Today’s blog, a piece from my next book. This summer I will sit and write and re-write and make good. Letting words flow through the river of my heart. Hopefully by the end of the summer my next book will be ready to go to print. I must work hard!
To share my words is a blessing and something I love to do. What for? I’ve no idea…..it is simply a love of the art… and today I asked myself…….
What exactly is Mother Wit?
Natural ability to cope with everyday matters; common sense. Innate intelligence
Ah yes the Mother one who knows, the Wit of her essence………
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And circle becomes the feminine mother intuitive,
the nurturing part of myself and the dreamer who speaks softly inside me.
My dear family in all directions,
how does she make it right for others?
How much does she give, how much is she responsible for?
Does she assume they cannot look after their own needs?
Mother one, who knows.
Mother, one who knows.
Mother who has so many roles she forgets herself many times over.
Mother moon, looking down towards the earth.
Towards the children in the darkness, I see you.
There are no needs that do not need acknowledgement,
no needs that are not real and worthy of love and tenderness.
Even those needs we would dishonour through fear of judgement.
Connecting back down to earth, to memory in the bones,
I see you again, earth bound mystery.
Mother, feminine, loss, betrayal, speak the love you once knew
and let not the tides wash away too soon the possibility
of deep growth that try’s to force its way through the cracks
made open in the stretching mind of the body.
Mother mystery, so much unknown
and yet so much held in the voices unspoken,
learning to trust, mother learns to trust and speak,
for only she is the one who knows deeply the turmoil in her own belly.
Learning to give freely from this turmoil
to see what was unable to be set free and protecting the one,
she unravels the bloody yell back to where it came from.
Whore, witch, mistress, enchantress, dark mother writhes in unseemly passion,
what many of us could not possibly know or take a second glance towards,
incase it touches one finger tip to poison our minds
against what is now settled and confirmed.
That sweet confirmation of victim,
lost to the story.
Dare we take another look into a realisation
that all is not lost and thrashing out that one last spell,
we are victim no more.
My world is changing both inside myself and all around me. I notice how the body shifts itself into a new gear, one that is preparing for a whole new level of being with woman hood. It is inevitable, it must change as the age draws nearer and bleeding ceases, I am not the ‘productive’ beast any more, the child bearer and big bellied mother. A grandmother now and happy for it to be this way. My body changes inside as the small womb shape becomes that hardened walnut and shrinks its size. So too does my world around me and I find the nest of my home far more appealing. I want to curl up under softness and find the dark corners of my mind for contemplation. To burrow into the dream time and watch the colors changing to their subtle more undefined shades.
My small workspace mirrored around me, reminds me of that walnut and I keep drawing on my own medicine woman from the shell of its existence. There is no need for the big immense gathering any more, I simply do my work as much for myself as with anything else that needs it. Unraveling years of hard work now done, now completed as all things must be.
And the change happens, I become the elder, the grandmother, the wise women holding wisdom beyond her years. My years that started before I was ready and so they must continue.
In my own circle I am aware of so many changes, as women it can be a challenging time to go through the change that menopause brings, but I had learnt the only way was in the deepest surrender, to allow my body to do what it needed and though some times uncomfortable, letting it have its way, going through as much as it needed to. Menopause has been happening forever and here is yet another way for women to try and control what is one of the most natural of process’. Just like our first menses and our childbearing, we have been too quick to try to control it, make it less uncomfortable and avoid it if at all possible. I am welcoming these changes, I know it can be a rough ride but just as in birthing my babies, I have had to surrender to nature, to allow its forces to pass through me. I noticed so many changes and at first they took me by surprise. So suddenly they seemed to happen. Well I knew it was due, so no real surprise, but the rapidity at which things changed could throw me off my centre. Still I noticed a stronger sense of myself, more confidence and a deeper knowing of who I was. The skin may be changing but it was simply another cover for a worn out ego that did not serve any more. Like my own snake shedding her skin it was time to take on a gentler and more mature outer layer and a softer sense of being a woman. My circle began to show new forms, animals that could offer me a different sort of companionship, different textures that matched the walls and the linings of the cauldron. A darker presence that spoke to me in a different language and yet I understood every word.
I am growing, older, the medicine woman
that has been digging in the dirt of existence.
Unraveling, un-weaving the threads as I lay bare the souls membrane.
Relaxing into a dance that takes me ever further into a mysterious universe.
Yet when the body aches as I expand the dancer,
to dance the way she once knew,
then I tap into the frustration that says “no can do.”
It is then that I meet with the curse of the witch gone sour.
So my circle becomes stronger the older I become and the wisdom comes more from the inside then the outside. I haven’t read a book for a few years. I pick the odd one up and browse a chapter, sometimes really wanting to know all of its contents. I find that I just want to write and pour out all my thoughts and poetry, my dreams and what inspires me into my own journals. I could gather information from others work, I could study and research for hours days or months at a time. But I realise that my story, my words, have to be from my own journey and my own inner sense of who I am and what I have experienced. I cannot speak for anyone else and I do not want other writings to influence what I am here to share.
My dance has taken on a new meaning as it becomes much stiller and I am listening. I want to know every movement and be quite sure that the breath is connected and that the patterns of my movement matches with the murmuring heart beat and the in and out breath of each expression.
I continue to hold a space for others. I watch and listen, slowing down my own body and breath, even my heart beat so I can listen with an intensity. I do not listen much to the words, of course I pay attention to them and get to know the story, but I am listening to the vibration of their body or bodies, allowing my own vibrational body to match it.
From this place I begin to know what needs to be done, I become aware of the energy that is fixed or stuck in limbo, I resonate with it in my own body. My muscles and cells are listening. I become completely present to what is happening and without any plan or idea of what has to happen, I simply follow the energy of my own body and find its release. My circle must be strong for me to do this work. It contains my feminine and my masculine and the two must work together and unite together to follow through with what is arising.
Slowing slowing slowing, down to the present moment,
nothing to do but listen and feel the vibrations.
I listened to intermittent sounds and voices, images came to me and my heart was moved. Birds interrupt the sentences with their calling, but the words are strong and cause me to open my heart even more, to take in the vibrations that I noticed in my own body.
My hands expand with the essence of my heart, exploring the emotions and the changes that want to be expressed. Softly they nurture each other into being – listening to the stories that each one unfolds – honest communication, finger tips listening to finger tips as they touch each one after the other. They know their time is not forever, so for sure they must meet with every breath and every story before their time is done with this body, to speak every story and touch every tangible experience before they are no more. And their dance unfolds, the bones and the muscles follow one after the other, like the snake as it carries itself along the earth, rippling its movement continuously, wave after wave into the shore, where the lapping waves of the lake in my mind, gently massage the edges and push outwards to create wider boundaries, expanding that depth of heart to meet more and more of the world. To stretch those boundaries and circles to reach out to the parts of life not yet shared with.
The lake becomes wider and fuller, its depths become deeper and the reflections it creates show me more of myself. Reflections that mirror a wider universe, a multi textured and vibrant mirage of so much understood and so much that is misunderstood. So the questions keep presenting themselves and I ask the dancer to show me more clarity for through the dance I can trust a deepening process, a voice that never lies as shapes emerge and melt away leaving only a trace of knowledge, quickly gathered up to be remembered in the unfolding pages of my life.
The memories filter through as does the wisdom of each breath, the muscle knows and clears a space as the dancer reaches out once more, to find a deeper meaning and acknowledges its own intelligence, for the dancer has its own intelligence, it does all it can to reach into that world, with each spark of inspiration and every enthusiastic leap of faith trusting in the greater scheme of things, that it will be received, because why on earth wouldn’t it be? Only some old remnant of refusal or rejection lies in the palm of these hands and that now can quite simply be brushed away.
Caroline Carey,
from ‘Circle, Fire & Phoenix’
Caroline Carey Writings, Prose & Poetry 
Crone médecine is certainly a doozie!! Much love from one Crone to Another..ps, I have the most awesome gift for you. When you see it you will know, just how much it has to be yours, ours even! I will post it to you when it’s finished. xx
How exciting thank you 🙂 Cant wait to see it…and you Cxxx