This autumn in Root + Rise, we’re being guided by Oshun, one of the most powerful and beloved of the orishas - the pantheon of 401 deities from the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

A couple of months ago, during my Morning Pages, some delicious downloads began to flow through about the energy of desire, specifically about soul-aligned, or authentic, desire.

A deep truth that I’ve been increasingly turning towards is that the more available I am to life, the more life becomes available to me (because life + I are intimately entwined.) This sounds obvious enough but we tend not to really lean into it, become infused and embodied in it.

Summer is in full swing, and the desert is hot. In the 100s before 9am. Rushing around is not an option, although the newer energies moving out here these days seem to be hell bent on overriding the slow summer pace and maintaining a constant gogogo...but that’s another story for another day perhaps ; )

I had a memorable dreamtime experience recently. The dream itself was a dull and mildly stressful one where my bag was stolen. As I was about to angrily run after the thief, my limited sense of ‘I’ expanded quite significantly and the thought arose:

”This is a very boring dream. I’m going to wake up and have a different one.”

And I woke up, smiling to myself at the delightful simplicity of it all, and fell back to sleep, dreaming another dream.

The rhythms of these slow, seasonal shifts are the ways that the Earth observes time. They’re the ways that our bodies, that belong to the Earth, are designed to observe time.

Supported by this wilderness, I’ve been tending to wounds from the dominant culture, from generations and ancestry. After a couple of journeys into the underworld to retrieve + restore parts of my soul, the embodied knowing that I am not these wounds took seed in my nervous system one spring.

Back in 2010, when I was still living in London, my soul began to stage a revolution with the quiet repetition of there’s more to life than this. The existence that I had been sleepily fumbling through had become completely devoid of meaning: a husk-like existence that, for myriad reasons, demanded an awakening from.

As I dive into this missive, I want to presence all of my Self, invite all that’s happening within me to participate in the formation of the words taking shape on the page as I write.

If you’re reading this, I’d hazard that the answer is a yes.

​Before diving into an exploration of this, let’s begin with a quick working definition of trauma. For me, the one that’s been most clarifying is from the somatic (body-based) therapeutic lens.

If curiosity were a season, it would be spring.

​​It would be the wildflowers that bloom in spring.

How does it feel in your body when you look at wildflowers? Even just one, bursting up brightly through the earth, fearlessly and full of grace?

There are few things more delicious than the experience of being fully present.

​Can you recall how it feels in your body? Or maybe you’re fully present right now. What are the sense perceptions that arise?

​For me, it’s usually a beautiful spaciousness that doesn’t deny any of the contractions that the events of life are eliciting in my body. A spaciousness that’s inclusive and welcoming of the tightness in my jaw, the twinge of pain in my lower back and sciatic life nerve.

Yay, spring! The season of life bursting forth from under the ground, from the time of gestation + hibernation in the darkness of winter, up into the sunlight above the ground.

​This involves leaning into the discomfort of expanding our growing edges, much like saplings and seedlings leaning into the discomfort + mystery of the natural process of growth.

Less than a few a hundred years ago, wild buffalo - what we nowadays refer to as bison - roamed in their millions across the vastness of North America. They were revered as sacred by the diverse tribal nations across the continent, each people having their own ways of honoring, communicating and working with the animals.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a pretty resistant relationship to goals due to a number of reasons (including the garden variety fear of failure.) One of the more interesting reasons was that as a child of the 80s and 90s - the age of the insatiable, unchecked greed of the yuppie-corporatist - my young, contrarian free spirit associated goals as a portal into a dystopian pulverizing of humanity.

When was the first time you experienced inner conflict?

​I’m taking an educated guess that you don’t remember because it’s one of the earliest ways that most all of us learn to relate to ourselves. As we start to experience the world around us more acutely through our senses, we observe that being at war with ourselves is in fact one of the most “normal” ways to go through life.

There once was a woman who dreamed herself awake.

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As with any worthwhile endeavor, she had help. In her Dreamtime, she would be visited by snake, butterfly and stag.

This isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last time that I write to you about reclaiming your safety, specifically your felt-sense of safety.

On the Lunar New Year back in January, I was lying on the couch in a semi-altered state after indulging in some gentle daydreaming. The currents of the day called for it, not that any excuses are needed for daydreaming.

Slowly, these three words echoed in my ear:

​Trust your resilience.

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Yes. Of course, I thought. And tell me more.

True belonging - especially for those of us who have moved through life feeling like we don’t - begins with us.