The Time I...Spent A Week Alone (ALL ONE) in a tiny cabin in the forest: Part Two
day 4 musings
I woke up to a tiny sparrow inside my room rapping against the window of this wonderfully modest A-frame cabin. I have no clue how she got in, there are no open windows anywhere. A mystery. I get out of bed and open the window and she flies out. It was my Grandmother, I think. When there are birds in your house it is surely a sign. When I ask my intuition who she is, that is the reply.
I also ask google and she says, “Sparrows have a variety of different spiritual meanings, including letting go of your worries, releasing any fears you may have, following your inner voice, staying positive, don't give in to fear, finding beauty in the simple things, celebrating the little things, and don't be afraid to take risks.” MESSAGE RECEIVED.
I am so much calmer today. Empty, in a good way. The shadows try to reach for me but I remain in the sun. I take a freezing cold shower, make hot coco and dab myself with rose oil. “Fear is so stupid,” I laugh as though I was not just in agony on the floor for most of the day yesterday, feeling absolutely abolished by it. I kept hearing my teacher’s voice, burn through it. I always knew I would come out the other side. This grandmother sparrow’s visitation was just driving the point home.
The silence is no longer deafening. No, it is filled with the sound of the bees in the rosemary, the rustling of wings in the bird bath and the bark of the sea lions down below. I let Spring in. Not just the season but the true expression of it, into my heart. I lay down winter. I lay down the past. I open to the budding within my own spirit.
I have slowed to the pace of life. I have landed. There is nothing more to do than to just enjoy. I feel nourished by my medicines—the mullein and dandelion tea, the hearty bone broth made by my mother, my eucalyptus oil and dry brush. I anoint myself with peppermint and walk barefoot through the garden. I swing softly in the hammock. I watch the Tibetan prayer flags fly in the wind.
We need winter to appreciate spring. And that was a long ass winter in so many ways. My winter was full of earth shaking change, big risks and wild rides. It left me with much to process and so I heeded the call. I went home when my soul requested and I am better for it.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, “the old Inuit say, that the breath of god and the breath of a human, when commingled, cause a person to create an intense and holy poetry.” And it is this holy poetry that sustains us when we go back to the mundane of our everyday lives. I feel as though I have myself back again. That these days alone have brought me back to All One. A simple and yet advantageous goal.
Tomorrow I leave my solitude and arrive back in everyday life. A lunch date, a pick up before the traffic gets bad, an invoice to pay, an event to promote, a new podcast guest to research…but the sparrow is in my heart, the deer is in my ear, the owl is in my eye. I see from both under and above the deep ocean. My breath and God’s commingled in the holy poetry of life.
We mustn’t remain in solitude. The world calls us back out the same way it calls us in. And so I return.
Just now, the large black crow that greeted me when I first arrived, departs from the tree behind me causing me to look back. He feels my job is done here, and so do I.
I am so grateful to the land and it’s creatures for holding me. For my family, my husband and my friends who understood that my silence is a contribution to life and to the worlds we build together.
I hope that by reading this, it inspires you to go home. For you to find solitude if only for an hour or perhaps a week like me. I hope that it pulls gently on the thread that invites you into your own facing. Your own directness to the things that scare you. To feel it all the way through. To let life burn your ego to the ground. To let spirit arrive and lead you out of the ashes and walk you back toward your wild nature.
As always, thank you for listening,
xo Ally
So beautiful and inspiring 💛✨