rebirth

I have been thinking about rebirth so much these past few weeks, maybe even months, as the animals of rebirth began appearing for our monthly journeys in the Spring. Jaguar showed up first, the Queen of Shadow work and the one who often appears for dismemberment, then Snake, the shedder of skin and the symbol of transformation, and then in August, Beetle came…a small guide of rebirth who turns literal shit to nourishment, recycling our difficult experiences into powerful spiritual lessons. My personal work with Vulture prepares me, of course, intimately connecting to death and rebirth.

Through this entire process with breast cancer, it has felt like the end of a dis-ease, not the beginning. A personal invitation to be reborn into the healed Angie, the one who has done the work. That might sound strange, but it felt like the culmination of many years of working through trauma, grief, soul loss, and heart chakra imbalances. Like there is this part of you—over the heart, that has manifested cancer in my milk ducts. Interestingly, the cancer developed in a breast I was never able to produce milk out of. That is not exactly true. The milk was produced, but it could not be expressed. (Is that a metaphor or what?) I had a child who died, and I remember how engorged and painful my breasts were, filled with milk and no child to drink. I put huge cabbage leaves on it, until they withered and I smelled like an Eastern European soup. I would cry in the shower as my breasts would weep milk. Except the right one. It would just stay hard and engorged and no milk would weep until it just stopped trying.

During those days, I often thought about this class on Death and Dying in college with one of my mentors Dr. John Raines. He said that babies cry because they know they deserve food, comfort and love. And the cry, he explained, was exactly designed to be uncomfortable for humans, it is a noise we want to stop. It is only when they cry and no one comes that babies stop crying. My breasts were the same. They eventually stopped weeping milk because no baby came to feed.

It is interesting that this tidbit came from a class on Death and Dying. We have those moments we face death both metaphorically and literally. Maybe we survive a great trauma that threatened our life, or we stand and face our demons and get sober, or we ask for a new way to be in the world. In the process of earth medicine initiation, we undergo the process of rebirth through the shamanic experience of dismemberment, where, in the journey state, we literally ask our animals to rip us apart, tearing at us, killing us in journey, so that we may rebirth. With Vulture as my guide, she asked me to release my soul. She could not tear me apart alive. This process of releasing brought up so many emotions and feelings of helplessness that had permeated my life…how do I let go when all I have been doing is holding on tight? It is a zen koan, a paradox for survivors. Somehow I did, though. That is the thing…somehow we do. We do it when the holding on is killing us.

When I had my first chakra balancing many many years ago, my heart was completely closed. The pendulum did not move. It just stood stock still. It disturbed me. I had learned through my many years of life how to shut my heart off. Immediately, the self-punishing thoughts flooded in. “Oh my God, I am broken. My heart is shut. I am a monster.” (This is why I teach my students to be kind and gentle when doing a chakra balancing.) It has been decades-long work to open my heart and to trust people. It was well before I became a healer that I started, but I knew then that the pendulum was telling me something I needed to pay attention to. Opening my heart involved many healers, many therapists, many releases, many times feeling so vulnerable and fearful that I took steps backward and then when I was ready, started back on the path.

I say this because there is no healer that isn’t a wounded healer. Our DNA, our strength as healers comes from our wounds. It comes from our humanness, not our divinity or otherworldliness. While I appreciate there are many who feel shadow work is not as important as light work, I politely, yet adamantly, beg to differ. Any lightwork done without being aware of your wounds ultimately will take you back on the same path again and again. You encounter the same lessons, the same kinds of people (friends, lovers, colleagues, enemies.) Our wounds are invisible blocks that keep us in an eternal loop on the spiritual path, like Sisyphus, the Greek King who cheated death twice and was forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. Sisyphus’s story has come to represent any futile, yet difficult task. Unless, we can identify our own triggers, wounds, and blocks; make them visible then dismantle them, we stay in this endless Sisyphean cycle. This is the rebirth. To simply emerge from the tedious work, to slowly break down that rock, our wounds into smaller pieces, so then we can break that cycle. Then our journey isn't so tedious.

Where shamanic and earth medicine work excel is in the rituals, ceremonies, symbolic work of that rebirth. We call in the snake, the beetle, the vulture to help us find a way to break our cycles. This work is a lifelong process. I have been intimately involved with this trauma work and work around my own heart for so long it is almost comical, but also I didn’t start it to be a good healer or to write a newsletter or blog post. I started it because that heart, the one closed and unable to weep, demanded I look at it. This petulant, hurt child within me said, “I cannot be ignored any longer. I will not be neglected. I need to be loved.” It began crying and I began responding. And in turn, I healed those around me, who tried to get into that closed heart for years.

Self-care and self-love sound like such bullshit terms, but they are juicy, deep, life-altering journeys. They aren’t just bubble baths and dark chocolate and masturbation. Self-love embodies self-compassion, self-care, self-worth, and self-actualization. We must remother ourselves, or refather ourselves. That has been the challenge—seeing and loving myself unconditionally. But when I struggle, I look at my own children and think, "You are just like them--beautiful, perfect, worthy of care."

It is strange to see my body without breasts. I don't NOT like it. It is just an adjustment. I am almost starting to like it more. I have been trying to take some time with no bra and no shirt to just get used to how I look now—a huge scar running across the place where my babies suckled. My belly sticks out like a big Buddha belly and my chest goes in, almost concave. Right now it is all puckered and there are major folds in it that are angry and tight. They will soften over time. Just like the other scars I have healed in my life—things soften with time. I can honestly say that I feel complete, even without my breasts. This body does not seem ugly, or unlovable, or unworthy at all. It is simply an adjustment.

This is what healing gives you—unconditional radical self-acceptance. I have been working on it for years by demanding I love myself. I thought that if I just said it enough, wrote it out on enough intentions, it would happen, but the truth is—that isn't what did it. You are not in control of the healing timeline. It is something you cannot fake. You simply love yourself until you are willing to accept the love. That's the thing--for me, self-love was about accepting the love, not giving it. Giving love was easy for me, but accepting it was a whole other thing altogether. You become gentle with your inner voice. One day something weird happens—you get diagnosed with breast cancer, or your partner leaves you, or you notice that your face is wrinkled and your hair grey, or you break something valuable and through this long rebirthing process you realize you aren't mad at you, or disappointed, or embarrassed, or ashamed. You stand tall and you say, “Yep, that is me, still me, still the same me as yesterday, still worthy of love and acceptance. I love you. You got this, kid.”

You got this, kid. I love you.