My womb is shedding.

I am writing this under a New Moon in Cancer, June 28th (well now, technically June 29th), 2022.

Yesterday I experienced wildly painful period cramps, nausea, the works.

I put my hands on my body and I asked it

“How do you want to be held right now?”

Laying face down, hands on my belly, I could hear my body yearn to want to be received exactly as it was – bloody, in pain, raging, screaming with so much anger, sensation, resentment, grief.

I knew I could do what I’d done for years and just tolerate the pain and discomfort until it went away, placating with tinctures, herbal remedies, teas, and a multitude of alternative healing techniques designed to integrate my feminine and heal the mother wound, and when those didn’t work, ibuprofen and mezcal.

I knew then in that moment though, laying my hands on my body, the time is now to fully accept – fully accept the waves of nausea, to welcome the burning pain, welcome all of the horrible sensation that a large part of me just wanted to go away.

Melting into the presence of full acceptance and acknowledgement of my body’s intelligence and moment by moment allowing it to be as fully sensationally uncomfortable as it needed to be, I felt it.

I felt the Wilderness coming fourth.

First, I noticed my hatred, my anger, my frustration. I felt the palpable heaviness of my resentment and my blaming of others for my difficult integration of this womanly experience. I felt my victimization at the cellular level.

Grunts, growls, and the wailing moans of a wounded creature emerged from the bowels of my soul.

From my womb.

Growls turned to shaking, convulsing, as my nervous system processed god knows how many years of rage, terror, and unintegrated experience held in my womb.

It doesn’t even matter.

The visions.

Clarity.

Relief.

Then sobbing as the grief further released its grip on the anger.

 

My body.

The cave of wonders.

 

Every time I put my own hands to my body without expectations and with the utmost reverence and deepest of listening, I am always left with awe – and surprise – at what emerges.

 

This is the sacred wisdom of the feminine.

It is a lost art.

In our culture it is demonized, logicized, and controlled away.

It is manipulated.

It is feared (and rightly so – it’s powerful as fuck).

It is misunderstood.

 

And yet is the essence of this incredible animal we embody.

It is life – all of creation.

 

And yet it took me many years to be with it.

To accept that I am it and it is me.

I am still learning how to be the Wild Creature that my soul was born into, that my spirit wove into manifest – flesh and bone and blood.

 

My body is always a sacred place of knowledge and deep visceral truth, but this time – the time of bleeding and shedding under the new moon – is particularly precious.

The pain and nausea forces me into the retreat of the inner world.

It forces me to touch my animal nature.

It holds me to the truth of my organism.

This time, I chose to surrender fully to it.

I am no longer afraid of where it will lead me.

The path is dark, moist, and fecund.

It is not known, that is for sure.

But I know from my many many journeys that I am safe here, in my body, in my cells, in my flesh, and in my bones.