Using Our Brokenness To Let The Light In.
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There’s a lesser-known Hindu Goddess I stumbled upon as I traipsed across the interwebs…
She’s the Goddess Akhilandeshvari, The Goddess of Never Not Broken.
I don’t claim her or own her — her image has not been something I’ve grown up with, and yet, whenever she graces my presence, I have the innate knowledge that I have always known her. We haven’t spent a lot of time together but the time we’ve spent has been intimate and awe-inspiring.
She’s seen me at my most challenged, even when it was so dark that no human eyes could make out shapes or lessons.
From a deep pit with seemingly no way out, she peeked over the ledge as I crawled and clawed my way up the sides — thirsty, dirty and bleeding, with desperation and hopelessness creating a lump in my throat and wells at the corners of my lost and lonely eyes.
She didn’t offer me a hand.
I fell back a few times tumbling to the bottom — more scratches, more bruises, bones broken and muscles torn. I was forced to learn in the dark where my body met the landscape.
Aches and pains screamed out to me from places of myself I hadn’t talked to for a great long while — the loudest and most blood-curdling screams came from places so hidden, off the beaten path, and without directions that I had managed to erase their existence altogether until that moment when I felt them rip open.
I struggled and my wounds spread.
As my wounds spread light poured in — illuminating images of tears, and sighs, and traumas, and stories, strength and weakness, vulnerability and power. Flickering images connected one after another, creating resplendent backlit stories where I was antagonist and protagonist, observer and observed, nothingness and Universe.
As my light grew, so did hers, reflections of reflections, lifting me out of the pit that was suddenly full of pathways made visible and easily traversed.
As my wounds sealed, her glistening and challenging stare faded into the distance, but there remained a phosphorescent glow emanating from the path I had taken. As I looked behind me, I saw the long trail of my story, lamplights hung where I needed them most.
You might not know her as Akhilandeshvari.
You might know her as Heartbreak, Grief, Suffering, Loss, The Tower or Disaster.
She remains never not broken to remind us, as Rumi stated: “The wound is the place where the light enters.”
So take this darkness, you broken figures, you lost souls, you society of rebels and revolutionaries, take these hardships, these marginalities, these struggles, and most importantly, these wounds, because (as the Collective Tarot Reminds us):
“Do not be afraid. Do not get stuck in Oppression. Coping. Trying not to change. {We} cannot control the disaster. The change is inevitable. It is our nature to preserve ourselves. Our dreams. Do not be afraid. The Star awaits.”
Honor your broken-ness.
*****
Traci Medeiros-Bagan is a broken and flourishing queer vegan femme-inist of color, healer and community nurturer. She sometimes finds herself sitting in the seat of therapist or leading yoga classes but believes only one truth utterly and completely — that she is a client and student to the process of life. In this process she strives to live consistently, graciously and compassionately. She humbly presents herself here to this discussion to teach, to learn, to grow, to explore, to connect, to reclaim, to question, to subvert, to deconstruct, to break and rebuild. You can learn more about her healing practice here, join her in her community nurturing project here or connect with her on Facebook.
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