Vulvas of the Earth, VDAY Full Moon Wander 2022

 © photo by Jacque Gustafson

There is a park down the street from where I was raised that has become quite a popular spot as the historical neighborhood has become more gentrified. People come to play, lovers come to cuddle and watch sunsets, be photographed for their weddings. Designers come to photo their models. Family’s walk their babies, their dogs. Exuberant exercisers run the stairs and do intensive boot camp with their trainers. When it snows, people sled and build snowpeople. You can see the city, the lights at night, the sun going down over the recognizable bend in the river. And when we lived here again during the first ten months of Robin’s life, we got to see the Confederate soldier statue removed from its high post that overlooked this Southern city.

If you follow one of the park’s less-well-traveled paths, you may or may not notice a concrete hollow in the hillside. Hollow almost makes it sound magical—but its magic is rather desecrated. It’s a few square feet of cement box cut into the hill. Inside it is a small old pipe that taps a spring from within the hillside. When Andy and I visited Ireland in 2017, I was struck by the holy wells that surrounded places such as these—places where the creative life force bubbles up from the earth, making itself available to us. This spring has received no such love or honoring, at least not for a long long time. Here, water puddles in the concrete box and then runs down the cement curb. Nature does Her best—there is a bit of an algaenic ecosystem here for sure—but one that is interminably fragile and inefficient compared to what might be. Marsh seeds have found their way into the runoff from the river, so a few cattails sprout up, but Her water is mostly lost in this runoff, heading from one cement surface to another, never making it to the river She longs for, or even back into the Earth.

As I looked at this spring, the desecration of my own divine feminine was mirrored to me. A forgotten place, a place covered over in concrete, a place where creative life-force flows but is not honored, where it’s creative potential withers, dries out, evaporates, yet does the best She can under the circumstances. She is not understood in Her original wildness—the luminous gift that she is offering . Here this wellspring is treated as waste, but maybe not even as waste…just completely neglected, completely irrelevant to the rest of humanoid life around it.

How often have I treated, and the world treated my own feminine creativity in this way. When have I treated others in this way? The twin mouths of creativity on my body simply dribbling out their life-force down the face of an unforgiving, unloving surface that sucks but does not nourish.

The last day of our holiday trip, my family made a small offering at this water way, at this forgotten mouth, forgotten vulva of the earth. Laying offerings at Her threshold, we said ‘We see you. We love you.’ It felt so necessary, wanted, and also inadequate, but maybe like a beginning. When the three of us returned to our desert home in Moab, I found myself at another spring—this one on friends’ land. She has a pipe too, but also banks and trees that live in reciprocity with her, that love her—a pond she feeds, gardens and sheep, children who love her, fish who swim in her womb, adults who restore themselves to sanity by her edges. Here offerings were made too. Marigold petals, seeds, ice ornaments, shells offered as a visible halo to Her holy vulva.

This is Valentine’s week, and some of you may be familiar with V-Day and 1 Billion Rising—a movement that asks the world to end violence towards all people who identity as female and the Earth. To recognize and restore the sacred to what has been forsaken, desecrated, at a minimum taken-for-granted. It is in that spirit that I ask you on this full moon to go and illuminate the sacred in one of the desecrated vulvas of this Mother Earth.

 © photo by Jacque Gustafson

My #metoo ask then is to go to a place on the land where this is happening and ask what you can do. The land you go to may look like a dump or it may be a creek that is no longer supports the life it would like to. Go and ask what you can do for Her—for yourself—share your story and listen to Hers—the Earth is humming #metoo me too me too me too over and over. Maker Her offerings, make Her a halo for Her vulva, decorate Her in flowers or ban together with your neighbors to pay more attention to Her presence. Maybe She will ask you to help you revive her Spirit in some way, to relieve Her of an abusive or greedy presence. She may ask you to lay down with her, to make a haloed vulva around your own body. She loves you. Love her love her love her love her, and ask consent.

Note: If you would like to go deeper with this kind of wander exploration, a beloved guide of mine and many, Peter Scanlan, is co-leading a five-day program called Tracing Rivers of Ancestral Connection in our Soul's Journey in California this May. I can't recommend this kind of work on the Land—with a kind, experienced and wise guide enough. Click here to learn more.