Gate to the Wormhole: a memoir
Rita
Muddy Lotus, Heidi J, Cedar
Hi I’m Heidi J.
I am an artist on a path of transformation, self-discovery and healing through the mythic.
I am human.
I wish to share with y’all a story of a chapter of my life.
I wonder if I were to try and express inherited patterns through theatre, would that unintentionally cause an awakening in my own body?
I wonder, if I were to attempt to write out this story, what components would I want to share with y’all?
I wonder what would be too much.
I wonder if I should try to make this story funny.
I wonder if there are things we do not yet understand about ourselves.
I wonder if the individual is inextricably connected to the collective.
I wonder if nature is an unconditionally loving witness, holding all of our sacred stories for us, waiting until we are ready to listen.
I wonder what your stories are, dear reader, I wonder.
The Gate to the Wormhole - A Memoir
~my hands were red with the actions of my ancestors~
In Spring of 2011 I produced a multimedia show with thirty folks, in Missoula, MT, called First Breath. In this production we used theatre to look at different patterns we inherit unconsciously from our parents (betrayal, neglect, shame, etc.). Then we individuated from these patterns. We also created art which represented the chakras - energy centers in the body - and ended with the throat chakra (voice). Also, I was very curious about the visceral process of birth: the sacred passage from the safety of darkness and heartbeat to the supreme effort and courage required to be birthed into light.
The art created in First Breath initiated a deep and wild process of transformation. A store of energy was unleashed through my body and a gate spontaneously opened up into the deep regions in my lower brain. Beyond this sacred gate lived a wormhole into historical times, where ancient, unconscious parts of me were trapped, stuck, lost, waiting to be found.
I lost many friends during this time, because they did not understand what was happening to me. Instead of choosing to listen, they chose to abandon. This was excruciating. I fell in love with a human who lived on a small farm in a semi-intentional community, and I moved off-grid to face this ancestral trauma, near a small town in the Wilds of the American Northwest. I will add that “decolonization” and other information from folks about ancestral, intergenerational and historical trauma was not available yet. So, I had little context for what I was going through.
For five years I let go of job title, identity, email, social media, notions of personal progress, and especially, control. My ego was annihilated. I became one with the land. I became fire and water and earth. I experienced ego death. I found that under my ego identity lived a butt-load of intergenerational and historical trauma.
I transformed on a very deep and cellular level, and experienced the earth as an unconditionally loving, intelligent, supportive, divine life force. Without the earth's love, I most certainly would have physically died. The moon, who traversed the skyline slowly, the star-filled sky, the sixty medicinal plants in the garden, hundreds of mushrooms - tucked in, in symbiotic relationship with tree and earth, the bees dancing on raspberry and strawberry flowers, osprey and eagle, thrush and robin, ant and snake, loon and salmon, owl and shooting star - these were friends in my support system. The Creek itself was magical and had small pools to baptize oneself, over and over. The sound of the Creek was constant, cleansing, soothing and kind. The sun rays refracted through the dewdrop prisms on spider webs, which would shimmer and tremble in the wind, stretched between cedar tree and pine. I also felt supported by various benevolent ancestors and unseen beings.
The small, land-based community I joined, while they allowed me to stay there and work on my healing, was not deeply supportive of emotional work. I was the only person in the community metabolizing trauma. I experienced that this community prioritized physical labor over emotional labor. My lover, who helped me survive financially, and did the best they could to love me, was verbally and emotionally abusive. This created a profoundly unhealthy power dynamic.
We had dozens of diverse volunteers come through the farm every year, which was super fun. I helped manage the farm and I shared a lot of stories, laughter, music and experience with these colorful humans, which I am very grateful for.
Surrounding the semi-intentional community was a larger, down-to-earth community. Everyone out there knew I was healing trauma. I didn’t talk much about it, but I was not exiled, institutionalized, stoned or burned at the stake. I was accepted by this salt-of-the-earth community. Sometimes I would arrive at the bar red-eyed and shaking. No one would say a thing, they'd just buy me a beer and offer me a cigarette, and sometimes a hug. This includes the men. They never shamed me. I learned so much from this community and the country-style way of life. My friends could plant, harvest, take care of their farm animals, hunt, help each other out, paddle board under the full moon, tell endless woeful stories about the gophers and pack rats, play music together with instruments from all over the world, drive 4-wheelers around looking at the beauties of nature and party hard. There was something truly wild about this place, and this wildness was in the people too. A wildness and a simplicity.
I cultivated a friendship with an elder female friend, Muddy Lotus, who lived (and still lives) in a stunning drainage. Her home is gorgeous, simple, with a giant garden, a sauna on the creek and composting toilet with a fabulous view of the rich mountainside. She had gone through her own healing process years before, of deep familial trauma. She was the only one of her siblings to recover. Somatics, breathwork, singing, dancing and the land were a part of her process, which we discussed. She was instrumental in my healing.
Muddy lotus’s voice:
A cultivated friendship, like the dirty fingernails plant nurturing we both loved. Did she tell you we danced together like a couple of wild women? As if we had been dancing together for a lifetime? What a joy to be with Heidi; sometimes like a daughter – something I never had till my sons started marrying – sometimes just that girlfriend you can talk into the night with. This true artist – unlike me, lover of harmony – touched me, excited me.. I was more than willing to share my trauma story, to help her as others had helped me.
The childhood incest I – and my siblings – endured from my earliest memories to menses was once the most important thing about me. It disarranged my world, and integrating it into my adult being was a long and sometimes excruciating process. Those events are of far less import now, but the process of healing I went through very much informs this moment, and perhaps brings wisdom.
Important things about me: I will be seventy in a few short weeks, I have lived in this mountain valley for forty-eight years. I have deep roots, and the privilege to be centered in the land. I have been present at eleven births, and eleven deaths; events of spiritual import that put every small inconvenience into wider perspective. I worked in hospice for twenty years. I have practiced Yoga each day for over thirty. The last death I attended was that of my husband of forty-three lively years; a peaceful and perfect passage granted him at eighty-seven by the powers that may so bless us. I sense the balance tipping as my tribe moves into elderhood. After a lifetime of large households, living alone most of the time now a revelation and contentment of late life. I am still learning, seeking, but also just letting life flow now. May we live like the lotus, at home in the muddy water...
I also found an incredible therapist, who worked at the local health clinic. Rita guided me with much skill, empathy, love and discernment, through a long process. She stayed with me, and was always encouraging. If she made a mistake, she apologized. She did NOT use her position of power over me. I was constantly grasping for answers, and she would always gently remind me to stay in the unknown, to allow the process to unfold. “Heidi, what if you let go of your need to know WHY?” Once I brought a Djembe (drum) into her office in the medical clinic and we played and sang and laughed. Without her skill, presence, love and ancestry, I would not have had the minimal encouragement I needed to process this ancient material.
The worst parts of this painful time in my life were the lack of ceremonial support and love, being in an abusive power dynamic with my lover, food and housing insecurity and not knowing if I would make it through the integration process to the other side. However, this time of my life was also tremendously sacred, special and simplified. There was an incredible, deep love I encountered for myself, my ancestors and the earth in all the times I said "I'm sorry". My hands were red with the actions of my ancestors. I experienced that my memory is connected to a collective memory or field, and that this collective memory is connected to the earth.
I started to improve, and the processing became less intense...I was getting better! I was sure that THEN my lover would choose to deeply love and appreciate me. I felt I loved them with all of my heart and soul, and that I would stay with them forever. My denial shattered like a crystal vase on a stone cold floor. My lover told me they thought I was a piece of shit. I realized I needed to leave the land I so deeply cherished. This was very painful, as I had never made a deep emotional and spiritual connection to land before.
By that time I was an alcoholic, drinking around 7 IPA's every night. So I decided to quit drinking. I joined AA in the local town, and faced the shame of my alcoholism and addictive tendencies in general. I am so grateful for AA and all people who have tried to heal an addiction. It is fucking hard. I am now able to see that epigenetic patterns and addiction are intricately intertwined.
Then my special dog friend, a divine angel who guided me through the darkness of my psyche, was hit and killed by a car. It took me 5 days of processing that trauma just to get the image out of my head. It was then I had a vision. I saw many sacred fires all over the land. I saw an earth where people had chosen to return to their sacred, decolonized roots and selves. I saw power and healing and celebration and art. I saw a spectrum of expression honored. I saw life, simplified. I named this “Free System-Sistema Libre”.
My friend and I decided to move back to Missoula, the big city.
For the past four years I have been re-integrating into society. I got a smartphone, an iPad, a new computer, headphones, a Venmo account, a PayPal account, a Facebook Profile, an Instagram account, a Business bank account, etc. I made as much art as I could, through comedy, drag, music and storytelling, trying to find my voice in a world where many people seemed to be disconnected, armored, addicted, completely plugged into technology, more interested in instant gratification than working toward a better world and unconcerned about what we are doing to the earth. I struggled to find a sense of belonging. I co-created an album for the Free System-Sistema Libre Multimedia Art Project, with thirty-five magical, talented artists.
Then I was traumatized again, a moral injury. You can hear more about this in the piece “Sweet Piggies Jump” in this project. I nearly died and found no help whatsoever, in the justice system. I witnessed something very dark, and not the beautiful darkness of healing (which includes the medicinal shadow work possible when I have experienced drumming, wild grief work, sweat lodge and sauna, uncontrolled dancing and sound, theatre, horror, bodywork, etc.). Instead, an unethical darkness which creates moral injury without care, concern or empathy. I am still healing from this trauma. Something broke inside me, and although much of my sweet spirit has returned, something was also lost, and I am now limited in my body's reserves.
The wisdom of many cultures, my experience and increasingly larger numbers of studies show that there is intergenerational trauma and conditioning in all bodies. All unprocessed trauma is projected onto ourselves, other humans, beings which are different from us and the earth. While there is discomfort in allowing unconscious material to come to the surface to be integrated - shaking, yelling, sweating, expunging water from the eyes, snot, vulnerability - there is also tremendous benefit. Although I will feel shame when I have hurt someone, there is NO toxic, shaming voice in my head anymore. I never shame myself or anyone else, and this takes no effort. I am my authentic self. I speak truthfully. Light is not separate from Dark. I am able to listen deeply. I am able to take accountability. I have healed many addictions. Sometimes I do not need to prove my worth. Sometimes I am able to experience contentment. My internal experience is sometimes very quiet and clear, like a turquoise-blue glacial lake. I understand the cycles of life and death. I am able to live in harmony with nature, and seek to do so with other humans of diverse expression. I am much more equipped to not project my crap onto other beings, although it still happens, which is why I need to be checked by my peeps.🙏
I wonder what it would have been like to heal my trauma in a loving, supportive environment, where people were honoring that work.
I wonder if I would have been able to go through this experience had I not been incarnated as a white-bodied American female.
I wonder what it would be like to have a lover who actually loved me, and did not abuse me at all.
I wonder if nature has more to teach us.
I wonder if we could learn how to care for one another, as a collective.
I wonder if I should make this memoir funnier.
I wonder what songs you sing, dear reader, what tales you spin, what lives you’ve lived, and what you choose to love.
I am so grateful for all the collaborators in the Free System-Sistema Libre Project, all folks invested in ending white-bodied supremacy and all other delusional constructs that cause deep suffering, and all courageous folks tapping into their own vulnerability, empowerment, accountability and capacity for co-creation. Thank you for healing and growing and for working together to make this world a better place for humans, animals and other beings.
Gratitude to all of you near The Creek who allowed me to be me and face the monsters within me. I will never forget yaz.
Thank you, reader, for listening to this story.
Thank you, healers, artists, farmers, dreamers, activists, storytellers, mystics, teachers, stewards and earth-lovers, from all cultures and times.
For All My Relations.
