“We do not care for what we do not know. We do not know what we cannot name.”
Sharon Blackie
When all women are in tune with and listening to their wombs and following their hearts, the Earth will restore to balance again…
There is an amazing man in my life who has the sensitivities to feel into the feminine dynamics within himself and others. In one of our heart to hearts he said~
“Women are the most intelligent species I know of. Every woman knows what she wants in her heart. If every woman listened to that voice, and followed it, life in and around her would restore to balance”
His words rattled my heart. However, it is was all that lived in between his words that drew me into deeper inquiry. There was an ask in his reflection. He needs me to follow my heart- regardless of whether it meant our connection shifted its dynamics. He understands that the divine balance of Life rests on women to listen to and follow the wisdom in their womb bodies- their hearts. The female body is what upholds life and therefore the wisdom within our bodies, when clearly heard and followed, is always in alignment with Life inclusive principles and freedom of heart for all.
What does it mean for me to follow my heart? I felt into how the cliché has been tossed aside as a groundless new age platitude. When in fact, following my heart is the exact thing that will give me ground and invite my intended path on this Earth to meet my feet. When I follow the wisdom in my heart, I set into motion a course in miracles that begin to arrive to me rather than a grasping for. All the help I need, as the structures of false support fall away, is waiting to hold me in the layers of grief, anger and honest, hard, self-reflection of everywhere and everywhy I could and would not hear my heart.
Aligning with my heart requires the ability to listen to the higher aspects of Self AND follow the guidance. My higher self has always been there. She is the voice that has remained unchanged no matter age or circumstance. She is the voice buried under the modernities that are designed to distract me from this path. Listening is an artform not for the faint of heart- which I am not. I have come to know through many trials that once I hear that wisdom whispered to me- it cannot be unheard.
There is so much letting go. So many conversations to be had. A great gift cultivated on this path is my capacity to speak my truth with the people in my life. I do not leave things lingering because when I do, resentment festers and I entrap myself into bitterness. Bitterness and resentment in a woman are a direct line to a heart unheard and dismissed by her.
Illness in the body of a woman, especially in her womb, is a direct line to self-inflicted heart break that has stemmed from her life and the lives of the women before her. There is heart break that comes from grief and loss because you loved so much. These are the cracks that Rumi speaks of and that almost every living human shares. Then there is the implosive heartbreak that comes from self-suffocation of the voice of wisdom. You must then become the torch bearer of whatever light you can find inside as you walk out of the trenches of your internal war.
As a woman, for my authentic heart to be heard, I must be in relationship with my womb. My womb is the compass in my body that helps direct my life down my heart path. My womb contains the story of creation- which includes the void I came to fill with my gift. It is a channel that speaks the language of Life and tells the Myths and dreams of my ancestors.
There is a forever untouched part of us as women. A code and chain unbroken lives within the blood of our womb bodies. In that place lives a story of a woman from behind the stars that sacrificed her womb for the sovereignty of ours…
She descended from behind the Northern most winds. She came to life in an immaculate swirl of dynamic chaos with her sister by her side. Some said they were lovers, some say mother and daughter who birthed each other. They carried the gift of reciprocity to share through birth, death and rebirth rituals with the beings that dotted the newly forming Earth. Their medicine pouch- nestled within their iridescent bodies held by silver strands of ligament in the center of their pelvic nest. They were flesh and star.
As the mysteries of all time go, the question of “why?’ did that one dark star spiral away from the light?- we can never know… Then came that day when the wind shifted in a new way- that sent the women wandering into a hollow land. Up in the distance the wind seemed to still and thicken into a darkness they had not seen, but heard tales of, from the Dreamers of the Earth.
It was a band of men. Men unlike the ones they had anointed and loved in their journeys. These men sent that cold wind to their bones. One of the men, in metal and matted hair and fang and blank, dark eyes, stepped forward with a dagger in hand. He pinned one of the sisters in her glimmering flesh and heavenly heart to the Earth, raped and killed her in front of her lover-mother. Her blood spilled red rose gold and she melted into the Earth.
The sister left standing sent a wild cry to the stars. The air shifted and swirled around her as her womb began to glow. She drew the dagger from the Earth, where her beloved disappeared, made a motion to the Sky and carved her glowing, grieving womb from her body. She held it in her hands before the men. She buried it; blood filled and throbbing into the Earth. She forever sealed, within the body of the Earth, a place where every woman will forever be untouched, unraped and unharmed- A sovereign womb free from the great dark star mystery that haunts us through the treacherous and unsafe times we have known as women.
She cries in the womb of every woman to remember the oath and rituals that revive Her wisdom…
If you cannot hear your heart, then you must turn to your womb. What are Her stories? What are your Mother’s and Grandmother’s stories? What does the pain say? What does your pleasure or lack of say?- Your blood, your births, your losses, your blocks, your anger, your grief?
I spent the first half of my life completely disconnected from the intelligence of my body. The layers of my traumas created depleting illness that forced me to surrender to a path I longed for- but ignored. My prayers were answered- the hard way. True prayer lives inside this silenced space in the heart and rises from the womb. We cannot deceive ourselves too long if we truly long to align with “God”- we certainly cannot deceive creation. Yet, everyday we try by turning away from our path and silencing our heart.
One critical reason for me to follow my heart is that I have the privilege to do so as a Western woman in the Global North. Consciousness can freely and, for the most part, safely move through me to guide me towards all my heart came to this Life to experience and love. I have a duty to tend my life in a good, true and beautiful way because, as a woman, I am entrusted to steward this Earth in ways that open the potential for all living beings to live in balance and freedom. I took an oath to uphold Life. By upholding and tending mine- all of Life follows. The Global North drives a lot of what the Global South inherits.
It is up to me to change Life back to the way of the heart. As a collective, privileged body of Western women, it is up to us to change the course of the Earth and tap into the places that know better and remember the medicine of the stars- period. Oh periods.
Can we remember our individual and collective oath? Can we live into our virtues all the way to the edge of the Earth so the blanket of healing reaches all beings? I am doing my inner shadow work (always) to look at the ways I have been deceived and still easily slip into deception around what I deserve, what I truly want, what supports me, my ideas of my body, needs, desires etc. There is a shadow that is lurking in the “I deserve it all” -“I deserve to have what I desire”. We have mistaken our ego desires for our heart’s desire. Our heart would NEVER have us choosing paths, careers, partnerships, choices around our wombs and bodies that are anthropocentric and disclusive of Life.
BTW- all I, you and we deserve is our Life.
Our hearts have been manipulated to desire unnatural forms of what we must look like, things we must have in order to be considered a successful woman (including children), careers that deplete the Earth, medicines that create illness in our body and poison the planet in order to maintain this feminine “power” path. We get caught in a webbing with people and partners who do not support or align with our authentic heart and womb path. Deep down, most of us know better.
Women reclaiming this energetic and spiritual alignment to their hearts heals the Earth. The Earth body is our body. Currently as a collective woman we are still aligning with dynamics that do not support Her. The Earth reflects our actions as women- more than men. When we turn against Life due to the many societal indoctrinations and traumas, we will continue as a human race to dig into Her flesh until the scars blur all the paths back home.
We must let go of the structures of the wasteland (Sharon Blackie) and answer the call inside of ourselves. When we fall from these false structures that vilify our inherent wisdom as “witchcraft, woo, and imaginal” we need a web of loving hands, also longing for a return to what our hearts cry for, to catch us.
We need other women we can trust- one of the greatest longings of the heart. The path of following the heart will take you face to face with the most insidious shadows that tear your life apart- but you can’t see without others. It will transform all the places within you that fester and scream into a song- the song you came to sing.
My circle of love is a large part of why I am able to fully follow my heart. I see the direct impact my path has on the lives of those I love and the community I am a part of. As a woman on her wisdom path I have taken that oath to uphold Life seriously. I know what supports me and I still have many days that confront this wisdom. But then I open my eyes and look about the landscape of my life. I see the women who stand by me in a sisterhood, partnership and a perseverance that is breaking down patriarchal wounds of competition. I witness the men who are holding us and this land we call home in strength and devotion as they gather with one another and allow their hearts to pour forth- for Her. And, most important when I look out at the waters that surround this sacred place, I see the reflection of a woman who knows the gift she came to share and that her prayers have always been heard- and answered.
