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

3 Tenths

Tuesday morning, day after Memorial Day, the Bolder Boulder, and my niece's 6th birthday.  Big day yesterday.  I walked the Bolder Boulder with my youngest son and daughter, and much of the way with my niece,nephew and sister-in-law, until we couldn't walk that slowly any more.  At Kilometer 7, the three of us took off at our own speed and didn't turn around to go back and wait, and wait - like we had been doing.  I really tried to be in "family" mind for the full 10k, but it couldn't last the whole race.

Perhaps this is a metaphor for my life.  I can do family mind for 7/10's of the time, but the other 3/10's I just gotta walk  my own walk, at my natural pace.  Great thing about yesterday is my natural pace was right in sync with my kids' pace.  Together, we found an easy rhythm and perfect speed.  Then to top it off, Steve and my older daughter, who both had already run the race, came back to meet us and walk the last 2 kilometers.  There was something very fitting about all of this.  My family kind of fits together - how we walk, the speed of our walk and our aligned intention for how we wanted to finish the race.  It felt really good.  It was only a race, but a great reminder of when you walk your walk, there are those who will join you and walk right beside you, walking their walk too. We are being true to ourselves, and in relationship with each other. Also, there are those who will be left behind, and those who will walk ahead, as well as those who will walk a different path altogether. 

My concern, actually it is a way more than a concern - it's a downright fear, is that when I walk my walk, I will be all alone.  I will have to separate myself from my loved one, my family.  That who I am and what calls me will tear me away from the fabric of my family.  That I will be all alone and they will be altogether judging me for who I am and the choices I make.  That they will not love and accept me.  That I am unloved and not accepted.  That I am unlovable and unacceptable.  That I am alone.

That I will have to split myself off from my family to walk my soul's path.

So I don't walk it.  I stay home.  I stay in family mind and be a loving mother, a good wife. I do the dishes and the laundry, I cook, I garden, I work.  I support and love my kids. I support and love my husband.  As the mother and wife, I hold the family in the way of the feminine.  7/10's of me loves everything about this.  I love being a part of my family and that I am mother to these 4 incredible kids.  They're amazing and they are each so unique and different from each other.  I cannot parent one the same as any of the others.  I love this.  I love being with Steve and sharing our lives together.  It's not as straightforward or simple as being a mother.  Our relationship has all of the challenges of any marriage when you've been married for 23 years.  So I would say that I am at a 6 out of 10 with the marriage part.  I love Steve and our marriage, but would also love to experience the passion and excitement of when we were first together again.  As I write that, I realize that the sex piece makes this relationship more complicated.  Hence, the 6 rather than the 7.

But I'm not ready to write about sex just yet.  That will have to be another blog post.

So how does all of this relate to my belly?

Let's start with the physical and see where this goes.

Yesterday I wore my splint when I walked the Bolder Boulder, and also when I gardened.  I must have spent 8 hours in the garden this weekend, preparing my new vegetable garden (still not quite ready for planting) and transplanting different plants to different beds.  A lot of work.  A lot of walking.

I loved wearing the splint, not for how it felt from the outside, but for how it felt from the inside.  I felt supported and held as I dug, bent over, pulled, carried and walked.  My back didn't get sore.  I remembered to pull in and engage a lot more frequently.  I used my body and more core much more consciously and correctly.

As I lay in bed this morning waking up, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a dear friend last night at my niece's birthday party.  My friend says that everything in her life is falling apart and that what used to work is just not working any more.  We got to sit on a chair swing together and just talk.  What I was so struck by was that all of her compensations that have served her to "get by" in the past are no longer enough for her to get by.  We're talking on all levels here.  K. deals with significant dyslexia and her methods for dealing with that - gone.  What has worked in her relationship - no longer enough or what the relationship needs.

Thinking about this idea of compensating.  I have compensated for my belly split by using the outer muscles.  I have used the big muscles in my legs, hips, butt, anything to not use the muscles in my belly.  One, the belly muscles haven't worked they way that I have needed them to.  I feel a lot of shame and not being good enough when I do use them, and then this only contributes to the split and makes it worse, at least energetically.   A viscious cycle.

So I would have rather compensated and gotten by than feel shame, blame and self-loathing.

Makes a lot of sense - oooohhhh, there's that line again.  But it didn't support or challenge me to deal with the cause of the shame or with the split itself.  It just left me with 20 years later still having the split that affects every area of my life.

When we compensate, we get by...until we can't just get by anymore.  What worked in our 20's and 30's, even our 40's, no longer works in our 50's.  Our bodies change, we begin the process of menopause - which is a whole journey unto itself!  We're not as strong, fast, slim as we used to be.  And that's just the physical aspect of it all.  What we want and what matters to us in our 50's is very different than when we're younger.  And when we're younger, we just don't think that it's going to happen to us.  I sure didn't!

To tie this back in to "walking our walk", I have avoided my walk out of my fear of being all alone and not being loved and accepted.  I have compensated for this fear by staying out of my core - my core desires and dreams, and have supported others to live theirs, as a mother, wife, friend and coach.  This is how I have felt loved,  useful, wanted and needed.  7/10's of me is happy, fulfilled and not scared.

But the other 3/10's of me is no longer willing to be quiet and compensate.  I am now 51 and this 3/10's of me - which must be the most close to the essential part of who I am - is getting loud, antsy, and ready for a good, long walk.

And I gotta listen.  I gotta stop compensating, justifying, explaining, and wishing it would go away.  'Cause it's not. It's only getting louder and more insistent.  This 3/10's of me is demanding that I listen to it, come into it, love and honor it, and get on with doing what it wants to do.  I realize that I am blessed in that I know what I want to do. For the first time in my life, I know what I want to do when I grow up!  So many of us don't have a clue and that contributes to the fear and justifying we do.  I know only because I was somehow willing to listen to the first calling to walk the El Camino de Santiago and travel the Celtic Camino by train.  This in  itself was the initiation to these next steps on my journey.

I WANT TO WALK THE CELTIC CAMINO.  This is my Camina, my journey of the feminine. LA CAMINA.  Next spring.  I want to walk parts of it awith other women who also want to walk this sacred pilgrimage.   I also want to walk alone.  I want to join my 77-year old  father in Cornwall in early June along with my brother and sister, and for us to assist him to lead a tour based on his book that he is writing right now. I want my family to join me in England after trip so that I can share with them my homeland, my extended family, the land of my ancestors and my soul.  Ultimately, I want to live in England, to lead pilgrimages and to support all people, and especially women to live and walk from their beautiful bellies.  I want to walk, walk and walk some more.  I want to support and challenge people to walk their walk, to respond to this part of themselves that knows exactly what it wants to do, who it wants to be, why it is here, and what it desires to contribute. 

I want a world full of people who are walking LA CAMINA, however and what ever that looks like for them.  This is the journey of connection and alignment to spirit, to the divine feminine, and thus to the inherent beautiful balance in all of us.  When we are connected with the feminine, we are connected with ourselves, our hearts, our divinity, with Earth and Heaven.  There is no split - the split has been healed in the journey, in the walk itself.  They journey is the healing.  The journey is the transcendence of the split.  There is no split. It is not taking the joureney - not walking one's walk - that causes the split.  The journey, LA CAMINA,  is the wholeness. 

There is an important distinction here.  It is not just any journey.  It is not the journey we just happen to take even if we are asleep or not intentional, although this of course becomes part of  LA CAMINA.    It is not the journey that we take by default, only find ourselves asking, "oh my god, how did I get here?  This is not where I intended to go.  I thought I was going over there."

This is the journey that one chooses, with intention and commitment, as a spiritual being in a human body living a human's life and making choices, creating and being in relationships.  This is the journey that has become one's sacred pilgrimage of life.  This is one's commitment to living, expressing and fulfilling one's true and sacred purpose here on Earth this lifetime in all of its beautiful reflections.

This is the pilgrimage of one's soul -  back to one's soul -  to express one's soul.  This is LA CAMINA.

This is the pilgrimage when  the 3/10's embraces the other 7/10's and one becomes fully integrated, connected and aligned to become 10/10's, to actually become more than 10/10's.  This is where synergy, and perhaps alchemy, occurs.  Once becomes more than the 10/10's to embrace, embody and own all of who one is, on every level of  body, heart, soul and spirit. 

This is the embellied pilgrim, walking from her core, true to herself, and sharing joy, love, compassion and wisdom with all of whom she shares her path and all who she meets along the way.

And perhaps, just perhaps, as you walk your path at your natural pace in the way that resonates from your soul, your loved ones will just happen to walk at a similar pace in a similar way and join you for part of your journey.  Each person is walking their true path, and experiences a joyful crossing of paths with loved ones, new and old friends, and pilgrims along the way.

This is the journey of the pilgirm.  This is LA CAMINA.

Scared Little Girl

I am up early to edit my book.  Looking forward to start my day writing.  As I write that, I realize that I love to write.  I am just owning that as I write it!  It feels good.  I also get that I process and connect in the process of writing.  Very often I do not realize what I am going to say until I write it.  Same as when I speak.  It is in the act of communicating that truth is expressed through me.  I have read that these are the characteristics of a "clairsentient" intuitive, and while I could relate to that through my speaking out loud, I am now more deeply understanding and owning this about myself as I write.

Today feels like a quiet day on the inner front.  I actually started my period yesterday.  I say actually because I am in perimenopause so I never know when or if I am going to get it.  It actually caught me by surprise.  Earlier in the week I had been feeling a little pre-menstrual in how I was eating and that I was very content to have a quiet day inside working up on my bed all day.  No need or desire to go outside, be visible or be active.  So, really -  I am not that surprised that I am bleeding.

I feel like I had my first real hot flash last night at dinner.  We were having a late and lazy dinner, hanging out and talking with our 16 year old daughter when all of a sudden I had to pull my hair off my neck, unbutton my sweater and create space between my body and my clothes!  I felt like I was a furnace and just oozing heat from the inside out. 

I am a perimenopausal woman who is healing the split in her belly and between her self and her Soul. 

Watch out!

Yesterday I went to talk with Christiane, a local wise woman who has created and offers a beautiful, rich, deep body of work called the Re-Wilding that requires courage to even consider .  And I am seriously considering it.  I have known Christiane through our children going to the same elementary schools, and recently came across her work when she was recommended to be on our radio show.  I was so moved by what she was doing so after our interview, I contacted her about working together.  One of the points that caught my attention was that so often, we are "ashamed of the shame."  When Christiane mentioned that, I felt the truth of it in my bones - actually in my belly. 

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, my shame is sheltered, hidden and kept safe in my belly, and I am so ashamed of my belly.  I am ashamed of my shame.  I have hidden my belly and what's inside of it for my whole life, even as a little girl.  Especially as a teenage girl.  I celebrated it during my pregnancies because now I actually had something in my belly that was beautiful and full of life and love and was not "me".  My belly's roundness and fullness was to celebrated, not hidden.  For 36 months of my life (out of total of 614 months so far) I got to celebrate my belly!  And then as soon as I gave birth, I felt ashamed of my belly again.  It was too big, too flabby, too ugly, the skin was too stretched, and the feeling of something dark, black, thick in my belly was back. 

I hear the saboteurs saying to me, "You are being so dramatic.  Just give it up already.  Get over yourself.  My god, girl - just who do you think you are?  Just get on with your life and stop all this drama."

And this is what I have done, time and time again - gotten on with my life and packaged up the feelings and the shame into a nice neat box with a pretty bow, and a smile on my face.  Actually, I have put the feelings and the shame deep into my belly, hidden away from anyone who might see it, hidden even from myself. 

Until it oozes out through the split.  I can't contain it.  It won't stay hidden and tucked away.  It comes out when I least expect it, when I least want it, at the most inopportune times.  It takes me out of what I was doing.  I leave. I don't return to the next class. I check out and become very vague about what I was doing or what I had committed to.  I return to feeling safe.

The split.  The portal of my belly.  It can feel like an open, gaping wound.  What is its role and its purpose?  It is like a crack in the bowl.  Nothing can be fully contained.  It allows that which is inside to leak out.  It allows that which is external to come in.  A feeling that it is so difficult to have boundaries and to say NO and to mean it.  To even know what I want to say no to.  A feeling that it takes so much will force to say no, to mean no, and to keep saying no.  All the doubts and concerns for saying no come in and I am often pulled out of my no, out of my clarity and conviction, and am convinced to say yes and I acquiese. 

When I birthed my babies, I hemmoraghed each time.  Here I had given birth at home naturally with no drugs and as soon as the baby was outside of my body, the contractions stopped and I bled out.  I lost all the power and energy that I had generated through giving birth.  It's like it just seeped out.  I couldn't contain or hold this energy to nourish me as a mother, as a woman.  I remember viscerally the feeling of the life force slipping out of me, and my not being able to contain it in any way . 

You know the line from Marianne Williamson's poem, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."  I know that this is true for me. And if it's true for me, I know that it must also be true for so many others.  What if we leak out our power and our true force out of this deep fear?

Back to the split.  It also serves as a leak so that I cannot contain my power, my strength and my true force.  Not only can I not keep that which is outside out, I also cannot keep that which is inside in.  Again, the image of a sieve comes up for me and the words, LEAKY BELLY. 

The plus side of all this may be that the shame doesn't get locked inside of me either.  Locked in, it could create disease.  Yet it gets to move around, ooze in, leak out, but maybe there has been a level of status quo with it because of the "sieve system."  Now that I am messing with system through my intention to heal the split and the transverse exercises, everything is getting heated up.  I am challenging the status quo.  I am literally getting heated up and getting hot flashes for the first time, and my period for the first time in over 3 months.  I just got this image of the shame being fuel for the fire of my transformation.  This just sparks so many thoughts and images that are converging.

I know that it takes heat to transform our cells and our DNA.  This is the value of fevers.  Our bodies heat up so that the fire can literally burn through our DNA and cause us to evolve.  What if my body is now heating up as I close the split because of a self-balancing mechanism in my body?  My body is operating out of a homeostasis that has learned how to handle the shame at a certain level.  If it gets too much, it will leak out through the split, or through bleeding (both after birth or during my monthly cycle), or it will burn it off through a fever or hot flashes.  My healing the split is challenging the homeostasis on all levels, so to regenerate balance, I get my period, I have a hot flash, and I initiate a relationship to heal the shame through deep, profound body centered work. 

What I am appreciating here is that my body is really supporting me to create health and balance.  Yes, there is shame in my body , but  that is not me or my body.  My body has learned how to keep it in check through the split.  My body actually split from the inside out.  I chose the split in order to survive the shame.  I split.  I chose to split in order to survive.  I can feel this truth reverberating in every cell of my being.  I chose the split.   I am responsible for the split because I didn't know how to handle or be with the shame.  I can feel this scared little girl inside of me who felt so alone, so ugly on the inside and that not knowing what to do or who to go to, she chose to split off from the pain and the shame. She was terrified.  And so she split.  The scared, ashamed little girl split off so that she could be the happy, good little girl who fit in and was loved. 

There have been quite a few moments of breathing and being with what I just wrote.  It's one of those moments where you know you have known this - where I have known that I have known this, and I have just re-claimed this knowing on a much deeper level of the spiral.  Also, that I have been attempting to heal this from the outside, but how I can heal something from the outside when I split from the inside out.  I can so appreciate that the physical process is such a wonderful catalyst for the inner work, but to focus only on the outer work leaves the same energy imprint  to split again, perhaps in a different way on a different level, but to split again all the same.

I keep coming back to La Camina.  This is my soul's journey - this is the way, the healing I came in to do.  I committed to heal the split on every level of my being, for myself and for all.  I feel as though I am creating a template for healing the split.  I am committed to healing the split on all levels, on all dimensions, on all timelines, in all worlds.  It is my soul's work.  It is my body's work.  It is what I came to do.  It is who I am.  Because what I know is true is that there is no split, no separation.  There is only the way, La Camina, to which we all return to take the next step forward, the next breath.

Thank you for being a witness to my journey.

Suseya!
Sahara 

La Camina, a.k.a. The Celtic Camino

So if I have spent the last 20 years getting by and not dealing with the split, why now? Why now am I choosing to focus on healing the split?

This is a question that I have been asking myself. I really believe that my choosing to heal the split represents a convergence of intention on every level and that the time is now! It chose me and I chose it.

I committed to the work of "healing the split" during the ritual from now nearly 21 years ago - it was the summer that I became pregnant with my now 20 year old son. It really doesn't matter if I remembered the ritual or not. I made a commitment that afternoon that has powerfully shaped my life. And now I am remembering that commitment.

Also, a year ago I became a pilgrim. Last spring, I walked the last 170 kilometers of the El Camino de Santiago in Spain and then I traveled by train with my then 15 year old daughter up the Celtic Camino from Santiago up through France to Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, Scotland. I am clear that as a pilgrim, we have both our conscious reasons for our pilgrimages and also our unconscious reasons that only become apparent after we have completed our journey. Perhaps if we were to know the true reason for the pilgrimage we might not take it, so we go on our journey under the pretense of our known reasons. Yet the pilgrimage works its magic and the real reason always emerges anyway.

Walking the Camino and traveling up the Celtic Camino was a pilgrimage of initiation for me. I admit that I knew it was an initiation, but quite honestly, at the time, I had no idea what I was being initiated into. This is what has revealed itself over the past year. Sue Kenney, with whom I walked the Camino last year, says that "when the Camino is over, the journey begins." What is so interesting is that Sue is back on the Camino right now walking through Galicia to Santiago. She is walking a day or two further than we did a year ago, but I am reliving my Camino as I follow her on her Susesya page in Facebook. It is so alive and pulsing in me a year later, as though I can remember every step that I walked.

My journey began when I left Rosslyn Chapel last June.

In the perfection of Spirit, without my having to do anything to plan this, I traveled to the city of my birth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England. I began my journey home at my birthplace.

But I jump ahead of myself. I want to share more with you about my pilgrimages as they are essential to why I am healing the split and even writing this blog today.

While I was on the Camino, I realized that walking the Camino was my physical and spiritual preparation for the Celtic Camino. While everyone else was walking the Camino as their pilgrimage, I was walking in preparation for my sacred pilgrimage, the journey that follows a sacred configuration of seven pre-Christian sites, from Santiago de Compostela, Spain, up through France to Rosslyn, Scotland. This sacred configuration forms the route of a "pilgrimage of initiation" used by the Druids and Christian mystics in their search for true knowledge and enlightenment. These 7 sacred sites actually correspond to the 7 chakras of the human body.

Even before I left to travel on this pilgrimage, I called this journey “La Camina.” I could feel deep within myself that it embodied for me the sacred feminine and the hidden streams of spirituality that flow beneath the surface, connecting all of life, rooted in the body of the Earth and the ancient wisdom traditions. After my experiences on the pilgrimage and in my journey over the past year, I am more clear than ever that the Celtic Camino is a profound "pilgrimage of initiation" and that even more importantly, it is an initiation of deep feminine wisdom and healing.

Hence, LA CAMINA. It is the way of the feminine, a feminine journey to bring one home to oneself, in body, in wholeness, balance and deep connection. One is not hit over the head. It is subtle, yet profound. It unearths oneself from the deep core of our being without our even having to be aware of it until it starts to spill over into one's life, like a volcano.

It has not been a violent process for me. The volcano isn't spewing hot lava ferociously, at least not yet. It has been persistent, oozing, heating up, not to be ignored and you'd better pay attention to me kind of volcano. As I write these words, I realize that the goddess Kali is here with her fiery energy, demanding that I pay attention to her, to me and to honor this process. If I don't, she will boil forth with molten lava.

I made a commitment to heal the split 21 years ago. I traveled La Camina and was initiated.

The time is now.

Suseya,

Sahara