Kiva writes some of the most powerful Essays and Poems we produce, artfully getting our Gaian message out to the greater community. We’ll be regularly adding to the inspiring selections below.

“Terry Tempest Williams’ books evoke the grief, blood, communion and eros that is this Earth. Henry Miller delved, exposed, embraced and challenged. Diane Ackerman entices as she informs. Kiva Rose is a sensualist and provocateur whose words do all these things at once- caressing and evoking, provoking a new/ancient way of seeing, being, manifesting and believing. The world is a poorer place to the degree that we deny ourselves this level of honesty and depth of feeling, and richer for the words she has given us. They are not entertainment, though they interest and please. Let them break you open the way river parts rock, and then ride them like a pounding silken beast or wing-lifting winds in the direction of your passions and purpose." - Jesse Wolf Hardin, author of Gaia Eros and co-director of Animá Center

"I hope you will go out and let the stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. Then you will see what medicines they make, and where and when to apply them. That is the work. The only work."
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of Women Who Run With The Wolves)

I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while, and I just wanted to say to you that I really admire your connection to the land, and your highly honed sense of herbs. I want to be that kind of herbalist one day

-Persephone

I just found your blog a couple of days ago... Wow! It's so full of beauty and information. With three little ones at home, it took me awhile to read through all of your archived posts, but I devoured them in my every spare minute. I've only just started on my own medicine woman path, so I look forward to all your subsequent postings. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your love of our kindred spirits, the herbs, with the world. :)

Your Newest Faithful Reader,

Brandi

Kiva, I have occassion to read your blog and have to say that you inspire me so much. It just proves to me that the only way we can truly learn the language of plants is to learn from the plants themselves. I spent 9 years studying herbal medicine through books at a college. I have learnt more in the last 6 months from the plants themselves than what i learnt in all that time in a man-made institution.After reading of your experiences with the wild green I am loathe to think that I could call myself a herbwyfe. Thank you for being an inspiration, for letting the rest of us know what it actually means to work with plants.

many blessings,

Michelle Carnochan, Australia

Your deep love of and connection with the plants just shines through in your writing. And you write beautifully. What gifts you have!

-Julie James, herbalist with 20 years experience, East Village Wellness, Long Beach, CA

If it is the highest and the greatest that you seek,
the plant can direct you.
Strive to become through your will,
what without will, it is.
-Goethe

Come with me into the juniper woodlands, into the green world where the garden still grows wild. Feel in your body the wild canyon gales of the sacred southwest, the river lapping at your feet and the soft mud rising up between your toes. Move with me as if the mother were holding you to herself, as if you are being embraced by emerging light and damp earth... as it is, and as you are.

Know in your bones, in that small, hollow space between your ribs that you are the beloved of both land and water, born to feel the ecstasy of the fecund earth as well as the death throes of each being. We are all living extensions and sensory feelers of the body of the earth, of our mother Gaia. We are the poets and priestesses of this fertile, verdant wildness. There is nothing so fulfilling as the love of the land, of being not so much filled, but opened, as a conduit for the force and rush of energy and light, this is what we are born to be, and an integral part of each our individual purposes and callings.

Look! The plants are all around us, the brilliant orange flowers of Yerba de la Negrita, the fierce spikes of Agave and grandmotherly arms of the ancient Cottonwoods. these vibrant green beings are some of the very first peoples. Not only do they provide the air we breathe, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, but they have the ability to provoke a wide range of feelings, reactions and states of mind. From the tongue tingling tastes of plump mango fruits to the gently protective properties of milky oat tops to the sensual evocation of the red rose to the reality shifting shamanic powers of the salvias and the poppies, the plants move us, tantalize us, heal us and sometimes irritate us like nothing else.

Shhhh, listen... deep within us, somewhere much deeper than ears or skin we can sense and hear the songs and speech of the green ones. Since before the first ceremonies and the first healers, we learned from these ancient teachers, and dreamed of their subterranean world of roots and soil. As with our ancestors and the indigenous peoples across the world, we use the plants in medicine, ritual and pleasure.

...there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all... on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and... you may hear it --a vast pulsing harmony-- its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.
-Aldo Leopold

Understanding and connecting with the plants begins with opening our awareness to their energy and presence. Simply noticing that they are there, whether the dandelions in our apartment parking lot or the leafy shade of ancient oak trees in the city park, they each have individual personalities and energies. Each possesses its own mode of healing and signature song.

There are many ways to meet the plant spirits. They may come to us in our dreams, speaking in the symbols and whispers of our dreamtime or they may grab us in their thorns, holding us fast and waking us to their language and presence. Still others may lure us with their lovely ephemeral scent or the mutter of the wind in their leaves. Whatever way they catch our attention, it is up to us to look closely, to feel fully and listen attentively. We cannot expect any teacher to instruct us over the chatter of our own voices and minds, and the plants rarely shout.

All forms of art require a dedication to focus, and none more than the shamanic arts. Before we can learn to hear we must learn to be silent, to quiet our minds and allow our bodies to sense the intricate, active world around us. The best times to hear and fully feel the spirits of many plants seems to be dawn and dusk, the traditional times of the emergence of the faery folk, ancestral spirits and wild animals. During these between times our senses are more aware and the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual fade and blur. Take advantage of these brief magical hours by venturing outdoors to spend quiet time with Gaia and her plant children.

Two of my students accompany me out into the early morning woods. Dawn is emerging in a lavender mist as we lay together on the cool ground, listening with our whole bodies, and with our expectant spirits. When we become still, we are able to hear the rhythm of breath, the beat of life, the hum of song, the intricate pulses of the plant world, the drinking and eating, breathing and opening into sun and air, withering and rotting back to earth. We must be fully attentive to feel the energy of the plant pressing against us, entering into us, sensual as a lover touching flesh, sharp as a knife slipping under skin, warm as wine spreading through the river of our veins.

To begin our journey into the green language of the plant world we can use a few simple exercises to enhance our awareness.

#1: Begin by choosing an individual plant, don’t base this choice on any preconceived notion of it being an “important” or even a medicinal plant. Let yourself be drawn naturally to a specific species and then to an individual plant.

#2 Sit beside the plant (especially in the early morning or near dusk), noticing everything you can about it, look at it from above and from below, what kind of leaves does it have? Is it flowering, in seed or just starting as a small sprout fresh from the womb of Gaia? Gently break off a leaf and smell it, is it pungent and musky like oregano or does it have a more subtle and delicate smell like a violet? If it is flowering, smell the flower. Is it sweet or bitter, and what is it shaped like? Look also at its environment. Is it growing beside a mountain stream or out of a crack in the pavement? Is the area wet or dry? What is the surrounding vegetation (if any) like? Are there bees, butterflies or other insects or creatures tending to or eating the plant?

#3 Draw the plant. You don’t have to be an artist to do this, all you need is a desire to better understand as well as to express your feelings about the plant. Don’t just try to capture the shapes of the leaves or the proper number thorns or spines, but instead try to express the personality and essential spirit of the plant.

#4 Write about the plant. Write down your observations about its appearance and environment as well as your impressions of its nature. Don’t be put off if you feel like you have no idea what you’re talking about, just record what you sense through your body (see, smell, touch and even hear) and intuit with your heart.

#5 Find a good field guide for your area or someone familiar with local flora to identify the plant. Once identified, do some research and find out as much as you are able about it. Is it a perennial or an annual? Does it have any medicinal value? Is it native to this land? If not, where is it from and how did it get here? Is it cooperative or invasive? Are there any stories or myths associated with it? Write down what you find out along with your original observations, watching for parallels or tie-ins.

#6 Return to the plant. See how it has changed or not changed. Sit with it again. You may notice previously unseen details or experience a different impression. If your research showed that this plant is edible or medicinal, taste it,. harvest a small amount at the correct time. Record your feelings and observations about this experience. Write about and draw the plant again. Repeat this as often as you return to visit the plant, at least once a season.

People (like soil, bears, butterflies, and monkeys) have made their medicine by percolating water through plants, eating them whole, soaking them in water for teas, or rubbing them on their skin... for we, like all other life, have long been inextricably interwoven into the fabric of the plant world.
-Stephen Buhner

We, along with many of our relatives, from the elephants to the bears to the birds to the ants, have used the plants as medicine. We have healed our wounds, eased the pain of our dying, aided our births and traveled into vision and ecstasy with the help of our green allies.

It is only recently that we humans have forgotten and destroyed much of our knowledge of the ways in which our ancestors used the plants to heal, this has happened primarily through cultural annihilation and assimilation. We must begin again, by salvaging the remains of our great, great grandmothers’ knowledge. By watching the animals around us. By learning from each other and by asking the plants for their help. And we must teach our children what we learn, passing on through story and shared experience, as well as inherited cellular knowledge, the power and beauty of herbal healing... so that we will not forget again.

At the same time, we must also remember that the plants are just what they are: plants, and not humans. And that while they are often happy to help us when we ask, it is not our interests that they are most concerned with, but the wider web of plant, animal, fungi, bacteria, with the beloved body of Gaia who is the mother and Creatrix of us all. Knowing this, we enter into relationship with the plants respectfully, prayerfully, humbly, remembering we are but one part of the living, feeling whole.

Only through the earth may we be as one with all who have been and all who are yet to be, sharers and partakers of the mystery of living, reaching the full of human peace and the full of human joy.
-Henry Beston

In my hands, the vibrant violet blue flowers radiate the cooling calmness of the Salvia clan, she is a lush plant, her bright green leaves standing out in stark contrast with the Summer’s dusty grasses and withered wildflowers. She grows throughout this riparian canyon, with riverside watercress and up against the prickly cholla cactus. I gather her slowly, mindfully, cutting the flowering tops from the stem with a quick snip, and thanking her for her medicine. Even after I place the Salvia gently in my woven basket, I can feel the life of the plants still in my hands, feeding me not only oxygen but something undefinable in scientific terms: magic! And I can still hear their songs weaving through the mountain air. We are all, whether aware of it or not, nourished and affected by their spirits as well as bodies. By the fertile beauty of their dying, by the fierceness of their flowering and the radiant fullness of their fruiting.

Join me, on this journey ever deeper into the green world... into the wild garden.

the bear turns back

her tracks lead up

into red volcanic rock

where I lose her

the path of crushed leaves

torn bark and still wet

roots lingers behind me

where I will follow

it back into the dusk

finding the trail

that leads to home

that leads to the origins

of both woman and bear

woman - my hands small

and quick as they

gather medicine

from the ground

bear - I race through

the open sky

one claw opening

up the skin of the world

that I take

and I eat

mantled by moon

silver tipped

as I sing an old song

to the rust red bark

of alder trees as they

are born from the earth

in mountain meadows

dressed in the gold of mahonia

and grass growing cold

sometimes I lose myself

in this animal skin

the blood scent

of the ripened world

calling me always

further inward

to the heart

of the wild mother

in the morning

I eat berries

honey and milk

mingling the tastes

of a long summer into

the cool quick bite

of the oncoming autumn

beartooth set in silver

heavy at my throat

I wander into the morning

carrying a basket of flowers

and roots

barefoot in the remnants

of a heavy dew

and I am singing an old song

the blood song

of animal and woman

bound together

into one body, one spirit

-flesh, fur and bone-

my tracks lead up

into red volcanic rock

where sometimes I lose myself

inside this animal skin

“Bliss is not ‘found’ but revealed. Acknowledged. Allowed. Engaged. Embodied.” -Jesse Wolf Hardin

I watch my four year old daughter as she crouches naked up to her shoulders in the San Francisco River. Her head is dipped down as she drinks the cold water in quiet gulps while her hair falls in wet ropes around her face. She is effortlessly comfortable and completely aware, surrounded on all sides by the rich riparian green and raw red cliffs of the Gila Wildlands. A single vivid blue damselfly rests tentatively on one small brown shoulder. Rhiannon stops drinking to motionlessly watch her visitor with intent eyes and a huge grin. She waits until the damselfly takes flight on its own before she whirls in wild circles, growling and howling in wordless delight.

While I am watching her I cannot help but think that this must be the original and intended state of being: perfectly present and aware, a blissful extension of the land itself. That this wild-eyed child is the embodiment of bliss. And I also cannot help but feel my own bliss, constant here as it never has been before. Bliss not defined as a sense of carelessness or temporal happiness but as a deep seated knowledge of oneness with land and purpose, as a sense of no longer being lost or lacking for any needed thing.

I have not always been able to claim such a state of being. For most of my life I have wandered, searching and discontented, all too aware of every trouble and misery ever visited upon my life. It was a revelation to me then, when I discovered that life was not inherently ugly or burdensome, it was not even meant to be a mediocre tedium. Instead, I found that life was meant to be beautiful, a celebration and prayer manifest in every action and movement.

Unfortunately, it is this attitude of futility and cynicism that is most common. We are born into a culture that seems to believe there are certain sets of rules that must be followed. That life is a multiple choice test and that we must choose one of the preselected answers. What I have discovered is that truth and contentment (much less bliss) never comes as a prefabricated answer. That the only valid option is to invent a new answer and to realize that oftentimes the question itself is a fallacy. If the question is “how can I get through life as comfortably as I can?” or “How can I succeed just enough to get by?” then the question needs to be thrown out completely. The question should be more along the lines of, “What gives me the greatest joy?”, “What passion/purpose could I dedicate my life to?” and/or “What do I need to be whole?” If we are honest with ourselves we will find that the answers to these questions have very little to do with societal standing, monetary status or even comfort level. The answers to these questions will often frighten us because they will show us just how far we are from our own passions and needs. The questions will creep into our dreams and our internal conversations, regardless of our denial until answered with affirmation and action.

We’ve all heard of “finding your bliss” but in reality, bliss is not something that we can find. Bliss exists within us as an expression of the beauty and joy of Gaia. We need not search for it, we need only to acknowledge it, to embody it. But what does it mean to embody bliss, to own it completely? To not see it as something outside of and separate from ourselves? How to recognize and realize ourselves as extensions of Gaia, extensions of her beauty and bliss?

The answers are simple but never easy. What came easily to us as children will require work and focus to reclaim. To embody bliss is to take every step with intention, to be fiercely and fully awake.

And what does it mean to dance with the broken heart of Gaia? It means rejoicing in the beauty of that little girl in the river even as we recognize and feel the pain of our people, of our planet. It means dancing with the joy and with the pain. It means being strong enough to experience everything completely. To take the agony and the joy as currents of the same body of water. It means knowing that it is better to suffer than to feel nothing at all. It means waking up every morning welcoming the dawn, knowing that our lives have meaning and purpose and that our connection to our Mother is well-nourished.

How can we embody bliss? Once again, we must understand that bliss is not something outside of us, not something we can earn or seek out. It is something already alive within all of us. It is unfortunate that most of us live lifestyles that are far removed from the wildness or natural beauty that teaches us bliss through example. We must re-learn what we should have known from the very first breath.

The most essential ingredient in embodying bliss is a highly refined awareness. Although this heightened awareness is something all of us are born with, the time between then and now has often dulled that awareness into a numb complicity, and skills that should have been honed in childhood have atrophied into near uselessness. If any proof is needed, observe the habits of both a domesticated house dog and a dog that has either gone feral or was born wild. The difference in alertness, intelligence and instinct are remarkable. A house dog unaccustomed to being outdoors without a leash or to fending for itself will wander into traffic, ignore potential prey and nearly starve before it becomes aware enough to take care of itself. In the same way, those of us who have been conditioned by a normal American upbringing have been taught to ignore our feelings, stifle any tendency towards childlikeness and to confine physical consciousness to the gym or sex. We have effectively crippled our instinctual wildness. Our awareness will have to be awakened from dormancy and carefully nurtured in order to keep our senses alive.

The easiest and quickest way to engage our bliss is to seek out the little girl (or boy) that is inside us all. Usually, she is fast asleep or lost and wandering somewhere in our interior landscape. We all get occasional glimpses of her when we allow ourselves to eat a messy dessert with our hands, stomp through a mud puddle or lose ourselves completely in a beautiful piece of music. But for the most part we force her to keep her mouth shut and mind her manners. We still hold onto that antiquated Victorian saying, “children should be seen and not heard”. We’ve been taught to keep her under tight control and careful surveillance to avoid those curious glances and critical words we earn when we’re caught (grown women!) climbing a tree in the city park or singing offkey in the rain on our way to work. Part of bliss is being able to ignore the onlookers and quiet the critics through our total focus and engagement in play and experience.

Joy originates in the heart of the child and all of our wildness waits for us there. We need to find that little girl, let her sit in the flowerbed in the backyard and contemplate the animal shapes of passing clouds. We need to give ourselves license to play again.

We all know how easily innocence is lost, how simple it is to thoughtlessly embrace cynicism and the humdrum monotony of what we call everyday life. What many of us have forgotten is that we have the ability to reclaim that joyous sense of freedom and intensity. I grew up in a home where my childhood was virtually nonexistent, I was an adult with all of the weight the adulthood carries in our culture before I even hit puberty. For too long I saw the bitterness and tiredness of my mother and her mother when I looked in the mirror. A woman who had seen too much hardship and not enough joy, play or laughter in her life. I knew there was somelthing terribly wrong when I noticed that I woke up every day steeling myself to face the morning instead of celebrating the beauty of each new dawn.

Only as an actual adult, in my early twenties, was I able to properly give voice to that little girl. It was only then that I could give myself permission to spin in the dew-wet grass in the predawn morning hours. To allow myself to spend whole afternoons sitting in the tall grass watching a carnival of insects parading around me without feeling guilt at what I wasn’t doing or self-conscious that someone might see me playing. It was only when I found that little girl that I was able to become the woman I was meant to be.

Another way of embodying our bliss is to be open to our own feelings and experiences. To pay close attention how our daily lives affect us. The overwhelming joy we feel when our child greets us by throwing her arms around us or the peace and satisfaction we feel when finishing a project or meeting a goal or even the horror we experience when we watch the evening news each night. We need to tend to and honor these feelings. It is the depth (or lack thereof) of our emotions that gives us the capacity to fully experience bliss. If we play down our feelings, even when they are “negative” feelings such as dissappointment or pain, then we are numbing ourselves down. The less we feel, the less alive we are. Many of the most alive and blissfull people I have ever known were terminally ill. They were determined to experience and feel everything, to be hyper-aware even to pain in order to be aware of the razor edged preciousness of life. It can be hoped that not all of us need a time-frame placed on the days left to us in order to be that open to our experiences.

Perhaps the best way to open up to our own experiences is to realize that our feelings are not isolated and limited only to ourselves. To aknowledge that we are extensions of the Earth and that to deepen our connection to Gaia is to deepen our connection to ourselves. It’s important to be aware that the connection works both ways. The less separation there is between us and the Earth the more we will feel what the Mother is experiencing as well, including the enormous amount of pain She is suffering at the hand of our own species.

There are countless ways to solidify our connection to the land. It can be as simple as appreciating the amazing taste of locally grown fresh fruit or as complex as searching out and dedicating ourselves to that certain place that is home to us. The direct result of a deep connection with the Mother is an immediate and personal knowledge of how we are linked to each other and all other life. This eradication of separation from the Earth is the mainline to bliss. As long as our spirit and life are based in our love for the land we will never have any shortage of joy or awe in our lives.

In order to really own our bliss we must acknowlege that it is a state of being that we deserve. Too many of us get right up to the edge of everything we’ve ever wanted and turn around and walk away. Often this denial is triggered by guilt or a sense of not being enough to deserve joy or contentment. What we have to tell ourselves over and over again is that bliss is the state we are born into. It is not found and it is not earned. It is the birthright of every human being and it is only our imagined separation from the land, ourselves and each other that creates the illusion that we should ever exist in any state except bliss.

My daughter dances on the riverbank, arms open wide and spinning. I pick her up and I dance with her. We dance with the broken heart of Gaia in a world that is wounded and yet unfalteringly beautiful.

To embody bliss is to know our blessedness. It is to know that there is so much beauty in the world that we are unable to contain it, that it overflows and floods the world. When we open to the bliss we are carried by it on an undeniable current that delivers us back to the center of our own beings: wild, awake and authentically ourselves.

from “”

I’ll take you back
to the trees
to the first forest
the myth held
inside stone
water
and the liquid
states
of the human
spirit

whisper then
walk closer
to every edge
follow
the spiral
down to earth
to the mystery
of water
rising to cover
everything
you have
ever known

listen to me
let me
bring you back
to the first
human home
the original
wood still
splintered
with stone
that rises
from the earth
heaving
with the
ache of fire
the birth
of myth
and landscape
the human
hands spiraling
stone and water

touch me
until I turn
to you
until I am
only a mound
of leaf mould
and a million
flowers still
smelling
of honey
and the
sweet scent
of new decay

hold these
handfuls
of scarlet
petals
and twining
vines
give my
body to
the sky

remember
the stories
remember
that all these
faery tales
are true

The call to power necessitates a separation from the mundane world: the neophyte turns away from the secular life, either voluntarily, ritually, or spontaneously through sickness, and turns inward towards the unknown, the mysterium. This change of direction can be accomplished only through what Carl Jung has referred to as "an obedience to awareness".
-Joan Halifax The Wounded Healer

I often felt lost and lonely as a child, there being no one in my life whose example I could feel good about following. Like other little girls, I looked to the women in my life for that, for a powerful role model who could provide some hint of what I might become. While I loved my mother dearly, I could not find in her the strength, magic or wisdom I was looking for. I then searched the faces of my friends’ mothers, of the women at church and my female relatives... but although I felt affection and admiration for many of them, the woman I was looking for just wasn’t there.

Amidst an often frightening life, I frequently retreated to the tall trees and long grasses for my home, and to my inner terrain for family and identity. I fantasized about the archetypal witch in the woods, her cottage draped in thorny roses and the dappled shadow of an ancient forest. I imagined her long braided hair tucked into her belt, dressed in a rough hand-woven dress that mingled the colors of mosses, lichens and leaves. I could see the heavy mortar in her hands and smell the pungent herbs she ground for a tea or tonic. Her deeply lined and wizened face was my comfort and a welcome escape from the rules and dogma of my conservative family, from the constant pressure to be a good girl, cook dinner, pray to Jesus to forgive my sins. Her way of speaking silently to the plants while she gathered and dug them from the forest floor reminded me of the magical creature I was before all the words got in my way.

I played with wild plants in the backyard, mixing pokeberries and burdock leaves into secret soups and medicines that I gleefully dispensed to my ailing imaginary friends. I was always trying to rub leaves on my little sisters’ “owies,” and fascinated by the way wounds healed to become new, pink skin. I didn’t just want to “fix” things though, I wanted to experience the direct enchantment of one being helping another. The world still seemed an amazing living repository of mystery, story and animate intelligence, and I was sure that if I was still enough, perceptive enough, powerful enough, I would suddenly be able to hear the voices of the animals, plants and soil, to understand what I knew inside they had always been trying to tell me.

Such imaginings were among my most deeply guarded secrets, hidden away from the prying eyes of siblings and the mocking of family and peers. The few times my fairy tale world came slipping out I was always met by a sharp word to grow up or get out of fantasy land. My mother would sigh and tell me I had to live in the real world where life was hard and the only healers wore white coats and dispensed sterile, bacteria killing pills. And “lord knows,” she would say, “I won’t be able to send you to med school, so you’d best get to working.”

On the outside it appeared I became sensible, cynical and hard, just like my mother said life was. I hid my worn volumes of fairy tales underneath the bed, dressed in mournful black and developed a penchant for clove cigarettes and diet pills. By 13, the old stories still persisted in my dreams, and I still felt the overwhelming urge to reach out to those in pain, but more and more I found myself looking away, pulling back from the possibilities of magic, doubting I could ever truly become the woman I envisioned I could be.

I, like nearly everyone, was afflicted by a gnawing sense of self-doubt, sure that my dreams were not only impractical but unattainable. And after years of caring for my siblings, mothering other kids on the street, taking in stray animals and sadly enabling the sicknesses of my lovers, I was too worn out to want to take care of anything including myself. I clung to the self-image of the tortured artist as if my very life depended on it, denying the persistent call of my destined purpose.

Awakening To The Calling

In the old days, Spirit would appear to a woman as a bear or a purple coneflower or a butterfly, calling a woman forth from a habitual and unchallenging lifestyle, to offer her a mission. Spirit might seem to say, "I'm giving you this great gift, I'm opening up your eyes to see all the way into this world of meaning. I want you to take this gift, this medicine, and swallow it and keep it deep inside the very core of you, and then I want you to find your own special way of sharing what you are and learn with the needing world.”

And sometimes if the woman was afraid, if she hid from Spirit and the medicine she would get so sick she couldn't move or hunt or even hold her baby. Not because spirit was angry, but because this is what happens when you hide from yourself, from the power of your own nature and what is surely your own personal gift and calling. These days, we have nearly forgotten what Spirit sounds like and our dreams are often filled with TV jingles and shopping lists and the staccato of gunfire from the evening news. We don't even know why we're sick, but we're run down and restless and we can't sleep at night anymore. In the roar of machines and babbling voices it's gotten hard to hear or feel or know anything at all.

My own denial was deep and painful. Three years ago I found my way to this magical canyon, so sick with confusion and rage that I could barely function, eat or even think. I had been running on adrenalin and anger for so long that my essential energy and life force had waned to a fine and fragile crescent, making me wonder if I would ever have the energy to crawl my way back to my desire or joy. The more my belly churned and refused to hold food, the more I raged and cried. Through all the years of anorexia, alcoholism, diet pill abuse and hard street living my body had somehow persevered, kept me running and wary. Now in the arms of the canyon, it fell apart under the lightest touch.

The bitter irony was that even though I had made the switch from cigarettes, whiskey and bad food to whole home cooked meals, fresh rainwater and daily yoga, I was sicker that I had ever been in my life. For awhile I felt betrayed by Spirit, and deeply embittered. Every stab of stomach pain seemed a malevolent enemy to fight against, and every day spent sick seemed like a day stolen from me. Throughout all the raging and crying and sleepless nights, my wolfen partner held close and clear, insisting that my illness was a gift essential to my learning and re-becoming... and this special place consistently held me as well — held me down when I tried to hurt myself, held me back from leaving the land that loved me, held me up to the moonlight so I could see myself for who I wholly am.

While struggling to teach others from the depths of my own confusion, I kept stumbling against a term frequently referred to in the Anima teachings: the “wounded healer,” the shaman who’s been called by Spirit to heal not only her own wounds, but those of others and the integrity of the web of the world. I was struck by the similarity of so many medicine peoples experience of fear, hurt, healing and subsequent giving back. And in the place of my great resistance to caring about or for anything, a seed began to grow.

Still, whenever anyone used the word “healer” or “medicine woman” to describe me, I shrank away. I didn’t want to be confused with fluffy wannabe shamans and self-identified healers who inflate their image with hollow promises, easily solutions and cheap tricks. Nor did I want anyone to expect me to “fix” people, taking responsibility for eliminating their symptoms when they won’t change the ways of eating and living that brought on the problems in the first place. I sensed that real medicine went far deeper than symptoms, and knew from my own experience that the process of true healing was seldom easy or comfortable... that it was a partnership between the patient, Spirit and the healer, and a quest-like process of becoming ever more whole.

Whatever we are called to, it is not always what we imagine, what others have laid out for us, or what we think we would most like and enjoy. It is who we really are, are best gifted to do, and are most needed for. It is what we can deny but never escape. And even for those of us who swore we’d never give in to anybody or anything, a calling is something we ultimately have to surrender to.

Surrendering To The Calling

My new and true home was a wilderness of not only pliant greenery and sensuous river but also prickly cactus and sun-whitened bones, a force abrading like wind blown sand my most carefully crafted masks. The writing that had once come so easily to me, now slipped away along with my contrived identities, like water through my tightly clenched fists. It was terrifying to have the little girl underneath the masks and armor exposed, after being fooled so long into thinking she could hide herself from the ridicule and the hardness of the world.

As I had once dreamed it, the rocks, plants and spirits of the canyon did indeed try their hardest to communicate with me, vibrant and glittering on cliff perches and from within wetland hollows. I was often too afraid to listen at first, sure I was imaging it all and back to living in fantasy land like my mother always accused me of. Thankfully, the wild beings of the canyon were persistent if not always gentle, instructing me through the metaphor of both supple green shoots and the pointedness of thorns. Awakening to the voices of the land, emboldened me to try in earnest to find the gift in all my pain. It was months many before I could feel the strength I’d gained from living with chronic pain, the intensity of joy made possible by bared nerves, the sensitivity and compassion that is thanks to tender Nordic skin and – yes – a tender heart.

In the embrace of the pulsing river, I began to be able to feel myself curve and meld to the shape of the current. I was nourished by the gentle patter of Spring rain, and stretched by the insistent questions of our students, I at last found myself spilling out of the confining shell I had shut myself up in. I started to get over my self consciousness enough to hug the women we work with, kiss the rough bark of the Mulberries and Junipers, and enjoy dancing with those who come here for gatherings... yet continued to resist being labeled a nourisher, mother, caretaker or healer. In the beginning I was so damaged that I felt hypocritical trying to heal anyone else. Later, I was leery of the responsibility that came with my gifts and abilities, and uncomfortable with the distinction that came with accepting the a distinguishing role and title. Even when we have heard the call, it is still up to us to step up, answer and fulfill it.

Answering The Call

For numerous tribal societies, taking on the mantle of Medicine Woman involved not only owning one’s calling, but being inducted by other Adepts with the witnessing and support of the people. A woman who had completed the necessary training, and shown the requisite natural talents, would then undergo a ceremony, sometimes preceded by a a period of fasting and solitude. The actual moment of assumption, she might be presented with a sacred mortar and pestle or a special drum to symbolize her role. Other times a piece of clothing would be the gift emblematic of her new position, such as an intricately woven cape of flowers and feathers made for just such an occasion, and draped over her shoulders by a presiding elder... or a holy bear skin, slowly drawn up and over her head like a hooded cloak, until it is clear to everyone including her that she has not only earned her way to doing the work of the Medicine Bear, but that now as never before she is the bear healer, acting from that place of knowing, seeing through the eyes of something bigger.

I am, as I write this, trying to come up with the ideal symbol and ceremony to vest and bless my graduating students with, something that will mark for each of them their accomplishment and transition into practicing Medicine Women. And yet for me, accepting and assuming my calling was less a particular ceremonial moment than a series of steps, like a dance that kept circling me back to myself time after time. My partner wrote stories about an unusual red headed herb-gathering woman that held undeniable parallels for me, and drew vibrant pictures of me looking confidant and clear, holding out bunches of healer-flowers in sure hands... pen and ink mirrors that he spread around my den to capture my attention and win my admission. All the while, I kept surprising myself with how quickly I was able to intuit the properties of unnamed herbs I couldn’t find in any book, and how many dreams I had of the Anima – the earth – telling me her secrets through the voices of the different plants. Diagnoses I made, proved unexpectedly accurate and the treatments sometimes miraculously effective. And woman after woman that I helped, would insist on calling me what I was afraid to be called, but felt called to be. I did not slip into a symbolic costume so much as surrender to being laid bare, so that when I looked into my reflection in the river – as I now counsel my students to do – I recognized not only who I am but what I am. The identity I had hesitated to assume, I realized, was nought but my own.

That may be as important as anything, that we each open to feelings and signs, in time discerning between what we fantasize we would like to become and what we are specially gifted and called to be. We may desire the respect given a warrior woman, when our talent and calling is to be a nurturer, or wish we had a more important career than teaching even though our effect on kids proves it is part of our most meaningful purpose. I ask my perspective students: Do you like the idea of being a healer, or does it feel like an inner compulsion? Are you learning healing in order to heal yourself, or are your personal ailments the lessons to prepare you for healing others? Do you imagine yourself caring for others, because you have trouble really tending and taking care of yourself? Are you simply doing your best to learn the techniques of the trade, or were you born with native healing abilities that make it obvious what your life work should be? Are you prepared for the responsibilities, or only for the accolades and rewards?

No matter what our individual calling, it is what both distinguishes and connects us, as we’re called into the necessary darkness of our personal rebirthing. Each one of us crawls out through the canal alone and naked, assisted only by the earth’s contractions. On the slippery, unsure path we are beckoned to move forward without the aid of foresight, trusting our own knowing bodies for the strength to reach the unknown destination. Into the light we fall. Into the hard gasping rhythm of first breaths we awaken and are born into our purpose. For the most sensitive among us, this means a role that requires intense feeling and a capacity for empathy. And for the most driven, it means accepting the mantle of teacher, the cause of the activist, the burden of the artist, the work of the healer... or the moniker of the Medicine Woman.

Wet yellow flowers

woven into watercress

the ground cool

and damp enough

that puddles form

around my bare feet

gold petals slick with sundots

late season survivors

of a quick coming winter

on this island of lush life

I linger among the red skinned dogwood

and let the sun warm my cold toes

watching the light go gold

as it passes over willows

and the wild hills of the Gila

gathering up summer in my hands

I eat monkeyflowers and watercress

tasting all the spice

and sweetness of heat

as the ice forms along the river

Significantly they always spring up among "the people" -- the poor, the young, the outcast, women and minorities, "the mad", the artists -- and they are always seen as a threat to the established order. Rightly so. They are the children of the Great Mother, struggling to regroup.
-Barbara Mor The Great Cosmic Mother

We sit on the river bank, dangling bare feet into the water’s slow summer flow, grateful for the shade of the wizened grandmother Cottonwood that shelters us from the afternoon’s blazing sun. Ivy hangs her head and stirs the water with a sandy toe,

“How do I know who the real me is? How do I know I’m not just imagining my calling as a healer? I feel so powerless to change the world when I can hardly manage to heal my own emotional wounds.”

I look down at the swirling patterns the water forms as it journeys towards an unknown destination, at the Silverweed plant near my skirt, it’s buds swollen and ready to bloom at any moment, striving towards light and fruition, and then back at the young woman beside me. Her face is tear swollen and tentative, but also determined not only to survive the pain and betrayal she has experienced, but to thrive. To open to the joy of life and the healing purpose of her spirit. Though she’s already been trained as a Midwife and Counselor and now as an Anima student, she’s still unsure of herself, awash in doubts despite her learned abilities, inborn wisdom and hard won insight.

“Dear one, you already know the answers to your questions”, I begin and then pause, “You have the courage, the purpose and the drive to pursue your dreams. You’ve done the hard work of facing yourself through ritual and daily practice during your time as a student here. And you know the training of a Medicine Woman is never done, you’ll walk this path until you lie down for the last time. And even then, you’ll still be learning. What you need now is to accept the power as your own, to let it flow through you as word, touch and love. To focus and direct it until it is a great river of life rushing through your being. All you have to do is accept it, and it’s yours.

She turns to me and takes my hand. ”But Kiva, what if my power leaves me when I leave you and Loba and this special place, what if I’m not strong enough without your support and help? Who will I look to as a teacher and a Medicine Woman out there? ”

“Your power doesn’t come from me or any other teacher. It doesn’t come skills or knowledge or words, as useful as these tools can be. It comes from you, from your connection to the land and to spirit, from the wisdom of your heart as it opens to fully feel the bliss and pain of this world. We’ll always be here to help you as long as you’re open to the teachings of this place, but it’s time for you to go out and find your home and to create the magic of your own special medicine.

”The Medicine Woman is with you always, Ivy. Look in the water, and see her in your own reflection.”

You too, know who she is, and you always have, even if you can’t quite remember her face or name. She's the old Spanish abuela on the corner growing those strange plants, the Chippewa student protesting clear cuts near the rez, and that red-headed caseworker who kept you off the street as a kid, you remember her, don’t you? She's the grandmother who brought you daisies and hot chocolate in a dream the night before you went in for surgery, and even the toothless street woman who thrust a strange black rock into your hand on your way to the grocery store. And if you're reading this, she is probably you too.

The Medicine Woman is any one of us who actively contributes to the integrity of the self as well as the greater whole. She follows a tradition rooted in her ability to co-create her world, to take responsibility for her direction, to understand that every moment is the decisive moment, that every action makes a difference. Her decisions and actions are based in her deep conscious connection to the Earth we are all a part of. The tradition I have studied and now teach is called Animá, a name for the vital force that animates and connects all things. Animá is a practice and a way of life rooted in ancient ways of knowing and being, but existing outside of any particular cultural bias or form. Thus leaving me free to practice my tradition in the ways that spirit and experience evoke, rather than being restrained by old habits and taboos that may not serve my work and spirit. Working within this ancestral/evolutionary practice, I am able to constantly adapt to circumstance, environment and instinct. At this wildlands sanctuary where I live and teach, my apprentices learn first and foremost to let go of old habits and previously held beliefs in order to better experience the intense present moment, and to learn from experience rather than words. Opening to the inspiration of the inspirited Earth and their own feeling hearts rather than waiting for instructions from an outside source.

There are real Medicine Women across the planet still practicing an Earth-based, spirit inspired and pro-active tradition without regard for the cultural restrictions and societal expectations normally imposed upon individuals. The path of the Medicine Woman lies outside the walls of religious beliefs and dictates. It often survives as a subversive current within the shadow of existing beliefs, as in the Curanderas practicing even today in the periphery of the Catholic church. Everywhere, these women live on the fringes of their people, always needed but rarely accepted. The same woman who is called a bruja or a witch in times of health, is respectfully approached as a powerful healer during sickness. At the same time, there have always been those who call themselves Medicine Women, Witches, healers and priestesses but who are actually charlatans and attention seekers, acting out of their own insecurity and need for power or attention rather than a true desire to serve or calling to heal. The line between real and illusion is oftentimes badly blurred, but as Medicine Women we need to cultivate a finely tuned sense of discernment in order to see through comfortable illusion, both that of others and our own.

We can recognize the authentic Medicine Woman by the way spirit pours through her like a tidal wave, and all her life and love surges on that wave, an expression of the great force that animates this beautiful planet. Earth speaks through her, through wise words, healing touch and fierce courage, through the way she dances through the sacred ceremony of life. Her stories discomfort and thrill you, shocking in their honesty and their beauty. Her tales are about magical rivers and murdered women and intimate touch and hurt children and hope and all the healing that is possible. Her words get under your skin and illuminate shadows you never even knew were there. Back home, you wonder what it would be like if more women told stories like this. You wonder what stories you might tell.

A Medicine Woman is not a vessel to hold stories or magic or healing, she is a conduit. She does not hold back or keep within, but allows the medicine of wholeness to flow in and out of her, on the tide of her body's cycles as well as the larger cycles of season, bioregion and planet. She knows the land she lives on, whether urban jungle or remote wilderness, as an extension of her own body and cares for it as such. She eats weeds and dances barefoot and falls in love with wildflowers. The Medicine Woman does all things in balance. Balance is not stillness, it is the act of constantly redistributing weight in every direction in order remain upright. She moves this way then that, always seeking equilibrium, always learning, always adapting to the flow. Through it all she remains rooted, in her calling as a truth speaker, in her role as a medicine maker, and in her body as a rewilded woman.

We -are- the myths. We -are- the Amazons, the Furies, the witches. We have never -not- been here, this exact sliver of time, this precise place. There is something utterly familiar about us. We have been ourselves before.
-Robin Morgan

Look at your hands. Do you see those fine lines and the wrinkles across the knuckles? Do you see the calluses and the scars? Look in the mirror, strip off the everyday costume of makeup and clothes and see the beauty and grace of your animal body, see the wisdom that flows in your bloods, that waits to emerge as a story or an act of courage or a healing tea. And then, you remember.

Sometimes we get the urge to go out and lay down in the grass. And the need is so great that we ache inside, as if we've been uprooted from the earth and must get back to the soil before we wither up and just blow away. And once in a while we become so passionate about a dream or a love that we can't think or speak or be anything but that passion. We get so full with it that we are like a silk sail filled with a great wind or a swollen river hellbent on reaching the sea. That flood of feeling carries us back into our bodies, connecting us with the Earth we were born from and creative forces that sustain us. Then we know what it's like to be a child again, to hear the voice of Spirit in our own mouth, to feel that our roots are indeed in the ground. Then, we remember who we are.

In those too rare moments of longing and feeling, we are reconnecting to our instinctual nature, to our ancestral mothers and to our own unique self. These flashes of connection go deep, all the way down to bone and blood. It is in blood and bone that our memories flow. It is from this deep source that we connect to the all, and learn the first steps towards reunion with self and the animate, inspirited earth we are all a part of.

I tell all my apprentices what I told Ivy, that there is no right way to become a Medicine Woman, that we each have our own path to walk. But I also point out the guideposts, the cairns that mark both important landmarks and dangerous pitfalls along the way. I give them my personal knowledge as well as the collective Animá wisdom, not to hem them in or hold them back but to let them loose. It is, after all, easier to navigate the sea once you have learned to sail.

First and foremost comes reconnection. While the medicine women is actively a healer, she heals by casting light on every aspect and part, and helping to draw those parts back into participatory oneness and active balance. Sometimes she works by giving comfort, other times by disturbing and alarming, or exposing our dangerous illusions and painful wounds. As I have seen again and again here at this wildlands women’s center, there may be no stronger tool for bringing us back to our authentic, needing, empowered selves or the planet we’re extensions of than something as simple as the ancient ceremony of the sweatlodge,

It is this connection to the mother, that provides the medicine. The medicine is really anything that is used to contribute to wholeness. This means that medicine is wildflowers and dancing and dirty roots and death and bliss and wine and terror and hands and song and bread and windstorms and whatever else brings us closer to our center, to our own essential selves. Only when we fully inhabit our bodies and our true selves are we whole, and only when we are whole can we contribute to the larger wholeness, the all.

We can understand medicine as the mystery at the center that unites all things, the spiral path we walk, bringing us ever closer to the center. And medicine is our own personal magic that we bring to the world, gifting those around us with our unique sense of delight and plant, and with the wisdom garnered from our individual wounds. Medicine is spirit singing into our wounds, medicine is the mother in the ground holding us to her, medicine is the love that pours through us into all things.

We formed the circle, we danced, we spoke the truth, we dared to live it.
-Starhawk

Looking around, we might have previously imagined the Medicine Woman a dead breed, lost to the cruel march of progress and the cool pragmatism of a culture more concerned with cash than magic. Yet we have seen and known the Medicine Woman in others and in ourselves. We are still able to recognize the Medicine Woman because she remains a central, if repressed, part of the human story even after generations of separation from the tribal knowledge and primal being once essential to everyday life. The archetypal healer, the mediator, the shaman and the storyteller are still with us as well as within us. Our forms and costumes have changed, allowing us to slip under the cultural radar. Our work is always subversive and often subtle, our magic is in small moments of conversation or touch and the ever present example we serve.

Serving as beacons to our sisters and children, we provide them with role models as well as confidants of their own wild natures. Nevertheless, we must do the hard work even if we are never recognized for who we really are, or ridiculed for what they imagine us to be. A Medicine Woman knows herself for what she is, without regard for the illusions or images projected by others. She can fully see herself, others and the world. It is our responsibility to maintain the magic and to carry on this necessary work, no matter what the cost.

We are committed to healing, to the furthering of wholeness in all things, including but never limited to the self. Healing is not the act of fixing a problem but a process of both nourishing and challenging. We do not heal only to bring comfort or ease, but to restore the integrity of the whole. We are web weavers, we are the links back to the primal matrix. As role models, as healers, as celebrants, as mediators and warriors, we can be the ones slowly singing the world back into balance even as we recognize and mourn the imbalance that currently exists.

What remains is only to animate the essence within us. To take up her staff and live and breathe the life of a Medicine Woman, to live as one called to this great work of renewal, rebirth and restoration. What remains... is to begin.

Ivy’s first steps out of the canyon are still tearful, but there’s a radiance in her now. A readiness for the challenges to come as she heads towards a full life that is uniquely hers. Her head is high, she knows she is a Medicine Woman: a healer, a conduit, a deeply loved and fully empowered daughter of the Earth.