This is SALEM No More!

I looked out of my cave and saw the sun shine and the ordinary life move

She said "come on out, this is not Salem any more"

I cringed and moved back into the darkness...
Don't you know that I still have the stench of burning flesh in my nostrils?
The bruises of your stoning in my bones?
The scratches of the unspeakables on my soul??!

If I come out my friend,
I will make a mess
I will say the wrong things
to the wrong people
at the wrong time

and not because I want to

I will stress you
Annoy you
Disturb you
Trouble you

and not because I want to

I will bleed through the containers you will want to put me in and the ones I will put me in

I will ooze ... past the judgments, the boxes and the names you will want to call me

I will be the discomfort
The challenge
The trouble
The thorn
That you want to run from

Because I am...the Scary old HAG...that you have put in the broken hut at the edge of your towns!!!

I'm the stinking witch of a woman with warts and hunchback that you look upon with fear and disgust!

Oh....but you crawl to me in secret begging for my Medicine and for my Sight

And I'm still here to serve you
not in the beautiful ways of the past
With the salves and poultices to mend your bones and sooth your heart

But to carry the stench of your crimes, the sins of your deeds

I hold that which you don't want to see....to bring to you when you are old enough when the time is ripe and you can make right what you need

I see the hidden threads of your pain
I speak with your dead beloveds
I reach inside of you and pull out the hurt
I bleed the poison out of your veins

I am the HAG at the edge of your town!!

I'm opening my healing work publicly for the first time...as I inch my way out of the cave

Listening to the wisdom of her great great grandmother__Sleeping Beauty__she began closing down

Those times when a big change was coming or

when she had given away too much of herself or

the darkness and the silence was the only way out

she would listen to this teaching that ran deep inside her veins.

This was one of those times, so she went to sleep as did her dragons, the castle shut down while the thorniest of rose bushes covered it all up.

But then suddenly a knight showed up calling: I'm here to slay the dragons said he

She opened her eyes...The dragons stirred

She thought the time for such deepening between them had passed, they had moved on

But the knight insisted... he wanted all of the dragons, said that he will leave none behind not even a drop of their blood

This was a sacred call to be attended to so she got up....the dragons hissed and prepared

But he didn't come
Still he didn't come

Maybe he had been swept away by the flood__or his fire had dimmed and his sword dulled__ or the words had been much bigger than the meaning he had thought

His Boots were Empty

The dragons grew dangerously restless
She paced around her dusty castle__opened all the doors __looked under every bed and inside every closet

She stood in front of a painting she once had carefully chosen__and wondered why

In that moment the castle blew up into pieces all around her

One of the dragons fell off a cliff a few gave up and turned into pigeons but the fiercest and the handsomest few kneeled in front of her!!!

When the dust and the debris settled__the blue sky washed her face, the sun kissed her hair and the wide world embraced her

There she was free and she loved

the nooks and crannies of her own being
her knights with their brokeness 
all the sleeping beauties 
and the awake ones
the castles that protect 
and the ruins that liberate

She got on the back of her dragon and flew away into her life

BAD

This tiny little word, capable of destruction like an atomic bomb,

Slips through the lips of a mother
Prounced in the sermon of a holy man
Given by the hands of a father

It takes over, where once was velvety warmth of innocence.... It lodges in and grows poisonous tenticals of war criminals

Where the little boy trusted the impulses of his body and its movements

When the little girl knew the truth of her feelings and that they were as natural as her fingers and toes

The damage hides in the comfortable folds of the normal life, of the family habits, in the worship of the church in the blind acceptance of social norm... Invisible to all

Accepted as though it is ok to steal part of a child's soul

But we don't get to call it ABUSE _ it doesn't quite QUALIFY_ there is too much agreement on it not being called out

So the child doesn't get to have an advocate, the permission to name the hurt nor to know that it isn't her fault

In time.... she/he will agree with the louder voices of her adults and turn against himself and see bad and wrong where there wasn't any before

When the pain is excruciating and overwhelming the sweet distraction that numbing brings is welcomed.

But if it moves in, become chronic and settles in, it becomes most dangerous. Like mold it sends invisible roots all over one's life. It dulls colors, sounds, emotions, impulses and life itself.

Pain and discomfort are our alarm system, keeping us safe, away from danger and that which is harmful for us. When they are ignored habitually, we end up not taking good care of ourselves.

We eat what might be toxic, or when full because it tastes good. We stay in a draining relationship because it has exciting moments. We tolerate circumstances, jobs and places that are not supportive or aligned to our well being.

Survival reflexes and with it, direct connection to our needs, to our very selves are dulled.

Let's stop running from pain, say hello to it, invite it in. Let it have it's way with you it. Your life depends on it.

Sometimes... I have a visitor that demands my attention and disrupts the flow until I stop. In those moments if I can surrender to it, something extraordinary begins to take place and magic happens.

But this is no ordinary guest, it is loud demanding, persistent and it's satisfaction arrives only when I can give in to all it wants, give all of me and surrender
truly
awkwardly
thoughtlessly
messyly
generously
bravely
wantingly
abandonly

Then and only then_Sorrow becomes delicately sweet, breathtakingly exquisite

Anger, oh the troublesome anger, becomes a gorgeous dance of angles and stumps, fire spitting twirles, truth telling howls

The best of all, my favorite_Loneliness_ my juicy soft surrender brings the fulfilling sensation of a union, Eros of oneness, falling in love with a me that I had missed and the tenderness of knowing her.

Grateful to how well my guests know me, how much I'm seen by them. How loved I am.

When something happens to us, physical or emotional, there is a brief moment before we NAME the experience .... We call it pain, tragic, terrible, shouldn't have happened, betrayal, or all the pleasant ones.

If we PAUSED in that gap ___ in the nameless silence long enough___ the experience might have a chance to introduce itself in its entirety....and It might be something entirely different than the small box we wanted to put it in.

She had left her feet behind
Abandoned... At a door step, in a playground, the scary basement, in her room

She was 4, or 8 maybe 14 as she planned her escape, perhaps 28 when her heart broke or was it at 36?

The pieces of her were snatched by the mother____ oh the mother
By the forceful words of sacred books
her father, the men
the wishes of the masses

Split from herself
by the dusty rules of women of long ago
the demands of twisted rules
made up lines drawn in sand seperating her people

She didn't know who to be___how to be ___where to be

She was pulled between her broken pieces strewn over time and the mesmerizing call of her numbing vices, the comfort of not feeling, the familiar pretend

Yet it was dimming...

Her salvation, the parts she had played so well to cover up...were failing, betraying her, refusing her their intoxication

There was no where to hide

Had to go back to her basement and the doorway, the abandoned room to find her pieces like the beads of Persephone and put herself back together

It was time...

She had become a little brave
And her feet were asking for her

For my clients, mothers, grandmothers and little girls

He said I was hiding something...

Didn't know what he was talking about

I was feisty and difficult. There was a fire that flowed from my belly twirling me throwing embers from my finger tips, skipping my mind, intellect or wisdom. There were no words. I didn't understand...nothing made sense. After all it should be possible to turn what was once a great passion into something new

I was being danced by kali and Shiva at once, a dance far stranger than any language could name

He said I didn't want to be with him

I breathed....remembering that he was my air, his heart pulsing my blood in my veins, his being, with all of its turns and twists, its very bricks and door knobs...was my home

Yet there were no words

At the mercy of the fire in my belly, I was danced screamingly:

No polite little parcels of connection will do...no small talk about our days can feed...nothing less than blood on my lips can speak

He said...nah, too much drama, too negative

There are some endings, with a path, a lover, a habit, an identity that comes in a tentative manner...lingering. Filled with returns, what ifs, living in betweens.

Then there are some that arrive with clarity, definition, loud noise of boundaries contained by walls covered in shards of nooooos. Guarded by undescerning dragon destroying all in it's path. 

Inside of that sits the self

Saying ...when you were taken by the Promise of the Beautiful, the Seduction of a Sacrifice, the Successes of a Challenge...I was here, left by you, waiting for you. You couldn't see that It was me that you were looking for, after all.