I really love women. And not just because I am one......I've been through many fluctuations in my feelings about us, and had many bitter things to say about young, middle aged and old women throughout all my different stages, but above and beyond everything..................women are just wonderful. Full of wonder, to bleed without being injured, to create life within us, to nurture little humans for as long as we do. And even the women who choose not to mother, nurture their own forms of children into the world. We are such incredible reflections of the greater cycles around us of birth, life, and death or rebirth. With our personal monthly cycles we reflect the seasonal cycles, and the lifetime cycles, and the cycles of ideas and relationships that can be born, live, die, and then be reborn again in a different guise. From my learnings over the years, I see that most of our collective problems come from our resistance and fear of, or attempts to control these cycles, or to try and arrest them into eternal life, so no pain has to be felt, and this is often to the detriment of ourselves and the world around us.
But us women in our fibre and cells are attuned to these cycles, and reminded of them every month when we bleed, that a part of us that we carried inside us in our mothers wombs........is dying. And this occurs to us metaphysically, and also literally. Our bleeding can be the death of a dream of concieving new life, or a painful process that reminds us that we're not always in control. The letting go of relationships and ideas, or a monthly purge of pent up emotions as we erupt with hormones. A brief hiatus in a busy schedule, even if our bodies have to bully us into it with pain, or a reminder about how much we have to supress our wild natures to be a truly domesticated human animal woman.......
In my experience anyway, us women are just a touch more connected to the great mysteries of life, the learnings to be obtained from the underground, and the great beauty there can be in death....... Conversant with the great and swallowing pain that is the echo of complete and unconditional love.
And I can say right here and now that I love deeply every woman in my life. Even the ones who have jarringly hurt me are loved for the lessons they taught. I can't speak for the famous women and the icons and the movie stars, for I have no personal experience of them. But instead when I think of woman, I think of all the women who have touched my life, and each and every one of them is beautiful. I've learnt harsh lessons about my own mothering, about my mother, about how I've mothered my oldest and first born daughter, and they all lead me to reflections of myself. And I believe that if I can heal them in myself, I can heal with them, and help others to as well, and ultimately the world is a better place. And beyond my personal family relationships, women in my life have taught me how to love, to hug, to giggle, to feel safe, and so many other things. I've always had a special woman in my life in particular, who was there for me as a friend, sister, and sometimes lover, as well as a larger circle of amazing, talented and passionate women around me, and we all reflect, mirror, and beam on each other our particular brands of light.
Women smell good, and feel good, and I always feel wholesome when I think of how nice it must be for a baby to lounge on my curvaceous body built for comfort not speed. To sleep on my big and generous breasts. To sit on my soft and accomodating lap. Women by the nature of our bodies have a spiritual recess, that leads into us. A deep that can't always be dived into. An intimate inner part of us that needs a respectful request to gain acceptance. We have parts of us that have to be dug for.
On my journeys through the interconnected world wide web, I've met some incredible women, some on the other side of the world, who have shared stories and birthing journeys and inspirations and advice and love and learning.......and I'm greatful for you all, and I'm happy and sad all at the same time that you're too numerous to mention by name, and for me to tell you little stories about what you mean to me, and how I hold a flame for you in my heart.
And as I write this taking moments to gaze into my bonny baby's face and smile with him........I've got to express that I'm profoundly greatful for being a woman, and for the spiritual path that my feet tread as a result of birthing all the babies I have. The humbling lessons they've taught me, and the unique personalities with which they instruct. And helping me to get to that amazing place where I know a lot from my life experience, and it all goes to show me how incredibly much more there is to learn.
So as a gift to whoever wants it on this International Women's Day, I'd like to keep with the theme but break the sequence, by posting two chapters from far off in the future in my book that I've been serialising here....Balthazar and Nimue. One is, I guess, my ideal of womaness, and the other is a song that I wrote many years ago. I love women :) Hope you enjoy these two gifts to the goddess......
Once there was a woman who brought everything around her to
life. Not just the people she met, and
the trees and plants around her she touched, but the cars which she drove, the
dishes she washed at the sink, the tiles she walked on to the bath, the cloth
she draped over her skin.
If you had the gift of sight, of being able to see the energies that
move around a person or a plant or an object, and you had been able to watch
her, to hang back to a point of observation in which you could view the
reaction of energies to her passage through them, you would have noticed a
visible hum of life at her approach in all of the atmosphere around her. Which would build into a buzzing at her
imminent presence, vivid greens and purples and reds and blues and yellows
swirling round her, threading out to vibrate through the very air circling her,
melting into everything in its wake, and then at her departure the rapture
slowed, faded, and a miserable ache of loss at the realisation that all was as
it had been before, no more freed of it's inanimate incarnation, then the slow
numbness of forgetfulness..........
She hadn't been this way all of her life. She'd spread out luscious amounts of her time
and love onto everyone, animal or cause that grabbed her at that moment, and
spent her earlier years like an ant, scrabbling out scraps and lessons, and
storing them underground, letting it build up till she knew what she wanted to
do with it all. Till a curious phase
hugged her to it, breathing in her ears a warm, fragrant, sea breeze tune, that
lured her closer, till she forgot to remember she was dreaming, and let it
become reality.
Every single moment of her life felt sacred, her room became a
temple, her existence became filled with ritual, clothing herself became
dressing the goddess. She bought herself
sweet oils and incense, velvet and satin, sweet treats and dope, herbs and
fruit juice. She looked at the stars and
bled into velvet, then rinsed them in water and spread the bloodied water on
her plants. She bought sea salt and rose
bath salt, sandalwood oil and candles, and made her room into time warping
peace. Melodies lilting, scents wafting,
timeless, buzzing, soft bright peace.......
At first she just bathed in her own reactions and senses, feelings
and smells, touches and caresses, and languished in the waves of herself. But a little further down the path, at the
end of a living green tunnel, she found herself aware of every particle around
her. She ran herself a bath, walking
over the cool tiles, spread rose petals and scented salt through the rising
bubbles and burbles of water. Lay
outstretched at first, feeling her skin, then she felt a rose petal brush by
her and found herself in moist soil, feeling her roots into the ground, and her
sturdy thorned stalks, and the soft, velveteen roses of deep blood red
petals. Felt the sun beating a soft
heart path to her leaves and the bright bright sky spread above
her............back again to feeling her body.
Then a grain of sea salt nudged her soft thigh, and she was hurled in a
spiral through the deep dark sea, brushing by fish and anemones and being drawn
toward the surface, and the melting of dark sea into purples and sea greens and
white blues.....back again to feeling her body.
Then she touched the bath and shocked into knowing the rock and stones,
ore's and oxides, landscapes and caverns, and hands of many people that all of
these particles went through to become a bath.
And the room became very crowded.
She brushed her teeth and her gaze strayed out the window to the
lurid patterns the grass was weaving, with sprinkles of white belled flowers
and deep pink buds, then clothed herself, feeling the vista of sunswept
paddocks of cotton plants, with their soft white balls of fluff waiting to be
picked, and woven, and patterned, and shaped, into clothes. Doing the dishes she felt all the particles
in every plate and cup and container she washed, gently, and placed with
reverence in the rainbow bubbled water and then dishrack. Every journey made, every hand that touched,
every paint drop pressed in it's surface.
And she knew herself part of a bigger circle, larger life. Countlessly relaying and passing and feeling
information, and conversation, and content, and life, onto others and through
others, and round the spiral of life, to the great mass of creation and
knowledge, that hangs round the circumference of everything that was and is and
will be.......
Well I’ve been always out at sea
Nobodies ever rescued me
Drag myself towards the shore
Every stroke is hurting more
Is this the price for liberty
Constant drowning out at sea
See the flags fly on the sand
Distant drumming from the land
Chorus-
Maiden Mother Crone your story unfolds
And to you my sisters call
Feel the power rise within
Break the binds of christian sin
Oh mother can’t you see me here
Does my crying reach your ears
Seen your face so many times
Bruised and worn believing lies
You face misogyny and fear
Been beaten down so many years
Kept from knowing your own worth
Sacred mother of the earth
Chorus
Looking back on all my years
See the root of all my fears
Recognise the constant grind
To domesticate my mind
No amount of worldly gain
Can ever ease the pain
Separated from my birth
To the mother and the earth
Chorus
But my mother never dies
She is there beneath the lies
Steady drumming from the ground
Can you hear the ancient sound
Till her children hear her call
Stop this dance with death’s thrall
I think I’d rather be
Always drowning out at sea
