This piece is an extract from my contribution to a book called 2020 Vision, to be published by The Unbound Press in 2021.
It has been rather a year.
Gently place your palm down on your heart, close your eyes if you like, take a slow full breath in through you nose feeling your body expand, exhale slowly and completely feeling your body soften. Tune into that place under your hands, the cavern of the very back of your heart. Does any guidance or message come through for you? Maybe you hear it maybe you don’t, but what is for sure is in deep in your heart lives your truth.
Whatever is true for you in the many states you may have experienced in 2020 from; expansive exciting opportunity, perhaps a time to take a sacred pause, to an utterly devastating grief stricken mind-mess (or any of these and every emotion in between!) we have been in this together, navigating a collective experience which we simply have no blueprint for. Yet individually each one of us may be uncovering and revealing different truths long buried. We cannot deny that this year has seen the world confront truths that have never before been brought so glaringly under the spotlight, alongside the reinforcing of truths fundamental to the human experience.
In May while most of the world was feeling the strain of state enforced house arrest, on the screens of our coveted devices we saw a black man named George Floyd brutally murdered by a white police officer. In lockdown we were a captive audience to this atrocity. For a moment white people everywhere had a fleeting glimpse of the truth about life under Patriarchy for those who are not white. The world went into shock. Ardent battle cries that racism must end (which it really must) were voiced worldwide. We could speculate and stumble into Conspiracy -Ville about the interests of those who fund the BLM marches, but speculation aside the truth was wailing to break out, exposing the dominance of Whiteness and its visceral impact on those it stops at nothing to control. The true horror of the Police’s institutionalised racially motivated violence continues. But we have all seen the truth now, it will not simply get back in its box and zip its inconvenient mouth like a good girl. Truth does not care about playing the agreeable game.
We were reminded this year of the ingrained deception that if you are male, white and in a position of power, years of colonialism through Patriarchy gave you a free pass to inflict harm on people who do not look like you, ones you perceive as other. If you have power over another person, wear a Police uniform (optional) and also happen to be visibly standing on his neck, you can reduce a man to cry out for his Mother, crying out for the one who gave him life to return for his final moments and comfort him through his transition to a place where racist BS does not exist. The place where there is only One. We all need the grace and comfort of the Divine Feminine Mother archetype this year, given what our eyes and souls have seen. I’ve needed to be comforted by in the open, unconditional arms of the Wild. People have been seeping out into parks and fields drawn toward nature and the reliability of Her unending life and death cycles held by Mother Earth. Nature does not tell lies.
We were dosed more 2020 truth serum by Tara Reade who courageously went public with her disclosure alleging Joe Biden sexually harassed and sexually assaulted her in the early nineties. I had to write ‘alleging’ because no charges have been brought against Biden. Let’s be very clear; I believe Ms Reade. The US Democratic Party purport to “Believe Women” when we come forward to finally utter words that may have been keeping us prisoner for years; I was abused. I was assaulted. I was raped. I have spoken these words and felt the grief and unnecessary skin crawling shame of disclosing sexual violence. But I am clear that speaking my truth set me free to awaken my recovery.
HIStory has rarely favoured truth tellers. Those who lift the veil giving us a glimpse that things are not as they seem while shining light on to the abuses of power that have long dominated History, have time and again been met with at best ridicule and at worst, death. The searing truth of their lives snuffed out by hierarchical powers which attempt to bury truth in all her manifestations. They tried to burn all the truth tellers. Razing on pyres whole generations who chose to live life in reverence of the Earth and Her magic instead of bowing to an all seeing all judging Male Godhead. Wiping out the wise women, witches, initiates, teachers of the Mystery Schools, seers, healers, apothecaries, oracles and most of all the heretics who dared believe and practice a different truth. They lived the truth of sovereignty, discernment, knowledge of their inner wisdom found in altered states, of gnosis versus subjugation, control and power.
Their bodies were burned but their essence lives in each of us who choose to observe, question, discern and be autonomous to live our loving, aligned truth. That is the Sacred Feminine brand of truth. She who begins as a whisper when we feel something is that little bit off, misaligned from our truth that is inside us but is yet to be articulated, to being that Wild Creature lying belly down on the earth, pounding the ground with fists when her sovereignty is threatened, when choices over her own body are stripped, when consent is stolen. The Establishment has a penchant for abuse, for squeezing, censoring and choking the sound of truth. But the Feminine finds a way to slip free, snaking up, turning on Her heel to say: No. Enough now. Come reside with me where truth lives. She won’t stop telling HERstory.
She won’t stop even though we live in times when people are still killed for living their Truth. Modern Witch hunts. I sometimes have to pretend these things do not happen because it is not on my doorstep. It can be horribly distressing to consider the huge amount of human rights abuses and general maltreatment perpetrated by Patriarchy in the 21st century. People are murdered because they are not the right colour or the right gender or the right sexuality. People are imprisoned in concentration camps because the brand of patriarchy where they reside considers them the wrong religion, deemed parasitic to the nation they call home, subhuman and expendable. I felt overwhelmed earlier this year by the sheer amount of shit going down. I leaned deeply and strongly into my Reiki and Yoga practice. Like the rest of the world I needed to be soothe. I am grateful to have these practices for self-soothing. Something is shifting both in the micro and macro and I am optimistic…
So earlier this year I put my hand on my heart and began writing my truth. A book has been forming with my heart all over the pages. Truth on the page became medicine, cooling the fires of anger stoked by falsity on all the medias. I want you to feel the Truth Medicine too, it works.
Pull Down Your Mask,
Spit Out Your Gag
Speak Truth.
Connect with your Truth in 2021 with Reiki Level One Training.