Story Medicine

I wanted to share my final writing piece from a Story Medicine class I took with Meta Commerse earlier this year. Being in the class encouraged me to write morning pages before I did anything else each day, for the course of five weeks. Now if only I could get back to that discipline…

I have stories in my bones, and as I tilt and whirl through my days, the stories move and shift along with me. Sometimes they settle in to the rich marrow to marinate a bit more, and let the ancestors whisper in their lost wisdom, so that my story becomes a legacy, a history, an account of my lineage and the overarching experience of humankind. Sometimes the stories wish to be spoken, to be danced onto canvas, to find release through my limbs into space as they stretch to ancient rhythms made new again. And then there are those blinking-awake moments in the wee morning hours, when I get to feel my pen between my fingers and let the ink stain the pages, make marks where there was nothing before.

We have the opportunity to change the world with our words. Through getting thoughts onto paper, we can declutter our minds, set the weed whacker on the tangled, thorny thickets hanging out in corners, and find the glimmer-gold strands of truth. Grab onto them and hang on for dear life until we’ve pulled the length of them out of the muck and let them speak through us…in volumes, until we are empty.

The journaling in itself has brought the magic back. In writing my thoughts, my perceptions, my limited interpretations of the goings-on in my life, I’m able to discern more clearly what is mine and what isn’t, where certain beliefs come from and which ones need to change. I am able to find expression where there was silence, very much like digging under heavy heaps of dirt and roots to get to the eternal spring, the core, the self, that is life-giving. Wait, that is life itself. In writing past the static and jumbled mumbo-jumbo that is not me, I walk the razor’s edge again, where feelings are deep and raw, and my lungs expand with rain-kissed air. I am filled up, my skin breathes, my smile extends past the limits of my face.

I am coming back to myself. Story Medicine has been yet another jewel I have mined and plucked from the gracious earth and placed into my toolkit. My bag of stones and secrets that rests on my hips and keeps me steady and sane as I navigate this ever-changing world of ours. In sitting in stillness and finding solace in solitude, I am comforted by my own words. I am remothering myself so that I can be a better mother. So that I can stand tall and firm on my own ground. And I will continue to use the medicine, as the ancestors shift beneath the soil and their souls continue to fertilize our collective harvest. I will bend over blank pages as if in prayer, devoted to my continued unraveling, to my transcribing the murmurs of the ages through the strokes of my pen.