The slow passage of time
as I wait for you to appear to me. Deeper into the night I go
Searching… Searching
For your face o my Beloved.
Then slowly, too slowly for time
Your shadow emerges.
First, a glimpse,
Then clearer and clearer in the darkness.
Oh all this waiting was worth it,
For your flawed perfection.
For the knowledge,
That you were with me all along.
Though it took complete darkness
To know that you were there
Last week, a friend paid me one of the highest compliments a woman could pay another. We were talking about women and she said to me, “Babe, you to me seem really comfortable in your sexuality. You don’t play it, but you sit in it really well.”
Sexuality is a funny thing.
In my teens, I remember being really uncomfortable about it, trying to hide it behind baggy t-shirts and changing the way I moved. The teenage years are awkward anyway. Suddenly no matter how you try to keep it that way, the way you walk becomes less angular, there are hips to maneuver and don’t even start with the breasts. It is like you are relearning to live in the same skin.
Arguably, some people go through life that way, but ideally you’ll grow out of it.
Dancing helped me as it made me more comfortable in the shape of a woman. I say shape because I was shaped like one but really hadn’t settled into it.
Then I turned 19 and dated an older guy (he was only present in my circle of friends because he was repeating his final year for the 2nd time or something). We didn’t last very long. Ironically one of the reasons was because I didn’t want to sleep with him, but it was around there that my sexuality took centre stage. It was not so much sexuality, more sexiness – the kind that was in your face. I had discovered the control dial, and it was turned up all the way. It was that insecure, rather dirty knowledge of having the power to put it out there but not follow through.
The leap from the awkward teenage years to being insecure in your twenties can be a pretty fluid, and organic one.
Looking back at my life from my 30s, it’s damn well comical.
I’d like to say that some days I can’t believe that girl was me, but that would be a lie. I know for a fact that it was. Mind you, I was in long term relationships for about 8 of the 10 years of my twenties, so I wasn’t out there all that much. When I was, it was funny.
Even now sometimes, I see myself in the younger girls sexually try to get the attention of men. There is that very pronounced sexiness, pushing it forward, radiating it from the skin. In a world like ours where everything is loud, bright and quick, that’s what a lot of men will notice first. Apparently competition is tough in the nightclubs of Sydney and the pages of Tinder so I suppose the more you lather on sexiness, the better your chances are.
But really, are they?
It all comes down to what you want. I’ve always been more a relationship girl than a sleep around girl, but if I am honest, almost all my relationships in my twenties started with sexual intent. The invitation was put out there pretty early in the game, and then the rest of the time was spent trying to build a relationship from that. It was how I comforted, resolved arguments and settled discussions. I would do anything to keep a man from walking away back then even when he treated me awfully.
A testament to how uncomfortable I was in my own skin.
The transformative powers of yoga and meditation brought that fact up in my face.
To deal with it I chose celibacy and donned this energetic burka through resolve and intention. Suddenly I was invisible in the sexual sense.
It was only meant to be a year.
The first of which went by quickly. It was when I was about to lift it that the biggest test happened. My dad passed away in January 2013. With something like that you want someone to lean on, the comfort of touch, the distraction of a kiss, just to know that someone is there and that you are wanted.
I must be a sucker for punishment. I extended the period instead.
It has been 15 months since my dad passed away. How I wanted to have someone distract me from the nightmares that came almost every night those first three months. In that state though, it would have been a need instead of a connection. It’s hard to connect when you can’t even find the ground beneath your feet.
You might think I’m just going on about whatever and losing the thread of the sexuality conversation. I’m not. I’ve found that being comfortable with sexuality comes hand in hand with being comfortable on your own, in your own skin on this ground. The last two and a half years, I’ve played with it a bit, first shutting it down completely, then letting it buzz and then organically just growing into my skin as a woman.
The effect on me is that I am fully here with no corners left dimmed. I feel myself filling out this skin and nobody else needs to be in here. You don’t need to be having sex to sit fully in your sexuality. Some have said to me that I am not honouring my woman-ness by not having sex. I believe that I am doing just that by wanting to wait for someone who can see me as a complete woman with a brain, a heart and a soul.
My ban has been lifted but I am in no rush. Well meaning friends try to push it but really, it is not needed.
Sometimes you have bad days and you need someone else to make you feel sexy, but really sexuality is not directly related to the sexual act. It is the skin you wear without shame whatever your preference. It wraps itself around you from the inside out. It walks with you when your feet stand comfortably on the ground. It expands and contracts with your breath, part of your life force. It isn’t related to your height, your weight or the colour of your hair, it is how you stay in it all.
It scares me sometimes, but it is a part of me. It is this woman-ness, the ability and strength to put the heart out there and the courage to allow it to break, then to rebuild over and over again. It is beautiful, soft, vulnerable and magical but solid and real at the same time. It is the soft shawl that can wrap itself around a blade without getting torn to shreds. As much as it scares me however, I love it. I love the freedom that comes with being a woman, the fluidity, passion and flame and ability to be strong in surrender. Not here to be conquered or saved but able to step into a space like donning a second skin – daughter, sister, friend, lover, team-mate, partner, the one who stands behind you or by your side depending on the day and occasion, warrior, nurse, teacher, student and everything in between.
Finally gaining the recognition that I am all of it and yet none of it… And getting here, oh what an adventure it has been.
Female Mudra
They say the only thing that’s constant is change, and whoever they might be, they are right. Nothing ever stays the same for longer than is necessary and even in the stillness things are moving, gathering, becoming what they should be.
I am supposed to be this person who facilitates change and yet, I still feel myself scared shitless when big things shift.
You think you’ve reached this destination, but then you realise that that is not the case at all, that there really is no ‘destination.’ It is but an illusion, an oasis where you may rest for a bit before things go on again. You’ve done all this fucking work, but life just doesn’t stand still. There’s still more work to be done.
Underneath it all of course, is fear.
That fear.
You know that feeling. When your stomach does flips at the thought that things could be different. It’s not that this place here is better than what could be. It is just that through familiarity, it has become safe.
It’s like being in your bed when you have all the pillows arranged just so and your spot is perfectly set, comfortable, warm enough but not too warm, soft enough but not too soft. The thought of having to move the setting just seems a bit like too much work. Just a little bit unsettling.
What if you adjust but it doesn’t work out and you have to readjust?
But you’ll have to readjust anyway.
Summer moves into winter, and as it gets colder, you will move things around, thicker blankets, more pillows.
Then when it grows warm again, you adjust again.
It is just the way of the world.
Situations change as they must. Roles change. And scariest of all is the fact that relationships too evolve.
But why, why are these big changes so scary?
Why do we do this thing where we go back and forth?
Why delay the inevitable?
I suppose it is fear and not knowing.
Perfectly valid reasons.
But fear when mixed with a touch of desire turns to excitement, and knowing, well, what do we know anyway? We can only know things when we get there.
You only have three choices.
Try to run in the opposite direction.
Stay the same.
Or surrender and move forward to something that is petrifying but has the potential of being one of the best choices you’ve ever made.
Which will it be?
Some things are meant to happen anyway.
You might fight, deny, bury it under the excuses stemming from your past experiences, but this is here.
This is now.
We think so much about reasons not to… but what if this time, we focused instead of the reason to do it.
A flower will bloom when it should as it should, and trying to keep it as it is will only break the petals. When it is time too, the petals fall off, making room for another incarnation as it should.
The question now is:
Will you let the lotus bloom or will you break the petals by trying to keep it closed?
I am trying to write something that I can give to you but the words are taking their time. I am trying to reach out and touch you with my words, the same way I saw two friends touching each other the other day. There was so much love in that instance, it stopped me in my tracks. There was this giving and receiving, total trust and surrender. She moved the boundaries between them as she ran her fingers over his skin and he softened into her touch. The most intimate of moments, yet a moment so pure the connection between them radiated through the room.
Are we like that too?
When I lower my boundaries, stepping away from the world of social media and instant messaging to have a conversation with you is that what I am doing? Our friendship is the same as a million other friendships in this world, and yet, it is one that is unique to only us. We stand there, skin against skin and sometimes, I can feel your heart beating underneath this skin, inside this shell that is your body. Your voice has become familiar to me, and your touch, sometimes a challenge, but at other times a source of comfort and safety.
With you, I am learning trust. With you, I am learning that I can allow for moments of softness. I am learning that if I need you, you are there. With you, I am learning that there is more intimacy in the moments we spend together conversing and breathing than I have known with lovers in the dark. We know each other like this. You. Me. A knowing look, a moment shared between two people. I know how the skin of your hands feel, the rumble of your laughter, the sound of your breath. So intimate, so real, a solid entity in a world where everything else is air.
Do you know that to me, you are fucking beautiful. All the things you consider flaws, the parts that you hide from the world, the things that make you uncool – these are the things that make me love you. I know you have your mask on for a reason, as do I. It keeps us safe, but sometimes I wonder if instead of fearing the person behind the mask is unworthy of love, we are more afraid of someone loving this person. Not being loved allows us to remain in our little world, so we love people we feel we are unworthy of and we love people who are unworthy of us. Perhaps deep down we know that it is when love comes and is returned in kind that our carefully constructed worlds might change.
So we build boundaries.
We raise our masks.
We write stories.
We make the things that are already happening impossible. Yet here they are. Possible. Happening. We just choose not to see them. We find that one more thing that we have to work on before this can happen, we tweak and change, we make ourselves busy, leaving no space, so we can have just a little more time in this safety. We think we are not ready, but the fact that this is happening means that we are.
In a way that is unique only to us, we know each other. Before you say a word, I know that it is you standing close to me, a completely foreign but familiar entity. We’ve known each other for a while, yet every day we are just starting get to know each other. You continue to change as do I. Our lives continue to evolve, moving between emptiness and fullness, and yet, in these cycles, we are still here for each other.
Why are we fighting this gravity between us?
Why do we find that one more reason to not allow ourselves to just surrender to this moment, this thing that sits between us silently?
It is bigger than you and I together combined. It is that space that engulfs our two lives, creating a whole new space in the process. It is allowing the universe’s wrecking ball to break everything that we have built so far so we may rebuild again. It is allowing that final hold to drop and allowing our hearts to love, really love, to be uncomfortable, to be awkward, to find ourselves in a strange new land and to allow our separate universes to turn upside down.
It is the courage to let that raging person sitting behind the mask finally bask in the embrace of love.
A few weeks ago, my mother came to visit. In an effort to organise my kitchen in a way that makes sense to her, she used wall hooks to hang up my cooking utensils. Unfortunately however, the wall hooks were hung with tape and since she left, they have been falling off the wall one at a time leaving no marks. It made me think of how we do a lot of things in life. To save on initial time/money/effort, we tend to just stick things in place using methods that are cheapest/quickest/most efficient, but as we learn in management 101, the most efficient might not be the most effective.
This comes as a reflection as I have committed to a 40 Day Yoga Revolution. This journey includes five days of studio practice, one day of home practice, a day of rest and meditations twice a day along with some journaling. I am learning very quickly that it is one thing to just put your name on the board, but quite another thing to allow for the practice to really affect you. Putting your name down without any real fire is akin to using sticky tape to hang a photo frame on the wall. It is the continuing practice that is a challenge, especially when you somehow end up teaching four classes a day.
In our world of quick solutions and instant changes 40 days does seem like a long time. However as the first week of the revolution ends, I am reflecting on all aspects of my life. By nature, I am highly impatient. My right shoulder is a work in progress so side planks, arm balances, inversions and even crow pose sometimes makes it feel uncomfortable. In my early days of practice, I would get extremely frustrated with the shoulder, and I would push through. Then of course, I would hurt it, and not be able to do anything for a while. Through the years, I have become more patient and careful with my shoulder and apart from every once in a while, it is progressing for the better.
Ah time… That thing that we all think we don’t have. When I worked in the corporate world, nobody had enough time, or money, or anything. Everything had to be done yesterday, and of course, tomorrow, everything falls apart. In relationships, we are constantly rushing to get ‘there’, wherever there is – marriage, kids, etc. Two of the biggest relationships of my life started within two months of knowing my previous partners. Sure they lasted for four and three years respectively, but when times got challenging, we didn’t have the underlying friendship to allow for healthy communication.
Time is relative.
In our world, 40 days is a long time, but in the grand scheme of things, what is 40 days after all?
We can implement personal change in a day, but it is time that will tell us if this change sticks. We can overhaul an organisation or a country just by writing a piece of policy but it is time that will let the change settle through the people involved. We can look at someone and be attracted in an instant, but it is time that will allow us to see if the two lives can fit together.
Why am I doing this?
Like a lot of people, my life is pretty set. I have done things the same way for long enough that it has become a safe cocoon.
As scary as it is for me, I am doing this to allow for the possibility of things coming into my life that will change it. It could be a change in my meditation, a change in my practice, growth with work, the courage to lower my defenses when I do feel attraction to someone, a relationship that affects me more than just physically, a new idea or a new way of waking up in the morning. I am here to let time do what it may. Instead of using sticky tape, I am allowing for a mark to be left on the wall.
Today marks the 20th day of Ramadan for Muslims all over the world. During this month, among other things, we refrain from food and drink from sunup to sundown. Of course, seeing as how it’s winter in Australia, it isn’t a very long day at all.
Like others in the world, I am also practicing Ramadan.
I have been practicing this since I was eight years old, but it wasn’t until I started living alone that I really understood the meaning of it. When you are surrounded by family, every night is a big feast and you end up eating more than you actually need because you’re not really being conscious. In recent years, this for me has become a month of introspective consideration, of early mornings, waking up before the sun for a solitary meal and revelling in the quiet of that time of day.
This year, Ramadan changed for me yet again.
It is the first year that I have really needed to manage my energy so that I could continue practicing, work, and still serve others in my yoga teaching. I must admit that the first two weeks were a bit of a trial as I was working six day weeks, running a conference where my shortest day was 10 hours long, and teaching on top of that.
A lot had to change just to remain standing those first two weeks.
Where I would previously go back to sleep after a cup of tea, a date and some water in the morning, this year I have had to carefully consider my meals so they may serve me through the day. I am lucky as I am not finicky about labelling my food as ‘breakfast food,’ ‘dinner food’ and so on and so forth as it gives me freedom to eat as I feel is needed. There have been mornings when I have had a bowl of pasta for breakfast, knowing that I would have a strong practice and a long day.
Where the bed beckoned before, this year I have opted for staying up after my meal (that’s from 4:30am for us here and let’s be honest, who can sleep after a bowl of pasta?). The mornings have been filled with silent meditations, writing in my journal and quiet contemplation in long baths. There have been many days when I have just indulged myself in long, slow home practices as the day slowly grew light.
My bed time has been modified too as I try to be in bed by 8:30pm or at the latest 9:30pm. If I wasn’t much into hanging out at pubs and bars before Ramadan, this month, the chances of that have been reduced to zero.
In Ramadan, life is modified.
And on the mat, my practice had to be modified too.
It was a great thing having Les Leventhal here during the second week of Ramadan. If you’ve practiced his classes, you’ll know that they are advanced classes on steroids. The heat is on, and you’re doing at least eight poses on one leg before you switch to the other. In equal parts, he will remind you to breathe and encourage you to go for it. Now, I’m not as strong as a lot of people are on a good day, and even less so this month but practicing a class like that teaches you things. You can go hard, end up in a heap halfway through the class or walk out because you get lightheaded, or you could modify your practice and make it through the duration. When your body says ‘no more,’ you always have the option of sitting in meditation enjoying the positive vibes around you.
There was also a lesson in managing the ego here – that voice which says, ‘yes, go for it, you can do that one more vinyasa! You don’t need child’s pose.’ Did I indulge? Of course I did and then I went to teach and I didn’t have the energy to demonstrate even the simplest pose, let alone support my students. The class left me so drained I couldn’t even hold a conversation after, which doesn’t help as people might have questions.
And then you learn to receive and be soft. I have amazingly supportive friends, so my life this month has not been lacking in terms of hugs, mini-massages, and even a 10 minute Reiki boost. People have been very understanding when I have not been able to show up for parties after a long day at work, and when I haven’t made it to brunch during the daylight.
In order to keep going, things had to be modified.
10 days to go and although I am tired, I am doing it because I want to. After all, who is to stop me if I decide not to fast? It is a lesson that we don’t need as much as we have to survive. The lessons of Ramadan work hand in hand with the lessons from yoga. It teaches you of patience and surrender, waiting for a time when you can just have a drink and knowing that the sun won’t set until it is time. It is a time to take note of when you’re tired and hungry, and how that affects you emotionally. You learn how your body works or how you react when you don’t have the energy to do as much as you are used to doing. You are living on less sleep and less food than usual and it is interesting to see how that affects you. And you start thinking about the people who live like this every day, and not just from when the sun comes up to when the sun comes down. In a world where it is all about having more, doing more and being more, it is a time for less.
Ramadan Mubarak.
It’s been a while since I last wrote something for you. Two weeks of movement – dynamic energy, fire, flight. When the world moves quickly like that, it’s easy to lose track of where the heart is and what it needs. But as the world usually does, it allows time to land, a time to negotiate with the discomfort of slowing things down. The discomfort of not knowing what comes next once you have cast your intentions out to the ether.
Another full moon comes. Another phase of life ends. Perhaps it is just time, but no ending should go un-mourned, no part of life let go without being honoured. There was a certain emptiness before, but it was an emptiness that invited an exploration. It was, in essence, a space to allow the lotus to bloom into its full glory, to marvel at the majesty of a beauty that grew from the mud.
And now, the lotus has bloomed so it is time to move into a new realm.
There is a sense of unfamiliar familiarity with this realm. You’ve been here before, but not in the same way. I have been here too, but not with you. Yet, I have, you have, and we have – from lifetimes before, in different manifestations. I was the person who smiled at you as a child, only to then run away. You were the person I knew in my youth when I was lost, and you were as lost as I was. Yet, you were not, I was not, and we were not. Nothing has changed between then and now, and yet, everything has changed. We have changed. Many lifetimes have passed within this one incarnation.
Your heart, as it beats, is new to me, yet it is not.
My body and its movements are familiar to you, but it is still a strange new animal.
We have spoken of the same things before in different ways, with different people. Here we come, sharing that same past with each other, but with different eyes than we had before.
Maybe it is because we have grown.
Or maybe it is because we have still some growing to do, with each other this time.
Empires have crumbled so that new ones can rise. What different are we, the people who have had lives before this?
We have had lives where we have grown and crumbled, lives where we have each danced in the ecstasy of love and mourned within the despair of loss. In these lives we have known the highest high and the lowest low. In these lives we have known anger and loss, loneliness and desire. We have each learned our lessons of who we are up to this point and here we come together because something bigger than we are said that we should.
And now, what do we do?
You can run. I can hide. We can bury it all deep under the surface and never look at it. We can distance ourselves from this discomfort and nothing will change.
Or we can take a bit of silence to honour that journey which has brought us to this place.
And then perhaps it is time…
Time to believe in a bit of magic.
Time to have a bit of faith.
Time to find a bit of courage.
Time to just take a deep breath, and as gently as possible, soften, surrender…
Dive in.
Picture from Costa Rica Arts
The other day, someone asked me, “how come your hips are still tight even with all the yoga your practice?” It is an interesting question that can be answered in many different ways. On a physical level, sitting down for long periods as well as activities like cycling and running can affect the hips that way. On an energetic and emotional level, tight hips can sometimes signify a certain degree of resistance, or emotions being held, trust or any number of reasons, depending on where the individual is in life. In my case, mine were feeling a bit tight because of a combination of physical and emotional reasons which I won’t go into.
What interested me about the question is the idea behind it that a chosen activity or spiritual path can be a cure to life. Yoga, prayer, whatever path we choose, we sometimes think that it will protect us from life.
When I was a child, I believed so strongly in prayer. I still do. But as a child I would pray for a specific thing, mostly for my father to come home, and when he didn’t I got angry. What I wanted, really, was to not feel the pain of it all, but of course, that never happened. And then, I thought that God had a personal vendetta against me because of it. As I got older, I learned of another way to deal with pain – disconnection. Alcohol was a great tool for this method, along with a life of partying, and then sleeping it off. It worked for a little while, and then it got old.
Then, in the great old age of 30, yoga made an appearance. Not the gym yoga I had done before, but the kind of yoga that gave you space to be with yourself. I looked at all the happy, healthy people and thought, that this might be it, the cure to all pain and suffering. Asana practice led to meditation and stillness, and prayer. Slowly, I worked through my physical injuries, and then the emotional injuries, but guess what? There are days when the hips are still tight, or the shoulder is out of whack. Sometimes I still spend half of class crying into my mat.
Why?
Because life doesn’t end and as long as we live in the world, shit will happen. When people claim to not feel pain or sadness anymore, I wonder if they have let the parts of themselves that can feel all that die. And yes, it is safe when you’ve learn to shut the world out, living a solitary existence, but is that really living?
The only cure to life is death.
All the yoga, prayer and meditation did not stop my father from passing away. It doesn’t stop my shoulders from being sore sometimes, and it sure as hell doesn’t stop sadness or anger from making an appearance in my life. Instead it has taught me to stop and take some time exploring these injuries and emotions.
This is the path of surrender without giving up, knowing when to back away instead of walking away. It is taking the labels of “good” and “bad” out of emotions and just feeling them. Crying when you need to cry. Being angry when you need to do that. Taking time alone when you need that. Or simply walking up to a friend and giving them a hug because that’s what you need. Have you ever felt like crying but ended up laughing hysterically instead? Well, that is the energy moving.
Sometimes the energy just needs an outlet.
A friend at work asked me how I could still breathe and hold my space even when I am angry. The answer is simple. I have since stopped trying to push my anger down and sit on it. If I need to, I will get up and go for a walk. Sometimes I get into an inversion just so I can see the world in another light. And of course, breathing techniques help. The way I manage my anger though, might not be the same way you manage yours, and it is your journey to find your tools.
Yoga, prayer or meditation – shit will happen.
It is how you deal with it that will change. Surrender and acceptance doesn’t stop sadness, but it allows you to feel with a certain degree of peace. Self exploration in the silence allows you to find safe ways of letting emotions flow through you in a compassionate way. And perhaps, you had these skills all along, but as you read more books of people telling you how it should be, you forgot your own intuition, the higher Self that guides you through the smooth and rough. This Self which is made of equal parts shadow and light, and knows things that your brain might not.
So explore. Learn. Feel.
There is no cure to grief apart from grieving.
And there is no cure to life apart from living.
The third eclipse in this short span of time comes to us with the next full moon, and with it, is a time to say “goodbye,’ – a time to release, and perhaps even let a whole section of yourself die. Most of us are uncomfortable with endings and a lot more of us don’t like talking about death. It is the final end. The place where you can’t go back to what once was. It is that place where your footprints get washed away by the sea and all that is left is to go forward, into the unknown.
There is comfort in the old, a familiarity, a certain safety, and to hold on is so much easier than to let go and step towards the future. We might say that we don’t believe in these things, but sometimes, something greater just moves us in this direction. Without ever intending to, we leave the past and head towards the future. Something closes, something else opens. Like my teacher Mel would say of a backbend, “it is like everything in the past pushing you forward from your heart.” There is a beautiful sadness but also an excitement of what is to come.
It can be comforting having just that one string so that we can hold on to the past, but sometimes that string needs to be cut. In that space where there was left the faintest of connections, there needs to be just emptiness. The faint imprint left by a former lover is wiped away by the rain, allowing the glow of a new sun to spread it’s warmth on a clean foundation. Sometimes a lover becomes a friend, other times, even the friendship can’t be salvaged and the lover becomes a stranger. A friend or even a stranger becomes a lover.
You think your heart died the last time it broke.
Going back into that space where you allow things to enter seems crazy.
But something stirs again – Perhaps the tiny flickering flame of affection, growing into desire and in the future, who knows?
You died once when your last life ended.
And you are reborn into this new life.
The heart beats.
It lives.
It wants to soar.
It wants to go into the unknown.
You’ve found your centre and don’t want to lose it, but your heart, the centre of it all is ready to bring you off your axis.
It is time.
The final goodbye led to the first hello. And the darkness makes the light seem so much brighter. Something different, someone different, is scary. It is the possibility of your universe being flipped upside down in a way that is beyond your control. It is two movements in one – allowing something unknown into this comfortable and familiar space that you have painstakingly built while you yourself move into an unknown dimension. It is a doorway to another part of yourself, yet undiscovered. How do you know that you will like this undiscovered self? How do you know that you won’t?
Right now the questions are being asked and not answering is no longer an option.
Will you let go?
Will you let the past rest where it belongs?
Are you going to release fear and step over a threshold into a new life?
Can you allow a glance to become a lingering look?
When someone reaches out their hand to you will you take it?
Are you ready to immerse yourself into the unfamiliarity of the future?
A million questions, and the only answer that will make a difference is…
Yes
Once there was a Phoenix born to earth dwelling parents. As they could never understand her fire or her need to fly, they did everything they could to protect her. What they never realized was that being a Phoenix, flying and burning was part of her nature, and where it would kill others, it only made her stronger. The Phoenix tried to be an earth creature, and even tried to love one, but just like her parents, he never understood her, and his fear of her nature pushed him to do everything in his power to hold her down. Unfortunately, her nature won and broke free, burning him in the process. The more he had tried to dominate her, the more it fed her fire and finally it came out in a great explosion, setting their world on fire.
So she flew away, leaving everything she knew and loved. Being afraid that she would burn another again, she spent years flying alone. Then one day, as she was flying, she came across a Wolf, out hunting on his own. Immediately something in him drew her to him. She sensed that although he resembled a wolf, there was something more to him, something that even he hadn’t discovered yet. So fighting every ounce of fear that she felt, she let him in. Together they defied nature, but she always felt that there was a part of him he was holding back, a part of him that he chose to forget.
As they grew closer, and she grew to know his family, she grew to know him. He came from a family where his brothers had all chosen a space between heaven and earth, with creatures of the sky. And with the women of his family, she could feel the sky within them. While his brothers had chosen to be free of pack constraints and make their own fate, her Wolf however, chose to travel with a wolf pack. Within his pack, the Phoenix was overjoyed to find other creatures of the sky among the pack mates. It was often that they would exchange stories of the sky, and speak of things not of this world. From them she realised that there were land dwelling creatures who could allow their sky-dwelling mates to fly.
The Phoenix had lived her life holding her fire in, and she continued to do so, but with the Wolf, she tested her boundaries, and his. In public, she always held her flame in, but when they were alone together, in the dark of night, she would sometimes allow her inner fire to burn. And in the dark of night, he matched her fire. He matched her in every way, and encouraged her to take flight, but she was always aware of the part of himself that he had yet to face. One day, a scent in the spring wind caught them both off guard and the Wolf just left her to run off with his pack. After fighting and crying for a while, the Phoenix let go. Then one day after many moons, injured and broken, he came back to her, and she let him into her life again, without judgement, without question.
For six moons she waited in fear, that the wind would blow in the wrong direction and he would leave again. Then she lowered her guard, and softened into their life. A life they were building between heaven and earth. Just when she was settled though, the Spring winds came again. Just like that, he no longer wanted her again. Heaven seemed too alien to him and he wanted the earth again. This time, she couldn’t bring herself to fight. She flew away to allow him room to breathe. She had always been close when he needed her, always been ready to fight with him, but this time, she needed him to fight for her. As she expected, as soon as she left, the pack surrounded him.
The nature of the Phoenix is that she is a creature of intuition, fire, freedom and passion. In her intuition, she always sensed that the answers he needed could only be found in his past. The nature of wolves however, is that they are creatures of self-gratification, often traveling in packs and bound by pack rules. The Phoenix knew, that the only way her Wolf would ever find himself was if he braved being alone and faced the darkness of his past. But the pack would never allow that, and she knew she could not win against his pack. She didn’t want to be another voice in his ear, drowning out the voice that he needed to find – his own voice.
In her silence and meditation, one day she caught a vision. Another wolf had moved in, a female. She knew before she saw it. That was the day the Phoenix’s heart broke. That was the day the flame inside her started to rage. Maybe she had been wrong after all. Maybe all he could be was a wolf instead of the Wolverine she sensed. Maybe all he wanted was to be part of the pack with a mate who would never fly. Maybe all her faith had been misplaced for all these years, for instead of climbing further or braving himself to jump higher he chose to move deeper into the ground.
The anger she felt was more for herself than for him. She was disappointed that she chose to trust him again, that she saw more in him than he ever saw in himself. She knew that as long as he chose to deny the part of him that could fly, he could never find her, and as long as he could never find her, he could never hurt her again. Deep inside she also knew that if she didn’t leave, her fire would burn and destroy all those she loved and all those he held dear. After all, as long as he believed he was a pack Wolf, the sky was beyond his grasp. So on the night of the full moon, she flew. Once there, she let the fires consume her in every way. In the flame she sent a wish out that he would someday remove the blocks from his memory and brave the past. Only then and when he realized that he didn’t have to be what everyone wanted him to be would he be free to become everything that he was meant to be.
So when you look up at the red moon, think of the Phoenix burning far far away. For in order to be whole enough to support others that might need her, she had to let the flames engulf before rising again.
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