Retrieving my Parts

Journeying to Erishkegal to Rise with a Kaleidoscopic Soul

The London Writers' Salon has been my cradle for the past 18 months, as I find my voice again through writing. And there, the deep and beautiful soul that is anyakara holds a Friday Bibliotherapy Group. Although I only managed to attend a few before life whisked me away from those sacred hours (soon to return, I hope), what was catalysed was mind- and heart-blowing.

Here is a slightly edited piece that came through as we sat with Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones last October. The sentence that called to me for exploration was “...I had a physical defect, like a missing foot or finger…”.

All my life, I was different. Even before I became physically disabled in my late 30s-40s, it was like “…I had a physical defect, like a missing foot or finger…”¹. When I was young, I felt that people knew some secret about me that I wasn’t in on. And as the differences became more physically manifest it had one of several effects on people:

1) the ‘defect’ made their subconscious fill in the blank so that their eyes could slide over and off me, not getting snagged on the unmentionable;

2) they felt a deep-seated anger towards me, which they reasoned was due to some ‘rational’ thing that had nothing to do with the way my ‘defect’ made them wonder if I could see theirs, hidden below layers of money, status, looks - perfection-simulation-dummies;

3) they made the whole of my essence reduce to the one ‘defect’, so that I failed to be human at all and simply became a pot for them to pour their charity, their pity, their othering into.

So here I am, confronting them with my nakedness. My willingness to be seen. My inability to be what I’m not once the veil has been lifted, no matter how many fire-blankets are piled on top of me. People ask for your authenticity and then expect the reveal to be like an adept magician, whisking away a pristine linen tablecloth with only the slightest tremor of fine bone china before everything is almost as it was before. But the tinkling of porcelain bells is not the sound that accompanies the flaying of the false self on the meat hooks like a Erishkegal.

_{Trustees of the British Museum}

I think they mean what they say when they ask for the ‘Truth’. They do not understand the journey down through the cave steps, water dripping down the unseen walls, and every gate
another death,
another loss,
another wailing,
so that I can retrieve that which they say they want to see.

I have made this descent time immemorial. I am always somewhere, sometime, feeling for the edge of the rock to take the next surrendered step. I do not do this for them though. And that is where I have, at times, gotten caught on the claws of the demons in the dark. What I am here to remember need not have any value to them. It need not have any value at all, but simply be another shard of my shattered self, another shank of mirror. I can choose whether to die on it repeatedly and stay here, or to carry the piece back, carefully- trusting my feet can find the way with my hands occupied – and emerge from the crack in the parched land with a rainmaker, a refractor, a mosaic-crafter, a weaver of rainbows.

Yes, Mother, I have returned, but I am changed,... again, again, again, again. Do you still see me, Mother? I am your daughter though we are shifting shape together. Will you reknit the tunic that held me so that I am adorned again? I see you are changed too. And we carry the shank and the mosaic in our hearts now, Mother.

“...I have a physical defect, like a missing foot or finger…”

I have the missing piece for the tableau of lights.

I have a heart pierced by seven swords.

I have the capacity to see you in your pain, because I have witnessed my own. I own It

I carry the thorned crowd on my head and the stars dance in my tear-filled eyes,… fractals, kaleidoscopes.

I have returned to you with my truth and it rests in my belly like a sleeping animal. The weight of her leaving me bearing down with my legs planted firm and wide as the planets dance around my head.

She will be birthed in the red earth and the blood. And the moon and stars will be her playthings as I cradle her, nurse her on the nectar of jasmine.

Turn away from the gash in my side if you must. But look what else you will not see for fear of your own perfect Shadow.

I would love to hear how you have journeyed to retrieve pieces of yourself. Please ‘pebble’ any resources that support you, images that capture your path or writings that have evoked this transformation in you in the comments below, my love. Thank you, so much, for being on this journey with me. We heal in community, don’t we?

1. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg p57