The Wednesday before Coronageddon, we had a Circle at a local healing center.  It was an incredibly powerful, small Circle with five of us.  The rumblings of what was coming had already started.  There was tension in the air.  One of our regulars had a haircut appointment but decided at the last moment, that this was more important.

As we left the Circle, she said her husband had just texted her that COVID-19 had officially been declared a Pandemic.

We had no idea what that meant and what was coming.

But now we do.

Sixty four days later, here we are.  Home.  E-learning with our children.  Ordering from Amazon if we are lucky.  Facing our fears at the grocery store if we are not.

Or maybe you’re on the ‘frontline’ as they say.  On one hand, I find that a bit of a stretch as my mind jumps to unwilling soldiers throughout history, guns or swords in hand, bullets flying through the air, blood, gore.  Alive one moment.  Dead the next.  Or missing an arm.  A leg.

You’re working at Meijers.

But I see it.  I see that fear you have to wade through each and every day.  And I have the utmost admiration for your bravery and your courage that you must set that aside each time you go to work and enable our world to turn at its slower pace.  We rely on you.

And yes, I see how in 2020, you truly are at the ‘frontline’.

Things have changed.  Life has changed.  That is what happens.  We are evolving, and that is a good thing.

Another essential part of my walk with the Divine Feminine:  cycles and opposites.  The good.  The bad.  The hot.  The cold.  Up. Down.

I do believe we are birthing a new period of herstory.  And like all natural births, it is messy.   We have hit ‘transition’ and many of us are wondering how much longer we can do this.

Maybe you’re trying to come up with yet another activity for your children.  They’re bickering.  You’re trying to work.  You feel fortunate to still have work, but oh my Goddess, working while ‘homeschooling’ your children is no easy task.

Or maybe you lost your job and you haven’t been able to get through to unemployment and why is it that all these people who don’t really need it got their stimulus check but you did not.

Or maybe you live on your own and therefore haven’t touched another human being for 64 days.

That’s not the way we are made.  It’s painful.  Small things become big.  Minutes drag.

Yes, many mystics spent prolonged periods of isolation going to nirvana.  Perhaps we are all doing a mini-version of that.  But you must travel through the Underworld to get there.

And don’t get me wrong, sometimes, you may be seeing the benefits of this slower pace.  My blended family of six has never eaten together as much as we have the past sixty four days.  The other day they all played softball together without my prompting.  As an ‘extroverted’ introvert, it is especially peaceful when I do go out in public.  The parks are terrific.  The traffic is non-existent.

But as an empathetic person, I also think about what is going on behind closed doors.

If you have a healthy family, you’re getting through this.  Not the prettiest, but it has its moments.

But those of us with ‘patchwork’ families, just like that Walmart float you bought, we’re deflating.   Maybe school was the only glimpse your child had of ‘peace’.  Maybe shopping or vacations were the glue that held your struggling relationship together.

I see jokes about the increase in alcohol consumption lately, but as someone who has stood on the edge of the abyss for a good deal of her life, I’m going to be first to say it, the ‘struggle is real.’

If we make it through Coronageddon but lose our mental health in the process, where are we?

If the new world is a socially distanced sanitized hug-less one, was that what you dreamt of?

I am not saying that all of this has been mishandled.  I believe we’re doing our best to get through a completely unique time in history. Yes, way more died of the Spanish flu pandemic and thankfully, COVID is nowhere near as deadly as the SARS epidemic in early 2000’s or the Avian flu in 2010’s.

But the flip side of being less deadly is being more contagious.  So for those of you sitting back waiting for this to die out, I wonder.

And the difference is, in the meantime, at no point during ‘human history’ have we had … social media.   So while we’re sitting around waiting, we’re being bombarded from both sides with posts and news saturated with fear and anger.

I believe that this is a very lengthy game of wait and see to see how this virus mutates and interacts with us humans.  And we are entering a very lengthy time of ‘Mother May I’, stop and go, forward and back.

I also believe there are a large majority of us who are quiet right now, and maybe it’s time we spoke up.

And here’s the deal:  I don’t mean speak out online from behind our computer screen or smartphone.  I mean speak out to each other.

Not too far from me there is a nursing home that had a COVID-19 outbreak where one quarter or 24 of its residents died from COVID.  It is heartbreaking to read about.  Goodbyes said over Facetime and through windows.  Accusations and lawsuits flying.

And in the midst of that, good people working there.  Strong people.  Courageous workers who despite the severe shortage of employees are showing up every day and have had to help families to say goodbye to loved ones taken quickly, without a funeral or closure or anything we have come to accept as a normal process of grieving.  Heart breaking.

The large majority of us have never lived through anything remotely like this before.  And many of us are running through the familiar maze taking bites of that cheese we have always eaten not realizing that it is almost gone.

Or maybe you realize the cheese is getting smaller, and it fills you with fear.

The time is now to find a new way.  And us ‘healer types’ I believe have been doing our work for the past decade so that we can be exactly where we are right now.  And do exactly what we are meant to do right now.  Help people.

And how do we do that?  Through Sacred Circles.

More so, now than ever, we need the reason I started theDivineFeminineApp.com to create and foster small intimate Circles that meet regularly.

For the past nine weeks, two to four of us have been meeting for a weekly Circle outside.  We ‘socially distance’ at these Circles.  We pass an ‘invisible talking stick’ and do air hugs.

I cannot tell you what these have meant to me.

Meeting.  In person.  Heart to heart.

Am I being reckless?  Am I being dangerous?  I have thought through that.  And have come to the conclusion that mental health counts.  And virtual just doesn’t cut it all the time.  We need to actually sit with our Sisters in Circle.  With precautions of course:  small numbers, social distanced and not passing anything around.

Yes, we must protect our vulnerable populations.

But as any good Mother knows, we must also take care of ourselves first to do that.

If I thought things were divisive before, oh my, that has been multiplied a thousandfold.  You get online these days and are bombarded by ‘sides’:  the ‘Stay Home Save Lives and if you are stepping outside your front door, then you are Evil and Heartless’ side and the ‘Get the Government Out of My Life, Have they ever done anything well?  This is all political.  And hell no, they’re not going to trace me on my phone’ side’.

But I know somewhere in the middle there are a large silent majority of us, watching, waiting, reading, hoping, loving.

Let’s all meet somewhere in the middle.

And let’s do it in a Circle.

 

* Never heard of a Sacred Circle or the term Divine Feminine before?  I invite you to come check it out at theDivineFeminineApp.com .  Use code ‘a new world‘ to see the details on news, profiles and resources.  We will always give out a code to those who ask.