

4 I am seeing my mother as the source of suffering

5 I am taking it personally

6 I am ignoring her own biography and those of the women in my ancestry

7 I am holding her responsible when in fact I am resentful at the wounded Mother (archetype)

You will notice I highlight the Wounded Mother as an archetype and so I then journal into that. I find myself further wracked with pains of the world - of wars, refugees, destruction of the planet. I find myself, yes angry that she is wounded but that she lets herself be wounded. How pathetic! Stand up for yourself woman! Protect the innocent! I am angry at the loss of innocence.

This takes me back to the step 4 process... what is my part in it again? And I find that am not owning nor healing the wounded mother within me... and I am giving my power away and not claiming my own power as a woman and a mother. I am not protecting the innocent. 

I google "healing the wounded mother" and come across a book which I am pretty sure is on the reading list for the doula training "Songs of the Womb" by Benig Mauger. This seems like a clear signpost and waymarker - I am on the right path and this is the way! I shall buy the book and read it. And let you know how I get on!

 

Self Doubt

1st November 2015

It's been a while since I posted. I had commited to a daily blog but two things happened (and they always happen)... the first was a re-read what I had written and trashed it in my mind... the second was someone said something to me that led me to doubt myself... and so I withdrew.

The idea was that I would blog daily over 9 months as self directed study towards becoming a doula. I read my first couple of blogs back and found them rich and wordy and intellectual. What relevance did they have to being a doula?

Then a lady in my welsh class asked me how many children I have and when I said none she didn't hold back "I wouldn't want you as a doula" she said "I'd be screaming at you that you had NO IDEA" (and she laughed and looked away).

I had blog posts planned which seemed ridiculous to post - an anecdote about an eccentric man managing to silence to the Quiet Zone on virgin trains - or the photos of autumn leaves on my daily walk...

And the days have passed. And this project is 3 weeks gestation and I am afraid that it might not go full term.

I doubt I have what it takes. Who am I to do anything like this?

When the lady said that she wouldn't want me as a doula initially I was unfazed... I smiled at her and gently said "I have no bad experience of my own to bring to the birth, I come holding the ideal of a perfect healthy birth intact".

It was only later my heart broke into a million pieces. I have forced it down and down and down... but I want a baby of my own. But I don't think I ought to.

I am comfortable with death and I work with the dying and bereaved. Why? Because I know death. Death and I have talked. And I know Her.

I have a better relationship with death than I do life. I fear life more than I fear death. I fear intimacy. I fear loving and then rejection.

I fear rejection so badly.

At 28 I was told I was likely infertile. 20 years of eating disorders by that time had stopped my periods. I took it quite well then, I guess, I signed up for fostering and fostered young people leaving care. I worked harder. I also did what I could to be healthier. I did my yoga training, my periods returned, my hormones levelled out. I stopped purging... I gained weight... long story short I found a way to arrest the eating disorder and for 5 years now I have been well and healthy (contact me for more info if you need that kind of help and I'll share with you where I went)...

So now I am 35. Despite all that is said about how late in life people are having children now - it's not my fertility that is likely to slow me down. It's the radical all pervading self doubt that I have any genes worth passing on. The absolute guilt I would feel if a child of mine spent their teens and 20s in the grip of addiction.

So I realise that my journey into birth is about my own journey into a love of life. By the time I get "there" in 8.5 months time... I hope I will love life as much as I love death. I hope that I will love my own life as much as I love others. I hope that I will see my "wasted" years as of value.

And maybe this is a parallel to the beginnings of pregnancy. The fragile seed taking to new soil.

And I am sick. A vomiting bug. Cue inbox jokes about morning sickness...

If only you knew how unlikely conception actually is right now.

15^th October 2015 “The dwindling light of sunset in one sphere is the new hope of dawn in the next.”

Photo taken on 15^th October 2015 at Butley Priory “Gazing at the ceiling”

Photo taken on 15^th October 2015 at Butley Priory “Little dog, Big tree”

I was asked for clarity on the points I made yesterday. I love that; what did it mean? If I tell you what it means to me then that’s one thing but what does it mean to you?

It sounds depressing; that human life is a web of stories of brokenness. I don’t find it depressing; in fact I find it incredibly liberating to realize that my personal scripts of feelings of complete inadequacy and untouchability may be the reasons I feel so separate and alone but in fact unite me with my fellow humans; we all feel like that from time to time; it is the human condition. What does it mean to me as I ponder on Life and Creation at the beginning of these 9 months? It means I have to be prepared to accept that whatever is born through my creative endeavours: the metaphorical baby… is not going to be perfect. And nor will it make up for any feelings of imperfection that plague me in the dark corners of the night.

Today I heard the tale of Valhalla and that the ancients believed that upon death they crossed the ever distant horizon.  

I wonder to myself how many people would want a birthkeeper so comfortable with death as I am and yet I feel the two topics inseperable as the dwindling light of sunset in one sphere is the new hope of dawn in the next… and wait the night out long enough and that same dawn will come again in this.

Today we created together. 3 of us in a small studio, a little dog, an “abundance” candle. With no rehearsal nor preparation we just gave each other a nod and did it. An album in a day. Watch this space.