“If you have yet to be called an incorrigible, defiant woman, don't worry, there is still time”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?
Preparing for my first Vision Quest next week, this Rilke verse is soothing what I’m struggling to language. When I committed to this in May, I didn’t really know what I was stepping into, except that it didn’t feel like an option.
Any chance of sailing off into a Soulbbatical sunset became a fantasy. There was gear I needed to source, health checks I needed to sort, family to prepare, indigenous lineages to study and a mental load heaving with doubt. And yet, this season of slowing down has generously created space for it all.
The reaction from street folk when told I’ll be away on a solo wilderness immersion for four days and four nights fasting without food or a tent, is expectantly, “Tina are you crazy! Why on earth would you do that?”
I flounder. I don’t actually know ‘why.’
‘Why’ is not a spiritual question. That’s not to say the question has no value, but the universe will never answer ‘why’. Mystical laws are notoriously annoying like that.
Our culture rewards logic and having evidence to back our choices. But haven’t you ever wanted to do something challenging or different that makes no sense at all? If yes, this is your creative intuition at play.
When you swallow a full-bellied yes to an initiation, you get prepared to meet yourself in a whole new way. A Vision Quest asks you to step outside of answers and into the wide open field of organic communion. While many modalities and therapies prepare you to heal and grow, the Vision Quest prepares you to serve.
The idea of a Quest is to breathe such questions that have been circling round in sacred ceremonies for thousands of years by removing every familiar known distraction and comfort. There are moments in our lives when progress cannot be hurried. No clarity will emerge on demand. We’re invited to rest on the earth and listen to the hum of nature in total uninterrupted peace.
Admittedly, I’m feeling very unsettled right now. Untethered. Undone. All the ‘Uns’. In fact, writing from this undefinable place is not the moment I’d normally communicate with you.
I gain encouragement from generous artists, like the late poet Andrea Gibson;
“So as never to clip the wingspan of truth, I am writing to you from the heart of the wound, from the bullseye of ache. I am writing in pain, friends, knowing many (if not most of you) are in some kind of pain as well. Because I realized that if I only reach out to you from the healed place, from the lesson learned, then we don’t get to sit in vulnerability together. Neatly resolved stories signal that the exploration is over. Sometimes it’s not about knowing the answer, but being inside the question together. Being inside the hardest winter together.”
In this vulnerable place of waiting to Quest, the circling falcon is asking…
“Please Tina will you just witness. Your only work right now, is to be the witness.”
To see with spiritual sight through the eagle eye and observe all that is playing itself out like some travelling onward ghost. To bear witness;
Without throwing in an opinion.
Without selling a solution.
Without rushing in to repair.
Without interfering in someone’s healing process.
Without maintaining a brand.
Without believing I’m a problem to be fixed.
This inaction is not passive, but one of the hardest known spiritual practices. To reprogram my nervous system’s vigilant urgency into patience. Circling and swooping only at precision. A training ground to hold space for the wider global eco-village, not just for my own personal gain or self improvement, but for all creatures. Furred, feathered, finned and fine haired.
“The woman who is willing to make that change must become pregnant with herself at last” (Ursula K Le Guin).
Right at the minute of transition, when the head is crowning and she’s barren of breath, and that final push feels impossible. Here, we don’t get the answers. We get eery silence. We get rare air. We get pent up primal power. And if we stay long enough with the pain, we start to feel the stirrings of something else: not certainty, but trust. Not clarity, but something more solid. Authority. Birth. New blood. The splitting and tearing of the fear fabric that’s cocooned the wintering woman you protected. A membrane to dissolve into mulchy soil so the vision can emerge.
When everything that once defined you is stripped away, what is left?
The more women who are willing to write their own permission slips for space and solitude, the less lonely and separate we’ll all feel.
I’ll be joined by 20 other women for this Quest. Led by Katie Rydge, a wilderness expert. Recently on the TV show Alone. The first Aussie woman to be represented in the US version which took place in South Africa. She spent 28 days alone in the Kalahari desert and finished in the top 3. We’re in safe huntress hands.
Katie quotes; “Aloneness isn’t a punishment. It’s a portal.”
Along with the amazing Gina Chick, I’m inspired by these women who challenge the modern status quo and blow apart convention to remind us what we’ve known in our ancient bones all along. We ARE wildlife, we’re not separate from it.
The dominance of masculine energy has disconnected us from our ecological knowingness. We all come from indigenous lineages of women who were caretakers of the land and the wildlife. We’ve just forgotten how to trust ourselves.
Trust the wolf in your gut.
Trust the song in your throat.
Trust the storm in your soul.
See you on the other side.
T x
Clearing
I am clearing a space
here, where the trees stand back.
I am making a circle so open
the moon will fall in love
and stroke these grasses with her silver.
I am setting stones in the four directions,
stones that have called my name
from mountaintops and riverbeds, canyons and mesas.
Here I will stand with my hands empty,
mind gaping under the moon.
I know there is another way to live.
When I find it, the angels
will cry out in rapture,
each cell of my body
will be a rose, a star.
If something seized my life tonight,
if a sudden wind swept through me,
changing everything,
I would not resist.
I am ready for whatever comes.
But I think it will be
something small, an animal
padding out from the shadows,
or a word spoken so softly
I hear it inside.
It is dark out here, and cold.
The moon is stone.
I am alone with my longing.
Nothing is happening
but the next breath.
By Morgan Farley