This piece sprang directly from the drum journey I participated in as a part of the preparation for the red tepee project, the rhythm of the drum taking me on a journey deep within my body, to surprise and enlighten me with what lay beneath.
I have come to know this woman as the One Who Knows, and I endeavour to listen to her when I feel lost, and I feel she is birthing me home. She is strong and robust, deeply powerful and infinitely soft, she is her own authority and heeds her instinct with implacable care and fierce wisdom. She responds to life from the wild blood that remains intact in her, flowing through her by the ancient pathways, her great love, her hunger for truth, her reclamation of her power as woman. With her as I journeyed into my womb, her den, were snake and wolf. Wolf led me into an ancient forest of fur trees. In my arms there was a dead baby, I buried her in the damp earth, wrapping her in fern fronds and wild flowers, I covered her with the soft earth and lay three large stones on the ground over where her body lay. I stood and began to dance, an elation flowing through my body, a surrendering over, a deep letting go. As I danced I felt a skin shedding, a pelt peeling from my body, I wriggled myself free and saw at my feet, an old and withered one, She who had grieved since the beginning of time, her pain etched on the dry pelt of her skin. Lovingly I took her and wrapped her too in fern fronds and wild flowers, I buried her in the Earth and again placed the three stones upon the ground where her body lay. Again I stood and danced for her. So light and exuberant I felt, so free of these two stories I had carried beyond time, not of this life but deeply lived in the body. I think she was showing me how we can all give our pain back to the vast body of the Earth, She will take it from us and help us to heal, we will be renewed and transformed. This vision felt so strange to me, and such a gift, I had to share it as it was.
Read Meet Mago Contributor Lucy Pierce.
[Editor’s Note: Lucy Pierce’s above artwork is included in She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?]
Fantastic article Lucy.