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A part of me has always naturally felt drawn to my primal roots – drawn to remembering the ancient ways.
I have always loved nature. As a girl I would go out to the woods and sit in a tree or on a fallen log over the creek and read for hours. I have always stopped to admire the flowers or a beautiful sunset. I’ve always been intrigued by herbs and their healing properties and for years before babies were even on my radar, I knew I wanted to have a homebirth.
I never really knew why I felt all these innate drawings and desires. No one in my family was an herbalist and I had never known anyone who had a homebirth. But in my soul, I knew these things felt right.
Fast forward to today.
I am currently reading the book, Women Who Run with the Wolves (by Clarissa Pinkola Estes), and it is rocking my world.
There is a concept in the first chapter of this book that I wanted to flesh out a little bit and put my own spin on.
A story is told of an old woman called La Loba – the wolf woman (She is also referred to as the Bone Woman). This old woman lives in Mexico in the middle of the desert in a cave. She is a bone gatherer – she collects all kinds of bones, but her favorite bones are wolf bones. She collects wolf bones until she has enough bones to complete an entire skeleton.
Once the skeleton is completed, la Loba sits by her fire and ponders what song she will sing over the bones. She then sings her soul-song, and flesh and tendons begin to grow over the bones, and organs and skin are formed until the wolf is brought back to life. The wolf gets up and runs out of the cave and as it runs away, it is transformed into a beautiful woman. The woman laughs and continues to run from the cave and off into the mountains.
There is quite a lot of symbology in this story, which I did not understand at first, but now I see deeper meaning all over it.
The bones in the story represent the indestructible aspect of our instinctual nature. The bones represent arts and ancient ways that used to be alive and are now believed to be dead or forgotten.
As women, we innately know how to create. It doesn’t need to be taught to us. We create life. We create beauty. We create art. We create curiosity. Our bodies instinctually go through a life/death/life cycle each and every month. We are the creators of new life, and we resurrect life to things that we were once forgotten and dead.
La Loba represents the old-bone-gathering-woman inside every woman. We gather the “bones” of what was lost, forgotten, or dead, and we sing new life over them.
What bones are you gathering and singing new life over in your own life?
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Here are some of my bones and what I create with them.
- Bringing back an old forgotten craft or artform…creating art inspired by nature. Fiber arts, pottery, beading, wire work, painting or embroidery.
- Primal birth- birthing in my own space, with only those there who I want to be present, trusting my body to birth my baby just as I trust my body to create and grow the baby.
- Mothering instinctually – it’s not popular today, but keeping my babies close to me always, extended breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and treating my children with kindness and respect (for I know that they have a keener intuition than me and I would never want to “teach it” out of them)
- Following nature as a guide because nature knows best – and this surely seems like a bone that has been forgotten by our society today. There is nearly no respect for nature or trust that nature can provide us with what we need to be healthy.
- Studying the plants and creating medicine with them for my family.
- Doing the work to dig into my intuition and learn to trust it again. And teaching my daughters to do the same.
- Following a similar diet to the one that my ancestors thrived with for thousands of years.
- Undoing the damaging cycles and thought patterns that have been taught to and ingrained in me since I was a child and replacing them with new ones.
I am bringing back to life the ancient ways that have been forgotten. I reclaim the ancient ways.
What are some of the bones that you find yourself gathering and bringing back to life?
