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It’s a crisp October day, two days before the full moon, and my little boy and I are walking in the woods in Oklahoma.  We passed a pile of cut logs at the edge of a stream, and follow a trail along the water’s edge.  The trail opens up into a wide shoreline of soft mud, covered in little deer tracks. Just on the other side of the mud, there is a movement of grey, and three deer, flushed out of the water’s edge by our presence, climbed up the bank ahead and disappeared.

The trail here just disappeared, so we retraced our steps and started heading back to the car.  I walk the land with intention, heart and eyes searching for meaning behind every blade of grass, touch of wind, song of bird. Along the way, I found a perfect little white feather in the brown leaves below us.  I have been finding feathers on the regular the past few months, since my spiritual awakening begun in earnest.

We find a secondary trail, one that appears to have been cut by truck tires, and our feet crumble dried brown leaves as we walk, destination unknown.  We are just exploring. Along this walk, he is telling me about an anime he has been playing online called “Bleach” in which there are two types of resurrections: a regular resurrection is where you die and then you get revived, and a “resurreccion” in which the character is transformed. The regular kind can happen any time, but “resurreccion” only happens during a full moon.  The character says a magical trigger word and then releases a burst of “reiatsu”, a word meaning “spiritual energy” in order to cause this transformation to occur.

I am intrigued by this because it reminds me of my experience last full moon.  I had put a concentrated focus on transformation. “I let go of self-doubt and fear.  I walk in faith and confidence”, I had affirmed to myself.  I still feel the skin of self-doubt, but it has begun to loosen and slide off. I can recognize the feeling and remind myself to let it go.

A couple of weeks ago, during the time of the New Moon, I had gone to this spiritual retreat called “Soul Camp”. While there, one of the exercises was to do an hour-long silent meditation walk in nature. I had wandered slowly, eyes wide in wonder. By the edge of a pond, the sun had baked the land into hard cracks at the shoreline. A small ribbon snake, coiled up, reared his head at me in an unexpected warning.

I leave it be, retreating to the cooler side of the pond to sit under the trees in the shade. My bottom rested on soft, cool dirt as I took a moment to ground myself. My eye was drawn to the light falling on a shimmering flat object in the dirt to my left. I pulled it out of the earth to examine it. It’s a piece of petrified snake skin in the striped pattern of that ribbon snake. I carry this around like a treasure and put it on my altar when I get home, a symbol of the transformation I am going through in my spiritual awakening.

A week or so later, I was walking slowly across a field with a wise woman.  We were picking up trash in the park as a form of service to Mother Earth.  Our eyes were focused on finding objects white and plastic to scoop up and put into our trash bag.  I reached down to pick up something white I saw in the grass, and then realized it was moving. It was a grasshopper in the white molting phase, shedding his oversize paper-thin skin to transform into a new form in the cycle of metamorphosis. This is a fragile time in the life of a grasshopper, where they are more likely to be picked off by a predator, being less likely to be able to get away from them.

Later, I contemplate what it means to be transformed, what skin am I shedding. At Soul Camp, I told myself I was letting go of worrying about what people thought of me, and just focusing on how I feel. As I let this skin shed, I find myself taking more risks socially and creatively. When I care less about judgement, I put my true self out there more.

I am also less willing to put up with bullshit, and I want my friends to be as fiercely authentic as I am now. I used to just allow them to be disingenuous, accepting them where they were. Now I want to press into their wounds, asking them to tell me more, ask them to admit more to themselves.

Change is uncomfortable.  Honesty is uncomfortable. Sometimes, so is growth. I want my friends to grow along with me now. I want my relationships to grow with me. I challenge even my marriage in this way, asking my husband to step out of his comfort zone in order to more fully create space for my wants and needs that I am finally standing up for.

If you asked me to put my fingers on that first layer of skin coming off, though, I would say it is the conditioning of my family; the apparent misogyny of my parents, the catering to men and forgiveness of their sins while holding women to an impossible standard. It’s the worry that if I expose my true self to my family, I will be subject to attacks and ridicule, and the recognition that this behavior is their problem, no longer mine, and I will not let it stop me from putting myself out there.

It’s also about letting go of the hold that food has had over me. Changing my relationship with food is a big physical transformation I am currently undergoing. Maybe the shedding of skin is literal, not metaphysical, and this time next year, I will have completed my own metamorphosis.

In my transformation, I will reveal my talents boldly and unapologetically. I will not be afraid to step into my gifts as a creative person. I will share my work in ways that feel right and comfortable to me with other people.  I will not be afraid of failure or ridicule.  I will simply create the life I want to live with my magic.

On this walk with my son on this October day, the trail ended in a clearing, with a structure at the opposite end.  We walked over to it, my son curious about what it was.  I explained to him that it was a deer blind, but those words meant nothing to him.  I explained further that the hunters would sit inside of it, hidden to the deer, and when the deer came out to the clearing, exposed, the hunters would shoot them.  My son was horrified at the idea that something so innocent and beautiful would come to a brutal end, not understanding it was part of a cycle passed down for generations. Birth, growth and death, and then the cycle behinds anew.

On the way back, we took a side journey to an old graveyard, a simple fenced in area with about a dozen marked graves, and possibly several unmarked ones.  We admired a huge tree in the middle of the graveyard, tall and sturdy, but with all its branches missing except one, possibly transformed itself by the recent tornadoes or simply just age or disease. My son pointed out that it’s one good branch would make a nice place for birds to rest, and he wasn’t wrong. Its transformation made it ready for a new purpose.

Death is a part of transformation that we don’t like to think about, but sometimes death is necessary to fully complete the changes required.  That morning that I was picking up trash with the wise woman, we also found several dead dragonflies.  Dead dragonflies can be reminders that endings are necessary for new beginnings, and allowing ourselves to evolve. We have to let go of the old ways and the old conditions to allow the new life to begin.

That same morning, I also found four feathers, three of them white like the one I found on this morning walk with my son. As he and I walked back to the car after finding the deer blind, I had found another feather, this one white fluffy down at the base, but a glittering blue-ish brown along the top. I bring the feathers home and add them to my collection, reminders from the spirit that I am on the right path, even though I am just feeling my way through it.

https://youtu.be/b__kjReL_a0?si=fLNUuhXoEai-gmej

There is an ancient myth that keeps popping up in my life, and I am starting to wonder if it is connected to an ancient rift that I have been sorting through in therapy.  The myth is that of Persephone, who was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld.  Her mother Demeter searched for her desperately, and was only able to find her through intervention from Hecate. During the time Persephone was in the underworld, she was told not to eat, but she was tempted by a pomegranate and ate a few seeds.  The price that was paid for this was that once she was returned to Earth, she was bound to return to the underworld for months out of the year.

This myth first came to me in a reading back in the beginning of June, where I was presented with the card of Demeter and told that this was a Goddess with a message for me during this time. Demeter was a goddess of agriculture and the harvest.  She controlled the weather and the growth of crops in the fields.  When she was angry about her daughter’s disappearance, she caused a famine and people suffered.  This is when Zeus intervened and argued with Hades to bring her back. By the end of that month, I had become intrigued by the Goddess Hecate, as some experiences during the Solstice brought her to mind.  Lately, the story has been popping up again in media that I am consuming, and I find myself contemplating Persephone.

I also find myself contemplating what messages this story has to offer me. The story is one of a deep connection between mother and daughter, and also speaks of a daughter’s desire to be independent and live her life by her own rules.  Lately, I have been working on establishing boundaries with my own mother.  This has been a struggle my whole life, but lately I have become more assertive about this, due to a perception of increased risk by her behavior and from support in my inner growth from my therapist.  I have been working on establishing boundaries and being more assertive at work, and digging into my past to recognize where this behavior pattern stems from. Of course, it all goes back to our roots, and my roots, like most of us, are a complicated web of family history.

This week, my sun is square with the asteroid Ceres in my zodiac chart.  This configuration can show up as tension between one’s self and women, mothers or caretakers. It represents a friction between the care you want to give or receive and your deepest self.  Interestingly, Ceres also represents a Goddess of agriculture, but in the Roman tradition and not the Greek (as in Demeter). During these four days (Sept 2-6, strongest today on the 4^th), it provides an opportunity to acknowledge and heal past hurts.  This is a time for old wounds to resurface, which happens for the purpose of digging deeper into your core wounds. When you acknowledge past hurt, you meet a deeper layer of yourself.  It’s a time for revisiting past memories of your mother and gaining a new perspective.

The stone associated with this time is the moonstone.  As I am writing this, I gather two moonstones that I had on my September altar. I hold them in my hands, contemplating the relationship between my mother and I.  I hold them to the flames of my candle, a “stress relief” candle my close friend recently gave me, and warm them in the glowing flame. As I place them down on the rounded slap of oak, next to symbols of the fields (jars of grass and flowers), one of the stones rolls off and “runs away” to the other side of the desk.  I guess that one is Persephone, disappearing to the underworld. I put it back with the other stone and now they sit together in harmony.

I think a bit about what it was like for my mother to love me.  It is hard to really imagine the love a mother has for their child until you become a parent of your own.  At this stage in my life, I am the Mother and she is the Crone, but at one point, I was the Maiden and she was the Mother.  I feel the exquisite beauty of her love for a second, and it brings tears to my eyes.  I think about how I was always running into danger when I was a teenager and beyond, my fierce desire to be independent of her, my chafing under her control.  I had so much potential, but I made some bad choices.  I ran off to the underworld myself for a while. She went scorched earth on me for a time. I almost stayed there, but she called me back and I answered the call.  I regretted it for a long time, though.  I was under her thumb and even though she was giving me support, her support always came at a cost.  I felt that she did not give me enough positive attention. She never told me that she was proud of me or that she loved me.  All I heard in my head in her voice was criticism, and this made it hard for me to love myself and feel truly confident without being crippled with self-doubt. Lately, I have been purposefully going low contact with her and my dad, as I focus on my own healing from the scars of my past.   I have been working on feelings of self-love and growing in confidence in order to take back my power.

Earlier today, a friend drew a tarot card from a deck for me.  The card was “Understanding”. The meaning was to signify a new awakening and realization. “You have the ability to choose what is right for you beyond perceived limitations.”  I feel that tonight these realizations were around the theme of forgiveness and love, both for my mother and for the girl I used to be, my inner Persephone who ran off and came back, but still spends some time in the underworld, feeling sad and sorry for herself.  I forgive you, Persephone.  I forgive you, Demeter.

Last night my friends and I created vision boards.  I included stickers and images that represented themes of knowing my own worth, that I was enough, that I had power, a kind heart, encouragement to be bold, that I was stronger than I think.  I chose to place the tarot card representing “strength” as a focus on one corner, and included sparkly gems, stars and clover to represent luck and charisma.  In the center, I wrote the words from a card that my friend chose for me from a deck, that spoke to her of me. “I reveal my talents boldly and unapologetically”. 

Lately I have been embarking on a creative period and letting a feeling that I need to share my voice with the world lead me.  I competed in a storytelling contest and recited poetry at an open mic night all within the past couple of weeks.  Now, as Mercury transits Chiron in my chart, I feel a call to express these emotional connections and transform my words into wisdom and healing. I take this time to reflect on how far I have grown this past year in my work on inner healing and breaking free from past behavior patterns. I hope that through sharing my vulnerabilities and my inner journey, I can encourage others to feel safe sharing their own stories and find solace in their own worlds through my words.

The women gather near the nature center at the Houston Arboretum. Some greet each other as old friends, and some are first timers, like my friend Lisa that I unwittingly enticed into this. Lisa and I had already been at the arboretum for close to an hour looking for birds, and she agreed to meet up with this planned group mindfulness hike with the Houston Women’s Hiking Group, despite the fact that I had not explained to much about what was going to happen from here.
What did happen is that this group of women proceeded to form a loose circle in a field of soft, perfect grass in the gentle sun of the morning. There was an invitation to take off our shoes to ground ourselves with the earth. We went around the circle and shared our intentions for the morning. Our leader Bridgette asked the person to share a gesture that represented their intention, and we each copied each other’s movements. After this, we took deep breaths and felt our connection with the ground. Bridgette led us in Dragon and Tiger Qi Gong, a series of movements used in medical qi gong that is believed to have healing benefits. The movements simulated the movement of positive energy from the earth up through and around the body, a flow of energy through the middle, the release of negative energy and an offering of positive energy up to the sky.

After this, shoes were put back on, and we began the mindfulness part of the hike. She asked us to spend the time in observation and reflection and reduce verbal communication, or at least be respectful of others who were observing quiet time in the woods. She set an expectation that at the end of the hike, she was going to ask us to tell her something we had observed, which helped us to keep our eyes open for that one most treasured observation to share with the group.

We started out walking through a garden area with murals on the surrounding walls. One of the murals depicted a butterfly feeding on a purple flower, much like the purple flower I had visualized in my deep-end reflections recently. She also asked the new people to make a joyful noise on a flower-drum sound experience. Beautiful white and purple flowers lined our path. We also all stopped to admire an unusual pine tree that had struggled, potentially during this summer’s storms, and bent over but did not break. This tree captured the imagination of many in our group as a symbol of resiliency.
When we got to the pond, we sat down for Bridgette to lead us in a ten-minute guided meditation. Before the hike began, she had introduced the concept of mycorrhizal networks, the “wood wide web” that connects trees and fungi in a way that allows them to communicate and share resources with each other. In this meditation, she encouraged us to ask for an invitation to allow our “roots” to come out of our bottoms (metaphorically) and connect to this network. She had also let us know that trains would come by during our meditation, and we were to try not to let that bother us, but instead concentrate on allowing any negative thoughts to leave our bodies and imagine them getting on those trains and being carried away.
Lisa and I had chosen to sit on a bench instead of the ground, and we shared later that we were having a similar experience during this time. We were having a hard time hearing Bridgette and although we both wanted to have our eyes closed as she asked and be inside ourselves, the outside world itself was so beautiful that we didn’t want to take our eyes off of it. There were so many dragonflies circling the pond, and emerald lily pads sparkling in the sun. A small group of watercolor painters had arranged themselves in various positions around the pond, inspired by the view themselves. Even the body positions and movements of the other women on the hike were fascinating to me.

Despite this visual observation, I was also feeling connected through my roots to the network below the ground, and also felt the cool breeze in my face and a certain stillness in my soul. Through this stillness, my doubts and insecurities were calm or perhaps they left on that train. I was left with a simple message in my heart. I am enough.
We thanked the earth for sharing with us and withdrew our roots in gratitude. She also asked us to think about people in our life that we love, and send our feelings of love and goodwill to them. I thought about my little group of friends, our “bonded pentagram”, and sent them love and goodwill. We also straightened up and allowed our minds to connect with the higher world. As above, so below.
When we were preparing to leave our seats, I noticed two little oval shaped orange-brown natural objects by my feet. I picked them up and gave one to Lisa and kept one for myself as a reminder of our experience. She referred to it as a “mango” and I thought of it as a baby acorn. I am not sure exactly what it is, but when I see it, it will remind me of that feeling of peace that I left with this morning.

After this, we walked around the meadow. I had just been in this same area last weekend with my sister and found myself again fascinated by the purple rod-shaped flowers that were in the meadow and also were found by the wetland areas. Google Lens identified these flowers today as Prairie or Dense Blazing Star. That name struck me as representing the women on this journey. We are all dense blazing stars. I felt another message inside. I am powerful.
As we walked, I reached out to brush all the plants with my fingers, admiring the softness or coolness of their touch, feeling connected to them and grateful for their acceptance of us sharing their world. We came upon a family in a fork in the path, mother pushing a stroller and dad herding the two small children along the path. Bridgette asked them if they were going in the direction from which we came, and the mother indicated yes. “Oh good, I wanted to let you know there is magic that way. It’s good magic, but magic nonetheless”. The mother said, “Oh, did you hear that? That sounds fantastic!” to her children.
The magic, though, I think, was not so much in the place but in the space we had created. We were the magic, we had formed it and perhaps we had left it for others to find, or maybe we were taking it with us. Maybe the mother would find her own magic, and perhaps just by Bridgette putting that thought into her head, she would know to look for it. Perhaps all that is needed for magic is for us to be open to the experience of it. I am magical.
This hike did not start out as our intention for our experience this morning. Lisa and I had actually agreed to meet at this park yesterday to look for a rare bird, the black whiskered vireo, that had been spotted at this park over last week. However, I had gotten halfway to the park yesterday, and a dreary grey sky had erupted in a gentle rain and thick fog. I had called Lisa, realizing we were probably not going to be able to see any birds, and we ended up going to breakfast instead.
On this morning, I had originally planned to go to Galveston for a sound bath on the beach, but we had decided to try one more time for look for that vireo before the opportunity passed. As it turned out, that vireo might be long gone – it hasn’t been logged on EBird for six days. Also, Lisa had forgotten to bring her binoculars, so we weren’t really set up for success on this adventure. Despite this, we did have a magical morning. Before the mindfulness hike, we had spent about 45 minutes exploring the ravine trail. A small flock of scaly breasted munia had appeared in the bushes next to us on the path, clearly seen with the naked eye. A yellow crowned night heron had appeared on a bridge railing just a few feet from us, allowing us the chance to admire him up close before he flew off again. I had just happened to notice that the hiking group had posted this hike, and she said yes to the experience. If we had been able to make to the park yesterday as planned, we would have missed this experience altogether. We agreed that although we didn’t plan it this way, this hike turned out to be exactly what we needed.

At the end of this hike, we gathered around little logs in a half circle and shared our one special observation, along with a gesture of what it represented to us that we again all imitated for each woman’s invention. I shared the beauty of the dragonflies flying over the water, which represents looking below the surface for the deeper meaning. I truly felt that this physical journey spoke to the deeper spiritual journey that I have been on. Dragonflies can also represent change, maturity and self-realization, which have all been steps in the path I have been on lately. Many of the women expressed thoughts of self-love, appreciation and gratitude for the group and the experience. There were many gestures connected to the heart chakra. The overall experience seemed connected to the root chakra, though, and left us grounded. We all walked away with feelings of peace and goodwill, feelings I hope will last throughout the week and the feeling of which I will continue to seek out in further magical experiences.