Category: Women’s Spirituality

La Llorona and the Dark Green Religion of Hope by Sara Wright

Picture of Sara Wright standing outside in natureI recently returned to Maine after what can only be called a harrowing journey from the Southwest. Grateful to feel beloved earth under my feet, I walk along the pine strewn woodland paths to keep myself sane. My animals have been ill, my neighbor was hospitalized briefly, other neighbors deliberately destroyed my garden wall crushing a baby balsam, and used this property as their personal ski slope, the threat of the C/virus looms – there are no words to describe this kind of exhaustion. As a PTSD survivor all my senses are on permanent scream. The simplest task has become monumental. And I am only one of so many…

Each day I attempt to feel gratitude for what is good in my life.

Momentary peace is found in the Dark Green Religion of Hope that I experience walking under every balsam, lichen, wet leaf, deciduous tree, listening to chickadees, phoebes, juncos, and finches, meandering along the swollen brook – Just to see clear mountain waters rushing to the sea reminds me that Nature’s rhythms are my own, and that most of the time I am not breathing with her – unless I take these walks. Somewhere along the way over these last weeks I have lost access to my body (PTSD). Continue reading “La Llorona and the Dark Green Religion of Hope by Sara Wright”

Trauma Healing in Collective Crisis by Laura Shannon

My previous post on this site, Trauma Healing through Communal Dance, on February 1, told of a traumatic event and its lingering effects, including insomnia, brain fog, nightmares, tearfulness, migraines, anxiety, and fear. Now I’m hearing reports of similar symptoms from virtually all of my friends who are affected by the trauma of the coronavirus pandemic.

Three months ago, Greek communal dance helped me recover from my traumatised state. Now, nobody has access to communal practices like circle dance to help us get through it.

So how do we heal when we all need healing? When we don’t have access to the things which would normally help us heal?

Circle Dance with Laura Shannon, Germany 2008 (photo: Beate Frey)

There is a lot of talk right now about strategies, small and large, which can keep us sane in this crazy time. Many speak of the ‘silver linings’ we can find in this enforced retreat, and I have found a few myself. But I have also heard from people who aren’t in a safe place, or who just aren’t coping well.

Even if you are blessed with a peaceful home, access to nature, and continuing income, not everyone is made for isolation. The lockdown can be particularly hard on extroverts. And many people may find that high stress levels in this time of separation, loss, and uncertainty awaken old ghosts of unhealed trauma.

My earlier blog named some of the therapeutic aspects of communal circle dance, including connection with others, shared movement synchrony, realignment with ‘my self, my body, my place between heaven and earth, and my home in the human community.’

Armenian Candle Dance with Laura Shannon, Findhorn 2015 (photo: Hugo Klip)

As I wrote in Medusa and Athena: Ancient Allies in Healing Women’s Trauma, “Past trauma can be transformed through ‘physical experiences that directly contradict the helplessness, rage and collapse that are part of trauma’ and which foster a renewed sense of self-mastery. Because trauma tends to be experienced in ‘isolated fragments’, treatment particularly needs to engage the entire organism, ‘body, mind, and brain’.”

So, dancing is perfect. Circle dance, particularly, is my ideal method of trauma healing. But how can we dance without a circle?

A lot of us are dancing on platforms including Skype and Zoom, but the slight time lag with this technology means that true synchrony is impossible; everyone’s movement appears slightly off the beat. Nevertheless, I love seeing cherished faces, talking together, and dancing despite the distance.

My favourite way to dance ‘in circle’ is without any online technology, simply connecting in heart and spirit. Since the start of the lockdown, my network of dance students, friends, and colleagues in different countries have been ‘meeting’ at set times twice daily, and it is deeply moving to join together in this way. We light a candle for loved ones, health workers, key workers, and anyone who is unwell or needs extra support at this difficult time. Then we each dance the same sequence of circle dances, plus our personal favourites. Knowing that my friends are all dancing in their own homes, and that we are all thinking of each other at the same time, is very precious.

Candle (photo: Laura Shannon)

If you too are separated from your loved ones, you can choose a time every day to stop what you are doing so you can think of one another, with no need for online technology. You don’t have to dance; just put on your favourite music and know you are connected.

Doing things you love can also provide an antidote to trauma – cooking favourite foods, lovingly repotting houseplants, or embarking on a fun creative project – anything you enjoy can connect you to your own power and experience of mastery as a source of healing. With my housemates here in Canterbury, we created a beautiful Easter feast – twice, first for Western and then for Orthodox Easter – with photos of our missing loved ones on the table. It was such a simple act, but nourishing on so many levels.

Time in nature connects us with the flow of life force which is in each of us. As we walk outdoors, feeling the earth below and the sky above, we can remember when we have come through challenges in the past, and let those memories reassure us that we will come through this now too. It was the same earth under our feet then, and it’s the same sky around us now and so it will be in the future when all of this is behind us.

Trees (photo: public domain)

Sometimes a larger crisis, like this pandemic, can put things in perspective, and bring us closer to forgiveness and healing. To support this inner process, I have found the Hawaiian indigenous practice of ho’oponopono to be very powerful. Hawaiian scholar and educator Mary Kawena Pukui describes it as a practice of forgiveness and reconciliation, for family members to ‘make right’ broken relations and prevent problems from erupting.

What can we do to foster forgiveness, move beyond blame, and focus on what we have in common? One recent story on the Karuna website tells how rival gangs in South Africa are now cooperating to deliver food to the vulnerable in their community. Amazing!

There is always something we can do, for ourselves and for others. And let’s not forget the larger context: life as we knew it has hit the pause button, and we have a chance to make some different choices in preparation for when we once again press ‘play’. Maybe we will find that all of us – and all of humanity – are suddenly dancing to a more beautiful tune.


Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s ritual dances since 1987, and is considered one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement. She trained in Intercultural Studies (1986) and Dance Movement Therapy (1990), and is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Myth, Cosmology, and the Sacred at Canterbury Christ Church University in England. Her primary research in Balkan and Greek villages seeks out songs, dances, rituals and textile patterns which descend from the Goddess cultures of Neolithic Old Europe, and which embody an ancient worldview of sustainability, community, and reverence for the earth. In 2018 Laura was chosen as an Honorary Lifetime Member of the Sacred Dance Guild in recognition of her ‘significant and lasting contribution to dance as a sacred art’. Her articles and essays on women’s ritual dances have appeared in numerous publications, including Re-Enchanting the Academy, Dancing on the Earth: Women’s Stories of Healing Through Dance, She Rises! Vol. 2, Inanna’s Ascent, Revisioning Medusa, and Spiritual Herstories – Call of the Soul in Dance Research. Laura is also Founding Director of the non-profit Athena Institute for Women’s Dance and Culture. She lives in Canterbury, Greece, and the Findhorn community in Scotland.

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Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright

I awakened this morning to frozen raindrops hanging from trees – jeweled beads, snow capped hills, and a cacophony of spring songs – I was serenaded by robins, chickadees, phoebes, goldfinches, and nuthatch tweets as I walked out the door into the early morning sun. I listened for the cardinals, who for the moment were absent. It was cold! 28 degrees at the end of April speaks to anomalies, or more realistically, Climate Change.

Yesterday we had rain, and working in the still damp air is literally a healing experience. The fragrance is a combination of chemicals released by soil-dwelling bacteria, oils released from plants during dry spells and ozone created when lightning splits oxygen and nitrogen molecules that then turn into nitric oxide.

I dug in baby trees that I had rescued from the side of the road the day before. Salt kills tender cedar seedlings if the road crew misses slaughtering them. Around Maine trees are worthless except as an economically viable product, a heartbreaking reality for someone like me. Continue reading “Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright”

Mother Tree Meditation by Sara Wright

A couple of days ago after an exhausting day of chores I lay out in the sun in my snow pants against the tree I call the “Mother Pine” because she shelters so many creatures from birds to bears. It was late afternoon and the sun was sparkling like a cracked diamond through a myriad of branches over my head. I closed my eyes and listened to an evergreen symphony. The songs produced by pines and other conifers as needles sway and touch soothed me. How much I loved the sound of light winds slipping through the trees.

I had recently returned from the desert where these sounds are totally absent. Instead, ferocious west winds hurl and churn dust and dirt in my face making it impossible to be outside in the winter and spring on many days. Because I have emphysema, I am too often trapped in my house by  polluted desert winds… To be present in this precious breezy moment allowed me to feel a deep abiding gratitude for the songs of trees I love… and Maine in general, although the rape of our forests continues unabated. Continue reading “Mother Tree Meditation by Sara Wright”

When the Tomb Feels Safer than the Garden by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I have always loved Lent and Holy Week. When I was young, I enjoyed the challenge of fasting. Holy Week was the powerful culmination of it all, so I would try to make the fast even harder then, like a sprint at the end of a marathon. Chocolate quickly got boring, so once I gave up all desserts. Another year, I gave up lying. (I’m a PK – Preacher’s Kid; enough said.) And then there’s the famous year sometime in my 20s when I decided I’d better give up swearing. (PK, remember?) Both my sister Trelawney and my husband just love to remind me of how I literally swore while walking out of the Ash Wednesday service. And didn’t even notice. And when they finally explained why they were laughing at me, I, of course, immediately cursed again. Sigh. Well, I respond each time, that’s why I decided to give it up in the first place!

My kids and I have also had a lot of fun observing Lent and Holy Week. Each year, it teaches us something new about abundance – especially amid the wealth of intensity and ritual during the last week. We are not legalistic about it; we just want to learn and grow together. One year, we limited plastic as much as possible. And I’ll never forget the year we gave up paper products. That was the first year we didn’t get sore noses, because we used handkerchiefs instead of tissues. As Trelawney likes to say, we finally stopped blowing our noses on a tree. Continue reading “When the Tomb Feels Safer than the Garden by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

Canada Goose by Sara Wright

Canadian Geese have been on my mind a lot lately. This past winter I have missed the skeins of geese that fly back and forth up and down the river appearing every single morning like clockwork. In Abiquiu when winter turned to spring I noted that the geese were behaving in much the same way the Sandhill cranes did before they migrated, splitting into pairs or groups of three and flying erratically. I was puzzled. I didn’t recall witnessing such behavior before this year. I wondered about migration patterns. Were the geese shifting their flight patterns too? Or perhaps the small groups I saw were staying year round? Some days it almost seemed as if these water birds were confused by something.

I saw three Canadian geese on the last predawn walk I took to the river/Bosque in New Mexico – just an hour or two before leaving for Maine. I knew that a perilous journey was ahead because we were driving cross-country from NM to ME. The C/virus was a frightening threat even though I brought all food, and planned to camp/use woods as bathroom. The first morning after my arrival at home I saw and heard three geese honking over my head. I was struck by the odd synchronicity remembering the mother goose tales of my childhood – and later as a graduate student when I learned about their mythology. Continue reading “Canada Goose by Sara Wright”

“Tree of Life” Dream by Sara Wright

Full Seed Moon 3/9/20

I see a beautiful fruit tree that is in full bloom with delicate pink blossoms and a man comes and attacks it violently – Oh, all the blossoms fall away, drifting tears cover the ground. Before this the little tree had bloomed “forever,” but man brought death to the blossoming tree and to the tree of life itself.

Little interpretation is necessary to understand this dream on a collective level. The Tree Holocaust is upon us. The Anthropocene is destroying more forests every second.  Billions of trees. The lungs of the earth. The Beings that gift us with rain. We have less than three percent of intact forest left on this planet.

“Man” represents the age of the Anthropocene – each one of us – male or female. Every human being on this earth is complicit in tree obliteration and the terrifying violence associated with this slaughter. It’s important to note that the tree is weeping. (My sense is that the tree isn’t just weeping for being murdered but that s/he is weeping for those who would annihilate her/him). Continue reading ““Tree of Life” Dream by Sara Wright”

The Healing Aspects of Ritual by Sara Wright

I have been writing and celebrating ritual for half of my life. The equinoxes and solstices and the cross quarter days (May 1, August 1, All Hallows, and February 2) comprise the eight spokes of the year. What I have learned from my research is that virtually every Indigenous culture follows this calendar in a general way – What I have gleaned from personal experience is that during these ritual periods my body is opened to the Powers of Nature in very specific ways that can be positive or/and negative.

Often I experience uncomfortable physical symptoms – feel an intense buzz, am struck by severe headaches, the feeling that I am walking on air without solid ground; I have unusual experiences with animals or plants; I am blind sided by radical insights in waking life or through dreaming. I have come to expect that usually there will be some kind of sign and if there isn’t one my body/mind isn’t in tune ritually and something is amiss – either my intentions, or the letting go (death) of some aspect of myself. The older I become the more I attempt to move through these periods with increased awareness that I am a receiver and need to be paying even closer attention… Continue reading “The Healing Aspects of Ritual by Sara Wright”

Walking in Moonlight Before the Pandemic by Marie Cartier and Kimberly Esslinger

photo by Kimberly Esslinger

For this month’s blog my wife, the poet Kimberly Esslinger, and I have written a joint poem—

 

Walking in Moonlight Before the Pandemic

 

and what is done to the least of these….

Where is the god of woman. Of cats. Of dead cats?

Of wives. Of midnight walks with dogs and the normalcy of silence.

And day becoming more like night in this stillness.  All the crowded spaces. Open.

Empty. A bag floats down at night. A grocery bag. Onto the hood of a

speeding hatchback. Not a bag. But now a cat. Someone’s cat.  Dead.

Just like that.  A hatchback. And yes, here I was, with my dogs, wanting to believe

it was alive. I start to call her, she. Did she just move? Did you see her move?

My wife has gloves. A box. A plan. But I push her away.

I believe in god. And she could heal this cat.

She would. She would if I would wait long enough. Continue reading “Walking in Moonlight Before the Pandemic by Marie Cartier and Kimberly Esslinger”

The Portal: How Do We Know What We Know? by Sara Wright

Every morning I walk to the river in the velveteen hour between the vanishing blue night and the coming of the first scarlet, pink, lavender, purple or golden ribbons that stretch across the horizon. Sometimes clouds with heavy gray eyelids mute first light. Either way all my senses except that of sight are on high alert; a deep peace embraces me in the dark. My body knows the way. I murmur to the willows as I pass through the veil and under their bowed bridge. Their response is muted, a song beneath words.

At first my footsteps are barely audible on the narrow serpentine dirt path but as I pass by the river I note that she too is singing; and my senses quicken. If the Crane spirits are with me I hear the first brrring of Sandhill cranes as they take flight. “Freezing” I am crane struck; the involuntary need to stand still is overpowering. Body -mind viscerally absorbs Oneness as I breathe in a multitude of crane songs or perhaps only that of a few. Now my eyes are suddenly open, straining to see the familiar brrring materialize into startling graceful heads, necks, and stream lined bodies…. I note the shimmering waters beginning to mirror blushing pastels or the gray smoke that stains the horizon. Sometimes these hues deepen into rose, blood orange, or scarlet. Continue reading “The Portal: How Do We Know What We Know? by Sara Wright”