10. The Power Of Transformation

Yoni,

My sacred space.

Chapter 10.

The power of transformation.

Warning.

The following reading deals with sensitive subjects related to deep-seated trauma.

Dear listeners,

Please be aware that this story may trigger intense emotional reactions,

So listen carefully to yourself and don't hesitate to ask for the help you need.

Yannick Villeneuve,

Author and story healer.

October 16,

2021.

The writer received her first review.

One word.

Punchy.

Definition from the Oxford Dictionary.

Having an immediate impact.

Forceful.

My reviewer said that she laughed,

Cried and learned.

She told me that I write wonderfully and she wishes the book to continue.

I'm humbled by these comments.

This is the biggest undertaking I've ever started and in the process of finishing.

I think it's worth it,

Especially as I've completely taken the pressure of myself to get published.

The book is obviously already fulfilling its mission.

October 18,

2021.

The earth.

The structure.

Solidity.

Everything that has shape,

Like the body,

The skeleton that holds it upright.

This was the theme of my daily meditation.

Knowing this in advance,

I had approached my base chakra near my obsidian pyramid.

With its help,

I hoped to achieve maximum extraction and optimal connection.

The teacher tells me about Ganesh,

The child elephant.

For me,

The North American,

He showed up as a grizzly bear.

I called again the archetypal wild woman who lives in my heart.

She walked up the moss carpet and took a few deep breaths.

It smelled nice and fresh.

The air was humid,

Laden with the scents of nature.

She was wearing the grizzly skin she'd received from Diane,

The one with the claws and the option of extra force.

She wandered through my forest below,

Looking for fallen trees and rocks that might get in the way.

She went into every nook and cranny,

Looking for anything that would interfere with her trail network,

Anything that was no longer in use,

And anything that might represent a danger.

Thanks to the force,

She was able to reduce all the debris in fine dust.

She sent it all to the great composter,

The fire burning in the center of my solar plexus and in my lower abdomen.

Throughout the 15 minutes of meditation,

I contracted my root chakra to the rhythm of the mantra proposed by the master.

OM GAM GANAPATI NAMAHA Meaning,

I salute the one who removes obstacles.

I felt during this recitation that the threads holding me to old ideas had been cut,

That the path in my forest below had been cleared of many fetters,

And I saw myself at the center of a wide,

Boundless space.

Back in the world of the ten thousand things,

I volunteered to do some fall cleaning in the garage.

While I was taking out what we no longer needed,

Phil was busy burning the clutter around the house.

At the end of this day,

Of course,

We can enjoy more space and a better organization.

As I sorted things into piles to be recycled,

Sold,

Given,

Or thrown away,

I realized in a flash how my emotional digestive system works.

Given the time it takes me to assimilate emotions,

I understand that I am a ruminant.

I am a caribou.

I have the ability to ingest large quantities of food.

Depending on what's available,

I can survive on things that seem indigestible to others.

I accumulate all this material in a jumble in my first stomach.

It's only when I stop and settle into a state of stillness that a portion of what I've eaten rises into my mouth so that I can chew it,

Digest it a first time,

And then return it to the second stomach.

This rumination continues,

Each mouthful digested in this way slowly,

Slipping into the next stomach to the end of its journey in the fourth.

Each pocket has its own role.

It's only in the third that the water can be absorbed.

The substrate can take the root of my fourth stomach.

It's similar to a human one.

It has the capacity to absorb nutrients and sort out waste for the elimination root.

In my first stomach,

I accumulate sorrows,

Joys,

Griefs,

And dreams.

I fill myself with all the emotions and sensations I encounter.

I store them in my first pocket.

When I stop to ruminate,

A memory,

A pain,

Or a color comes up.

I relive them as I chew.

These sensations become real again.

I laugh or I cry,

And I feel in my body all the vividness of this experience.

Thanks to my studies,

I know now that this rumination only lasts 60 to 90 seconds.

I take the time to savor and feel the message contained in this emotion memory before swallowing it again so that it can continue its journey towards the other level of emotional digestion.

That's a fine quality for a writer.

I'm a caribou woman.

I float on snow,

And I chew lichen.

October 19,

For one last time.

We went fishing at our favorite spot on Grizzly Lake.

We ate our lunch while inflating the board and dressed as frogmen.

We heard gunshots as hunting season was in full swing.

There was no one on the lake,

Just a little wind.

As soon as we put the board in the water,

There was silence.

Phil took us to the other side,

Where the trout usually hide.

Phil detected movement on the bank,

So we approached the channel.

He thought it was beavers,

But there were no dams under construction,

Which was odd.

We continued our approach to discover a family at work.

We met a clan of five river otters,

And one of them,

More inquisitive,

Came to see our board at about 20 feet away.

They were gray and fat,

Like Willie.

Some swam,

Other moved on land with agility,

Fluidity,

Living between two worlds.

Phil's the land,

And mine the water.

Even though we hadn't had any bites on our lines at the time,

We knew that our trip would be memorable because of this wild encounter.

Two of them escorted us to the windless bay,

Where in June we had seen thousands of tiny frogs making the long journey to their adult homes.

Clever otters took us out to the fishing zone.

We circled the reservoir again,

To return to the channel.

On the way,

I catch a trout.

My dinner is assured.

Motivated,

We circled back in the otter territory,

And the lake offered another trout,

So Phil could have something to eat,

Too.

Grateful,

We headed back to where we'd parked our side by side.

Because of the cool temperature,

We changed quickly,

Too happy to have met the otters,

A first for both of us,

And a meal as a bonus.

We made our way home,

Proud,

Satisfied,

And happy.

The colors of the forest trees were a delight to our eyes.

The yellow tamaracks lit up the woods.

At each concentration of these half-leafy,

Half-thorny trees,

I saluted my mentor,

Sharing with his spirit a spectacle he would have truly appreciated.

Back at the house,

Willie was waiting for us.

After giving him a pinch of kibble,

He took me to the back of the living room.

I look around.

There's dirt all over the floor.

Pots and plants have been knocked over,

Quite a mess.

He looks up at the window,

And I hear a rustle of wings.

While we were away,

Willie came in through the cat flap with a bird.

The poor animal was trying to get out through the window,

The one overlooking the sky.

After a few attempts to catch it with our fishing net,

Phil finally heeded my advice and caught the exhausted bird with his hands.

He released it outside,

And the bird immediately flew away.

What a great weekend.

October 21,

2021.

I have released the streams of my sacral chakra.

The river of life flows from me.

The dolls wash themselves in the fountain of youth.

The work of liberation has begun.

I feel I'm becoming a shaman,

Which doesn't surprise Phil,

Who believes I see gnomes and fairies even before I can see them.

I still believe,

As I do with unicorns,

That these beings don't exist,

That they're children's stories,

Fears,

As my father used to say.

And yet,

Fragments come back to me,

Memories of visitors and initiatory readings in my childhood bed.

It gives me the impression of a distanced apprenticeship,

But inscribed within,

Somewhere in my genetic code or my microbiota.

I hadn't planned on revealing this thought.

It came out spontaneously,

Like a sudden realization about a change,

Something new to me,

Seemingly self-evident to others.

I don't yet know where it's going to take me,

What revelations I have to discover,

Or what mission I have to undertake.

But I love this opening,

This door,

And now I accept this volatile part of my personality.

I'm going to cultivate it,

To meet in this new garden all those who have something to tell me.

I'm going to bring back their messages and translate them into my physical universe,

Which is in fact only a third of all that exists.

So with the cowish and the wild woman,

I set off to meet this shaman who lives in my forest below.

I settle down on my cushion and set off on my first trip in familiar territory,

On the bike path that starts in front of my childhood home.

As I walked,

A light rain came with the mist.

The forest changed its appearance,

Becoming cottony and full of mystery.

And then the caribou woman appeared and came towards me.

Her hair was thick,

Her muzzle wet and warm.

I felt myself becoming caribou.

My hands and feet enlarged and webbed so that I could walk on and in the water.

Then my heart expanded,

Gently pushing aside the moss to make room for itself,

Radiating all around.

I became a caribou with a lantern glowing in my ribcage.

October 22nd,

2021.

I traveled through different universes,

Motionless but moving,

Here but everywhere at once.

Yesterday I was in the forest with the caribou and today I'm flying.

Against a backdrop of ocean waves,

I visited the one to my left,

The Pacific.

I descended the sacred river,

The Kwakwesen,

To the lake Okanagan.

I took the network of small rivers to the ocean.

I left the hydrological network to take flight.

An eagle and migrating geese accompanied me and I became a beam of light as I flew with them.

Looking down into the ocean,

I saw the whale and the dolphins.

I flew into their mist,

Their sigh,

Their exhale.

I took a few particles of their being inside me.

I flew above the canopy of the ancient forest,

The one that should never be cut down.

I flew over the sacred territories of the Aedas.

I ate fog there.

I came back from this expedition in droplet form,

Filling my physical body which remained there,

Sitting quietly in the living room.

Now I know what clouds taste like.

Since I've been meditating daily,

My body has become even lighter.

It's ridding itself of the emotions I've been digesting.

Finally cleansed,

I can start rebuilding.

For this new version of myself,

I choose noble materials.

My physical body will be made up of water from the source and vegetables from our gardens.

I rebuild my emotional body with self-love,

Support,

And courage.

I set up my healing in the sanctuary,

Surrounded by plants,

Trees,

Birds,

Friendly bacterias,

And all that pulses around me,

Visible or not.

My Buddhist aunt has finished reading my book.

She is proud and happy.

She has given me the gift of other elements of her life,

Of her drama,

To refine my understanding,

My quest as a Sagittarian.

Her mother married at the age of 17,

Fatherless.

Her brother took on the role of head of the family,

Mistreating her and proposing her to marriage whenever it was socially acceptable.

My aunt's father was born in the neighborhood province who speaks English.

He left home at 13 to work in the lumber camps,

Accused rightly or wrongly of having committed an imperable act with one of his sisters.

From one contract to another,

He found himself 13 years later in the village of my grandmother,

Whom he married at the age of 26.

The economic crisis of the 20s made life already difficult even harder.

To create jobs,

The clergy and the state decided to open new villages,

New parishes.

My grandfather and ten other men were selected to clear the forest with axes and build a camp,

The beginnings of a village.

When my grandfather built his first log cabin,

My grandmother joined him.

It was in this dwelling that my aunt and my mother were born,

In a shack with no water,

No electricity,

Insulated with newspaper.

I can now understand the cold that stayed with me for so long.

It was endogenous.

My extremities were icy cold.

I had that frost inside me for generations.

It was in this shack,

In the middle of nowhere,

That this family grew.

It was headed by a man who was never there,

Assisted by a mother who was always pregnant and often sick with an illness that was treated only in town,

Hidden like a shameful disease.

When she was at home,

Numb by the medication and gin,

She offered her daughters her contempt,

Unable to give them what she had never received.

On the other hand,

She considered her sons to be her great wealth.

The boys' club brought home the money,

Granting themselves the right to play dolls with their sisters.

This abuse kept secret by the classic,

If you're not kind and quiet,

I'll tell.

Years of violent abuse,

Paid for with sweets and pretty dresses,

To go to the mass on Sundays.

Thanks to these revelations,

I feel a great deal of compassion for my aunt and my mother.

I also understand her fascination when she used to watch films like Mommy Dearest,

Psycho,

Or Carrie,

Every year,

In which the mothers were distant and mean.

It was a way for her to see in the TV another interpretation of her relationship with her own mother,

An irascible woman who believed so strongly in God.

From now on,

I feel it's my turn to listen to other movies,

Even if it means writing the scripts,

And to see that a mother can be present,

Understanding,

And loving.

I have to learn how to be