Letting Life In

Last night I dreamed of the Lion headed woman.

She was standing naked on a fire escape, maybe two or three stories high.  She was in a festive neighborhood, like Greenwich Village during Halloween, when everyone can be just who they want to be without question or judgement.  She intentionally had her legs spread wide, showing anyone who looked up her genitals.   As if she was inviting people to look  into her so they could see she was the same on the inside as the outside.

And coming off the top of her head was a big red heart and yellow sparks, like fireworks.

On waking,  my first thought was of Sheela na gig.  The carvings found in Ireland of the woman sitting with her legs spread and holding open her, larger than life, vulva.  She’s thought to be a pagan fertility goddess.  (She was also incorporated into early Christian churches as a gargoyle, it is believed,  to warn people of the dangers of lust)

For a long time I’ve been troubled by the decisions I’ve made in my life concerning my relationship with my family and my need to separate myself from them in certain ways.  I couldn’t live the way they live and because that belief system was so ingrained in me, I constantly felt guilt about it.

I had a hard time coming to terms with the idea that even though I knew I had made the right decision for me, I worried that it made me a bad person.  But I also knew it was because of my decision to separate from my family that I was able to open myself up and find my own path in life.

To be able to be fulfilled, make my art, and love in a way I had never been able to before.

But his past week as I was once again agonizing over my decisions, I realized that it was already done. There was no longer anything to agonize over. I had done what I needed to do.

I’ve already made my decisions and acted upon them.   But what I’ve been doing since then is dragging around a painful habit, an addiction of sorts of not trusting  myself and constantly reworking and questioning what I’m doing. I had broken a once unimaginable taboo, and I knew from the first it was the right thing to do. I knew I could never go back. I knew I had made the right decision.

But even though I’ve been living my life in the way I wished, my mind  had been in constant doubt, keeping the old relationship alive inside of me.  I guess I’ve been afraid to let go completely, in case I’m wrong.

It’s like I’ve been divided. One part of me making my decisions, acting on them and knowing it’s right for me.  And another part of me holding on to an old way of thinking, an old belief system.  It’s as if my conscious and subconscious mind were disconnected from each other.

And when they finally came together on this,  and when I had this revelation, my body seemed to rebel.  As if it too needed to reject the old truth and accept this new one.  It felt like I had the flu, an ache traveled through me effecting all my muscles, throwing off my digestion and exhausting me.  I was finally embodying the truth.

Then, that night I had this dream which was very different from the others I’ve been having lately.   For years, my dreams have been filled with scenarios where I’m trying to make peace with my family and no one seems to understand what I’m trying to say.

Dreams where I can barely move my legs to walk or run.

I think last nights  dream was telling me I was ready to embrace my life as it is now, having accepted the decisions I’ve made for myself.   The feeling from it of  not only of strength and being uninhibited but of letting life in.

Like Sheela na gig, saying here I am, let’s get to it.