Where Does This Rage Come From? by Kaia Tingley

 

Medusa's Scream II by Claire Dorey

There has been a deep trauma

^{To all of us.}

^{In all of us.}

^{By all of us.}

^{Against divinity herself.}

^{We have been the victims. We have been the perpetrators too.}

^{I do not know the name. I cannot describe the agony. But I bear witness to it nonetheless. It is real. It happened and we can no longer afford to pretend that it did not.}

^{I don’t have to know what happened. I don’t have to feel it all over again. But the bedrock of truth is unyielding. A steady place to rest, if even for just the briefest moment.}

^{There is no blame, actually. It just is a thing. A block in the vibration of infinity. A hiccup in the grand scheme of things.}

^{But it was painful all the same. Deeply painful in the way of giving birth. The ring of fire.}

^{THIS is where the rage comes from.}

^{Deep within us on a primal level.}

^{The trauma happened a very long time ago. When some people discovered that they could rule others through fear and power. Since domination became the foundational zeitgeist of human progress. Since we started trying to put an infinite, linear progression on top of the cyclical rhythm of nature.}

^{Since we decided a global economy (and its flow of profit to the few scions of power at the top) was more important than the very skin of the earth, and the stability of our families.}

^{We will continue to pass on the block in the darkness of unawareness for so long as we continue to flee towards what we perceive as safety rather than embrace the light of truth. Our physical gender in this lifetime is irrelevant to this process.}

^{The trauma shaped us. It brought us collectively to the point that we are experiencing right here. Right now.}

^{Do you see the edge? Do you feel it?}

^{Forgiveness is not a logical thing.}

^{It is not something the mind can decide, or religion can dictate must happen.}

^{It is not something to be broken down, analyzed, or understood.}

^{It is not even a one-time thing.}

^{Forgiveness is a mystery. She’s the sister of Eros herself. We aren’t built to understand. That’s ok.}

^{She’s the muse Dona Mwiria speaks of seducing. The harbinger of pleasure. The very essence of what it means to be alive and to know it.}

^{She calls us back to beauty. She calls us to the bright blue sky and the perfect beauty of the clouds chasing one another home. She sings the siren song of coherence in a world gone mad. She is the ground under our bare feet and the wind in our hair.}

^{Do you hear her singing?}

^{Her voice is beautiful despite the trauma she’s endured. Her seeds will always sprout, even after they’ve been crushed and burned and smeared into nothing. They will still grow if we can imagine that love still exists.}

^{She’s more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine. The definition of juicy. Forgiveness, dressed in her modest clothes, holds the secret of the future in her small, carefully cupped hands.}

^{She offers us a cup of calming tea.}

^{Do we dare to allow her softness again?}

^{It seems imprudent, but…}

^{I take the cup of tea.}

^{The world has always seemed to be trying to crush me into a tight little square space when my nature has demanded flow. Get a job! says Amanda Palmer. I feel that…}

^{But I crave circular spaces. White walls and dark wooden floors. Healthy dark green plants, soft breezes, wide-open skies. Cool pools in the dark evening and the enchanted sound of music sung in low harmonious voices. A warm hand on the small of my back. Permission granted to be as I am. No different.}

^{I’ve struggled with structure imposed upon form, and form animated by flow, in a never ending cycle. Haven’t you?}

^{Is this, at its heart, a problem of perception? Or is it the law of the Tao?}

^{Must there always be pain? Is the pain the necessary precursor to beauty?}

^{Is this just the way it was supposed to be?}

^{I don’t feel in my heart that it is. But I release the attachment to knowing.}

^{I release the story that I am supposed to be someone else in order to have the right to know this. That I should suffer more. Enough with the suffering!}

^{If these words come through me to you, then so be it! It is up to you now to decide whether or not to receive them. I will never take that from you.}

^{Contrast doesn’t have to mean control.}

^{We can learn to allow for fluidity within a structure, can’t we? Coherence is after all just an adjustment to the frequencies of previously negating waveforms.}

^{The inexorable pull of the tide brings me back to the place of stillness. The space between the inhale and the exhale. The exhale and the inhale.}

^{There is beauty in both sides. The union of the opposites could be just fine.}

^{We have been given the choice. It is upon us. Do you see it?}

^{All I can do is bear witness.}

^{I am content with the choice I have made.}

^{I sip my tea and smile.}

Art and essay from  Re-Membering with Goddess: Healing the Patriarchal Perpetuation of Trauma.

^{Kaia Tingley is a writer, artist, podcaster, digital strategy nerd, and sometimes hot-tempered supernova with a wild, free soul. You can find her on Instagram or on LinkedIn.}

https://www.instagram.com/muse.of.creativity https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaiamaeve