The vice binding my head holds me strongly to the illusions of life. I quiet and relax in attempt to loosen its grip, tentative like a deck of cards starting to tip. It holds so tight, a protection from this lifetime and others. Force has never worked for this delicate procedure as I’ve been told by my foremothers. So I wait and I breathe and I notice what I notice… Finally one stone loosens like a rock dislodged from a mountaintop. Will an avalanche ensue? Will one rock fall or a whole mountain collapse? I surrender to it’s power, nothing to do but to witness. Other doors are revealed to me, as I access the depths of loneliness. Like a loose stitch on a fabric I pull on a thread, revealing deeper chambers of lost pieces of me. Like glowing caves in the dark, I visit my traumas one by one. Bringing my age and wisdom and love to each one. The air is thick and stale with ancient hurts and ancestral knots. Finally pain is released through the surrender of moon time blood, a deep soaking of the brittle earth and mud. A sacred offering of my soul. My numb womb warming with the reclaiming of power for both mother earth and woman extolled.