Poetry Thursday - All Women are Healers

carey in tree pose, canon digital rebel xt

My beautiful friend Carey and I went on a long hike today under the gray overcast clouds and into the bright green bushes.

Our time together had many shifts. First light hearted, then deep, then raw down into our inner's...back to light hearted again. Hugs of encouragement, tears flowing with empathy and laughter spilling for release at the end of it all.

Invoking Sisterhood.

When I arrived home, muscles well stretched and tired, I felt inspired to open up my old We'Moon Calendar book (2002).

I found it so apropos that I stumbled upon the poem that I did. The poem that I will share with all of you.

It is my big sister Darlene's birthday today. She has suffered with a serious illness for over 15 years now. Most recently, she was put on a new medication that put an end to her suffering. It is enormous. Enormous for her...enormous for all of us to see her true self come back to life (I write this with tears). I see her spilling with energy, brilliance and grace. She has connected with my blogging sisterhood without you knowing and I believe this is also part of her healing.

My mind also drifts to other's friends in this blogging community as of late that are very ill and I think of those that are recently grieving for loved ones lost.

All of this, coupled with the sisterhood bonding I had with Carey today lead me to this poem. I found such power and warrior~ness in the poet's words. It is obvious that this poem is about breast cancer but I believe this message can relate to all illnesses...including those of emotional heart.

That when we gather together as women torn of the heart or body, we can move mountains and help heal one another.

All women are healers.

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Mama, I Tell You the Mountains are Moving!

The women are coming together – by tens, by hundreds
out of the hospital beds, off the X-ray tables
bald-headed women, one breasted women
with bodies scarred and carved, picked with poison to attack
the poison they breathed/they ate/their children sucked.
they are talking talking talking their stories
they are holding each other sobbing, they are beating the drums
they are drumming pounding drumming
they are laughing fiercely to be living
living and fierce, and together.

And mama, the breasted mountains are shaking.
I knew, when you lay broken and moaning
your chest flattened and stitched – brain, bone, lung on fire
I knew that someday the flaming women would erupt
someday they would drum the bedrock into motion
they would fault the poisonmakers, find each other with cadence
of love and fury. You would have loved to be among them, Mama.
I see you, and an army of your flat-chested ghost sisters
pounding pounding on the mantle of the world,
the drumskin is tight and thin, the living women match you
beat for beat – no wonder the cliffs are trembling.

I need not tell you, Mama, that the mountains are moving.

~ Bethroot Gwynn