Again and again, I am deeply touched by the fate of women who raise their voice to speak their truth and are been silenced violently. Most of us know how it feels to be ashamed and ridiculed, many are violated sexually, sometimes women are killed for speaking up. Just this week, I read about the cruel murder of Dilma Ferreira Silva, coordinator of the movement against dams in Brazil. She first had to watch her husband and her friend being killed, and then the murderers cut her throat. When I read about this, it felt like this woman was not only murdered physically, but this is an attempt to eradicate her courageous feminine presence even after her death. The violence in this news is so indescribable that something in me splits off in order not to feel. It feels as if my own throat was cut, my voice silenced. Letting me withdraw in anguish, freeze.

I offered my emotional reaction to this news to the Goddess moving me with every breath. The response was immediate: My body felt flooded by Her warmth and tenderness. Fearful contractions were touched gently. I laid my head against Her breasts and let the tears flow.

Her Voice and Touch

She whispered into my ear: Whatever happens to you, daughter, whatever happens to any of you, you can always be caressed back into life. In Her presence I felt deeply that healing is fully possible. Healing happens whenever I let go of any shame about my emotional responses and also of any agenda or pressure of time. Healing takes as long as it takes, sometimes it happens instantaneously, sometimes it takes decennia’s. Yes, She said, no need to hesitate, daughter, and no need to haste towards me. I’m here, always. With Her mighty, vibrant presence she let me feel when I let the healing She offered be interrupted by patriarchal mental patterns of linear time, goal-orientation and doubting or analyzing what presents itself. The Goddess reminds me I don’t need to know anything. Just allow to be held by her.

A Vision in the Desert

And then I saw: I saw an endless procession of women walking through a desert silently. They looked exhausted, their eyes were empty and their heads bent to the ground. Many of them carried traces of violence. Their appearance was deprived of color. But they kept walking, and constantly there were new women showing up on the horizon. As the women kept walking together, their hearts began to be breathed again. What at first seemed to be a mirage fabricated by the heat in the desert, became visible and tangible as a pulsation moving through all of the hearts, and I watched them slowly being restored into their radiance. Once the hearts were moving, a collective contraction let go into the ground. And in this movement their wombs were restored, flowering in their dancing bellies. Now a wave of joy moved through the women, and as their hearts widened the tension in their faces melted and their eyes began to sparkle. They began to talk and sing with unstruck voices, and their spines were recalibrated, dancing with freedom and precision between the heaven and the earth. Their hair was flowing again, and they were walking fiercely upright.

Fertility restored

As this all happened, I saw green grass sprout in the desert. Then flowers opened. Trees began to grow, there were birds, bees and butterflies. The return of the fertility of the earth happened in amazing synchronicity with the return of life and wholeness in the women’s bodies. The parade ended at long tables with beautiful food on a lush meadow, and participating in this feast there also were many men and children.

Rising together

Dear sisters, I feel all of this is happening in each of us and together. When emotional trauma is moving out of the body in a moment of grace and wholeness restores itself, the heart is fully alive and there is absolute trust in what is happening. In such a moment  I feel with certainty that this healing is not only happening to me, but to all of those before me, those to come and to the earth. And I am so full of it that I couldn’t possibly silence myself in that moment. Everything that wants to be felt is felt, what wants to be said is said.

I am so grateful to know that there are many of you, sisters, some closer, some further away. While we see uttermost violence and destruction around us, we are returning. We are letting the Goddess restore our bodies, our hearts. And I bow to you for any moment of healing of your soul that sustains me in my true being, too.

I commit to letting go of more and more shame and doubt.  Whatever has happened to us before and is happening now, the Goddess is ready to caress us, always and as long as it takes to fully feel her loving presence. In her embrace, nothing can stop us to rise again and again.

Rest in peace, Dilma Ferreira Silva. I am ready to feel you rise again, sister.