Planting New Seeds

The medicine bag is gone. 5 months it hung in the tree on my favorite trail. I don't know how many times I walked by it. Countless loops through the woods where I remember it every time I reach that part of the hike. At first, feeling as if I had torn my heart out of my chest and just left it hanging there for the wildlife to consume. What a sad and bitter meal that would have been for them. I often felt an overwhelming desire to go and retrieve it no matter the cost to me. But to clutch the broken pieces to me would keep them forever broken. This was beyond me and I knew it.

For the first few months, I had to remind myself that this was no longer mine to worry about, that I have given it over to my ancestors. To trust that they would protect and heal what I could not. And that if I gave in and took it back that they might see that as a sign that I do not trust them. I trust them absolutely. So I began to train myself not to penetrate the glamour used to hide it from view. The ancestors did their part to help me by distracting me with deer, a fox, countless squirrels and a hawk or two. I see all kinds of wildlife on this trail. But for the 5 months that the magic took, I had close-up encounters with the wildlife near there. These were such luminous experiences for me that I forgot anything except what I was seeing. I mean what is my problem compared to the sweetness of watching a fawn nurse or having an owl swing low and silent near your head as the dusk turns to evening.

Over the last few months, I have felt the need to look for it become fainter. Not that I couldn't stir that back into a fulminating craziness in no time. But I hiked with more presence and less thinking. I enjoyed what there was more and more. Until finally I stopped looking altogether. One last sighting in the Dreamtime of the fate of that and it was gone.

In an ironic cosmic weirdness, during those same five months there has also been an overwhelming need to have a man in my life. Not a desire, a NEED. The kind I haven't experienced since high school where a cool boyfriend was entree into a world that excluded me - a world of cheerleaders, parties and popularity. I have managed most of my life without a man in it. So, this felt irrational as hell, but I couldn't seem to choose otherwise. Nor did I understand why. 4 short term relationships where the lesson seemed to be about saying - I don't want this. 4 nice guys, each suitable in some ways, but pegged out wrong in others. Forcing me over and over to say NO. Then BOOM it was over. That need suddenly vanishing as quickly as it came.

The boy crazyness ended almost coincident with the bag making its transition. So I know the two are linked. I just don't know how. I don't have to. I am glad that both are at an end though because that kinda crazy requires a lot of energy.

So these days I am self-caring and reclaiming what was lost. In order to honor the work they did on my behalf, I have added some letterboxes to my favorite trail to coax some others into this space where magic happens and the ancestors walk so clearly among us. Now I will look for those instead.