Keri – USA
To Mend. To forgive. To re-member peace. It takes one, sometimes. And sometimes, it takes two.
She asks me is there a place on your body that feels disconnected or you’d like to speak to, and I say my belly. And she comes from behind me, deliberate and caring against my belly, her forearms cradling my hips.
These hips, she says, are beautiful, solid and strong, and well-adapted.
She holds my core, places my hands underneath hers, and lingers. The Divine feminine loves a slow, savoring, inviting courtship. After my guard surrenders, I feel my belly give way, no resistance, no fighting.
Only gravity and me. And a witness, courting my Wholeness.
And I breathe. The deepest breath yet of the day, from my bowels, I inhale. I soften. I am breathed by the Universe, by Creation, as a promise to Life and Purpose. This radical permission bursts forth from under my hands. I remember this.
Home. Under her hands. An offering, a simple act. To hold. Connect. Affirm. A profound humility and triumph to find myself taking up space, proud and full. At the suggestion. Naked. Vulnerable. Accepted. This comfort seeps deep in my bones, my sinew, becomes Whole Food for my body, this chalice, this transmitter to my Experience. My beloved place of weakest connection surges positive affirmations and her dignity is restored under the care and skill of a lover of healing, a lover of pleasure, a lover of the sacred Mending and Seeing, the joyful and sensual re-connection to our bodies.
And that was this morning, before I meet Erica on the banks of the Swannanoa. This morning swirls with plenty new sensual moments over the last month that have answered my sultry and exploratory dreams of self-acceptance and openness to love. On the clutches of jumping my hometown nest for a few months, I’m taking Radical to a whole new self-love, sisterhood and planetary stewardship level. And it feels divine!
For the photo shoot, I meet my Big self on the bank. I passed through the river, with all my parts. Through frigid waters my spirit acclimates and ensures steady footing. With a smile on my face, and all the exquisite laughter and lightness of recent love expressed, shared and felt, I forge the river in my best buff. I feel my toes numb, my hairs stand on end, my thighs turn pink at the steady nagging of the water’s chill. Through the stimulating waters, my body is returned to me, in its perfect form. Pink. Raw. Alive. This one devastatingly daring life, I sparked my own wondrous and enchanting initiation. To my wilding. To my nature. To this joyful commitment to Wholeness.
And I look there beyond the waters whose ripples bring nutrients to the banks, my destination. Precious and powerful Water, she sows the seed of potential and destruction at her whim, and laps the shores with no hesitation. I scurry between submerged boulders, then footpath, then between stoic trees that yield and bend with the bank to know the larger love of surrender. To be shaped by love. To yield to love. To truly love ourselves as a radical statement to know peace. We get there on our own and with others’ loving reflections of our gifts, our Wholeness. Witnessing ourselves as intact, playful, embodied, and awake, peace is our daily joyful activism and life is art, blossoming.