Marvelous Illusion!

Hello my wild roses!

My intention for this story is to share with you some of what I have learned on healing the wounds that can come with being an expansive, soulful human with dreams that don’t always come to fruition in the ways I envisioned. Perhaps you are in the midst of a dark time or have passed through one and feel the residual pain of pregnancy loss, being involuntarily childless and/or infertile. I understand, I have been through it— endometriosis, infertility, multiple pregnancy losses, failed IVF, a hysterectomy and childlessness. If you have ever experienced this, first off, I’m so sorry. My hope is that this will be a soft landing spot for you to process your grief and continue your healing.

It is sacred work to name what causes us to feel shame, to not isolate and bring to community what has laid waste to our faith. Stories shape and inform us that we are not alone in our pain. May this story be a healing balm for your war-torn spirit. May you stand a little taller, may you feel your roots dig in a little deeper, may this offering gently coax your wounded parts back out of shadowlands and may you feel the golden light of dawn kiss your face.

xx,

Marvelous Illusion!

Are we dreamed up from the dark? Who called you into being— your parents, grandparents, our ancestors, the descendants? Perhaps we have been called forth from the depths, here to unfurl and evolve; to witness the beauty, to feel the sorrow of loss and to make meaning. I have to believe that I chose to be here, now, in this way. I chose to be here with you, writing these words, my tender heart an offering. I pointed down from my star and said, “yup, that family, the one with the rowdy boys, the war vet father and the absent mother, this will be the start to a wounded healer’s life…”

Chiron the Wounded Healer

“I asked myself, ‘What is the myth you are living?’ and found I did not know. So… I took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks… I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me.” Carl Jung

The story of Chiron is from Greek mythology and like many in the pantheon, Chiron was born after his mother, a nymph named Philyra, was forcibly taken by the god Cronos. Philyra had attempted to stave off Cronos’ advances by hiding as a mare but he found her and took on the form of a horse to have her. She became pregnant and Chiron was born a centaur—half-man, half-horse. As his father was a god, Chiron was also granted all of the attributes of a god including immortality.

After Chiron was born, it is said that Philyra was so disgusted by his appearance that she abandoned him. This was the first great wound to Chiron, being rejected by his mother for being born just the way he was at no fault of his own. Fortunately, he was found by Artemis and her brother Apollo and learned from them the arts of healing, music, poetry, prophecy, archery and hunting. Chiron went on to become one of the wisest teachers and one of the most gifted healers of all of the gods and goddesses of Greek myth. He was entrusted with the care and training of many of the great heroes of the stories including Achilles, Jason and Hercules.

Chiron was also a teacher to the naturally born centaurs who were known to be a wild bunch. One festive night, a bottle of sacred wine that had been entrusted to the centaurs as a gift from Dionysus was opened by Hercules. Just the smell of this wine was so intoxicating that a fight broke loose and Hercules was forced to shoot off a series of arrows that had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra to fend off the centaurs. One of these arrows strayed and struck Chiron in the thigh causing so much agony that he had to retreat to his cave to tend the wound with his full apothecary. He spent years trying to mend this injury, learning a great deal and in turn, using this wisdom to support others in their healing. And yet, he could not find the antidote for the poison that was causing him unbearable suffering.

Hercules felt guilt for his part in this deep wounding and asked Zeus to allow Chiron to die. Zeus said he could not take his life, that the only way Chiron could be free from his pain would be to trade his immortality for the mortality of someone else. So, as a final act, Chiron gave up his immortality so that Prometheus could be freed. (Prometheus had been chained to the side of a mountain by Zeus for giving fire to humans to aid in their survival. An eagle would peck out his liver every day only to have it grow back overnight to start the process again in the morning, ouch!)

Chiron died and as he was so beloved, Zeus transformed the Wounded Healer into the Centaurus constellation. This constellation can be found in one’s astrological birth chart and depending on its position, can have a great impact on your life’s path— I can attest to that!

Unfold Your Own Myth

“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” Rumi

I wasn’t born half-horse but I was born part prairie dog, close to the earth in the vast expanse that is eastern South Dakota. We had big skies but small notions when it came to how a good little girl should behave. I spent a lot of time in church learning that a woman was the cause of our “fall from grace”, which really didn’t sit well with me. The youngest of four, my older brothers reminded me daily how different I was from them for being born with this softer body. There was a lot of hitting, name calling and teasing and I started to internalize self-hatred and shame from a very young age. My mom worked nights and my dad, a Vietnam war vet with PTSD, struggled with keeping his temper while keeping us all in check in the evenings. Safe to say, most days ended in tears.

I wanted so much to be loved and accepted by my family, to belong, that I started to cut off parts of myself that seemed to cause them unease— my exuberance, my dancing/singing/shining self, my sensualness, my queerness, the little druid girl who pretended bird baths were her cauldrons. I banished so much of myself to fit in with my people that my sparkly self started to tarnish, and a question began to form at the edges of my awareness, “Why am I even alive?”

Although I often did not feel a sense of belonging and welcome within my own family, I was able to receive it elsewhere— at school, my friends’ houses and most notably when I was fully immersed in nature. I am grateful to my parents for pouring what little money they had on buying a retro, little A-frame on a small lake amidst the rolling grasslands. This was the place I felt most at home, out in the elements.

I spent my childhood summers running through fields of wild prairie flowers, conversing with frogs and making friends with stray cats. I would spend hours meditating on the hypnotic rhythm of the diamond backed waves shimmering on the water, skipping stones and saying prayers to the swallows to bring up to the big man Himself. In nothing but a swimsuit, you’d often find me up a tree or hiding out in the cattails watching dragonflies. I spent much of my time playing alone but I didn't feel lonely because I belonged to the trees and communed with the spirits of the lake. I saw my dreams reflected in a cloud and marveled at the generosity of our gardens. I experienced with all of my senses the cycles of death, re-birth and fruitfulness in this most magical of places and there was nothing that I had to do, no act I had to perform to be accepted; we could all just be as we were. This was the place I felt most alive and connected to source, my wild heart place. And then, as life is wont to do, everything changed.

At the age of 11, I was in a terrible car accident. We had just arrived in the Black Hills on our first day of a family reunion. We spent the day visiting Deadwood, Crazy Horse Monument and ended up at Mount Rushmore that evening. My step-grandpa had been struggling with chest pains throughout the day but had insisted on driving home that night, eight of us crammed into a van, my parents and brothers in a different vehicle several cars back. Just a few miles down the winding road, he had a heart attack at the wheel. The van careened off the road, picking up speed on the steep slope; we were going about 60 mph when we slammed into the bottom of a cliff. The impact and lack of seatbelt sent me flying into the back of the chair in front of me, my left knee taking the full force of the blow. My femur broke in half tearing through the skin— like Chiron’s poisoned arrow, my bone pierced my thigh.

It took over an hour for the paramedics to arrive and they had to pry open the van doors with the Jaws of Life to pull us from the crash. As they placed me on the stretcher, the paramedic looked me in the eye and said, “Are you ready?” Before I could ask what for, they pulled my leg straight, setting the bone as best they could in the field. I think that’s the loudest I have ever screamed from pain to this day. By this time I had lost a lot of blood but as they lifted me up into the back of the ambulance I remember thinking very clearly, “I better let my parents know I love them just this one last time, because if I survive this, I will never say ‘I love you’ to my family again. This is my life now and I am going to live it the way I want to.” And so I yelled out to my parents that I loved them and quickly fell into what would be more than a week of morphine induced dreams. I made that agreement and stuck to it for over 20 years, my heart closed tight, armored against the pain of any more rejection from my family.

I was in the hospital in traction for a month and another 3 months in a wheelchair. I spent 6th grade on crutches and in PT, and had another surgery to stop the growth in the other leg as I was starting to develop a leg length difference. This wound continues to cause chronic foot, knee and lower back pain due to an inch difference in my legs and a deformity in the bone as it healed incorrectly. I started studying acupuncture in large part so that I could give myself treatments for chronic pain. This coupled with severe menstrual cramps which would eventually be diagnosed as endometriosis got me interested in natural healing and thus began my initiation onto the path as a healer.

I see so many similarities in my story and that of Chiron. I, too, felt rejected by my family of origin as a young one. I sustained a serious injury and have spent years trying to heal myself from that and then later, from the pain of endometriosis and infertility. Myths stand the test of time because they speak basic truths about the human condition— abandonment, suffering, injury, chronic illness. What can I learn from the myth of Chiron to help make meaning in my life now that I can never have children?

Shame and Self-Blame

For many years, I had a very rigid idea of what healing would look like for myself. Like Chiron, I tested out a whole apothecary of remedies to reach a very specific healing goal, to have a baby. I studied Chinese medicine, Western herbalism and Mayan abdominal massage. I ate well, took different herbal formulas throughout my cycle, did fertility yoga, performed ritual and prayed, well begged, “Please, this is all I want, to be a mother, to have my own family and know what it is to belong!” I lived in that fantasy for a long time, imagining myself as a mother. How long had I been envisioning that future, since I was a young girl? I realize now that I had been socialized to believe that the jewel of my life would be this divine child.

During this time, I had a recurring image of myself waking in the early morning hours by a cute toddler crawling up into bed with me to cuddle, the sweet smell of my child’s hair filling my senses and this inner knowing would blossom through me, a sense of wholeness believing that I had found the reason to be alive answered by my role as a mother. Wow, that’s a lot of pressure on children. I wonder how many people go into parenthood with this unconscious belief that their children will make them whole? How can I become whole, not trying to fill up a sense of emptiness by someone or something outside of myself?

I have sat with these questions for a while now and am still trying to parse through what I truly desire in my life vs what I was conditioned to want. There is no doubt that my yearning to be a mother was real. I wanted to experience a full term pregnancy, to give birth and hold my child in my arms. I desired to know the deep bond that forms while nursing and to witness their growth, to see the world anew again through their sense of wonder and be reminded just how awe-inspiring our place in creation is. So why did this happen and why do I feel so ashamed to tell people about this part of myself?

“Shame ruptures our connection with life and with our soul. It is, indeed, a sickness of the soul. When feelings of shame arise, we pull back from the world, avoiding contact that could cause or risk exposure. The last thing we want in times of excruciating self-consciousness is to be seen.” —Francis Weller

When I first started to open up about my infertility and pregnancy losses with people, I would inevitably be asked a series of very similar questions, two of the most common being, “How far along were you?” and “So, why don’t you just adopt?” How far along were you, does it really matter? Am I only allowed to grieve if I had reached a certain point in the pregnancy like making it through the 1st trimester? Just adopt? If they had looked into the world of fostering and adoption like I have, they would be hesitant, too. It was like I wasn’t supposed to feel what I was feeling after someone asked me these questions, like my grief wasn’t appropriate to the situation and I should have figured it out already and moved on. And that is exactly what these questions do, they tell someone that their grief is not valid and it stops the natural flow of the emotional experience. When we aren’t met in our grief with openness and compassion, our emotions tend to go back underground and are not integrated. Unprocessed emotions can cause physical pain, depression, anxiety and illness. This type of grief is also known as “disenfranchised grief”, which refers to grief that is not socially acknowledged. There were times that I contemplated suicide because I felt so alone in my grief. I knew no one else in my life whose infertility journey ended in childlessness.

Each time I was pregnant, I felt so much connection to source– it was like I was a child again in my wild heart place. Every birdsong, each poem I read, all the creatures who crossed my path were gifts for me and my child. After each loss, I would feel completely cut off again, as if I had been yanked out of the ground, my tender roots fully exposed to the harsh world above. I realized that my young one who felt so much shame and self-hatred, who had closed her heart off for fear of being hurt, this was the part of myself who felt so wounded by these losses. Because this grief wasn’t so much the loss of my baby but the loss of connection to an idea, an idea that is so deeply ingrained in our subconscious as one of the most important things a person will ever do in their lifetimes— to have a child. It was like the severing of the umbilical cord to what it is to be part of the human family and I was devastated. As someone who works as a healer, as an acupuncturist, wasn’t I supposed to be the fertility specialist? I blamed myself for every loss, every period each month was a failure on my part. For over 5 years I lived as a shadow of myself with one foot in the underworld. How do I free myself from the shackles of shame that it’s my fault I was unable to sustain a full-term pregnancy?

The Path of the Priestess Scar

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” –Viktor Frankl

I first started learning about people who are “childless not by choice” through a Ted Talk called The Lost Tribe of Childless Women by Jody Day who founded Gateway Women, an online community of folks gathering to talk about what seemed to be so uncomfortable for most people: grief and childlessness. I signed up for a “Reignite Weekend” online and was able to share my experience and be mirrored by a group of kind hearts who also identified as childless not by choice. I am part of other healing circles but being with a group of people who had been through what I was experiencing specifically was very healing.

I believe we need community to do healing work and I am so grateful to the people who have shared openly about their experiences of pregnancy loss, infertility and childlessness. Being with people openly sharing their hearts and experiences was incredibly important in my healing journey but months later, I noticed I was still feeling so much shame and that I had failed as a healer. Why couldn’t I shake this deep seated shame that I had done something wrong? It was like there was a deep groove in my subconscious that reached back to childhood and maybe even before. I had inherited so much from my mother and grandmothers, ideas around what it means to be a woman in this culture, what my roles should be and what happens when you don't fulfill those. I needed something to rewire generations of patterning, I needed a story and to rewrite my own myth.

I met with a friend who offered to read my astrological birth chart. I don’t know a lot about astrology but I find it fascinating. She was especially interested in the placement of Chiron in my chart. She said that the alignment of the constellation of Chiron amongst 5 key planets pointed to me being a wounded healer in this lifetime and then she said, “Did you know he was pierced by an arrow in his thigh, like right in the spot where your scar is?” So I looked up this ancient story that has been told for thousands of years and there was something about this myth of the wounded healer that worked its way deep into my understanding of what it means to be a mortal human with a soul on a journey to self-discovery.

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

― Galway Kinnel

I read many versions of the story of Chiron but all had the same core message, that our greatest healers often come through long stretches of pain, suffering and self-doubt. How could I keep blaming myself and feeling shame for not being able to have a baby after reading that Chiron, the most gifted healer of all of the Greek gods and goddesses, could not find the antidote for his wound? How many healers have experienced this for it to become enshrined forever in a myth that can stand up to thousands of years of the telling? This is the realization that came through when I read and reflected on the myth of the wounded healer. And the shame and self-blame, the story that I was holding onto so tightly that I messed up, that it’s my fault that I have infertility, that I should have been able to figure this out as a healer, that I should probably stop practicing medicine and hide myself away because I am an imposter posing as an acupuncturist— that all started to dissolve. I have started to bring in so much compassion for myself, for my young one and all of my wounded parts because honestly, all of this pain only makes me a more skilled healer as I can meet my patients with a depth of compassion and a level of attunement that I would have never acquired had I not experienced this dark night of the soul.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the ending of the story of Chiron, of him giving up his immortality for Prometheus. Did he really choose to die because his suffering was so great? Or was his ability to see himself reflected in Prometheus’ suffering the catalyst for transformational healing? I believe Chiron did not truly die but was actually transformed into light, into the constellation of Centaurus, after connecting with the suffering of another being. He was no longer isolated in his cave trying to heal himself by himself but became a guiding light, a true healer for someone else to help ease their suffering. He saw his reflection in Prometheus.

A profound level of personal healing initiated when I was able to see my suffering reflected in this story and in so many others who have been willing to open up and share about their pain, loss and grief. Chiron gave up his need to be identified solely by his story of wounding and became a wayshower, a light-bearer. I am not the only one who has a wound that won’t stop bleeding, won’t stop being pecked at. Maybe when Chiron saw Prometheus he thought, “Oh damn, I thought my wound was bad but this dude is straight up being tortured every day! I think I’m ready to stop holding onto this and give myself a break.”

These ancient myths but also symbols, poetry, dance, movement and songs are so supportive for healing because they cut through all the outer layers and structures that impact our thinking minds and tap into our deeper knowing to communicate with our souls. I believe immersing ourselves in nature also has this effect. Maybe we need to return to the wilds to recover from our experience of infertility, pregnancy loss and/or childlessness. Maybe we need the wildest corners of ourselves to re-awaken, to connect with the natural world, to mama earth. Let’s bring our offerings to her for she can hold them– offerings of our pain, our loneliness, our not belonging. Let’s forget the stories of not good enough, give them to the wind, scream them into a hole in the ground, burn them in the fire, let them be cleared away by the river. Keep writing and let it all flow to be taken out to the ocean to be swept into the arms of the Great Mother who will weep tears with us. She will take the stories, she will take them into her body, through to the underworld and into her great cookpot which has been simmering for billions of years and has held the dreams and sorrows of a million stars. And like the steam that gently nourishes our bodies from the gifts of the Earth we take in as food, our Great Mother’s body will transmit to us what we need like steam through our dreams and visions, through synchronicities, patterns and the gifts of the seasons. What if we lived each moment as being completely tapped in to source, can we remember to feel our roots that grow deep into the earth and receive nourishment? These walking legs can seem deceiving, as if we aren’t rooted, can we slow down and feel the ground?

For the last few years, a group of us have been offering rituals to support others in their healing. I am part of a spiritual community dedicated to healing through connecting with the natural cycles of the seasons and re-learning how our ancient ancestors lived in a more harmonious relationship with the land. As part of my training, I like to go camping for a night or two on my own. In the morning, I wake before dawn and go on a long hike. As I walk, I sing in the directions, the ancestors, my descendants, all of my helpers. I take it slow, this is sacred time. I witness each moment unfold, and every insect, animal and plant I encounter, every glimpse of the moon or sun, the breeze, mists, streams and lakes, all of it, is a gift and a reminder that I am part of it. I am connected to source, I belong in this moment, in this place and in this body with all that comes with it.

I am now planning an initiatory ritual for myself as a way to step into my power as a healer and as a priestess to support healing for my community. I want to transform into a guiding light, to step onto the path of the priestess scar. What if the greatest transformational version of myself is to be this heartbroken-wide-open, loving being? What if that love wasn’t projected out to the world seeking validation, seeking to be met by someone or something outside of myself but cultivated as the purest energy source within my own heart, as self-love, self-blessing? I want to flow from my own sense of self-worth. I don’t want to hide away in my cave, stuck in the cycles of shame and self-blame. I want to make it my task of tasks, my main purpose in this lifetime, to fully accept and love myself, every part of myself— the grief-torn, rage-filled, gnarly places within and the resourceful, beautiful, joyful parts, too.

After one of my long walks I wrote this poem, it was also inspired by an interview I read with Jody. In it she talked about an experience she had with her ancestors during a ritual. She felt that she was a disappointment to them for not being able to have children to continue the lineage. But then she received this message so clearly from them, that she was not the barren branch on the tree but the Fruit, the one they had been waiting for, just as she was, and they were so proud of her for doing her healing work in the world.

I believe each one of us is the product of generations of our ancestors’ yearning for someone to heal because as we heal, our whole lineage heals. They have been praying for us to step into our worth, to know that we belong and to remember our wild entanglement with the world. And this is the path of the priestess scar– to embrace the light and the dark with equal regard, to connect with nature and flow with the energy of each rising moment and welcome all of it. It is to know that we are full of seeds, luscious fruit bursting with potential. It is to accept our scars as the places where the light shines through and to be a lighthouse in the darkness of pain and grief. We are not tombs but living temples of love, verdant gardens teeming with new life. You are not alone in your suffering and you did nothing wrong.

The Spirit of a Mother

To have the spirit of a mother

and to walk this Earth with no living children

is no easy thing.

But is that the whole Truth?

Is the tiny tendril of a pea shoot my child? The wild rose?

Can I remember the time when I was held by the gaze of a cottonwood

and grew like a stalk out of a patch of wild asparagus?

Remember

You are the beloved, a flower in bloom,

A pomegranate, perfectly ripe and full of seeds.

You are the fruiting bodies of fungi growing from the decay,

new life amidst decomposing dreams.

Step onto the golden lit path of wildness and believe

YOU ARE what Eve was reaching for.

Photo by Felipe Santana on Unsplash