Kim Upton, 2014 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”
― James Joyce
“All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.”
― Cecelia Ahern
The morning sun has just started to peep over the treetops. Outside the grass looks like one million tiny stars dancing in unison.
Many years ago, during a powerful healing ritual, I connected to a phrase: “listening woman.” Google-Land only offered me a book title by Tony Hillerman. Years and years of research, and still nothing came up.
However, as I come to study my lineage, and meet Kin from other lands, there is a history of my women-folk doing work much like Hillerman’s character. In fact, modern scholars refer to them as Völva. Not only did they keep secrets, they lived outside the culture doing work (and getting paid pretty well, I might add), and usually had several young understudies that went along.
Now I’m not going to glamorize that path. Nor do I want to co-opt and ancient culture during this modern life. My hopes are to understand this tradition and how it works in my life. How many ancestors of mine walked in the world without worry or fear of what their life calling was? Near as I can tell, from first-person stories written down, and “channeled” information from family members, the heritage creeping through my bones is pretty intense.
And that is important for me to know, and for me to understand. Also, it is helpful to my children and their future.
It will also help them learn about the proper use of secrets. In my life “secrets” is not a friendly word. Too many times the phrase, “this will be our secret” turned out to be extremely painful for me. Along with that, it was mandatory that I keep secrets. “We mustn’t tell anyone about this, right?”
While some of you may disagree, for me there are no good secrets. Not even those that involve surprise birthday parties, or delicious bakery treats. Anyone that knows me well can tell you that if you whisper to me, and then say, “it’s a secret,” everything after that is a deal breaker.
However, I will keep a confidence. That is what I do as a Listening Woman. People who have much heavier secrets will tell them to me in confidence, and I will find the proper resting place for the words.
For some reason this week has been “childhood flashback” week. It could be the solar flares, the ending of Mercury Retrograde, or the upcoming All Hallows. It is not a pleasant experience to go through old emotions, fears and thoughts. Nor does it help me move forward when old tapes are playing in the back of my brain.
This weekend will mark the 16th birthday of my oldest children. When they were born, I SWORE on all things holy and important to me that by the time they were 16 that I’d no longer carry any of my past into their future.
So today I release my “role” of being the secret keeper’s daughter, and step into my birthright – everyone’s birthright, really – and walk away from long gone entanglements.
And I’m very serious about that. No more carrying. Along with that, I won’t need to constantly remind myself that I am okay, or that things in my life have “changed for good.”
laid my burden down
into the sea of healing
fish took it away
– ku 10-30-2014
And that, my friends, is all she wrote for today. <3
All love,
– ku
