Several times in my life I've felt as if a part of me was missing. The first time I recall it was twenty years ago, after the devastating loss of a mate, which triggered all sorts of abandonment injuries, or perhaps reinjuries, to my soul. I felt like the walking dead for many months and I can look back and see how it affected me for years.
Loss comes with regularity now, and each time it happens I can feel how something I no longer need strips away off of me and falls back to the Earth. It drifts lightly down, like a snakeskin. The letting go can be an exhilarating experience when the lessons become clear. When my Grandfather passed last year, it marked the beginning of shedding major layers of stories that had been paining my family for generations. Since I am the keeper of ceremony for my family, I processed those events for us, releasing the pain in solitary rites and gifting them to the Earth for transformation, like a fall dandelion releasing its featherlight seeds to be reborn.
I went to a circle on Friday night, my first with my treasured women since May. Our teacher had moved to the city and is now making her way back home. In an exercise with a partner, in which we stood face to face, then back to back, receiving readings and messages, I felt very open and vulnerable. I could feel the void within me. I felt like I'd been seperated from my twin and in this moment, I was reunited as a tree from which roots shot down into the deep Earth and arms extended to the Sky and grew taller, taller, until I could look down over all of the grove and feel my evergrowing commitment to this work.
I have to say that I left with a lingering feeling that my soul is in a bit of disrepair, and seeking a part of herself that got split off, as if scanning the rubble for the missing bit. I intend to ask for a soul retrieval from someone qualified, to bring in some insights, or I may conduct one by myself. My dreams and experiences this new year all seem to point in the direction of bringing a cleansed aspect back in that somehow got lost in all of that shedding. Since the exercise (that felt more like a healing) I already feel less exposed and more protected, but in a very soft, not-armored way. That thing that was depleting me feels less internally demanding, as well.
I'm enjoying the soft gust of information that comes from sitting in a sacred space, holding the questions and awaiting the download. As I deepen my trust of this process, and hold fast to my intention to allow my body and Spirit to lead the way, my mind is getting a much needed break. It feels a bit floaty-dreamy up here, but I'm in no rush to get back to the ground yet. Maybe when my Mercury goes retrograde on Tuesday. *wink*
