8/21/2024, Lake Tahoe
This morning I woke to celebrate 26 years of my dad being my "force much greater than luck." I lost him to leukemia when I was 17 and it's certainly been a journey getting back to feeling whole.
I could only see tragedy for a very long time, now I see the treasures.
To honor him, Sameer and I did a stand up paddle board meditation at the hotel on Lake Tahoe. We floated between the rising sun and the dissapeearing Super Blue Moon.
As I turned my head from left to right as though watching a tennis match to see the sun and moon, something dawned on me.
In July 2022, a few months post double mastectomy (I had my own dance with cancer), I got COVID. My body could not handle healing my chest AND fighting off COVID. I was feverish and delirious for 48 hours. I woke in a sweat in the middle of the night with a bodily sensation of being in labor. On all fours, I swayed back and forth on the bed, holding my belly and chanting "The ancestors are in labor" over and over. Giving birth to a new way.
As I floated between the sun and moon on this special day, I understood.
The sun typically represents a masculine energy (power, strength, action, doing / "making it happen") and the moon a feminine energy (calm, receiver, being / "letting it happen").
We have both energies within us. The body may present as male or female but the mind and soul may feel another way.
The labor and rebirth I see happening is to honor the balance of masculine and feminine energies within ourselves. If we sway too much to one side, we lose balance. In our individual lives and in our collective culture, w need a bit of each --
being & doing
letting things happen & making things happen
power & gentleness
giving & receiving
to thrive.
By shifting from solely seeing our individual selves as just "man" or just "woman" we see the humanness in all of us. That humanness equalizes us.
Many people are afraid of this equalization because it means losing what they once understood to be true.
This is why our world feels like it is teetering on edge - the ancestors are in labor, giving birth to something new.
~AKI
Image credit: Dall*E A serene scene at Lake Tahoe during sunrise with a paddleboard meditation taking place. The background includes a vivid golden sunrise on one side and moon in the lake reflection.