Fragments of Voices and Not Enoughness

The liminality of death and rebirth - the dark and light of these times and our voices

What do I need today - what do I need to know for my contract pitch this afternoon?

I wanted an answer that would point towards the pitch going off without a hitch - a shoo in. I know that we typically either ask the wrong questions or we get answers we need, not answers we want. But time will tell; this also may answer the contract question. I suspect it will.

What then does any overly educated, overthinking, menopaused, growth-driven woman, such as myself, do to find a quick answer, a quick blip of inspiration, so she can go on about her day?

Ask the Goddess oracle card deck. (This in turn was not a quick answer as I’m writing this hours later.)

If you know me, that might not have been what you expected and also hopefully it doesn’t surprise either. This isn’t my area of expertise or comfort. That is precisely why it was needed. I used to want some sort of external validation to soothe my brain or tell me I’m making the ‘right’ decision. Now it’s evolved. I crave an outside perspective to guide me deeper into myself.

After the first week of the American Bro-regime, I felt pulled again to practices that embraced the vibe of thrown up middle fingers and yelling down the middle of the road. So I pulled out my collection of oracle and tarot cards. This beautiful collection from the over years is a powerful tool to prompt a deeper dive into the things bubbling underneath the psyche’s surface that perhaps I’ve been distracting myself from with all the maladaptive noise and good coping practices. Similar to tracking my dreams, it’s not as if I’m basing my life on one version of an interpretation, rather like any well trained researcher, I am watching for patterns and listening for insights.

I shuffle today’s deck and I glance over at the spread of three from last weekend, Artemis - Lilith - Coatlicue - aka Selfhood - Power - Grief. Oooafff. Hello, my life’s work. A power spread no doubt. I don’t have a set method for this. Sometimes cards jump out and other times I just cut the deck and pick. This time today, one lands on the desk mid shuffle. As I turn it over, I chuckle and roll my eyes at myself.

It’s Cerridwen - Celtic Goddess representing Maid, Mother, Crone - death and rebirth. Fine. I get it. I get it. Death and rebirth. My whole body sighs in resignation.

This isn’t the direct answer to my pitch this afternoon, I don’t think, maybe. This is the answer to why the fuck can’t I just write something and publish it on Substack already. For fucks sake, Tamara. How many ways of hearing my own self-limiting of my own voice over the last three months do I need. Apparently many. Here we are.

I’ve been listening to the Witch BBC podcast (it’s a real delight) this morning during my workout. And I happen to be exactly on the episode about our relationship with Death and ancestors.

Death and rebirth. What needs to be let go of in order to make space for something new? That seems like the loaded question at this moment in time, doesn’t it? It’s social collapse, climate collapse, limiting beliefs around my own writing collapse, it’s how we configure community and support, our relationships to work and career which are so closely tied to the death grip of late stage capitalism. It’s the belief that in order to me to make any such statements that I have to have all perspectives and peer reviewed citations to support the claims as if my own knowledge and awareness up to this point after 48 mother fucking years of living, studying, being, intuiting, teaching, researching, observing, and being hyperaware of my surroundings isn’t enough.

Isn’t enough. There it is. What needs to die. Fuck this, isn’t enoughness, already. One of two main gifts I have found in menopause is I’m too exhausted and disinterested in the same overing ability to try to do all the things I would have previously done to prove my enoughness to the world, to you, and myself. All the ways I would have rewritten this post in order to tamper down my voice, to give you sources and links for credibility, and blah, blah, blah. I’m not even interested. Like the many other hundreds of partially written word documents on my computer, this probably would not have seen the light of a posting page.

Death and rebirth. I invited this process. I told a coaching client yesterday, when we declare our journey, we willingly (even when it also might feel begrudgingly as if thrown into it) step across the threshold into the liminal space of alchemy. Or I believe I phrased it more as change and transformation, but really it is alchemy because it’s a blend of seen and unseen components. It’s intentional choices, strategic movement, embodied action, and a following of joy and intuitive knowing sprinkled with guidance, be that from others, Nature, ancestors, meditation, prayer, whatever you call it.

I invited this exploration and I keep finding confirmation of it. I get it, that’s how confirmation bias works and also, what are the chances I would find a snake tail skeleton in the back corner of a kitchen cabinet the weekend after facilitating a client new year workshop titled, Your Year of Shedding and Rebirth. Apparently I meant mine also.

Isn’t that the way, though. Don’t we often offer to others what we ourselves may also need or benefit from, or a previous version of ourselves needed. I think so. And also isn’t this what we all need this year, as a country, community, and individuals all interconnected with Nature’s cycles of death and rebirth here as we come up to mid-winter this weekend.

Part of me wants to rip the bandaid off and just post this. Then I go into debating impulsivity vs overanalyzing paralysis. My analysis part was well put to use as a qualitative researcher, and it really is a wonderful mask for the hyper attentiveness that comes from childhood paired with often spot on intuition. Or is it ADD impulsiveness to just post? That could make it irresponsible to myself and, perhaps, you the reader. Then come the Gremlins fast and furious, oh so you think there will be readers besides your husband, that’s rich. Hi, Cam! Thanks, honey.

How do I reconcile this? You know the answer, right?

Ask the Goddess oracle card deck.

Gyhldeptis - the forest Goddess of the Tlingit and Haida peoples of NW North America. (Is it still called North America or has it been renamed to Tr$mplandia?) Anyway. The booklet says Gyhldeptis represents synthesis - the message of wholeness and honoring all the different pieces.

Fine. I get it. I get it. Death and rebirth. Let go of the old stories holding me back in my writing and the voices I share with others. Honor all the voices within the collapse which will show the fragments to merge together out of the rubble. Said in that monotone voice of yes, I know this and I’m tired of hearing myself say it.

I’ll post this after all. Having fully stepped into the liminal space of death and rebirth of my writing voices. Moving into this weekend of midwinter - St. Brigid’s day, Candlemas, or Imbolic, theses are not inherently my traditions. Sunday is Groundhog’s day and while I wouldn’t not call that ‘my’ tradition either, it feels symbolic that no matter what Punxsutawney Phil ‘sees,’ we all see the shadows at work to block our light in the coming days and years. Don’t we?

The seasonal cycle points to the liminality of midwinter. I’ve thought more in the past years about the liminality of autumn moving into the darkness of winter. I think that was needed to relearn how to slow down in a world of hustling capitalism. I love the liminal spaces though as the invitation to commit to letting go of the old thinking in order to make space for new dreaming and futuring.

Midlife is the liminal space, too. The menopause transition is all about liminality and as Sharon Blackie states, it is the transition into elder hood by embracing Hagitude (also the name of one of her books). Right now the work that is needed through the dark to fin the light is for the grief, the rage, and your fabulous fucking voice. Did you read that, Tamara? I can’t help but think that you might think this post is very self-absorbed, I see you Gremlin. No one has to read this. It’s your choice. And it’s mine to write and share.

“In that place of destruction, gestation and rebirth, we begin to learn the answer to the biggest questions of all: if we strip away everything we are told we must be in the Wasteland, what is left? When everything we once valued is taken from us, what then do we become?” (If Women Rose Rooted, P. 115 - another of Sharon’s books that I cherish)

Darkness has descended, be it even invited in by votes or the paralysis of apathy. Will you cross the threshold in the liminal space between death and rebirth to find the voice and light needed for these times?

Cheers to my first Substack post and not overthinking it into paralysis but going with the flow of creative curiosity within my brain and body…

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