The Sacred Medicine of Returning:
A Solstice Blessing
In the times when darkness eats the light, may you find in your heart a place of welcome and spaciousness for the confusion, sadness, fear and uncertainty that can swallow you whole. When it seems that there is no clear path in sight, may you become still and quiet enough inside the earth of your body for the soul door to open, carrying medicine from the wild forth to nourish and enliven that which has been oppressed, repressed, unacknowledged, hidden.
May grace hold you with tenderness until it feels okay enough to surrender to the slow time of deep gestation in the womb of the dark mother, where each of us is remade from the seeds of innocence around which our lives have unfolded since the beginning of time. Although you may feel you have lost it, know that innocence (what truly belongs to us) is indestructible, that it has only been buried under the rubble of un-metabolized betrayals, losses, failures, delusions—that with deliberate, steady tending it can be reclaimed.
The pain of dismemberment that you have endured is a sacred path of beauty carrying the medicine of maturation, deepening and the growing of strong roots and broad wings. May the eye of clarity discern between what is life giving and life taking, releasing all that is false to reveal the bare truth hidden inside your most secret longing.
May wonder, beauty and awe warm your heart fire enough to inspire the courage to become medicine, a blessing, an ancestor who carries the light of hard-earned wisdom forward to be shared.
When the time is ripe, in your own time and in your own way, may heaven’s light rise from your earthen body to release the wholeness that you have always been, like a flower from the bud, butterfly from the cocoon, a crescent moon from the darkest night.
Light upon light
darkest of dark
the longest hour
a dying lark.
Suspended sky
rigid earth
the shortest day
a painful birth.
Melting sun
lava core
lighting the way
I step through a door.
Liquid green
forest lush
winged peace
pregnant hush.
Between two worlds
separate and blended
seeing with closed eyes
wounds being mended.
Moon in her fullness
doves weaving sun’s rays
that lead through the darkness
and return longer days.
Poem by Monique Gaboury, Solstice 1997
About the Author: Monique Gaboury is a licensed acupuncturist, in Freeland, WA, specializing in Alchemical Acupuncture. She loves sharing her passion for natural healing at her clinic and through writing her blog ‘Re-membering Wholeness, Belonging and Kinship Through Changing Times’.
Juniper Medicine Alchemical Acupuncture serving the greater Seattle area on Whidbey Island. To schedule an appointment call 360-672-1506 or EMAIL.
