Journey to Letting Go

It’s an overcast day. The edge of my skin tightens where the cool fall air touches it. I’m walking on a path I’ve walked before, not far from where I live. It is called Gregory Canyon by white people. This is where I first came to know the poison hemlock plant. There is a creek here, barely trickling in this season. The dry crackling of branches and grasses rattles with my footsteps as I follow the path deeper into the woods. A brown bear is eating berries. She looks at me, knows that I am one of her own, and goes back to the berries, letting me pass unmolested. As I approach the village it is unusually quiet.

I come to a woman and ask her where I can find the Great Midwife. She looks at me and says, ”YOU are the Great Midwife now. It is YOU who are to help women give birth, care for the sick and help the dying on their journey to the other side.”

I am shocked. What can she mean? I follow her to a hut and stoop to enter the short doorway. A woman elder is lying on her sleeping mat, covered with a mound of blankets and furs. Her face is luminous, though her physical skin is darkened.

“Great Midwife, I am here to ask you about love.”
She slowly shakes her head, silently saying, “No”.
Then she speaks. “You must speak of death now. It is time. The seed of death is born when we begin to live in our mother’s womb. Mine has grown slowly and is now bearing fruit, like the bushes full of choke cherries.”
She stops to breathe for awhile, tired by the efforts of her words.
“You must eat of my berries now so that you will be strong with what I have grown to become. You must care for my people. You are the one that can hear what to do.”

She nods at the woman attending to her and the woman reaches over to her, removes the bear claw necklace from around her neck and places it over my head, to hang now on my chest. Its heaviness would bear down on me, if not for the uplifting of my heart by this sacred gift.
I kneel down beside her. “Grandmother, I am not ready. I cannot take your place.”
“You must. It is time.” She closes her eyes, her irregular breathing now the only sound.
When I reach into my bag for my gift to her, a thorn from the sprig of rose pricks my finger. I place the sprig on her chest, the one last blood red bloom from my garden. “May the spirit of the rose assist with this blessing.”

I quietly slip out of the hut to ponder my letting go, to pray for her Spirit to have a swift & peaceful journey to the Eternal Summer, and what this all means. As I walk away, I hear the keening begin.

--Terra Rafael

(Although I intended to find out about love on this journey, the stars had a different purpose for me. This was the astrology of 15 September 2009 when it was written-
Today is the final pass of the Saturn/Uranus opposition. It began last Sept. 08, then again in Feb. 09, and today it is completed.
At 6:50 AM (MDT), and all day, we are working with letting go of the old and receiving the new. Look at old patterns of thinking and behaving. Be really willing to let those ways dissolve and flow out of you, keeping your base of what works.
Then be open to the new and innovative ways of being that are ready to serve you and bring you into a more authentic way of being.
From astrologer and writer Jyoti Wind)