The Beginning

In the beginning there was chaos. I was not yet developed, not yet at a place of awareness about my female self. Yet I am the female; woman whatever that was or is. It took ten years to make sense of that. In my conscious mind the journey began in my thirty-third year of this lifetime.

I went to a dark and quiet place where sight and sound and smell and all sensations were strange and distorted; intensified and unruly. A place where I came to understand things I had only known before; to remember things forgotten and to feel things with my heart that previously I'd only felt with words.

When the chaos had all but swallowed me up, and I thought the battle lost, She came and led me to a place where water ran silently in a deep pool and a great oak with arm size roots stood shading it.

I sat; leaning against its trunk, felt it's massive strength tug at the last of my reserve. I looked to Her; there where she sat quietly by the pool, real yet not; flowing layers of silk spread against the green of the earth.

I called out to her, my voice shaky on the edge of tears, "It's draining me, sucking me dry. It is killing me."

She spoke without moving her lips while arising from her seat in the grass. She held out her hand to me, "Perhaps you are not ready to be so naked."

I glanced back at the pool, felt the oak hesitate, closed my eyes and settled back. The Lady smiled as she maneuvered back to her place beside the pool.

I watched the draining as it continued. I saw the oak from its roots, followed their trail upwards into the trunk where they metered down smaller. I watched my energy, my essence, move along those roots carried into the trunk and out to the branches then the leaves. I felt the oak sigh, then swell as my reserves dwindled.

I felt myself hollow back closer to the oak, felt her spread and surround like a body of water that wraps then consumes all things that touch her surface.

"Nearly over now." I'd spoken aloud. "Not so bad just a silent draining, a dimming of light, an increase in the shadows, then serenity."

I felt the leaves fold down and touch my face, felt the near completion of my being swallowed up. Then, slowly and very quietly I felt my strength filtering back toward me. Like taking the first breath of life outside the womb I struggled before I understood how it was done. Slow and even breaths, deep yet in rhythm with the oak. I grew aware of my strength returning then further aware that there was more. Different than that which had been taken; my strength magnified and new. Anew with an unnamable ingredient. Unnamable yet familiar.

Once filled, The Lady rose up and whispered my name. A new name, one I knew as mine, but one I could not pronounce in language spoken with the mouth or lips. I stood to move toward her, but felt the need to glance back, to be certain that I was free.

Again She spoke without moving her lips, "You are free."

We walked a long time, The Lady and I. She took me to mountains and valleys, rivers and brooks. We flew over a volcano and even climbed down inside. In the end I stood alone gazing out toward a long narrow and winding path. It was shadowed with light and contained curves so intense I couldn't see around all the bends. I hesitated, turned to look back.

The path was gone; fallen away. My heart froze up; I started to stumble. Her voice came in to me like a whisper from very far away. "No turning back, you are a woman now."

I shouted back at her, "A woman. What the heck is that?"

I felt her smile and fade away.

-Betsy-

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