Letter to my children: Me Too, Aquarian Age, Self-Swaddling
/My dearest Beloveds,
Recently, a teacher shared with me an amazing way of looking at the world right now - to paraphrase, “Our country has exposed our sexual traumas without a commensurate healing - it is affecting all of us. The trauma lives in our bodies and everyone is triggered.” When she said this, I immediately thought of Tarana Burke, founder of Me Too, and her concerns about unearthing such sexual violence without therapy, without safe spaces, without support.
It feels as though our country is a baby having a meltdown yet no adult is swaddling us close and singing to us - helping us process the pain. I can’t help but think if it is related to this unprocessed sexual national wounding - especially as so much of the news is being dominated recently by our former president who bragged of being able to “grope women with abandon,” in Brit speak.
When I was 15 I was grabbed from behind on a pubic bus and pressed against a man’s erection. My first lover cringed when I was on my period, I felt so ashamed and dirty as he cleaned himself. When I was in college/grad school I drank too much and woke up half way through having sex - twice, with two different people. When I went through medically induced menopause at age 34 (Bean, after you were frozen) one of the nurses told me that, “Corinna, your ovaries look like raisins.” These sexual bruises and hurts live in my cells and my beingness. All of these memories are part of who I am.
Why I am telling you this, my loves?
First of all, to share my tale of physical wounding so you know you are not alone. Your beautiful body with all of it is wisdom and glory is just as perfect with your scars from life as was before. Sexual hurt is real and can be traumatic but is not all of you - don’t let yourself ever be defined by your life scars. Scars are part of your beauty. Life is both/and not either/or.
You are still you - unharmed, beloved by The Good, a child of the Universe. Read Mary Magdalene Revealed, to start learning about the early history of Christianity (and thereby our American cultural antecedents) in the 4th century codifying repression of the female, the sin of the body, the desires of the flesh, the blood and stillness and dark wombs of The Good removed from one’s experience of the Divine. Then go and read the source materials (ideally in the original languages) and decide for yourself what to think.
Second of all, if anything ever happens where you are wounded physically or emotionally - seek safe spaces to share and be heard and to emote and process the emotions. That is important. Don’t bottle up your pain - it has a way of leaking out in unexpected ways.
I feel bottled emotion are part of the why behind the rise in uterine cancer (could be also a causation correlation discussion) - especially the sharp disparities of uterine cancer diagnoses between women whose ancestors were slaves vs women whose ancestors were slave-owners - or as NY Times says it Uterine Cancer Is on the Rise, Especially Among Black Women. According to the expert panel the rates of death are 2 to 1.
Of course women who were raped by their masters for over 250 years as a way of supplying free labor for plantations would have trauma around the uterus - it would be madness to expect anything else.
Please take a small moment to pause and pray for those women treated like incubators and those men who were so removed emotionally from what their penises were doing.
Pause. Inhale.
Pause. Pray.
Pause. Exhale.
Third of all, be kind. Never assume someone is short with you because they “are mean”. It is way more likely they are in their Cranky Monster. You never know someone’s story of trauma and pain. You never know if a memory of past or present abuse is being scraped open by an article they read or a conversation they had or the curl of their hair that day.
Finally, and most importantly of all, this is supposed to be happening right now. So many of my teachers talk of this time of transition. We are lucky to be alive during such a momentous time in our history as humans.
According to my Kundalini Yoga teacher training we are in the transition time from Pices to Aquarius. The cosmic vibrations are affecting our energetic bodies. As I spoke about earlier, Pices has very different energy than Aquarius.*
We talk about the electrical nodes in your heart - and your whole body. The electrical system that you are as a human body is being flooding by Aquarian energy from the stars. That cosmic energy flooding our systems is like your body is a drinking straw attached to a firehouse. Or a stream flooded by a dam breaking upriver. Or a wee phone charge cord being hit by lightening.
Or, Rob Wergin puts it in his latest Transmission Series:
This energy is relentless, usually there are periods of calm whereby we can reset - but in the last few weeks of June it has been relentless and it will continue to be into the next month… All of this is happening because your energy pathways are opening up. Density is compacted energies that we have not released for lifetimes… Know, trust, and believe this energy is to open you up, to release blocks, to set you free.
It is important to be grateful to these energies. It is important to do something everyday to calm your nervous system. Take a salt bath. Stay off TV. Patience and trust are important.
It is easy to go into fear and worry with all of this intense energy. This energy unleashes dreams, worries, body aches. We go a little cuckoo when we can’t figure it out.
Chaos creates courage.
There is so much going on and it is important to understand that as an observer not a participant.
Patience and trust are important, my beloveds. Calming our nervous system is important. Self-soothing is the only way we can distance ourselves enough from craziness to “be an observer not a participant.” We all need to be self-swaddling when faced with such energies. The politics of our country (and countries all over the world) are evidence of this energy flooding our nervous systems. We are going cuckoo personally and also in the body politic.
I am going to say that again, my dearest children. If every person on this planet were calming their nervous system daily we would be reading different stories in the newspapers.
You are no longer babies, no one can swaddle you but you. No one else can calm you down but you. We practice techniques now that will hopefully set you up later on - to get out of your monkey mind - to get out of listening to the tiny, mad ideas of the ego. If you can recognize emotions and watch your feelings in your body now I trust that skill will only deepen and strengthen as you age.
We have spoken about kicking pillows, screaming into the couch, beating rugs. Recognizing when you are in your cranky monster and breathing or asking for space till you calm down. Your, at times, choleric momma models this a lot for you (when my brain is functioning).
There are many good choices for dissipating anger and overwhelm so it doesn’t get stuck in your physical body as blockages. Blockages that would just need to be dealt with later, so it is better to not have the energy stick to you at all.
Scream.
Jump up and down.
Get it out of you.
In a dear friend’s family they scream into each other’s butts. I love this idea. As she shared with me - “usually you end up laughing, which solves the whole problem.”
Glorious wisdom.
* For those of you feeling triggered by the whoo whoo association of the “Age of Aquarius” here is the astrological science behind the term. “The Age of Aquarius isn’t part of astronomy. It’s an astrological age, which occurs because of a real motion of Earth known as precession. Precession causes the identity of the Pole Star to change over time. The cycle of precession lasts 25,800 years. And there are 12 constellations of the zodiac. So, roughly every 2,150 years, the sun’s location in front of the background stars – at the time of the vernal equinox – moves in front of a new zodiacal constellation. A new age might be said to begin at that point.” Thank you Earth Sky .
