
The Wound & The Medicine
"TELL YOUR TRUTH ABOUT YOUR WOUND..."
Dear Reader,
Happy May Day! 🌺🌸🌻🌷🌼
If you are like me in the Northern Hemisphere, we are celebrating the mid-point between the spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice.
Can you feel the radiance of summertime rising?!? ☀️
May 1st's roots lie in ancient pagan festival, called Beltane, that celebrated Earth's fertility, the changing of seasons, and the communal connection between people and our Great Mother.
Rituals like dancing around the maypole were symbolic of the sacredness of the earth and the Life/Death/Life cycles that sustain all of us.
When colonial patriarchy spread, these earth-honoring traditions were systematically erased. The celebration of Earth and her abundance was replaced by a capitalist focus on extraction and exploitation, not just of resources, but of people's creative life-force energy.
In erasing these practices, colonialism severed our inner-standing of “work” as intrinsically tied to the land, transforming the natural world into something to be dominated, while also eroding the communal ties that once bound people to each other and all living beings that are needed to sustain balance in an ecosystem.
By the late 19th century, May Day became a reclamation for workers' rights, born from the struggles and lives lost in the Labor Movement. Yet, in this shift, our Earth Mother was left out of the center of the conversation AGAIN!
The fight for fair wages, better working conditions, and dignity for all humans is deeply connected to the same fight to protect our planet and Her resources.
When we honor the Earth, we recognize that the land is not merely a resource to be used, but a partner in sustaining life.
We are at a time in our collective, human evolution where we must expand our definition of “health” to not just include the individual, but also the health of our natural world. We must resist pathologizing mental illness as something to be fixed, and rather, get curious about the ways in which our symptoms may be showing us where we need to slow down & adjust our conditioned, colonized behaviors.
What is looks like in your own life, is as personal and unique as your fingerprint.
🪶 Perhaps you are drawn to build a relationship with the cardinal that keeps catching your eye like a flash of brilliant red flame.
🌿 Or maybe you are being called by an herb that is native to the lands upon which you reside.
🌹 Maybe you experience unexpected bliss from the scent of a rose and it makes you pause, a reconnect with your embodied beauty.
🧘🏻♀️ Or bring breath and attuned touch to a tense place in your body, remembering that you are both The Healer and The Healing.
This work requires deep excavation of unconscious and intergenerational wounding that have festered in our lineages, until someone embodies the courage to heal it.
p.s. if you are reading this, that someone is you :)
Healing Affirmation for Healing:
“With a compassion and connection, I am learning how to minister to my unconscious wounds by building a conscious, loving relationship with Our Great Mother Earth."
HAPPY BELTANE!
With love, Kristen
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