Bellow to Bellow

photo by Emily Chavez

In this story, I was twenty-one and a newly married pastor’s wife. I was the woman behind the man, the prayerful wife who joined mom’s circles and MOPS and countless Bible studies. In those early years, I smiled every Sunday and sang the songs, all along internalizing the expectation to be good and small and easy. Yes, yes, okay, sure! Will do. Can do. Must do.

I liked what Jesus had to say and assumed (bless my heart) that the Church was an extension of his revolutionary love. I came to those spaces so damn earnestly. My faith was an unpolished and precious mess, and I liked it that way, if only because no one had yet told me that the Church only wanted clean things. Perfect things. If you were limping and covered in earth, it meant you’d crawled from the garden, curious and wanting, treading tall grasses far outside the Kingdom gates. It meant you were broken and Jesus hadn’t fixed you yet.

They didn’t want me with my unorthodox, sweary mouth; with paint under my fingernails and thrifted dresses draped over old jeans; most of all, with my questions and my tendency toward rebellion.

I looked around and saw a thousand shiny, happy people and realized I didn’t belong.

I insisted that I didn’t want to belong anyhow — I watched my back and kept my hackles up. Who needs them? I’m a lone wolf.

Except that, I knew I wasn’t a lone wolf. I craved belonging, and so I tried even harder to fit in. I drew a salt circle around my needs and original thoughts, around desire and appetite and especially my will, and in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I cast it all out. I burned my own self at the stake in exchange for a seat at their table.

I was clean and they called me beautiful, but inside, I was more of a mess than I’d ever been. No matter how tame I tried to be, I always ended up out past their fences, stuck in a familiar snare. There came a point when I had to make a choice: ignore the swelling growl within and chew off a part of myself for the sake of acceptance or call it what it was and open my throat wide for the roar.

I chose to roar.

Grief upon grief is the relationship with religion that you kill by choice. Even if it’s because you had to, even if it means life instead of death for a whole-hearted self. Pain doesn’t care. It’s still all teeth and blood and a lasting phantom ache.

As painful as leaving my old belief system and its institution was, I was finally ready to stop forcing myself into spaces that didn’t fit. I let go and felt the ache for as long as I needed, refusing to numb or hide. Instead, I stayed in my inner territory and wandered for long stretches. I stuck wildflowers in my tangled hair and listened for the sound of God’s feet in the garden and let my knees grow grass-stained and muddy again. I was learning to belong, not to a church or belief system or any one person, but to myself.

In this story, I am forty. I’m in my Eras era, as C says, the one where we are no longer afraid and have nothing to prove — and so we can exhale and stick our toes down deep into fresh earth and show up as our full selves without agenda or bravado, sunflowers and honey dripping from our brows. I’m out along the ridgeline, howling for my pack, a sacred coterie of ocean-song women, truth-tellers and soul-bearers, gorgeous shimmering minds and feral moonlit bones. And I hear you howling back.

This collected sisterhood comes slowly as, one by one, we meet each other with our whole selves — fangs and beating hearts, souls of cracking ribcage and bursting wildfire song. And instead of raising an eyebrow and throwing holy water and a prayer of penance, we wink and hum me too and do not sink under the weight of our fullness.

We hold room for each other, not because we need something from the other, but because love recognizes love.

Soul to soul,

power to power,

woman to woman,

tree to tree,

soil to soil,

equal parts stardust and earthworm and mythic goddess and precious mycorrhizal tendril. The life in me honors the life in you.

Pulse to pulse.

Heartbeat to heartbeat.

Bellow to bellow.

And from that place, we bloom.

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FIVE FAVES

1. You. Each of you. I’ll never not marvel at the power of collective us. The time you take to read our words and reflect back the ways a line or word spoke to you, lifted and unlocked you, and reminded you you’re not alone — it’s such good love.

2. Our new wood-burning firepit. Nothing beats the sound of wood cracking and splitting under the heat of a flame against a chilly night. This one is magic, too, because of the sciencey way it keeps smoke from blowing sideways.

3. This blood orange candle. I’m obsessed with the scent and have it burning most days before I’ve even made the coffee.

4. Stevie Nicks radio is on repeat over here. It’s equal parts mystic woman energy and nostalgia, and I’m. In. Love.

5. These ridiculously charming trophies. I have the one that says, “This ain’t my first rodeo,” sitting on my mantle as I type these words now. They have a ton of silly and irreverent options, and I kind of want them all.

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