Becoming Strong
Never in a million years did I expect to start a blog with a story about my cramps, but I checked in with spirit and this is the story that needs to be told today, so hang in there! I was enjoying a quiet moment of puzzling while sipping my morning coffee, when I started to experience strong cramps. This is not a usual occurance for me. I called in reiki energy, laid my hands on my belly, and pressed on with my puzzle.
When I could no longer ignore the pain signals my body was sending me, I told myself “I just need to sit with this for four minutes,” not even fully registering that listening to my body is my full-time job here on earth, not something you allow during a tiny sliver of your day.
Sitting With the Pain
I laid down on the couch, again placed my hands on my belly, and called in reiki energy. I opened my crown chakra to bring in any insight for me and opened my foot chakras to release all that wasn’t serving me. This isn’t my first reiki rodeo with paain, but this has become my practice since I was first reiki attuned in 2021.
As I settled in to sit with the pain, waves of ancestral understanding flowed to me. I felt pain for all the women who have been assaulted, pain for women who didn’t feel they had autonomy over their bodies, and pain for women who carried children because they were expected to, not because it was what they chose for themselves.
As the cramping began to subside, I felt very strongly the pain was birthing the divine feminine. It is bringing in a world where women have autonomy over their bodies and expand freely into their power as wisdom keepers for humanity. A world where the fullness of the divine feminine energy is felt and not only accepted, but celebrated.
Transmuting the Pain
I had an awareness in this new energy, women will be recognized as the true leaders for the ancient knowledge we carry, the sacred connection to the earth and nature, and for our divine connection to all that is. With each new wave of understanding, I breathed deeply, pulling in that cosmic energy, and breathed out all of the negative feelings and pain down through my feet, to Mother Earth.
This brief experience this morning reminds me our bodies are sending us messages all the time. Our job is to tune into those messages. Picking up Louise Hay’s, Heal Your Body, I learned the uterus represents the home of creativity and her affirmation is “I am at home in my body.” By taking those four minutes…. or so, I was able to quickly shift the energy of pain to an energy of hope and rebirth.
The Universe’s Lessons
As with all of the universe’s lessons, this one comes at the perfect time. I’m working on yet another round of edits on my grandmother’s memoir, Becoming Strong (that I have been working on since 2018). The title holds two meanings for me.
My grandma wrote mainly about her experience growing up on a rural Wisconsin farm during the great depression, up through the time she married Earl Strong and started a family of her own. But the stories always remind me what it truly means to be a strong woman. Every time I spend time connecting with my ancestors through the pages, I end up shedding healing tears for these women.
Ancestral Trauma
My great-great grandmother lost two of her siblings when she was a child and later, two of her own children. As a single, young adult, she worked in hops fields, but her salary was given directly to her father.
My great grandmother lost a son at just eighteen months old and then she was widowed, leaving her with five school-aged children to care for. She auctioned off the family farm and moved to the city to live with her folks and pick up sewing and cleaning to make ends meet.
My grandmother who was just a sophomore in high school at the time of her father’s death, started working at a grocery store to help support her mother. The butcher there would give her the scraps of meat from the day to help their young family through those first few difficult years on their own.
Birthing A New Way
Working on this memoir has been such a blessing for me. These stories shed light on the patterns of scarcity and struggle that have been passed down to me, but give me a deep appreciation for the level of healing needed at this time by my generation, for all the generations who came before us who were just trying to survive. I have so much love and gratitude for their struggles because it has all led to this very moment in time where we will birth a new way.
As I near the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing and dig back into editing Becoming Strong, I still hope for a 2025 release date. In the meantime, you can download a preview for a little insight into the magic that brought this story into the world, in divine timing.
