Friday, May 18, 2012

Great Granddaughter


author's note:  This piece arose from a dream which was comprised solely of the words: Great Granddaughter

My granddaughter is of African descent.  Both her parents are loving Caucasian female educators.  They have invited my beloved and me to be part of her village.

May my great granddaughter be born loving and being in awe of her vagina.  May she never hear it referred to as her down there or be taught to eliminate its fragrance or be called unclean when she bleeds.

I did not enter this life through my mother’s vagina.  My mother was relieved to be offered the more sanitary surgical method.  She never peered into her own vagina.

Yesterday morning I chose three cards from the Goddess Oracle and for the first time ever laid them out in the yoni spread.  Last night I spread my yoni in the way of the holy hag, the lineage of Sheela-na-gig.

I am traveling to a country where female genital mutilation is practiced.  I was given a book about a fistula hospital in Addis Ababa created to relieve some of the suffering by women who leak urine and feces because of obstructed births.  The book does not mention the mutilation.

Incredible pain cause by a cyst on my clitoris drove me to a military hospital for treatment.  I agreed to allow the lancing procedure to be observed.  My case was of clinical interest.  My suffering completely ignored.

It was through my vagina that I was called back into my body after my son’s death.  My beloved entered me and the call to live was irresistible and the cost of answering that call was terrible.

My beloved’s lingam becomes limp inside me as it perceives the trauma of a body memory even before I do.   We weep together for violations endured by and inflicted on the Goddess by the uninitiated.  Now only the divine enters my vagina. 

On my 50th birthday my beloved presents me with the most beautiful luscious purple, pink and blood red velvet and satin vulva puppet.  Together we worship the vulva.  Together we enter the mystery.

My body is the body of the Goddess.


4 comments:

  1. What a dance of healing!! Bringing tears to my lots dry eyes that have been happy a lot because I am witnessing healing in the most feared places among feared people because we are so awesomely human. Here you are arising in a powerful elderful way!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks,Ptery. It's so valuable to take time to recognize the healing that is constantly happening in and around us. So often the focus is only on all that is wrong. To feel the connection among the diversity of the human family is awesome and sacred. Blessed be.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A piece written to my mothers, the Ellis Island crowd, all of them, who would be in their 90's now, had they lived...they raised a question...
    What in our lives leaves us longing for magic?
    We the Crones
    from whence have we come?
    Trapped, T. described her mother,
    a fly in a bell jar,
    puzzled at first by its boundaries
    frantic for a time, seeking escape;
    defeated, then.
    A life bound by the needs of children, alcoholic husbands, constant lack;
    oh, you say, that was the lot of only some,
    sad, but not so for most women..
    Bell jars
    vary.
    Every Sunday our mothers wore fake pearls and pert little hats with veils
    to cover at least half of their faces,
    at least half,
    long dresses masking bellies pressed into girdles,
    they hurried home from church to cook the family dinner:
    roast pork, mashed potatoes, sweet cabbage..
    Dutifully they pulled the Electrolux around the apartment
    several mornings a week, ironed, oh how they ironed,
    wheeled carriages up city sidewalks
    carrying babies they did or didn't want
    created by embraces they did or didn't want
    freshly washed sheets whipping in the wind,
    promising flight,
    dissolving into a sigh of longing.
    Bell jars,
    dreams evaporated
    condensation on glass...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lissie thank you for adding your moving tribute. The images of bellies pressed into girdles, of how they ironed and rushed home to cook Sunday dinner while the rest had their Sabbath ring true to my memories. We your daughters, grand daughters, great granddaughters thank you.

    ReplyDelete