(the end of February 2017)

The cold concrete floor comes to meet me as I descend down into a deep forward fold, legs splayed out wide, hips groaning and widening, pelvis and thighs and knees electric with throbbing energy. Embracing mother Earth, the Great Mother.

I feel the frustration tear at me, at my body. The anger that I have repressed for so long, the anger of having to be the way that I am, gnaws on the edges of my consciousness, hungry. I waver for a moment, then surrender.

Suddenly I am crying, then sobbing, tears melting onto the dirty floor beneath my face. My body rocks with sobs for what must be hours as a deep well of emotion surges through me. I am so so terribly sorry, I tell my body. For all this hatred. For all of this needless violence. For everything.

Tendons dancing through the fire, ghosts and memories and abandoned hurts that have sunk to the depths of my being are awakened. Eyes closed tight, it is the bewitching hour as dusk settles over the wilderness, turning trees to animals and animals to trees.

I am sorry, I whisper to myself.

Something answers back, the mother in me, the deep and unforgettable and infinite feminine. She speaks to me through my body, through the thundering waves of the ecstatic vehicle of the soul. And there we stay together, the three of us, the storm cracking and wailing and seething as we hold communion together in the chaos.

For the first time since recovery, my body and I are one.