A remembering of rhythm, resurrection, and the soul’s return to flight

Two nights ago, I watched Resident Alien curled up beside my husband. The episode was quirky and hilarious as usual, but it surprised me with something tender. Harry, once alien, now fully human, was trying to understand the human experience. He didn’t have a soul—or so he believed. But then, during a Native American pow-wow, he found himself cradling a baby while the sound of drums, prayer bells, and women’s stomping feet filled the air. Something stirred in him—unexpected, electric. He turned to the elder beside him, bewildered.
“What is this feeling?” he asked.
She smiled. “That’s your soul.”

I thought of that moment the very next evening, as I stepped barefoot into the circle.

My friend Heather and I arrived early to the drum gathering, and Eric—who everyone calls Hugging Bear—greeted us with warmth and purpose. He handed us a box and said, “Help me build the altar.” I knelt beside the sacred cloth I chose—striped, geometric, carrying the desert tones of the Southwest—and began to arrange its elements like puzzle pieces whispered by Spirit.

In one corner, I placed a selenite tower—light in solid form. In another, a deck of affirmation cards. Along the bottom edge, a selenite heart and an abalone shell for incense. A seashell. A conch shell, center stage. But what stayed with me most were the great gray wings I found nestled in the box. I placed them at the top of the altar, arching outward like a blessing. At the time, I didn’t know why they mattered. Later, I would.

As the circle filled, Eric opened the space by asking each of us to introduce ourselves. After the first round of sharing, he asked:
“Are there any Reiki healers in the room open to new clients?”

I raised my hand. So did two others—Renata and Rae. I knew them both, had danced with their spirits in other sacred circles. Renata, radiant and powerful, had once shared firelight and story with me in the Heights. Rae, bright and playful, had first caught my eye at a Wellness Expo, where she sang the air alive with her steel pan drum. I had even thought about inviting her to lead an inner child workshop with my friends.

Eric smiled, as if seeing the whole web. “I used to do Reiki full time—over 50,000 sessions, thousands of workshops. But now,” he said, “my joy is mentoring others. I want to help you find clients, grow your practice. I do it just to give back. I want to be…”—and here he paused—“the wind beneath your wings.”

And in that moment, I remembered the wings I had laid gently above the altar. The altar I had unknowingly built for myself.

Something clicked. This wasn’t just a gathering—it was a resurrection.

Earlier that same day, I had seen the vultures on the bayou. A committee of them, wings outstretched like cloaks of shadow. Sixty or more, cloaked in silence and death. At the time, I felt both awe and unease. But now, in the drum circle, I understood.

The vultures were the death.
The drum circle was the rebirth.
And the part of me being reborn was my confidence—my soul’s readiness to lead, to heal, to fly.

At first, I clung to the beat with my mind—1-2, 1-2—trying to make order of the rhythm. It was the old way, the head’s way. But then, gradually, the counting dissolved. My hands found their own wisdom. I stopped thinking and started feeling. The drum called me home to the heartbeat of the Earth—and deeper still, to the heartbeat I once heard in the womb.

It was the same message I’d been hearing for months.
First from my Reiki teacher: “Get out of your head and into your heart.”
Then again in Sedona, from the woman at Follow Your Heart, as I cradled the aura quartz heart she handed me like a sacred talisman.

But this night—it wasn’t theory. It wasn’t metaphor.
It was embodied. Real. Alive.

I danced, I drummed, I whooped, I sang.
I let my inner child come out and play—no fear of judgment, no inner critic counting steps. I wasn’t analyzing the moment. I was inside it.
Co-creating a field of sound with strangers who weren’t strangers anymore.
We were primal. Raw. Sacred. One.

And the drum I loved most? The one painted with a cosmic tree, roots swirling in sacred feminine form? I struck it in the center, right in the place that looked like a portal or a womb or the start of all things. I didn’t strike with force—I struck with reverence. And I swear I heard her—the Cosmic Mother—answer back.

I am beginning to understand what Harry felt.
That mysterious stirring. That tether to something greater.
Not a possession called a soul, but a re-membering. A returning.

And just like Harry, I think I grew my soul that night.

Or maybe it was never lost.

Maybe I just needed to build the altar…
to pick up the drum…
to hear the wind rise behind my wings…

…and begin again.