I walked

I walked with Tessa yesterday in the woods and hills of Point Reyes.  The dark underneath of the world.  The sour, wet earth, a running creek, trunks with caverns in them, great mothers.  It comforts me, to know there is a great mother who holds the dark places, the wombs, who knows the darkness that I walk, the path of loss, of wanting to go down down. Not that I want to die, no.  But I want to be in the dark. The trees held that for me.  Gnarled and old and crouching by the water, sprawled out toward the places of light, winding to get a piece of the sun. I felt just like them. They are covered in moss, and when their turn comes for the sun to hit them, they glow, all around, the moss radiates the light. Tessa said, "mind, remember this."  A glowing tree. 

Since I grew up in the woods I know about shadow and light.  I know that it is mostly shadow, and that the light wavers.  But you notice it more, it has a shape and a heart, you move toward it, you feel it on you.  It encases things, it loves them.  I need both. I need the mother who understands the dark, who isn't afraid of it, who knows that it is a part of us, a part of the earth, not to shy away from it, be big enough to take it in, to be it.  This is a part of what we have lost in putting women into a smaller place, this big mama holding of the shadow. Women hold this in their hearts. To be the place where your child grows, to talk to your baby, sing to him, eat for him, and know him, to give birth to him, to then let him go, back into the arms of the earth, the arms of GOD, this takes a heart with a dark forest and a little creek and a floor where things die and rot and then become fertile again, fertile for another life. I am proud of this dark place. 

I am grateful for the father sun also, to shine on my skin and make me look up. We walked into the meadow, into the sun, the trees where on a hill, to the west.  Their branches moved up and down, just a little. They said, "that is the mother of Otto. She brought him here." And they knew you.  They knew who you were and that you came. I love you baby. I am glad you came here, to me, to my belly, to my heart. It is hard to keep taking steps but I am getting braver. And I will keep visiting that place with the trees with the caverns in them, with their openings into the black, because they know what this is.