these tender bodies…10-30-18

On just this last Friday I was hiking nine unforgiveable miles out of the canyon, and with each hard-earned step, totally appreciating my body. Feeling it’s power and strength and resilience, at the same time knowing deep inside the difficult work of healing each cell is doing.   While I was trekking, my Australian soul sister Madhuma, facilitator of the Essence Revealed workshop (which was filling with the most brilliant array of truth seekers) was in Marin and she, too, was hiking. In a singular flash, an innocent moment of turn and twist, her ankle gave way and she sustained a severe fracture of the tibia and fibula.

On Saturday we wept together on the phone. By the afternoon, the workshop was officially cancelled. She is on her way home for some pretty hefty surgery. Coincidentally (or not) as I made my way out of the canyon, every bone in my body realized I simply could not hold space for Pelvic Bowl: a workshop for women, scheduled November 10. And so that is cancelled as well. Classes, as you can see in the sidebar, are, of course, continuing. This is my work and it feels good and right and completely authentic to continue right now.

There is so much I could write about this magnificent canyon journey and maybe I still will. But this is the poem that emerged down there at the bottom. Thanks for listening.

Eulogy to a Uterus

Bleeding I emerged from the womb

Bleeding I blossomed into woman

Bleeding two babes were birthed

Bleeding stopped sans fanfare

Bleeding I discovered with alarm,

a signal from the deep end of life,

this heaviness in my belly

echoing the bleeding since time began.

 

For I have been a womb walker:

mothering, nurturing, caring, holding.

Instinct woven into the tapestry of my cells,

this love and labor of tending:

gardens, children, bodies, communities.

 

This bleeding womb soaks the earth

in painted spirals of creation and cultivation,

a ceaseless succession of pregnancy and birth,

as if space, emptiness, pause

were dreadful notions, never an option

and the capable and good girl that I am

must always earn her place in the cosmos,

as if simply existing would never suffice.

 

Maybe this subtext assumption

penned over a long lifetime

is up for grabs, looking a bit suspicious.

There are cracks in the silver platter

and actually, when the light is just right,

all this doing? A bit ridiculous,

a bit presumptuous, a bit over reaching.

 

And yet, I hold this worn life nugget,

its facets catch that just right light

and it sparkles sublime in perfection.

My hands extend to embrace the world,

I pulse, a well-used servant of the heart

and lord willing, may my last breath

be one of aching contentment

and sweet fiery love.

bella 10-24-18

So much love and appreciation for this community and I’m doing my best to let in the way the same is coming in my direction. It is an ongoing practice. Asking for help is not how I am wired. Exercising the ripe opportunity to create change around that.

Come out to Clara on Halloween night. This is only the third time class has fallen on this expressive holiday and there is no doubt it will be rollicking event…..

from this tender body to yours….bella