Unsafe

Volume IX

Dear Silver Fir,

I have spent the last few days shrinking, getting caught in guilt, in my own internalized patriarchal brainwashing.

I have been wishing that I stepped into this conversation with you on my own instead of being led by my business partner. Oh but what a beautiful lesson in partnership. I welcome the ego deaths and new constellations. I’ve prayed to not feel alone in this for so long. Here we are.

And now I am faced with the questions, as a human, how am I meant to hold myself in this? And as a Priestess, how am I meant to hold this community in the pain they are feeling? As a Priestess, how am I meant to hold the world?

PS. Dear Reader, Silver Fir is the anointing oil that I am the temple keeper of in the Rosa Mystica lineage led by my mentors Diana DuBrow and Elayne Kalila Doughty. I have been working with Silver Fir, attuning to her medicine and her messages, walking as her in the world for five years.

Dear Sarah,

Ground. Straighten. Listen. Even bigger. Even deeper. Even taller.

It is your job to listen. That is why I gave you ears to hear.

But you don’t like to listen, do you? The cries can be so deafening, so you busy yourself, fill your time, your cup. You shrink the view of what’s yours to hold. What’s yours to handle.

It is uncomfortable, but it is not unsafe.

Ground. Straighten. Listen. Even bigger.

It is too much for any of us to face alone. And when we are alone, we can only handle a sliver of the pain, but there is so much.

Palestine

Israel

The Congo

Sudan

Ukraine

Haiti

And so many unknowns in kitchens across the world

Locked in closets

Handcuffed to beds

It is your job to turn towards it all. Caring for all does not negate the worthiness of one.

It feels like a lot because it is.

And there is the tightness. The binaries come in with a tight grip. We shrink to louder opinions. We back off… So again, ground, straighten, listen, even bigger, even deeper, even taller.

Hold it all. Look at it all. Not to dilute, not brush over, not to minimize, it is not callous, but to be inclusive of pain. We must get bigger, deeper, more attuned… to offer reverence to all of the people who need our presence, our attention, our rage, our call, our love. Every terrified, dying soul is worthy. We are all Earth’s children, my roots grow across lines, and so must our hearts.

Name them, love them, grieve them, see them.

You’re still on the surface Sarah, go even deeper.

A heart that feels is a heart that works.

(Trigger warning, death, and rape.)

I see a woman cowering behind the wall. I hear bullets in the distance and drones dropping bombs. I see a baby clenched to her chest and a child hanging onto her neck line and to feel it more, I imagine it is my sister. And I see the bombs come, and her baby’s arm flying across the wall, and I gather it and bring it to her limp body, and hold her shaking bleeding body until the life runs all the way out.

Then I am in the streets of Haiti, standing with a woman who is watching her son be hung from a Lamppost. And when I can’t feel, I imagine it is my son. And I wail and collapse.

And that I am in a bedroom, a small child chained to a bed, and when I cannot feel, I imagine it is my daughter. And I am nauseous and enraged and murderous.

And then I am in a basement room, sitting with a woman poked and prodded, blood caked between her legs and when I cannot feel, I imagine it is me.

Ground. Straighten. Listen. Even bigger.

It could’ve been you, but it wasn’t. So now what?

I love you,

Silver Fir, Earth Protector.

***

If you missed our messages in this series you can read them here: