Our innate rightness

We held our first retreat in our sanctuary this weekend and it was good and deep medicine for all. My inner child’s heart felt so full and grateful to be bringing this service in an interconnected way. And to see all the effort of creating this space be so worth the effort as it held each heart, in love and inspiration.

At the retreat I shared this story and want to share it here….

I was 7 years old.  A little over a year after having been taken away from all I knew, at age 6, my dad had gained custody of me. He had good intentions but the reality was that we would live in a motel or apartment for a couple months then he would return to jail and leave me with someone.

This time I was staying in the home of my second cousin and her family. There were older children around me but I felt very solitary. I remember sleeping on the cot in the living room and falling asleep to the TV each night. I walked myself to school during the days and in the afternoons listened to Iron Maiden, especially a melancholic song about a merry go round. I like to say ‘all music heals’ because I felt seen by this music that I would hardly recommend to a child. It named my depression, aloneness and despair when no one else did.

I felt a deep emptiness and aloneness while family life swirled around me. I ate piles and piles of cinnamon toast on wonder bread to numb this pain.

But there was also something incredible about this home. I could wander through the backyard, past the free range roosters (a la Mexican style I love so) and hens pecking the dirt, and out through the back gate which opened to a grassy arroyo.

The family had a chestnut mare who had birthed a son that was never trained. So this wild chestnut horse ran free in the grassy fields, and I was both a little afraid of him and awed by him. I would see him in different places in the canyon each day.

I don’t remember much about my entire foster care journey as a whole, so much feeling a grey blur, but this I remember in vivicolor.

I remember the aliveness I felt, and the peace, as I leaned against a tree and watched the ants doing their busy work. Never stopping, but persevering and working together in long industrious chains up and down the mottled grey trunk. The bright red jewels of ladybugs flitting about and landing on my hands. The golden grass waving in the breeze and the wild horse running through it in the distance. Vigorous and free.

The warm sun shining a dappled light through a cascade of leaves and the gentle tree providing cool shade and shelter. An earth womb.

I remember Mama Tierra holding me.

In this moment when I felt so isolated and vulnerable as a leaf blowing in the wind, I felt her grounding.

I felt her whisper.

I didn’t know to call it that then. It wasn’t until many years later when I read in Jean Liedloff’s book The Continuum Concept, about the ‘feeling of rightness’ that indigenous tribes know with nature, that I recognized this experience.

Now I also understand that this was a blessing of my journey that continues to inspire the way I serve. As a child, floating through the years as a ward of the court/orphan, I learned that despite good intentions, humans were not reliable. (I had many caring angels along the way but my stays with them were temporary.)

So I learned to rely on Spirit/Creator as my constant. I knew I could always connect from my heart in prayer, seeking guidance, seeking companionship. As I look back I realized I was also doing this with Mama Tierra, plucking a lemon, breathing deeply into a fig leaf, finding any moment to rest on her, listening to her whispers in the bird, the bee, the butterfly, innately seeking the nourishment she gave.

I always desperately needed this connection and it was always there.

I always knew, this vital support IS here for all of us.

This, I shared, is why I have brought folks to this sanctuary in the woods.

For all to remember their ‘innate rightness’ and interdepence in this domination steeped modern world that so systematically disconnects, separates and instills ideas of wrongness, of not good enough.

When it all falls away, Mama Tierra and Creator are here holding us.

We just need to be immersed in remembering and listening.

I hold this space with love and hope.