[Editor’s Note: This piece was presented during the first and inaugural S/HE Divine Studies Forum held on September 7th, 2024.]
Turning Concepts of Attachment on Their Head
I have been in the service of people recovering from, healing from, and transcending trauma for over four decades. When I reflect on the broad swath of this experience, I realize how misled all of us were to think that there was something wrong with us. There never was anything wrong with us. There was something terribly wrong with the systems that defined and labeled us.
Let me explain more about this revolution in understanding attachment and bonding and why it is surfacing now, at the virtual end of time.
When I look at attachment somatically and through the lens of the human nervous system, I recognize that I was actively in a state of belonging and rooted connection for prolonged periods of time, for instance, when I was reading, writing or star-gazing. During these periods I was connected to a source that flowed through me and accompanied me. Before I could read or write, I was deeply bonded via my creativity and specifically my inner storytelling capacities, which were prolific, to the spirit world.
These forms of attachment were not validated or even recognized by the world around me. They still are not. As a result, I kept these experiences quiet, and within. This is a way in which my experience parallels that of indigenous people like Maata, who were rebuked for articulating their own language, except now we are determined to no longer hide or be silent.
That I found anchoring and connection is entirely to my credit. From a Māori worldview, it was probably also due to the ancestors in the unseen world who were backing me up and leading me to where the nutrients were. It is to them that I likely owe my life. Can you see how Te Ao Māori, the Māori worldview, and particularly the standard bearing of women like Kuia Maata Wharehoka, is leadership for a world in crisis, a world that needs an indigenous and a matriversal perspective?
Language Reclamation
From the moment that I began to write, which started around 7 or 8 years old, I was reclaiming my language. Language is identity. My true identity is in the language of my writing. It is a poetic dialect, like Te Reo Māori. I continue to be dedicated to reclaiming my own language. This is a continuum.
For decades, Māori were punished for speaking their own language, Te Reo. It is an exquisite, metaphoric and flexible language. As a people who learned and shared knowledge through oral transmission, the theft of their language was excruciating. Only now is Te Reo being fully recovered, but still those who were punished for speaking it, reel from the consequences of being beaten, often severely.
Something similar is true for me, and I believe it is also true for many others, mostly women. The language of our Original Brilliance has been stolen from us and we must reclaim it. This will root our secure attachment to what is real and help us recover from decades of living in shock from the theft of our heart and soul language. This is also what is happening for Māori and others who reclaim their language. It is liberating to see the ways in which the matriversal perspective parallels an indigenous worldview.
Even as we face the end of time, and the dissolution of the extractive, culturally insensitive institutions that are articulated in man speak, we can still claim our true bonds and attach to what is real and speak in the tongues of Original Brilliance. This language is simple and immediately understandable. It defies the ridicule of modernity and pundit talk. It is free of fad phrases. It is free of attempts to sell and convince.
As I liberate myself from false conceptualizations of bonding and attachment, I simultaneously liberate myself to speak a language that I claim as my own. The fear of uttering unacceptable or questionable phrases evaporates. I am all about craft and refinement of expression, but through the prism of my language group, the language group of those securely bonded with the living earth and the unseen worlds, the language of the matriverse.
(To be Continued)