I asked the shaman: “Free me.”
He said “Who has enslaved you? Are there chains about you?”
There was no chain holding me. “I am broken,” I whispered.
He acknowledged my pain with his smile. “You are growing.”
“I am bleeding,” I pleaded.
Again, he affirmed my pain with a gentle touch.
“I have been abused, forsaken, blamed, lied to…..and now I feel hollow.”
He paused. It seemed as though time stilled.
“You are filling the soul with that which you can give in love. It’s not blood draining from you, but the world. It’s the desire to help and to love that fills you. It is darkness that leaves.”
I didn’t understand. There was heartbreak and aching all around me. I could see it in my shadow, echoed in his eyes. “I know your pain,” he said, but left me to understand it, comforted me and knew that there was another time. He said….
My father was Choctaw...my nephew is as well. I love the whispers of the past.
Our time ended long ago
Be still and listen
Hear our messages in the wind
Today we are a whisper
Tomorrow we thunder
I looked and found that it was me, holding onto the thoughts and memories of the past that kept me hostage, holding on so tight with bleeding fingers that ached, begging to let go. In that moment, I realized that I was alone in this space, this pain, this imaginary place where right and wrong were gold and green.
I relaxed, first my mind ~ it’s broken fragile gentleness, the part of me that couldn’t condone, cope, rationalize, function. I let it sleep in healing oblivion, escaping the clasp of the past, escaping the horror of memory, the grating pain of abandonment.
I relaxed my hands, my fingers and watched the pain of love broken fall so far from me into a vast night sky, one filled with a million possibilities and promises. Without you, my love, heart and the desire of my soul…….I am stronger, I am more whole….I am me. You are the nightmare from which I am waking.
It was the release that whispered from the divine, to simply fall into the waiting arms and trust that like Alice, I would fall into the abyss with some strange ending. It is okay for me to know that there is no happily ever after, just one series of hallways after another that I will run with all that I am.
It’s okay to cast faith, hope and love wildly, to live passionately, to give all that I am. I trust that the Divine one – my real love, my imagination, my hope and my passion – is waiting at the end of the maze, making noise, giving hints, cheering with wild abandon until at last, we are home again.