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In Greek mythology a psychopomp is a supernatural creature or spirit whose purpose is to guide a soul who has just died to the afterlife. We die many times in one lifetime, aspects of ego and will, body and mind, ancient ancestors communing at the threshold of our passage so that they too, can evolve as sentient beings. We embody a myriad of lineages in our flesh and bones, not just the lineages inherent in our soul’s trajectory, but lineages across parallel realities that seek to serve a higher purpose. There is a sense of surrealism with each death, an altering of reality as we embrace a new one, an altering of a lineage as the sacred womb rises to give birth, life, healing and safe passage to those parts of us which need to die, which need to merge with a laden earth encumbered by human disconnect. Or perhaps those parts of us which need to ascend with the angels, a death absorbing grace as the Divine intended to the fullest experience a soul can have.

There is a descent into the underworld where we embrace flesh and bone as much as we do spirit.

There is a descent into darkness where we fall upon our knees and give thanks to the landscape that nourishes our understanding of good and evil.

How fortunate we are to listen to the wilderness that runs through our veins, echoing our names over and over again until the illusion slowly dissipates into oblivion.

To realize that we die so many times during our lifetime. The psychopomp materializing out of an emptiness, appearing in a form of a being we recognize as aspects of oneself.

A hidden landscape versed in the chorus of angels as well as the entreatments of demons. The ruler of this underworld are those wounds we hold close, yearning to ascend, reaching for any hand to help guide our way out of pain.

We become the master of life and death within our own experience. A nuanced pulsation of light and darkness, love and hate, a hunger for light to be fulfilled by pushing through the mire of a reality created by thousands of years of disconnect from grace. We become the psychopomp that we have prayed for to carry us through this confusion of self and to leave the underworld as we originally left it. With love.

Yes, with love.

I can’t tell you you will always feel safe.

I can’t tell you you will never feel alone.

I can’t tell you life will be easy.

I can’t tell you you will never suffer.

I can’t tell you you will always feel like you belong.

I can’t tell you you will never feel like you are at the edge of that precipice, teetering on the brink of exhaustion.

What I CAN tell you is this.

You are loved and held in a grace so palpable beyond any realm you could ever perceive that any thoughts of separation you feel during this earthly existence will be but a distant memory once you remember you are of the light.

Tip-toeing through gratitude

Where dreams of innocence

And peace feel like nectar underneath my feet

I could feel the wind blow

Through every chamber of my heart

Thanking the Divine

For being able to whisper

Love songs of hope

To weary ears

That will listen to its music.

To be grateful

Is such a privilege

So few dare to behold

As it requires complete surrender of

Body and soul

To a silence

So sacred

That once you embrace it

You may never be the same again.

There was a time

She wanted to be who others needed her to be,

Who others thought she actually was

Even walking the path the universe laid out for her.

Until the moment came

She realized in her own absence, the emptiness

Was a darkness she could no longer carry.

So she stopped pretending,

And threw her shame out the door.

Closed her mind and heart to all those voices who never really knew her.

And she became herself

A thousand times over

A thousand times within.

Not even the universe recognized her.

It didn’t matter. Because she finally recognized herself.

I was sitting down at an auto repair shop the other day waiting for the censors on my car to be replaced. 

I don’t often experience this in NYC but a man in his thirties asked me how my day was going. I responded in kind and then we sat near each other. There were a few moments of quiet, followed by what seemed at first was light conversation begun by him again. I rarely have time to myself and was torn between engaging and politely telling him I just needed not to converse with anyone. I try and take moments of solitude when I can, even when my car is getting serviced. I noticed he was calm, almost too calm, so that piqued my interest as to where the conversation would go. I let him lead and I simply listened. He began by sharing that he just moved back to NY to be close to his mother and that over a year ago, he retired from the military. He had been in since he was seventeen. He would tell me of the fifty seven countries he visited, warfare school, some of the perks for him of being in service. As he continued the conversation, I pulled back into a more neutral space. I noticed he began to become hypervigilant, his leg began to shake, his speech quickened. Then he started to traverse the darkness. His traumatic brain injury, 8 concussions from blasts, one from jumping onto his friend to protect him from being killed. His protocols range from a number of medications from antidepressants and antianxiety meds, to steroid shots in his skull on an ongoing basis. The frost bite in the bones in his feet has caused drop foot, his shoulder is severely damaged from an explosion. I saw the nightmares in his energy field and asked him if he slept okay. He said no, he suffered with nightmares constantly. I understood why this sweet man walked in to ask how my day was. I understood the need for normalcy, for connection, for knowing that he was okay. There was one part of the conversation where he said to me he wasn’t crazy, as though posing it as a question. I told him that it would be okay if he was. With all that he went through, crazy was just a part of walking through to the other end of healing. He asked me if I noticed if he kept looking over things all the time and that it was a bad habit he developed from his trauma. I told him his hypervigilance had saved his life many times, what a blessing. And that as time passes, he will find other ways to cope as he feels safe. He went from calm to very anxious, even showing me pictures of his wounds and some of his training. I sat there and looked and listened, realizing that he was inviting me to become a part of his story just for that moment, so that perhaps his story could have the opportunity to be witnessed and also shifted from his perspective, even from mine. I asked him to please find support here, a tribe, while he kept saying he thought he would be okay. I said it was okay even if there were times he wasn’t okay.

I notice that during this war between the Israelis and the Palestinians, as in all wars, so many are taking sides. The epigenetic threads that we are creating in response to this will be passed down to future generations. Peace will not come if we don’t become a part of everyone’s story. We are too immersed in anger and grief to allow ourselves to be open to perceptions of suffering from people we would never even think of holding space for. Problem is we will never know how anyone has truly suffered until we bear witness to a story we would never even think of listening to.

And one day,

Your ancestors will rise

In every cell in your body

In shackles and chains

That only you could unlock

With shattered hearts

Only you can mend

With tortured stories of lives gone astray

Only you can rewrite

With buried hatred

Only you can heal

Just waiting for someone to take their hand

And show them there is another way

To soften those moments

Where the darkness forgot

That forgiveness is the path

To redemption.

Listen to the embers burning

Of ancient cries amidst war

The desolation and emptiness that only darkness can bring.

You search for souls as your narrative

Weaves its way among ruins and bodies

Whose story becomes imprinted in your own

And within generations not even birthed yet.

You and I were once torn by gunfire and hatred

In another time, another place.

Do you think there are sides to war beyond the veil

Where the light glows?

You are both my comrade and my enemy

As centuries have passed

And our wounds have befriended

A peace deemed by God.

But our minds still want war

And to tear each other’s stories to shreds

So that no one can whisper victory but you.

When you finally cross beyond that veil

You will learn that victory belongs to nobody but

The light you refused to see.

Prayers are like fractals stringing wounded

Hearts from a somber and ravaged earth

Waiting for heaven’s staircase to welcome

Any whispers pleading for mercy 

So that war takes no more 

Souls of children who have yet to birth a voice

Somewhere between freedom and peace

A prayer will know stillness

But at what cost to humanity

Does one more tear even matter to those

Who cannot see beyond darkness?

Keep those prayers afloat in your hearts,

In your dreams,

And one day, perhaps, it will be hatred that will be the illusion

We will awaken from.

Wounds will find any path withered by turmoil.

Drenched in landscapes of confused memories

Torn between past and present

Lingering moments within the abyss

Ready to jump off the precipice

Hoping to find meaning for suffering long held

In one’s presence of being.

Why can’t you see the signs?

The light that blessed the wound upon its wayward journey.

The life created so that your memories would exist.

The peace that held your hand as you were ready to jump.

The softening of your suffering when you became still.

Don’t be so afraid of letting your wounds heal.

You are most deserving of this grace.