The past few days have been utterly excruciating. My face is puffy from crying and and my bones feel numb as I sit my ass back on the meditation cushion on the front porch on my tiny cabin in the woods. Ding, ding, ding, round 2. My second meditation of the morning. I am clocking about five a day. What else is there to do, really?
The first night I arrived my mind was so loud and chaotic it brought a whole new meaning to the phrase deafening silence. I was drowning in my thoughts. I felt like I was clinging to the top of the sail as the ship went down. Even without the everyday luxuries of distraction I have still found many ways to avoid the present moment. Some include, picking a fight with my husband over text, still finding a way to launch an event for next week (whoops) and enveloping myself in some odd book of nonsense I found in a dusty corner of the cabin.
One of my teachers says, “new level, new devil.” And I think of that now. I have moved through so much fear to get where I am. And now I’m here, a new level and new fears to face. “Does it ever fucking end?! I shout out loud over my toasted english muffin. My own voice frightens me. “What is the point of all of this?” I am terrified that I am only 24 hours in and I want out, like now. How much can one person take in a chosen isolation? A prescribed amount of time specifically carved out to do just exactly this. Sit. Isn’t this what I wanted?
I won’t bore you with the specifics of my own devil that I am currently sitting with. He is just as gnarly as everyone else’s is. But slowly the time passes, the discomfort amps and then the owl visits. I have never seen one so close. We stare at one another for a long while. His head swung 180 degrees to see me. I know what I must do. His wise presence encourages me. I need to write a letter to someone important that has been sitting heavy on my heart for months, years even. There, one assignment complete.
I keep crying. Then the deer comes. We stare at each other for a long time too. He tells me it’s time to go inside and get ready for bed.
I’d like to tell you that today was less excruciating, but no such luck. I walked the property in bare feet feeling absorbed by the squishy, mossy earth. My air bnb host messages me to ask if I might like to leave the cabin and experience more of the island. “Don’t leave” the hummingbird tells me, so I stay. After all I know this island like the back of my hand. This is the island where I became me.
This is the island where I led my first yoga retreat. This is the island I had the idea for Girlvana. This is the island that held the first Ladyvana retreat and subsequently dozens and dozens more . This is the island my brother got married on. The island that gave my mom that bad food poisoning one time. The island were I used to bring all my boyfriends. The island I have been coming to for fifteen years. The island that taught me how to teach and who I was.
So no, I don’t need to see anything more than this gentle meadow and the tall trees and the ferry boats passing back and forth. Instead I will sit again and again on this cushion and close my eyes and meet what is here. I will watch the bees touch down on the flowering rosemary and then ants crawl up my leg and the eagle soar mightily. I will cry some more, write some more and drink my eightth cup of tea.
I will try to not check my email or look at my phone. I will instead treat the rest of this afternoon like the tremendous homecoming that it is. A return to my nature and the land that raised me.
I snuck a book in my bag as I was leaving Vancouver. Deliberate in that it wasn’t a fiction novel for me to devour and get lost in but rather an incredibly dense piece of literature that I can only digest a few pages at a time, like once a year. The perfect book for a trip like this. My number one, most favourtite book in the world. Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She writes,
“Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.”
I have read this book in pieces over the last fifteen years but it is always new to me. I read the chapter Sealskin, Soulskin because that is the page I randomly flipped to the night I arrived. It was no coincidence that the first creature to greet me as the ferry pulled in toward the harbour was a seal. A friendly faced, human eyed seal delighting in the jumping fish and swooping birds.
Sealskin, Soulskin is all about women returning home. Not necessarily a physical home of the past but a place to rest well and return to her wild nature. All women must go home. “When we are overdue for home, our eyes have nothing to sparkle for, our bones are weary, it is as though our nerve sheaths are unwrapped, and we no longer focus on who or what we are about.”
“The return to the wildish state periodically is what replenishes her psychic reserves for her projects, family, relationships and creative life.”
Estes writes, “How long does one go home? As long as one can or until you have yourself back again.”
To be clear home can be anything. A moment by the river, reading an old passage from a beloved book, a day to yourself in the market. Something all for yourself. But do you see, it is more than a capitalistic ‘self care’ approach but rather and necessary meeting of oneself in present time away from the distractions of everyday life.
So you see, I am here in the raw movement of nature, me and the birds, to become one again. To feel in one piece. All One. I am met with such abundance here and yet my own ego must break down so I can continue to trek in the path of my truth. This is a worthwhile cause. It is the only way forward. I had to come home in order to keep going.
So here I am recovering my own pelt and meeting what needs to be met. Inviting in the conversation between myself and the wild soul. As painful as this has been, I emerge with the nourishing medicines needed to move forward.
Thank you for reading this. I needed an extended hand to the outside world today, if only for a little while. Now it is back to the cushion, where my wild soul eagerly awaits.
xo ally
What a perfect place to land during this time of quiet and introspection. That island has always held the most special place in my heart after attending one of your Ladyvana retreats! A place that cracks you open and helps you heal all at once.
Let go Ally. You are a FORCE to be reconned with as the next version of yourself emerges alongside the seal, owl, eagle, deer and raw wilderness. ❤️💪🏻