Animal All
My womb opens with a cry and a shriek
This dark November night.
I felt the labour pains wracking my body and gripped my own hips this evening
Like I would do for a mama.
Doula to myself
As I drank tea and ate birthday cake.
Pip said,
I didn't look in pain, I looked strong
"With you sat like that, hands on hips
You look like a woman
Ready to be the boss."
I am ready.
My womb today
Is the Morrigan thundering across the battlefields of Ireland
My womb today
Is Kali Ma crowning Shiva.
We of the old ways know this is no gentle birth
She is his death bridging into life.
I have felt not of this world for days now
Wandering in the darkness of the moon
And as the pains grip my body
It suddenly hits me
A freezing cold night
Exactly eight years ago now, the pain portal
Through which I journeyed to meet God.
To the boy and to the blood,
Who pass through my body like holy storms
Eight years apart, though time itself loses meaning
In a cycle within a cycle so deep
Oh I longed for you
I longed for you.
My womanhood flows through fertile soil
In rivers of red, dark, damp, death
And through you I am reborn.
I said to my lover I thought I was more than half animal
Now this body reminds me I am animal all.
- Jenny Wren
On Longing
The crone energy is so seductive
I always feel her at this time of year.
And right now my body
The moon
And the seasons
Are singing from the same deep.
I feel her black expanse
As she croons to me,
"Come and rest, little daughter
You've lived many lifetimes
These thirty years
My sweet."
I think of the experience that was hard to win
There isn't much I haven't done
Isn't much
I can't lay my compassion like a blanket over
And pour my wisdom for like tea.
I find myself craving
To stay with the grandmothers forever
To lay my longings in a wooden chest with lavender
And close the lid.
Today I am tired
And here I will sit
Surrendering to the dark
That nourishes the seed of my courage
The soil that holds me tight and snug
Until I am able
To crack open
To bud.
"It's not your time, yet" she whispers
"But I will cradle you until you feel ready
To step out and dance again.
Flowers in your hair, daughter,
Man on your arm
Babe at the breast.
Don't lay it all away with me just yet."
- Jenny Wren
The Annunication
In The Annunciation, when Mary is asked to be the mother of God, she is being asked to allow her heart to remain open in a world that is simultaneously joy and pain.
Keeping an open heart through life's trials, some involving persecution, abuse, is the greatest challenge of all. Can you remain open to it all? Can you let yourself feel it all?
Can you look for the innocence in others? Can you believe if they knew how to behave better, they would?
I've been thinking and talking a lot about trauma with people in my life recently, and the journey from being somebody with low self-esteem who lets others walk all over them, to being traumatised and seeing the world as baddies and goodies, abusers and victims, which is a necessary step.
The final one being able to feel inside a sense of wellness and protection no matter what and seeing the humanity of those who hurt others, acknowledging that sometimes we are the one who does the hurting and we are no better than anybody else. It is a process of cracking open and being humbled.
In the stories of the life of Jesus, Clark Strand and Perdita Finn who wrote "Way of the Rose" encourage us to see ourselves as all the characters when we are meditating on the mysteries. Sometimes we are the Jesus being flogged and sometimes we are the one holding the whip. How good are we at surrendering to what is? How good are we at refusing to punish and persecute others, even if that is only in our own heads?
I think about this in relation to the birth world, a place I rarely engage in these days. So many traumatised women trapped in the second stage of recovery and either bullying each other or playing victim while also trying to rescue women from the system. I have been that person.
I'm not interested in trauma olympics anymore. Everybody has been traumatised, everybody. We are all in this together. I am here to hold compassionate space for that. I'm interested in how you are able to hold everybody's humanity and keep your heart open to feel it all.
- my progesterone always drops around day 22 and then I can't sleep and want to write.
