“The wound is the place where the light enters you” - Rumi
She ran deep into the cool desert night. The waning moon, her guide. Naked to the elements, she let the wind caress her as the tears streamed down her face. All of the hurts over these past few years culminated in her chest and threatened to pull her into the abyss.
Her heart was both in her throat and dropping to her stomach as she considered the losses. Another heartbreak. Another man down. Another cut - a yawning maw right through the center of her. Her pain was primal, a beast she couldn’t outrun.
Out of breath, out of strength - she let the beast catch her. She fell to her knees and let it consume her. There on the desert floor, her tears watered the marigolds that perched happily beside her, unaware of anything unusual about this woman wailing and pounding the Earth, her heart torn asunder.
Finally out of tears, she sat on her heels and let the moon comfort her. Her body and heart, raw and worn from the release. It was almost pleasant to feel so alive.
On her back and hands she felt the tingle of the marigolds brushing her skin as the wind blew. These beauties were healing her scars and leaving their own marks where her open wounds once lay.
The light of the moon and the marigolds, a healing balm.
How blessed she was to have loved … and lost.
The wound where her heart once was became a window through which she could now see deep inside of herself. The universe had used this heartbreak to crack her open and show her all the work to be done - to stop abandoning herself, to heal old wounds gone to fester, to increase her capacity to hold the life of her dreams. So too it showed her all of the possibility and power and magic within her, to birth whole worlds made of love and light and life.
So she sat hugging herself under the moon, under the sky, letting the ashes of her old life be carried away on the wind, planting marigolds upon the grave of who she once was, carrying the reminder of all the women she used to be etched upon her skin in flowers.
It had to be this way, she realized, for her to become the woman she needed to be, strong enough to carry the dreams that lie dormant within her heart. She had to go through this to be ready to let go of her fear of being seen and known and loved.
This was how her path was meant to be, to show her all the ways she had been holding herself back, keeping herself STUCK. She was her only limit.
She would tend to her grief, tend to her pain, tend to her body, heart and spirit as she healed. To cultivate the life of her dreams, like a garden, some weeds must be pulled away, the soil must be tilled, old stories and dreams and patterns must be composted and alchemized with love. She would drop the walls that once kept her safe, but now only served to limit her.She would call in new love and new life and new dreams with the energy of the old, put to better use.
She would honor the aliveness in all things, even the grief and the pain.
As the sun began to paint the sky with the pinks and oranges of a new day, she steeled herself and walked calmly back into her new life. Determined to take the time to rediscover who she was now, after everything. Ready to finally become the love of her own life - scars and all. Seeds already planted for the new chapter ahead. This was her initiation into the next iteration of her being.
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“When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain” - Andrea Gibson
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“I am blooming from the wound where I once bled.” - Rumi
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Painted 10/2025
Written 4/2026
