Exhale the whole way and reach for me.

I was on a mountain ridge last week and I had an experience with a masculine aspect of God.

I was pretty sure I was going the wrong way up a pretty steady incline, but I kept going because the views were beautiful and I didn't mind turning around later.

Then I felt Him. Call it Holy Father, or the Divine Masculine, but it was definitely masculine and mighty.

I’ve been working a lot with the Primordial Mother of Creation, and so His presence was a surprise. But undeniable.

I had just sat on a peak and offered my dried roses and tobacco and spoken my prayers.

Something had heard my heart.

And so His presence was known. And He said to me, “Exhale the whole way and reach for me.”

Exhale the whole way:

He was guiding me to have more breath in my body. I’ve been unraveling this particular tension pattern in my abdomen that’s been there for 25 years since the birth of my daughter. It was just how I held my body, so I wasn’t aware of the pattern, though I was aware of the discomfort. Now there’s no need for the tension, so a couple times a month an acupuncturist puts needles in these muscles that have been holding a protection pattern for a long, long time, and I’m breathing differently. There is more breath and safety in my body.

Exhale the whole way. When I did that, I could reach for Him.

Reach for me:

I think this is when I actually cried. It was like this force was reaching into me, even into my body, and when I did reach toward it - not with my hands but with my propulsion - it moved me up the mountain.

With the breath and the reach, I felt a profound new engagement with life. He had given me the medicine I needed.

The reach:

A few years ago, I would go to a therapist and talk about what I was unpacking with the SRA family history. I had already done a decade of somatic healing and therapy work, so more or less this very kind woman was mostly listening as I tried to unpack the unthinkable and we’d move through EMDR processes together. I’ve heard stories of some therapists dissociating and going to sleep when people talk about SRA, but she leaned in and was like, “How can I learn more?” So grateful for her that she sat in that with me.

At that time, there was also this man briefly in my life. I wanted connection and relationship.

In reference to this man, the therapist talked to me about this vulnerable thing of reaching. That when we’ve been hurt, we tend to not reach for what we want. We hold our breath, we isolate, we do without. We protect the parts that have been hurt before.

Well, I reached. I got hurt. And then I reached less for a time.

But we have to reach. We are sentient. We are alive. We want to exchange breath and connection and the vulnerable spaces are vulnerable, but they’re worth it.

We have to reach and we have to breathe.

There are so many teachings about how a woman can and should receive, but truly, it’s in the subtleties. It’s not an idea. It’s in the soma, the tendencies of the breath, how safe she actually feels to let life in.

Exhale the whole way and reach for me.

May we be so brave as to live this way.

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A view from the top.