After Sicelo's talk, I felt something massive had shifted in my heart. I wasn't expecting my deepest wound, the mother wound, to feel so raw, especially on an ecology retreat. Amidst that breaking open, I was held by two people I'd gotten close to throughout the retreat. After all the crying, I fell asleep during our break, out on the grass under the sun and missed the start of the afternoon session. The rest of the day was blurry as I walked around with my open heart. In the morning, someone from the group offered to sing for us instead of our usual morning meditation. It wasn't just singing thought; it was described as a type of connection to the soul of the earth through singing. It was stunning, touching, expansive and something challenging to describe. I was convinced it had something to do with the absolute craziness later in the day.
I can't remember which talk it was, but I think it was on the fourth of five days were we were invited to do some land practice. We were asked to gravitate to an area on the land, calling us with the instruction to sit, observe and tune in. I felt called to sit in the car park facing the back of the wall to the room we were in for our speaker sessions and began scanning my surroundings. The exercise was to look at different spots and hold our gaze. I noticed the colour and texture of the brick wall and the sprouting of little leaves poking through the stone-filled car park ground until, eventually, my gaze came to a whetstone, an old sharpening wheel. As I stared at it closely and concentrated, I thought, "I wonder if this came with the land? I wonder how old this is? I wonder how it got here?"
In that instant, it was as if someone had turned the focus on the lens so I could see beyond what I was seeing. I started to watch and saw a vision. As I returned to the old whetstone, I saw a man sitting at it sharpening his knives. He wore knee-length leather boots tied at the back of his calves, beige trousers, and a white linen blouse with a criss-cross lace at the collar. As I got to his face, I realised it was one of the participants in the retreat. I was surprised, "what's he doing here?" I wondered. When I turned my gaze to the house and the land, I saw his partner, who was also on the retreat. She was wearing a corn blue dress with a white apron. Her hair was tied back, and she had a white cap on. She was walking around with a basket of wet clothes. At this point, I realised I was looking at the past.
I grabbed my notebook and started writing everything I saw without much thought. Then, I started seeing more people going about their daily life, chopping wood, kids running around, someone making a fire and general village life. It was numerous families because as I watched this, I heard a voice narrating what I saw, "these were the founding families of this land." The voice told me to go and touch the house, and when I did, the house started speaking to me. The house asked me if I could tell the landowners to put a fire in the house. Then I was invited to touch the land. The land told me the animals and insects were happy to be home because they had to flee when the last owners overproduced the land. I was also told that their current neighbours were the first landowners and that in this lifetime, their role was to support the new landowners, the British couple.
When we were called back, I was dazed and confused. As I started to walk back to our meeting point, I saw the woman on the retreat in the regression coming out of the house. I approached her and said, "I have a question for you. Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. What was your first feeling when you set foot on this land?" She instantly replied, "I've come home." I stood there in shock as my eyes welled up. "Why?" she asked, "because I think you have," I told her about seeing her in what felt like a past life regression with her partner. Her eyes welled up as I described what she was wearing, and her hand covered her mouth. She told me she'd recently made a psilocybin journey and had seen herself living in France, wearing a blue dress with a white apron, just as I had. I don't know which one of us was more shocked.
The facilitator started discussing what we would do next when we gathered at our meeting point. I said, "Are we not going to debrief what just happened?" I briefly explained what had happened to me, and then we moved to build a cairn to honour species-going instinct. The land owner pointed out where this would be built, a giant stone next to our meeting point (a hay bale); I heard the voice again, "No, not there." But I didn't know why so I didn't say anything. She later changed her mind and chose another area further away. When everyone was about to get up and start the walk in silence to do this activity, I shared that I wasn't ready to do that as I felt untethered to the earth. So I was invited to participate by going last and just witnessing, but the voice said "no". So when everyone left, I stayed behind.
As I sat alone on the hay bales, the voice said, "You need to build a cairn for the ancestors, the five founding families that lived on this land.". I felt unprepared to do this, but my intuition and the voice guided me. I placed five rocks in a circle on the giant stone. As I placed them individually, I tuned into them and began seeing their stories. I saw that on that rock, there was once a funeral of a miscarried child. I saw a widow whose husband had died in a fight. I felt the grief buried in this land, and I felt called to place my hand at the centre of the stones to transmute and heal the land's grief. As I did this, I felt a wave of their grief come through me, and I began to feel their tears fall down my cheeks as the rain began to pour down heavily.
I don't know how much time had passed, but they appeared towards the end of healing and stood around the stone with me. I saw them, honoured them, their past, and their pain. When it was done, I began to amble to where everyone was building the cairn, and as I got there, the rain had stopped. I briefly chatted with the facilitator and the landowner about what had happened. The facilitator asked me if I had ever done this, to which I said no. I spent lunch sitting at the table with the landowners and the couple that had appeared in the past life regression. I told them all about what I'd seen and heard, going through my endless notes. When I left that retreat, it took me a long while to get back into life. I felt very untethered. I didn't even understand what had happened or how, and it wouldn't be for another five months until I'd get the next piece of the puzzle.
With love and magic,
#AuthenticAlex
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Curious about exploring your own ancestry? I've currently been beta testing a group course on Reclaiming your Roots with success. It's a six week online course with ancestral reverence practices, creativity, meditations and creative writing. If you’re interested in connecting with your ancestry, then you can find out more here and register your interest, the second co-hort will launch shortly.
I'm opening up space to do some akashic record readings. For those unfamiliar with what it is, I'd recommend having a look at this article for an in detail explanation. In a nutshell, people that are trained can open up the book of your soul and look into the past, present and future to gain insight, awareness and guidance. If you're curious or feel called, you can email me here.
This is a call to women to immerse themselves in the journey of the feminine to reconnect with the power and deep love of the story. Over six months, you will hear a series of myths where you’ll be exploring your relationship around longing, fear, adversity, love, falling, failing and courage. Then, we’ll come together as a community to use our imaginations to cross the thresholds that surface through the process. Finally, together we will use ritual to reawaken to the profound spiritual nature of the soul. To book on, follow this link.
I co-host the Café of Endings and New Beginnings with my wonderful friend Tracey McEachran. The Cafe is a virtual place created to explore all our griefs within community. There is power in the group, because everyone is holding up a mirror to allow us to see ourselves more fully by exploring what we cannot see on our own. Our next Café is this upcoming Monday 10th May and is by donation, you can sign up here.