Act As If

They told me to

Act As If

To go through the process

With the scene already set

See what happens, they said

Instead of torturing yourself

Act As If

And let the healing

Unfold

They also said

Remembering isn’t required

And that, in fact, it can decimate those who are not ready

But here I am, risking it all

Trying to pry it all open

What do I remember?

I remember vampire games with the neighborhood boys

How good it felt, their teeth on my neck

I remember Dar, The Beastmaster

And how I wanted to be his

But how I also longed after

His curvy, voluptuous maiden

All these confusing thoughts and feelings

I remember

But I don’t remember my father, much

I remember his absence

And all the questions around it

I remember my mother’s mumbled curses against him

Not ever knowing why

I do remember him taking me to a birthday dinner

The creaky Cannery Row restaurant floor

Beneath my tiny feet

He was a strange, big mystery

And I think there was a limousine involved

I was only seven

Why did we need a limousine?

I think it was the same day

I remember the hushed words at the door

Opened just so I could see a sliver of him

But then somehow, being released to this adventure

Only him and I

Confused, but grateful

That was the one time I remember seeing him

After his leaving so many years ago

I remember my father, being gone again

Not until I was sixteen did he appear

Like an apparition

I remember him, and my grandfather

At the foot of my hospital bed

After the attempts

Their faces distant

But there

After that,

I don’t remember anything at all of those early years

As if a great eraser

Scoured my fragile mind

I don’t remember his presence

Or his violations

I only remember

His absence

I do remember

Her constant despair

Her daily extremist vacillations

Happy one moment

And the next, chanting die die die

Screaming how I should never have been born

Feeling her pain penetrating, unwanted

I remember her violations

Not through touch, but through psychic immersion

And the training of a confused little mind

When she said, smile plastered

No dear, everything is fine!

I remember

Her

And I remember

The way my first, how he held me with kind eyes

After I vomited all over his black leather

And I remember

The call to attend his sudden death

And I remember

Violent forced fingers

And passing out with swingers

And soulless ceiling stares

As I did my duty, medicated

I remember thinking

That’s just the way it is

But I don’t remember him

Until long, long after

Until I willingly hunted my father down

To know his eyes

To know the truth

I remember the look of shame on his face

And how he trembled when I hugged him

I remember the sly smile

Once the bond had been reforged

And a creepy feeling, it felt familiar

An older man, courting me

But there was no honest conversation

I remember, actually, barely any words at all

No, I don’t remember anything else

Except visions, dreams, and murky maybes

A baby cradle on a table

The ocean view outside the window

Her mouth filled…

A healer’s vision, adamant

And me denying, calling it projection…

Dreams of headless old men

Approaching, the terror

All these years later

I do remember

A real-life report that came my way

That my father’s father had crossed the line

Maybe you, she had said

Again, in that hushed tone

It was certain with the cousin

Who had hanged herself some years ago

So, I no, don’t remember

But what I am trying to piece together

Is why I throw up

Or weep terribly

Or leave my body

Whenever the energy comes near

Or why I have just decided to leave behind

The whole fucking thing forever

Dumbfounded why it’s such a draw

I can’t remember, but I’m trying to figure out

Why my whole life I’ve felt confused, blank, empty

And why I’m constantly trying to keep myself

From dying

Lately

I’ve begun to notice

The trail of synchronicities

Weaving in and out of my life

Relentless encounters

Torturous and unexplained symptoms

Bringing me to my knees in despair

All of it has ushered me to this point

Wondering

Wondering if this is the next layer

And if I should just Act As If

To go through the process

With the scene already set

To see what happens

Instead of torturing myself

To Act As If

And let the healing

Unfold

Initiatory Images

On the book cover

Rectangular and bare

I would first layer blotches of red

Red raining down

As I ask the skies of my purpose

Praying, yearning, weeping

And torrents of blood, answering

This would be the first image

There would then

Be an image I’m not quite sure how to form

Me, pacing wildly, heart racing, sweat beading

Swirling images of stirrups, scrapers, torture of eras past

Crying, hyperventilating into the phone

Terrified of what was happening

Fears of impending doom

Gasping, gasping

That would be the second image

Then there would be the Darkness

Coming over me on that twisted highway

Contemplating endings as tall pines gleam in the sunshine

How to form an image of the juxtaposition

Of brilliant, warm rays and the uselessness

Purposelessness

Confused and betrayed by my flesh

Not knowing whether it wants to kill me

Or initiate me into coming alive

Choked up, tearless silence

Darkness, Darkness, Darkness

Perhaps the triplicity, Hekate, would be there

This would be the third image

Spit-soaked pillows

Tear-drenched sleeves

Twisted sheets and heating pads

Shrieking at each small movement

Me, defeated and prone

Nowhere to go, no one to be

The cage of pain

What color can capture that?

Next I’d probably layer images

Of a succession of scales

Measuring cups

And the face of ticking time

Mysterious perpetrators

Hollowed out torsos

And gaunt, famished stares

I’d put a mirror up to them all

I’d put me finally

Facing it all

But I’d also draw thin circles

I’d draw them everywhere

As if emerging from the Nothingness

Hands, and circles, holding

Yes these would be scratched and repeated

Over and over again

The background color is still a mystery

In fact, perhaps it would be just that

The color…of Mystery

Dark, star-pricked indigo

Auroras intermingling

Roots and branches and webline lineages

Moon phases morphing, fingers pointing, crescents dancing

Coming together, weaving

Cradling it

Cradling it all

Finally, I’d take out my scissors

Cutting haphazard letters from ironic magazines

I’d line them up, carefully

Over the entire display

Until glued, they joined forces

And screamed

A Woman’s Experience of Menopause

And I would sit back

And give thanks

That this deep, deep body

Not caring what anyone else would think

Reached out and shook me awake

Blood Mysteries!

Yes, I’d sit back and give thanks

That today

I can remember

Featured

Blessed Lammas/Lughnasadh

a lovely tarot spread for the season’s shift. image by bujo witchcraft

from stem, to bud, to flower, to berry…mountain jewels return

interesting that hypericum gathered and tinctured at midsummer is ready for use exactly on this day

Blessed Be

thank you

Photo by Ron Graham-Becker on Pexels.com

thank you, great mushroom nation

thank you, great plant spirit nation

thank you, great animal nation

thank you, oh well and healed ancestral lines

thank you

even you

great human nation

thank you, for helping me see

thank you, for helping me release

thank you, for cleansing away

what no longer serves

thank you, for helping me transmute

thank you, for making space for new vision

thank you, for showing me the Wand

in my hand

the soil beneath my feet

the particular and ripe seed that yearns

for my attention

now

thank you, great mushroom nation

thank you, great plant spirit nation

thank you, great animal nation

thank you, oh well and healed ancestral lines

and thank you

yes even you i give thanks to

oh great human nation

for helping me

to see the cracks

to feel the hidden reflections

to know

i am not alone

thank you, great mystic family

furred, finned

mycelial, epithelial

meeting me on the dusty trail,

at the seashore,

in frustration,

and beneath cardboard

down rank cement alleyways

filled with death

and despair

thank you

for helping me

to feel this heart

to hold center

as this great Wheel turns

to dismember and remember

to know, to hear, to see

how this Wand and this Garden

wish to become

thank you

~Messenger~

Somedays I feel you

So close

Soft, ancient feathers inside thighs

We’re soaring, lightning

From Mystery to Manifest

Vibrations, great warbles

Shudder through my casing

My fingers, gripping

Ever fearing the end

Riding, this fire

Mouth open

I remember aliveness

I remember purpose, initiatic

I remember voice, cawing

I remember…alive, clear

This

So unlike the Darkness

The stillness

Etheric goo of Void

More often than not

My thighs feel Nothing

Aside from the air

Hovering, directionless

There, more often than not

Is vast, open, empty space

Potential, and

Mystery

With no function

In such embodied worlds

Hovering, this potential

Yearns for your feathers

Pressing between me, inside

To ride, to become

To carry this Mystery, on lightning

Skilled

To its place in the world

Reception, form, purpose, home

Ten stations, looming

And dull eggtooth

Pecking

Thickness overwhelming

And aching

To ride you

Sounding Mystery

Sounding Message

Riding, lightning

Messenger

Come

Resurrection

We find ourselves at a crossroads.

We know something must change.

Old ways of being and seeing our journey are no longer working, crumbling even,

around us.

Let us find a new way.

Let us use the magick…of re-membering…to open a road together.

Let us look deeply into where we’ve been, where we are and why we’ve come here.

Let us breathe new life into the story.

Let us open a new way,

At this crossroads,

Together.

I woke this morning, with this poem running through my mind. It is a first attempt at describing the work I want to offer in service to others, a way to verbalize the many strands of the web that wants to work through me. It is an offering called Re-Storying, and it seeks to help people look at their stories, especially stories around illness and shadow, and to see these stories in a new, more empowering way.

It has taken me a long time to feel confident enough to say I have something to share that will help others, not because I think I am a horrible person, but because I still struggle. Something in me feels like I somehow have to be perfect in order to be qualified to assist another through their darkness.

But I’m not perfect, and that’s okay. That’s the old story I am breaking free from, my own crossroads. Of whether to keep hiding what I’m here to give because I haven’t reached some sort of Holy Grail…or to step forward with my heart’s longing to help and to see what my perfectly imperfect life can lend others in their search for wholeness.

What I do realize is that I have taken a life that is filled with typically shame-inducing experiences and have managed to re-story it into one of deep initiation and sacredness. I have written about this in my memoir, Food Memories, but I have also spent the past twenty years actively living out and believing in that re-framing. I have chosen to not let the cultural projections of what I’ve been through, including even the Recovery culture, deter me. Don’t get me wrong…I have fallen over and over again into forgetting who I am and what the hell I’m doing here. I have wept and doubted myself and my attempts to re-member myself, my true story, in the sheer intensity of the projections that sought to tame me.

I am not perfect. But I do feel that my journey, and that imperfection is incredibly sacred. And that is what I think I have to offer, helping others find that in themselves no matter where they are in their life process.

I am Letting Go of the story that I am confused. I am Letting Go of the story that I don’t know what I am talking about. I am Letting go that I have nothing to offer. Or perhaps, it is indeed that I have Nothing to offer, that beautiful place of sitting in the not knowing and finding magick arising from it. I am Letting Go of the story that even Nothing, silence, presence is somehow unfit to offer others in their time of need.

Perhaps, like the Phoenix rising, there is a new story within me that desires to be told. One that includes accompanying you, and the remembering of your equally amazing and sacred journey, together. Even in these incredibly crazy times, can we find a way?

Let us open this road, together.

*Thanks for reading! If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I’ve referenced for this post, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

Inanna, Part Three

Body, lifeless

Hollow

Carcass dripping

Yet still able to peel open weak eyelids

Through the sliver

I see

They’ve come

Attendants

Fly-like beings

And they’re with Her

She is wailing

She is raging

She is screaming

She is grieving

And they

Are with Her

Days and weeks and eons pass

Relentless

They hold

Until a most surprising

Teardrop struggles its way

From the lid of the queen

Rolling down her concavity

She wipes it away

Looking at this wetness with wonder

Confusion

Remembrance

Fire breathing

Bitter

Decimation

Her way

For so long

But they are with Her

And She has changed

Not fixed

But Alchemized

By holding

A new form appears

Glittering

Not Her yet of Her

Split selves

To reach above

To give them what they need

Even if it is my

Rotting corpse

Of which She has no use for

Any longer

True Voice

I’m feeling really confused at the moment, not an unusual feeling, but one I’d hoped would be absent from my interactions with a recent book reviewer. This reviewer was a personal one, my prior boss from my days of working in the eating disorder treatment field.

What confused me is that in her gracious reviewing of my book, she noted that I might want to wait until I had a more final story of wellness to end with, not leaving people with how I’m still struggling. She made the point that it is helpful to do this so that people can have hope that it is possible to “fully recover” from an eating disorder, and that it would be less likely fuel for those still struggling to use against themselves.

This of course was one of my biggest fears in releasing my memoir, Food Memories, before I had reached some sort of end all be all disappearance of symptoms. That although the state I find myself expressing in the memoir is authentic for me, and although I believe that healing is cyclical not final, I feared that my words and lack of perfect recovery might hurt someone. I also feared that my belief in the cyclical nature of healing was all rationalization to prevent me from fully recovering and that someone would challenge me on that. In a way, my old boss did, and I find myself in the wake of her feedback wondering if my message is really one ready to share.

I find myself confused at whether I am being lulled back into the systemic brainwashing of recovery, whether this full and final disappearance of symptoms is really possible, or whether the cycles and awarenesses I thought I found in my process are the actual gold I have to share. I’ve tried so much over the years to address these things, including 12 step structures and it feels like there’s something deeper that’s not being addressed. This is what I’ve found is what I try to express in my memoir: the sacredness of illness, loving oneself and accepting the struggle, not pushing so hard for perfection that strides are ignored. Yet I wonder, have I not done enough? Should I spend more time and energy and money in hiring another coach, dietitian, specialist to try to help me reach this perfect state? I wonder, I wonder.

I wonder about how it would feel if this same conversation was aimed at someone with re-occurring cancer, or diabetes, or some other chronic illness: “It might not be as helpful for you to share your story before you fully healed.” It has such a different tone, and is obviously judgmental when seen in this light. Yet to say this to a person struggling with an eating disorder seems perfectly fine, as if the person has loads more control over their symptoms than someone with one of these illnesses. Something about it all seems so wrong, separating these two.

Yet I respect this person, and a part of me yearns for what she describes as being “symptom-free.” Hearing her words made me wonder, and swirl in this confusion I am sharing with you right now. Is what I struggle with a chronic illness, one I must learn to live with or one I just haven’t tried hard enough to ‘recover” from? When is sharing one’s story too early? When is the urge to share the authentic process of struggle and awareness from such struggle an ego exercise, and when is it a service that will help others? Where is that line?

Have you struggled with an eating disorder, addiction, depression or chronic illness? When do you think is too early to share your story, is it helpful to hear others’ stories of struggle? Is it unsatisfying if the protagonist doesn’t reach some sort of pinnacle of transformation? I’d love to hear your thoughts.