Once upon a time two little girls were born. The one with flaming red hair came fast, her first cries loud and furious. The midwives handed the wailing child to her mother, who gazed upon her and said softly, “Child, you must be not carry on so, the world can be a dangerous place for those with such a voice and will. I will call you Aphrodite.”

And as the mother tried to soothe the babe at her breast, new pains suddenly twisted her womb and she cried out, “There is another one!”

While one midwife rocked the first-born girl, the mother strained. This babe did not want to relinquish its watery circle of warmth, but after many hours a second girl-child was finally born. This dark one did not cry, and her night-sky eyes deepened as if she were contemplating her place in this new world. Her mother held her close and whispered in her ear, “That’s right, Quiet One, you will do well in this life. I will call you Hestia.”

As the girls grew they were never apart, even sharing a pillow as they slept. While Hestia hugged her arms around her own body, Aphrodite clasped her sister to her side. During the days they played, Aphrodite twirling and singing, sometimes stamping and shouting, while Hestia, crouching on the ground stirring pots over an imaginary fire, sang softly to herself. The adults smiled at Hestia and shushed Aphrodite and tried to still her.

One day when the sisters were twelve, Aphrodite was dancing by the gate. Her fiery tresses and bright eyes caught the attention of a passing gentleman. She quickened her step and whipped her skirts. Her eyes flashed under her long lashes. The next morning Hestia awoke alone. Hestia cried for the loss of her sister but found comfort in the deep silence which now wrapped her in its arms. That day she left her imaginary pots and pans and retreated to the encircling warmth of the kitchen. Here she cooked and cleaned and watched and listened. Although no one would speak Aphrodite’s name, Hestia felt in her heart that her sister was somewhere near, and safe, cradled even.  Within the hearth she kept a fire burning bright to guide her sister home.

While she worked Hestia sang, a soft chant low in her throat. Honey bees gathering to dance on the garden of daisies, zinnias, and foxgloves outside the kitchen door echoed her song. A pair of doves arrived and each morning crooned their melancholy lullaby as Hestia sat in the lemon sun of early day. Then the swallows came, swooping and looping, weaving unseen fabric in the sky. As the days went by Hestia’s song became stronger and deeper.

And then one day, as her voice carried up into the trees and pulsed down into the earth, she felt her whole body began to sing. The air around her resonated and glowed. And suddenly there she was. Drawn by the power of Hestia’s voice, Aphrodite rose from the well that stood not far from the kitchen door. Finally freed from the damp earth where she had been exiled, she came towards Hestia with arms outstretched. Wrapped once again in each others embrace, their hearts and voices merged in song.

For redefinition, I was thrown back to myself, to my inner knowing… Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 9 (“Super” Full Moon)… a week late, ooops.

Throat Chakra

I is for (Divine) Intervention/Intuition

(The original version of this post turned out to be very long. This is the condensed version which is more in line with the Authentic Voice Project’s format. However, I have included the full version at the bottom of this post.)

Many believe that god is not an external being, but that god is within. Every creature, rock, tree, is divine; as Krishna Das said in an interview in Sun, “There’s only one God, and we’re all it.” And we, as humans, can find and access this divinity – and its divine wisdom – if we choose. When the divine energy and wisdom of all things is in concert, powerful things can happen.

I believe Intuition is this divine – and sometimes inexplicable – wisdom, and that “Divine Intervention” (or Serendipity or Synchronicity) is tapping into knowledge we did not know we know and into sources of energy to which we did not know we were connected.

Throughout my journaling “career,” but particularly since I recognized this to be my life’s work, and even more intensely since I began grad school, I have been struck by life’s connections. Sometimes you can recognize the separate links as they appear (often in the strangest places) and connect, creating new knowledge and understanding. At other times, one comment or sentence can in a flash fuse together seemingly disparate events, books, people, dreams together to reveal new meaning and insight.

My most current experience is with my own definition of Finding Voice, meaning both the physical act of being able to speak up and out, and also as a symbol of finding and knowing Self, which is the theme of my thesis and memoir. I have always called myself a singer but I discarded this application of using/finding my voice in my studies and writing. But it was not to be so. A series of events, from losing my voice to a cold, to inadvertently connecting with a voice teacher on Facebook, to picking up a random magazine whose current theme turned out to be singing, have made it clear that my songs also need to be heard.

What causes these bizarre “coincidences”? I believe it is a divine wisdom, intuition – knowledge from a deeper/higher place – that causes us, and the world around us, to unconsciously move in a certain way. We must be open to it though. We must be seeking our potential and moving in a direction of growth and healing. And while I am not yet certain how this slight expansion in definition of “voice” will affect my writing and studies, I am choosing to trust the process. I am trusting this Divine Intervention and my Intuition.

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I is for (Divine) Intervention/Intuition (The Unabridged Version)

Many believe that god is not an external being, but that god is within. Every creature, rock, tree, is divine; as Krishna Das said in an interview, “There’s only one God, and we’re all it.” And we, as humans, can find and access this divinity – and its divine wisdom – if we choose. When the divine energy and wisdom of all things is in concert, powerful things can happen. I believe Intuition is this divine – and sometimes inexplicable – wisdom, and that “Divine Intervention” (or Serendipity or Synchronicity) is tapping into knowledge we did not know we know and into sources of energy to which we did not know we were connected.

This week’s post is an example of this. It is a convoluted tale with many different threads coming together from diverse and unexpected places and people. It is about “impossible” connections and happenings that, I believe, occur when wisdom/knowledge beyond our understanding is accessed.

My graduate thesis and memoir is about “Finding Voice,” with “voice” meaning both the physical act of being able to speak up and out, and also as a symbol of finding and knowing Self. Recently I was writing about some childhood memories where I was silenced in one way or another. I began to experience some sinus pressure while writing. The next day I happened upon this passage:

‎Many women have difficulty speaking, actually allowing words to come easily through their throats. Their sinuses are often blocked… ” – Leaving My Father’s House, Marion Woodman

This passage goes on to say:

The [sexual] chakra and the throat chakra are connected. Is it possible that when they fully forgive themselves for being sexual beings and fully let go into their creatureliness… Are their frozen tears the tears of generations of women who could not accept their creatureliness in their sexuality? When those tears flow will women be able to speak with clear, easy resonances from their feminine depths?”

I wondered about this connection between voice/silence and sensuality/sexuality. As a teenager I had often experienced an inability to swallow food in conjunction with stomach pains.

Then, while “chatting” on a Facebook group of former church members about the body-mind connection in relation to spiritual and sexual transcendence, one woman happened to mention she was a voice teacher. She said she has noticed that, “most peoples neuroses manifest in the way the use their voices, and most people don’t use their voices naturally and efficiently.” Suddenly I made the connection between singing and emotion. I have sung in choral groups and as a soloist most of my life but for some reason I hadn’t thought this was an important aspect of my story of Voice/Self and the silencing one can experience as a child – particularly a daughter – of fundamental/patriarchal religion. I did think it was interesting that as a teenager I was afraid that I would somehow lose my singing voice, as if unconsciously I was aware it might be the only voice I had, but to focus my writing on my singing still hadn’t seemed warranted.

I decided to write an essay, “The Story of My [singing] Voice” to discover whether my singing “career” somehow reflected suppressed emotion and loss of Self. (I can only figure such things out by writing through them.) Through the essay I realized my singing voice had, paradoxically, kept me both disconnected from my emotions and, albeit by a thin thread, connected to them through my physical, sexual/sensual body.

The morning I had planned to write the essay, I awoke with a raging sore throat from a dream where a mouse had bitten deeply into the skin at the base of my big toe. I looked it up and found that in reflexology this region is connection to the throat. Over the next three days I completely lost my voice. I then remembered that almost a year ago I had had a dream where a mouse bit my heel, which is the region connected to the pelvis. I knew then that the passion of my teen and young adult years, singing, could not be discounted in my story of finding and reclaiming my self as a whole woman and human. My voice, whether spoken or sung, is the “voice” of mySelf and I needed to investigate it to go further along my road to healing.

This past week my family went on vacation. While on the train I found a notebook in the bag I had dug out of the closet specifically for the trip. Looking for a blank page, I found this note from last summer when I attended the senior voice recital of a friend’s son:

I notice discomfort watching him showing emotion. Embarrassed for him. Find it hard to watch his face. Moved by music itself but interaction between him and female singer causes more discomfort.

Here it was again, a link between singing and emotion. Whatever causes an emotional reaction in us, whether it is discomfort, anger, or a knowing resonance, it is a clue to our own truth. While I had not consciously known when I jotted it down the relevance of this little note-to-self, finding it at this very moment gave me a message I needed. A little while later on the train ride, I found the magazine I had thrown in my bag at the last minute which I had recently “stolen” from a coffee shop (it was a old issue and I knew the owners were wanting to whittle down their piles of reading materials.) I didn’t open it before pilfering it, I just knew it was a great publication. The first article I opened to was “A Joyful Noise: Krishna Das On Chanting the Names of God,” and upon further inspection discovered that the theme of the whole issue was, yes, singing.

What causes these bizarre “coincidences”? I believe it is a divine wisdom, intuition – knowledge from a deeper/higher place – that causes us, and the world around us, to unconsciously move in a certain way. We must be open to it though. We must be seeking our potential and moving in a direction of growth and healing. And while I am not yet certain how this slight expansion in definition of “voice” will ultimately affect my writing and studies, I am choosing to trust the process. I am trusting this Divine Intervention and my Intuition.

For redefinition, I was thrown back to myself, to my inner knowing… Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 8 (New Moon)

H is for Healing

The medical world believes healing is taking a patient with a clinical diagnosis and controlling their physical symptoms enough for them to function as “normally” as possible. The emotional and spiritual state of the individual is rarely taken into consideration. In fact, in many instances “healing” involves suppressing these aspects with drugs.

The mind and body have been split asunder. Our memories, past abuses (self or other-inflicted), old traumas, our psychological complexes, our cultural “rules,” and religious indoctrination – all the “stuff” that makes us who we are – are not questions on the intake survey. Those body workers who do consider these aspects of the whole person, masseuses, chiropractors, energy healers, and other “alternative” medicine providers, are considered woo-woo by the establishment. The body is just a vehicle to be patched up when its bits and pieces get rusty, like any old car.

True healing is not duct tape on the bumper or a tin can on the muffler. These things may keep the car running but the rust is still there underneath, eating away at the structure.There is extensive evidence that psychological wounds eventually and inevitably manifest as physical ones. Keep something suppressed long enough and it will let you know there is a problem. Stiff back, digestive problems, sore throat, swollen joints… while natural elements of aging, they are also flags that it is time to address your inner life. Mid-life crisis? Just a shove and opportunity for new self-discovery and growth. Ignore this and you get psychologically more discontent and physically uncomfortable.

I am not saying there are not externally-generated illnesses, viruses, chemical disruptions, or accidents that hurt our physical body, obviously there are. What I am talking about is the body issues that slowly (or suddenly) make themselves uncomfortably obvious. Our psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual lives are all connected – interwoven, linked, one in the same. To truly heal ourselves we must acknowledge every level of ourselves, down to the deepest and most difficult to see. But every connection we make in our lives, inside and out, heals by bringing us closer to balance and wholeness (the word “heal” means “to be made whole”). (I wrote more about the healing of connections here.)

Yes, you can pop a pill. Or you can take the time to honor your whole self and ask, “what is wrong, really?” and “what do I need right now to be my best self?” Release the pain from your body by acknowledging your true feelings and sensations. Connect to them and really heal them.

Photo credit: sideshowmom from morguefile.com

Reblogged from wisdom within, ink:

• 

New Writing and Wellness Center Opens

By: Joanna Young, Reporter for Wisdom Within, Ink

Rutland, Vermont: In the midst of Rutland City, there is a tiny haven. It stands behind a fence on a residential street and started life as a garage. However, it now heeds a higher calling.

The Writer’s Refuge is a place of healing and creativity. It is a place where you can come to write your novel or write through pain, grief, trauma, joys and transitions.

Read more… 265 more words

Two years later it's getting closer to becoming a reality! (And I recently discovered it was originally a wheelwright shop - love that it has more history than just a plain ol' garage!)

For redefinition, I was thrown back to myself, to my inner knowing… Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 7 (Full Moon)

G is for God

I’m cheating this week by letting others speak for me. I came across this just two days ago purely by “accident” – the timing was perfect. So, I will hand over the talking stick first to Marilyn Sewell and then to Mary Daly:

God is a spirit, a mystery beyond human understanding, and therefore we can only approach that mystery through metaphor… The problem is that in the formulation of the religious metaphors we live by, women’s experience has once again been largely discounted. God has been king, prince, lord, father, conqueror, judge… [Let's evoke] images [that] allow a divinity of softness and vulnerability, of tenderness and nurturance [so] we are led to less fear and to more comfort and hope than traditional images alone have provided…

- Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality

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Why indeed must “God” be a noun? Why not a verb – the most active and dynamic of all? Hasn’t the naming of “God” as a noun been an act of murdering that dynamic Verb? And isn’t the Verb infinitely more personal than a mere static noun? The anthropomorphic symbols for God may be intended to convey personality, but they fail to convey that God is Be-ing. Women now who are experiencing the shock of nonbeing and the surge of self-affirmation against this are inclined to perceive transcendence as the Verb in which we participate – live, move, and have our being.

- Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father as quoted in Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality, edited Marilyn Sewell

Prompt: My metaphor for God/dess (Spirit, Transcendence, Universe) is…

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Photo credit: earl53 from morguefile.com

Gypsy

They say she danced from her mother’s womb. They say her first yelps were a song to the ear. They say she was born with the pulsing rhythm of her heart glowing red beneath her golden skin.

They say when she was twelve, a white man of the cloth saw her dancing alone by a stream. Her hair flew and her skirts billowed as she twirled. She was bewitched by the blaze of the sun on her upturned face, the throb of the drum, the stomp of her feet, and the rush of the water. He saw her Passion and it made him wild. He loathed her for that. He began to yell and shake his fists at her, calling her names she had never before heard. He said the devil lives in the skin of the drum and demons were dancing beneath her skirts. But she continued to dance while he continued to condemn. And then she stopped. For a moment she felt her Joy, her Love, her Passion falter. The poisoned arrows of the man’s words had pricked her heart and she felt something she had never known: Shame.

But they say she then began to sing. She looked the man in the eye as she sang. She saw things there that frightened her. She saw self-hatred and weakness and sadness. But above of all, she saw Fear. She sang to the Fear. Called it out of its deep, dark place where it was festering and polluting the man’s heart. She sang and she sang, and as she did she felt her Joy, her Love, and her Passion begin to flicker again. The deep red of her dress and of her Love reflected in the man’s eyes and began to burn the hard, dark steel plate of Fear and Hate. As her voice got stronger, her Love grew stronger and his eyes became soft with tears.

Then she danced again. She danced right into the river and let the rushing waters wash away the poison the man’s words had embedded in her heart. It beat fully again in time with her drum.

They say when she was a grown woman, the tiny perforations that Shame had ripped in her young heart allowed in the light of Compassion. She sang to lead all voices in harmony with the wind. She danced to call up the energy of the earth. And she beat her drum so that the hearts of those around her might pulse as One. And just like a broken bone that rebinds stronger than before, her Love, her Passion, her Joy – her Voice – swelled so no one’s words of fear could ever cause her doubt again.

For redefinition, I was thrown back to myself, to my inner knowing… Marilyn Sewell, Cries of the Spirit

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 6 (New Moon)

F is for Fornication

When I was six, I learned to pronounce it. At ten, I knew what it meant. And at eighteen it was burned into my chest.

In my last blog post I wrote that “Evil” is the most evil word I know. Well, “Fornication” can’t be too far behind. For me, the word weighed heavy throughout my teen years. It was the sin that was always on my mind because well, it was on my mind. Even thinking of it was supposedly a sin. That which is so natural to us as human-animals and is part of the regeneration of all life considered a sin! Unfortunately, condemning a sacred, spiritual, natural act as dirty really sullies its reputation overall, whether or not there’s a ring on its finger. Just look around at the way women and sex are denigrated in our society. And to convince young people that the natural needs of the body, with which they were born and over which they have no control, are filth tells them one thing: that they too are filth. Not so grand for the self-esteem.

“Fornication” is an ugly word, one of many words plundered and remolded as a weapon to keep us in line. Various Biblical sources tell us originates from the Latin word “fornicatio” which means arch or vault and is related to the Greek word “porneia,” to act the harlot (who stands under arches). Harlot: originally a description of a male vagabond, but since the 14th century, a prostitute or promiscuous woman (thefreedictionary.com). Ugly words, ugly accusations. For a completely natural, beautifully human need. Like eating…

A fornix, was an earth-oven – arched or vaulted – for baking bread which were named for the Fornax, Goddess of the Furnace or Ovens. The Ladies of the Bread were the priestesses, standing under the arches of these Goddess temples in ancient Rome. Festivals, which included sacred sex to ensure good baking throughout the year, were called fornacalia, meaning oven-feasts. Baking bread, furnace, hot sex… bun in the oven. Yup, that’s where it came from. The Romans used to say, “the oven is the mother.”* The mother “bakes” the babe and the oven bakes the bread that feeds the babe.

Sex and sexuality and/or sensuality is a way to “feed” yourself and the one you love with affection and care. To share something that is healthy and vital to our physical, emotional, and spiritual balance. As life-giving – and natural – as baking bread to fill our loved ones’ bellies and souls.

* Sources: Reinventing Eve by Kim Chernin and Bell’s New Pantheon

Photo credit: colossus from morguefile.com

The Authentic Voice Project: Week 5 (Full Moon)

E is for Evil

In my opinion the most evil word in the dictionary is, well, evil. It bites, slices, crushes; it infects, sickens, kills. I believe this word is too often thrown around where it doesn’t belong. It instills fear of rejection and shame in those who do not have (or were never given the opportunity to have) a strong sense of belonging and/or self-love. And those who think themselves to be of little significance have little power and are easier to push around.

Growing up, especially during those “rebellious” teenage years (when I never actually did rebel much more than attend a high school dance that I “shouldn’t” or make out in the car after a date), I heard this phrase too often: “Don’t give the appearance of evil.” Six words that imply so much more. “Your actions, and therefore you, have the potential to be evil. So, I don’t trust you (you shouldn’t trust you either) and you also shouldn’t trust others because their opinions – what they might be thinking – is more important than anything. Bottom line: be afraid of yourself and others. Just do what is right – what you should do – not what you are inherently capable of doing, which, as we said, is evil.”

And what about all those “evils” flung around at church each Sunday? “…every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.” (Gen. 8:21) Yikes! How can anyone who has ever had or held a baby think for one moment there can be grain of evil in that precious, innocent little body? Of course we all have the potential to make “bad” decisions and we aren’t always nice. But evil?? According to the Bible-thumpers, we apparently have evil thoughts, evil ways, even evil bodies – from birth! Our basic needs are evil: eating, drinking, having sex, making money, getting educated, loving and caring for our bodies, minds, and spirits, seeking actualization and self-enlightenment… Seriously? This is evil?

Hilter was evil. Torture is evil. Child/domestic/animal/nature abuse is evil. Rape is evil. War is evil. A man,woman or child living their life according to their human nature is NOT evil. Convincing us that our nature is evil is abuse in itself. It denies us of our Mother-Earth-given right to pursue our potential, make use of our talents, and follow our bliss towards happiness and joy. Tell a child they are evil and you fill them with self-hate. Self-hate breeds Other-hate. Other-hate makes for a fear-filled and evil world.

I say: No thanks. I choose to believe that I – and others – have the potential of love.

D is for Drive

Society says: Drive is good. Drive is what allows one to come from nothing and go to something. Drive makes the downtrodden get up, turns the girl next door into the celebrity on the hill, and gives the death-diagnosis a bill of good health. This is all true. But drive can also be destructive.

Drive to be more… better, faster, slimmer, prettier, richer… this all implies that what is here, now, you, is not OK. Of course, there is always room for improvement, and I do believe in order to have purpose and meaning in our lives we must always reach beyond our comfort zones and propel forward towards our potential. But pursuing our potential must an intrinsic goal if it is to be authentic. However, to be driven towards a goal/standard that is projected upon us by some outside authority – whether that is society, family, your boss, professor, etc. – is not authentic to you,it cannot bebecause it did not comefrom you.

I think women have a special relationship with Drive because we, as liberated women of the 21st century, suddenly feel we have so much to prove. Yes, we can be mothers, housekeepers, cooks (organic and fresh at all times, of course!), volunteers, activists AND full-time employees or students; tough AND beautiful; independent AND care-giving; and the list goes on. Saying “no” is hard to do because we don’t want to be seen as weak or uncaring or uncooperative. And in many cases, I do believe, we are still trying to prove just how smart we are.

I say: You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Accept yourself for where you are right now, in this moment. Yes, by all means, Drive! But drive towards your own dreams, not someone else’s dream or plan for you (or the plan you think someone else has for you). You’ll know when it’s authentic to you because instead of Monday morning rush hour, it will feel like a Sunday drive through the country.