The Calling of the Black Madonna

I got a new split yesterday.  That was an interesting typo - when I typed "splint" I actually typed "split".  Let's go with this and see where it goes.  I got a new split yesterday.  You know, it kind of feels like that.  As the main physical split is coming together because of the exercises, other little splits are occurring.  This split is not ready to be closed up, despite my doing my exercises everyday, despite my wearing the splint 24/7, even during the Bolder Boulder.  I cannot rush this process.  I also don't want to have the physical split come together and heal prematurely, to only split again.  I have written about this in another blog.  My intention and commitment is to heal the split on every level, from its core and original cause out.  My sense is that this is a spiritual split, a mental split, an emotional split, and then a physical split.  The catalyst for this healing process is the physical work and exercises I am doing to heal the physical split in my belly, but as I do these exercises and as I write this blog, I am aware that my intention is to heal the split on every and all levels.  Leave no stone unturned!

I just felt a sensation in my belly of the edge of the tear.  Without realizing it, I am sitting here and pushing my belly out.  I do that a lot.  My default position is to push my belly out, even with the splint on.  I push out.  Only when I am consciously engaged with my belly is my belly engaged and am I pulling my belly muscles in.

What is that pushing out all about?  I have wondered about this many times.  Oh, and by the way, all my excitement about being able to pull the splint tighter and that my waist is getting smaller was premature.  With getting the new splint yesterday, I realized that the old splint had stretched out by about 3 inches.  I am so disappointed.  All my stuff about not getting results even though I am following the protocol perfectly is up and in my face.

I feel ashamed, frustrated, challenged, fat, and big - and that I cannot hide my belly.  That my belly is not hidden.  I am not hidden.  I feel so differently in my body than how I look from the outside.  Yesterday we shot some video for our Own It, Sister! website, and I was shocked to see how my body looks.  Am I really that big?  I just don't feel like that from the inside.  I am aware of my belly pretty much all of the time, but I am still shocked at how my belly looks from the outside.  It looks way worse, way bigger, way uglier than how I feel about it from the inside.  Well, there goes all attempts to love and accept my belly out the window.  Truthfully, I just feel so big, exposed and ugly and unattractive.

When I look at how I look in the video, the words I hear are, "Oh my god, just look at that belly.  How do you even go out in public looking like that?  You should be wearing clothes that completely hide how big and ugly you really are.  Someone's going to take one look at you here and say no way do I want to work with this person.  She's so big.  Wow.  She really doesn't walk her talk.  She's so not in her body.  Look at Jeanie and Whitney next to her.  What is her problem then?  How do those other two even work with her?  I don't care how great she talks, she's obviously a fraud.  The upper part of her is just fine.  You would never know the truth of her belly if you just looked at her from the waist up.  But the waist down.  Watch out.  You know, she's split from the waist up and the waist down.  Who she is from the waist up is fine.  But who she is from the waist down should be hidden from the world and kept out of sight.  Oh my god, girl.  Just go home and keep yourself hidden."

These are harsh words.  I can feel them as I type them.  I am sitting here with a pit in my stomach.  The even more revealing part of writing them down here and seeing them is that these are the words running in my head and in my body all of the time.  These words and the feelings behind them are so familiar.  They are part of the air that I breathe and the water I swim in.  These words are on an endless loop, just going around in "play" mode all of the time.

What I realize right now out of writing them out on to this blog is that I relate to my body from the waist up.  How I feel about myself, how I present myself, where I engage with others is from the waist up.  And the crazy part is that is how I think that others are relating to me...until I see a picture or video of myself, and then I realize that no, they are actually relating to me as my belly.  Then the crazier part is that I think that I have hidden my belly and so that they can't see it.  Until I see it reflected back at me, and I realize that I have been fooling myself.  Of course they see my belly.  They can't not see my belly, because I haven't and actually can't hide it, at all.

It's been my own self-illusion all this time, and the only person I've been deluding is myself.

Shit.

You know...this sucks.

My belly sticks out and reveals itself all the time, no matter what I do, or for that matter, no matter what I think about it.

I have Joni Mitchell's lyrics from "Both Sides, Now" in my head:

I've looked at life from both sides now From up and down and still somehow,It's life's illusions I recall. I really don't know life at all. 

I can easily substitute "belly" for life.

I've looked at my belly from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow.  It's my belly's illusions I recall.  I really don't know my belly at all.

 I really don't know my belly at all.  And all of my intentions to heal it physically are about fixing it, making it normal and acceptable, so that I don't have to hide it.  So that I don't want to hide it.  So that I actually relate to myself from my belly, not just the waist up.  So that I become embellied.  So that I AM embellied.

How I relate to my belly is so out of a very old, engrained habit.  I don't know that I really know any other way to relate to it except how I do and have done for as long as I can remember.

I relate to my belly with shame and disgust.

There it is.  That is how I habitually relate to my belly.

Unless I think that it is following the game plan and getting smaller, flatter and more beautiful.  Until I realize that it is not cooperating and actually tearing, or splitting again, in another way.  It's like it has a mind of its own, and that it's from another place all together.    Who is this belly anyways?  or more accurately, whose belly is this anyways?  Why are you in my body?  You feel foreign to me.   Who are you?

I am the container for the life that you really are.  I hold all of who you are, from all dimensions, all timelines, all lives and all bodies.  I am the culimination and the container of all of your experiences, choices, loves, losses.  I hold it all right here within me.  I am this big because of the bigness of who you are, and of what you bring to this body, this lifetime.  Please accept that you are not here to be a flat-bellied cultural icon.  You are here to be embellied and to bring women back into their bellies, re-aligned and re-connected with the Divine Feminine.  How you feel about me is how your world, your culture, your society feels about the Feminine.  As above, so below.  As within, so without.  What is personal is universal.  I know that you do not want a big belly and that you feel like you stick out and are too visible.  I know you want to hide.  But this is not the time to hide.  She has been hidden for too long.  It is time to embrace Her, love Her, embody Her.  EMBELLY HER, in all of her bigness and full expressions - in Kali, Lakshmi, and Saraswati.

EMBELLY HER.  Love Her,  Accept Her.  Honor Her, with a strong belly.  Strong not out of being small and flat, and hidden.  Strong like a round basket woven of flexible, colorful, varied fibers, reeds and grasses that contain, hold, embrace and body.   Strong like a copper chalice that holds wine and water.  Strong like a stone bowl used with a mortar to grind herbs and spices used as medicines and foods.  Notice that all of these containers are strong and solid, but that they are also open at the top to allow the gifts to be offered and shared.  This is not about holding and hoarding.  The belly is about holding, and also about offering and sharing.

Loving my belly is loving the Divine Feminine, the goddess, Sophia, the Black Madonna.  Accepting my belly as it is is loving and accepting the Black Madonna, the black, internal, hidden, earthy parts of myself.  Again, I am recognizing another aspect of my pilgrimage last summer.  I saw the Black Madonna everywhere I went.  She sought me out, and I sought her.  Not the images of the Mother Mary with the baby Jesus on her lap, although I connected with her too.  But the images and icons of the Black Madonna.  She quickly found me in Santiago.

I was in the magnificent cathedral, looking for the perfect place to leave the stone I had worn around my neck next to my heart for every step of my Camino.  There is a tradition that you carry other people's dreams, blessings and intentions with you as you walk the El Camino de Santiago, and when you arrive in Santiago, you leave their blessings in the cathedral to receive the blessings of the pilgrimage.  There she was behind the bars in a chapel behind the altar.  She sat regally with an open hand, with the child upon her lap.  I knew that I was to leave the stone with her, at her feet and she would do what needed to be done for these blessings and requests.  I took the stone off and tossed it gently to her feet.  She received the stone graciously, and even when I went back the next few days, the stone was still at her feet.

Black Madonna at Chartres Cathedral, France

She called me to the Camino as She calls me now to the Camina.  I must answer her call, for She is the one who initiated me.  It was a pilgrimage of initiation.  I knew that.  I just wasn't quite sure into what I was being intitiated.  I  now understand anothe layer of the labyrinth, of the spiral of my walk.

I am an initiate of the Divine Feminine, here to bring Her back into our lives, our hearts, our bodies and our bellies.  The universal is the personal.  I am here to bring Her back into my life, my heart, my body and my belly.

And to love, accept and embrace my belly unconditionally...now,without waiting for anything to be different, or better, or healed.  To love and embrace fully my belly is to heal the split.  It's that simple.   Not necessarily easy, yet certainly that simple.

Suseya!
Sahara