Surviving Year Two: Week 38

Spring Heart

This is Week 37 of my Surviving Year Two Grief Project. Details about all my Grief Projects, as well as Grief Resources can be found here.

Beltane will arrive (here in the Northern Hemisphere) this week. Spring is in full swing and with the New Moon so recently appearing, I have really felt the movement of new growth and new beginnings. This weekend, I was able to work on some important ritual crafting for my upcoming healing ceremony, which is a few weeks away. Some dear friends came over and helped me craft and we all shared stories of our lives as aging ladies in a chaotic and confusing world. The intense power of healing and calm I felt after spending this precious time in this trio is hard to explain in mere words.

As I have mentioned before, I am working with the author Danielle Dulsky in promoting her new book, Woman Most Wild, and in her book, she talks about the "three keys for liberating the witch within." Essentially, those three keys are: aligning with the cycles of nature; understanding the importance of ritual and ceremony; and bonding with like-minded seekers. I really felt like I embodied all three of these keys this weekend. I can feel the power that these acts released, moving in my body — freeing up and liberating energy that I thought was lost to me forever.

Red is MY color of Mourning

I still feel grief and deep heartbreak, AND I also feel like I have a more solid ground to feel my feelings. I have more access to the powerful tools that help me get up off the ground and look towards the future with hope. This hope is like a quiet little flame in my heart, where before there was only darkness. The old ways, blended with my modern life, is my path. It is a constant collaboration with spirit — I take the next step and listen to the response to my call.

As I was crafting the headpiece I am going to wear during my Healing Ritual, I understood new insights as I did this physical act of making. I wasn't sure why I needed to use red fabric until I started cutting and shredding the material and realized that while traditionally the color of mourning is black, my mourning color is red — the color of blood, the color of love, the color of the heart. This was new information to me that I would not have known until I did this ritual act of making and then receiving a response from spirit. It is so powerful to understand what our own, personal archetypes are.

This process of listening and acting is my path. It is a path of questions and answers. What ritual do I need to create? Where am I on my cycle? Where is my circle of women to sit and create with? I re-connect and I re-member. I am healing. I am growing. I am flowering.

Thanks for witnessing me. See you next week.