Dear Ones,
It is the eve of International Women’s Day. I have lots of feeling about it. I have decided to offer a re-imagining of an ancient story from the land of my Irish Ancestors, the Selkie Story, told just this morning. The feet of it are so wet you may see footprints in the sand of our collective ground.
I believe listening to this story will be worth your while. Light a fire and pour a cuppa tea or brandy and lilsten with loved ones. I believe you will not regret listening if you take a long bath and listen in as you moisten your own fur. I believe you can take a long walk into a tangled wood and you will find something here. I think there is something here for everyone. Share with those in your life you feel called to. It might not be right for small children. But youth these days are exposed to so much. You don’t have to look very far to find hard stories. It is important for them to hear redeeming stories to find a way forward.
Dr. Martin Shaw speaks about the importance of feeding a story to keep it alive. I have fed this story until it is 42 minutes fat. But it is also a part of my upbringing. I just let it come. I was true enough to the original bones but then I made it my own telling because I believe it is time for the myths to have a chapter two. The story doesn’t end there. Yes I know they are sacred. Yes I know they are said to rise up from the ground or the bottom of the sea.. But something new is needed and I know it and I hope, so do you.
You might ask why I am afraid. Well I will tell you. Because in this story of forgiveness, the victim forgives the perpetrator, with time and work and the building of sacred trust. And this is never a popular theme in groups that support women’s work. Even Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in the movie version finds redemption for Mister - and I have hard many a conversation that women have had about NOT doing that. Perhaps my own internalized misogyny and rescuer has me wanting to save the misters of the world. They are my own father, my own brother, my old lovers.
If one in five women are raped, that means what about how many men are doing the raping? Yet do you know any? Can they find peace or speak about it? There isn’t enough room for men to do their healing and find their way to an authentic apology. And while I don’t think women need to rescue men. I do think as a culture of healing, turnings towareds the stories of men has got to be woven into the fabric. Especially now.
The number of fishermen seeking to steal skins is no less today than it was a hundred years ago. What can we benefit from telling children these kinds of stories as ways of learning. But if we always leave it at the part where they family divides, what then is the experience of the child? Do the children not deserve a new level of healing that has seemed impossible before.
Rape has marked my entire existence. I am not speaking about forgiving rape, but I am asking - if there are so many rapists out there - when will the healing story happen so we don’t create more. How will the next generation of men not become that? I think that is the essence of this re-telling is that the son is a part of the conversation of healing so that he can learn. A village elder steps in to hold the space of the feminine from her own loss of her son. That the parents are brave enough to engage in the needed dialogue and that we break through the taboos. Offering an alternate ending because clearly the story IS continuuing.
Of course, I am only speaking about the perpertrators who desire healing and who cry their tears and feel the pain in their own heart and body. They are here, amongst us in our families. Where do they can? Where can they turn?
The fear comes from the anger of women, the righteous anger of my sisters. I don’t want my sisters to accuse me of letting him off the proverbial hook. But if he does his work - do we ever forgive him? What if he is a father? What then? What if in the process, she ends up loving him anyway. I don’t know. We are very complicated beings. And for those I offend and trigger, I am sorry, I am reaching here.
I know it is women’s day - and this story honors the wild nature of women remembering who they are. But. There is also something here for her - because we are doing the labor ANYWAY, to heal. We are doing the pyschological heavy lifting with men no matter what. Where can she find peace within herself? Of course, it is all about her choice. But in my story telling she chooses to engage in the deep work of healing - even with the awareness that at one time, he didn’t offer her a choice. And learns to forgive her own shame. My work with domestic violence taught me that violence and love CAN happen in the same space. That we are the walking wounded and we need healing - and most of us don’t know where to look.
Men, if you are listening, where can you look?
I spoke of myself more like the fisherman with my husbands, drawn in by their dark beauty and wild ways. Trying to make them fit into my world. Not to take their skin without their consent - but to domesticate them into a world that works for me, and for women. Largely this attempt has failed. Good learnings all around but painful ones too. I wasn’t trying capture them, I was drawn into them. But caused harm, as they also caused to me. We are all learning and growing and forgiveness is here. Somewhere inside myself, I wanted them to be like the fisherman in the rest of the story - to become the healers of other men. I have a bias that says that men can only teach other men who first learn from women - their mothers, grandmothers, daugthers, sisters. Men MUST listen to women if they are to heal and to enage in healing with other men. But most men I know do not listen to women in the way we need to be heard. My two husbands, did listen. And I am grateful. They helped to shape our community and taught me so much.
The chances are if you are really honest, even if you have never actually taken someone’s skin without consent - you can see yourself in all of the characters. I sure can. Especially the child, who no matter what, wants to see their parents talking kindly to one another. Not that they do it to sacrifice for the child - but so the child can be part of a lineage of healing.
May all fishermen, whether male or female or beyond those terms, do the sacred work of asking forgiveness and in time, finding self-forgiveness. This takes many many moons. What else is there to do now but heal?
I would also like to suggest - after listening - to listen to this song by my dear sister, Amber Samaya Gould - Know How to Swim - it’s a ritual act to listen to this song.
In closing, I want to say, this is an imperfect offering on an altar of sharp oyster shells on a large stone in the sea.
Don’t forget to mark your calendar for the Equinox Ceremony on March 21. Also join me for upcomign in person gatherings - all of it is at www.musea.org
I hope it is acceptable enough.
Blessings to each of you right where you are.
Shiloh Sophia
”Ring the bellss that still can ring"
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Leonard Cohen, Anthem
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