Can You Hear the Hawk's Cry?

Emerging from the car, I stood in stillness, listening to a nearby hawk penetrating the cold with her shrill cry. I decided to pause and listen, before carrying on across the parking lot. Her cry pierced and moved through me, awakening both a knowing and curiosity to keep listening. I asked my mother, who was with me on this outing, if she could hear the cry of the hawk... She said, "yeah, get over it," cutting into my refection and hastening me into the store.

Her dismissive response quickly triggered something very uncomfortable. As the words left her lips I felt a tightening of my chest. The opposite of the opening sensation I am determined to allow in this life. This kind of disconnected response to my reverence of nature and interest in the transmissions of our fellow beings is not at all unusual. My knee-jerk reaction is to respond in kind, dismiss her from my presence and rage at her attempts to quell my wildness.

This is what we are working with, Sistars. So many of our mothers are clouded with the old paradigm, no longer willing to do the work necessary to access and impart ancestral gnosis or womb wisdom. I acknowledge my feelings of rage and deep disappointment and allow them to move through me as I write and release. I want so much to be able to hold my mother in love and unconditional acceptance, despite her wounded words and inability to offer the same comfort to me. We are both survivors of this patriarchy. It is clear that many methods of survival have required a relinquishing and abandonment of feminine power and a kind of self imposed amnesia regarding our divine nature. For some Sistars, survival is hardly a miracle in and of itself. Some of us appear hollow—as living shadows of the former temple left in ruins after unwelcome visitors ravaged, desecrated and dishonored its sanctuary.

A daughter’s tears absorb into the parched earth, as she bear witness to the imbalance and separation. Our work now is to hold space in acknowledgement of these traumas and assaults on the sacred. We must allow the festering wounds to emerge from the depths, right up to the surface for all to see. This purge is a necessary step and cannot be avoided.

Only through the opening, emptying and cleansing of our wounds can these spaces revive and re-cover. Our vulnerability is our power. We must remove the bandage (bondage) of shame and bear our open wounds to the ether and light. No more Band-Aids over gaping lesions. No more pills to dull our sensitivity. No more relinquishing our power for security and comfort. The balance will be restored. We will re-collect the scattered parts of our selves, and listen with nurtured curiosity as the wise woman soars and sings again.