Have you ever had a dream that felt so real but you couldn’t make sense of it in your wake? Recently, I had a dream that I was in a house and the fire alarm was going off but I couldn't hear it. Everyone else was on the outside waiting for me to come out. My dad was the one who called me. I said I was coming, but I was taking my time.
In the upcoming days the dream materialized. My dad reached out to ask how I was doing. I told him I had been going through a range of emotions and coming to more understanding of them and also other’s perspectives while on this trip. Later that night an eerie numbness came over me. It’s strange, the feeling of numbness. You know something is there but you can’t feel anything. I’ve come to know this as the calm before the storm. My numbness to what was under the surface was the fire alarm I could not hear. A deep suppression. When I committed to staying in my location for a few days more, the smoke detector in my room started beeping. No smoke to be found.
“Where there is smoke, there is fire and that is why I need you to be still” is what I heard.
All I could do was wait for it to surface. The fire was inside of me.
In the morning, the day before Mother’s Day, it came. I woke up, hips on fire. The place of stored emotions, especially maternal. I needed a stretch so I started in my pigeon pose and did a few others and all of a sudden my heart was flooded. Not with sadness, this time with fire. Rage. A feeling I don’t get often. When it shows itself I panic because, in the past, I haven’t been the best at taming this fire. After a few deep breaths, I ran to the bathroom. Fiery release. I had extinguished my gut, but what about the rest. It was spreading through my body. Lighting up parts I didn’t know could feel. Hiding places for unacknowledged emotion.
What becomes of emotion with nowhere to go? Fatigue, inflammation, disease, disorder. What is not expressed will find its way out. The body needs release. So what are these unspoken truths? These aches in the fascia? What is my body trying to tell me?
My rage scares me. I’ve seen it in my mother, I’ve seen it in myself. I tend to default to light because that is most how I see myself, it is the safest. But the shadow, light’s persistent sister, can not be denied. The rage just as valid as the love, the joy.
So again, “what do I do with the rage?”, I asked.
“Put it on the page” was the response I heard. I wasn’t ready yet. One thing about fire is it needs containment AND movement. So I went for a walk, went to the trees.
Breathe, the tree said. Just breathe.
When I returned from the walk, the mother of the host family I am staying with lead me through a yoga sequence that brought me back into my body. Afterwards, she made me toast and rice water for my stomach. Love, care, and nurturing all recipes to calm fire.
The last time my body felt this was coming back from my 30th birthday trip in Costa Rica, a soul ascension. On my journey home I had a terrible stomach bug and a day’s worth of travel. My mom picked me up from the airport and took care of me for the first 24 hours. This time, there was no flight. I decided to stay where I was prior to knowing my body would be in turmoil. My body knew. This mother’s day weekend became about nurturing myself. Being my own mother.
The wound of the mother runs deep and we will always crave the womb from which we came and the wombs from which they came. This mother’s day was about soul ascension. Healing a lineage of women, releasing lifetimes of rage.
Who is speaking through me? What needs were not met? What voices were supressed? What truths unspoken? What desires not manifested? How do I give myself the care I so deeply deserve? How do I give to myself so that I am able to receive from another?
I reestablished trust and safety with myself today. I became the master of my fire. The lesson? Fire needs containment, it also needs motion. It needs care and love and nurturing. I gave myself all of this today. Permission to feel, to be, to scream, to jump, to cry, to care, to rest.
I laid in the sun and let the heat of the rays penetrate the fire inside. Sometimes fire needs fire to warm its intensity. To say I see you and I feel you and you are not alone. The sun gave me energy, recharged a drained battery.
I thought water was what I needed but that would have drowned the fire. I need to feel. As a double fire sign and Scorpio moon (the fire of the water), I am no stranger to intensity. Sometimes soothing is needed and sometimes a flame needs to be ignited to be the catalyst for alchemy. My fire does not separate me from my water and distance does not separate me from my root.
I am an ocean away from my mother but our waters are still connected.
This Mother’s Day the mother was Me and the Earth from which we all came. It is an honor to be so closely connected. To return to my own water. The fire from which I was born.
This was such a a potent read. Standing firm in your fire, and leaving beautifully written imagery of your journey. I love it🔥
I knew that you'd land on your feet. That you'd figure it out. That you'd continue jouryneying. I like that picture of you. Sorry it didn't work out with the archivist lady.