A dear friend sent me a lovely note and on the back of it she attached the quote:

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” Terry Tempest Williams

And it resonated so much because lately I’ve lost touch with how to move at the artificial pace of the relentless machine, and I am beginning to feel the flow and energy of our precious planet, the pace of the Earth, and I’m delighted to know how slow she wants to go. The call to Joy that I received is still ringing and the journey to joy is singing me into going slow.

My body sets the pace, and sometimes it wants to climb into bed at 6pm and sometimes my body wants to sit by a river and sometimes it wants to walk up and down hills and pump my lungs and sometimes it wants to lounge and read and take salt baths and make slow meals, .and sometimes it wants to talk to friends. Everything that it wants, though, is slow, is in the moment, is unrushed and present and here.

My body has opted out of the artificial race and the artificial pace and it’s terrifying because if I’m not in that world how will I get my worth? Who will hold me? How will I survive if I don’t grind myself into dust in the pursuit of stuff? Who am I if I am not earning my safety, my security, my right to survive, my right to stay alive? How can I live and have a voice and sing at dawn and heal the world through joy when the world is relentless and I must earn my very existence?

Figure it out, says my body, because I’m not doing that anymore.

The voice of Ereshkigal is clear these days. She is down there, my wounded unheard self, down in the underworld of my belly. She is calling out to be heard. She is the ignored voice of the Earth, the abandoned voice of our innocence. The one who wants to play and create and be joyful, but her joy and innocence has turned to rage as I keep pushing her away. Pushing her off to the side. Later, I say. Later. Not now. Someday.

The water! she cries.

The animals! she rages.

Your own belly and bones and heart and throat! she anguishes.

Later, I say. Not today.

Well. Finally she’s had enough. So she flips the switch and all the light is snuffed. Something pops and now I can’t ignore her anymore because she is not just my little wounded abandoned maiden. She is also my body. She is my nervous system. She is my life force and my creativity and she’s had efuckingnough.

Come down here, she beckons. I’ll teach you how to die and how to rise and how to go slow and how to open your eyes to drink in the day, and how to love in the moment and how to play. I will show you what it means to be, with the cycles of the moon and water and animals and your own belly and bones and heart and throat, come down here and listen to me. I will teach you how to unyoke yourself from this mad race, from this mad place. I will remind you what it is to sing at dawn and dusk and celebrate the world with joy and grace, and you will learn what it is to let the body set the pace.