Fresh Symptoms, Old Wounds 🌎
I’ve been practicing Dream Incubation over the last month, and a decades-old childhood memory floated up from the depths in one the other night. I must have been about four or five years old, and my little legs were slow-poking their way across the footbridge at a local nature preserve. I was crossing the little bridge that led to the trailhead with my family when I heard a commotion - boys whooping & hollering - and the violent sound of rocks cracking against one another. I stopped and peered over the edge of the bridge. A group of adolescent boys were below: catching salamanders, holding them down on a flat rock, while two of them took turns bringing rocks down upon them, smashing their tiny bodies. One especially loud boy - the “leader” - was sneering and yelling and doing most of the killing, while the other boys either cheered him on or sat idly by, looking uncomfortable but saying nothing.
I’m witnessing an undeniable pattern among my female clients, colleagues, and friends presently. And it’s connected to this memory, and more importantly, the FEELING this memory evokes. Witnessing world events and the loud, puerile, cynical “leadership” of pain, violence and destruction we’re seeing around the world - all of us living steeped in this overculture of fear and aggression - old memories and deep wounds are rising up in women’s bodies on a mass collective level right now…
Women are sharing with me old eating disorders they’d overcome years ago have suddenly returned. Strange, mysterious back pain comes on without warning. Hip pain with no biological basis lingers. They’re experiencing intensifying cramps, incapacitating premenstrual symptoms, distress and extreme anxiety ‘for no real reason,’ they say. A heaviness and sensation of dread - “like sandbags” on their physical body. A feeling of hopelessness and heartache that they can’t put their finger on. Worry and agitated sleep. Striving for control outwardly, yet feeling completely out of control inside. Skin rashes. “Bone-tired fatigue.” Dreams of tumult, betrayal, abandonment and pain. Auto-immune diseases, inflammation, long-dormant viral and chronic infections are flaring up.
When I see undeniable patterns like I’ve been seeing over the past months, I take notice. Our modern healthcare system is treating these afflictions as new symptoms, but I believe they are a thread and a through-line to a very, very old wound: Women do not feel safe, and present day conditions are triggering the pain of women across time & centuries past.
As misogynistic, violent world “leaders” with the developmental maturity of adolescent boys kill for the sake of sheer cruelty, power, domination, and politics - in complete disregard for the horror and pain they’re causing - women, children and our planet endure & carry the greatest consequences. I have witnessed over and again in my nearly three decades of healing work, it can take a lifetime to heal from one act of violence, abuse and trauma, and no one - not one of us - is immune to a culture grown increasingly harsh, inhumane, callous and cruel.
The feminine force is the most receptive, feeling and powerfully sensate power in the universe - and with that gift comes the ability to sense & feel the pain of the earth and all of creation. When half of our country is willing to normalize and approve of violence and harming women - to dismiss it as a joke, to overlook it because it suits our taxes and self-interest, to pretend it is something other than what it is, to compartmentalize it because it doesn’t personally impact us - women will not feel safe… and our bodies are telling us so.
We can do all the individual healing in the world, but if we remain living in an over-culture that condones violence and domination over the feminine our bodies will continue to feel the resistance, the inflammation, the fear and the fury in our physical beings. It’s easier to assign blame to our bodies, diagnose us as a ‘billable condition,’ and medicate a disease than it is to honestly assess as a society what we have been willing to trade and degrade for our own self-interest.
What does it say to a woman who has experienced rape to live under the “rule” of a rapist? What does it say to a child who experienced abuse to live under the “laws” of men who look the other way when children are being abused? What does it say to a woman who has been sexually assaulted to be “judged” by men who have been that assailant? It is the ultimate human illusion to believe we can compartmentalize or separate energy. Everything we do in our lives affects everything else: this is energetic coherence, this is spiritual integrity — this understanding is essential to our evolution.
As 2024 winds on and we grow closer to the presidential election here in the United States, you may notice the women in your life experiencing heightened anxiety, despair, irritation, physical and emotional imbalance. They may grow quieter and more withdrawn, or experience uncharacteristic outbursts of anger and hostility. They may seem ‘not quite themselves’ or have old health conditions or addictions - food, cigarettes, drugs or alcohol - return. They may push back or pop off - hard & unequivocally - fed up with being leveraged, used and manipulated by rigged systems. Keep in mind there is far more going on under the surface, and that many of these present-day symptoms are signs and triggers that belie a great many old wounds. Have compassion. Listen to the greater truth speaking through the bodies of the women in your life.
One of my primary inspirations in practicing with earth medicines is to release the density and fear of the artificially-constructed human world and rebuild the safety, harmony and peace within my own body. This is why nature-healing is so especially powerful for women - nature provides the expansive safety, innocence, generosity and reciprocity so absent in our modern-day culture. Without realizing it, when we heal present-day migraines, or PMDD, or depression, we are healing lifetimes and lineages - releasing centuries of trauma and conditioning - and creating a felt, lasting sense of safety within our bodies.
“When the time for healing comes and the wounds of life can no longer be denied, those who are closest to the wounds will be better able to face the truth and start the healing. When there’s no time left for sending out for physicians or waiting for magical antidotes, the medicine must be found where it has been all along, within us.”
- Michael Meade, “Fate and Destiny”
Women and children today are not sick - we are sick because we live in a toxic culture that continuously triggers our oldest wounds and continues to prop up unsustainable, immature and destructive leadership. Our female bodies are speaking the truth so many people are unwilling to hear; all the individual healing work we do will have limited effect until healing takes hold & catches fire in the greater collective awareness. Feeling safe in one’s body - feeling safe in our world - is foundational to our healing and creativity. In this rapidly changing, transformational time may we begin to create new systems, structures and models of leadership that reflect an evolving consciousness to serve & nurture the earth and all of life.
