my muse? water.
when does the healing start & when does it end
Visiting Bayfield, WI, feels like visiting a home, surrounded by the body of water that mothered me into adult existence— Mama Superior. Mama Superior is part of the largest freshwater system on Earth, the Great Lakes. It’s deep, supreme, and cold to touch yet warm, captivating, and amorous— the moment skin is touched by her. She plays the wise elder that kept us at bay during times of sheer grief. Lake Superior, with its nurturing capabilities, acts as a guardian angel for some.
From a young age, I believed that water was healing. I was captivated by mermaids (The Little Mermaid on cassette was my nightly lullaby) and community pools, where I spent my time pretending I was a mermaid with my best friend Emma, who also dreamed of having a tail. I spent summers with my friends in swimming holes around the Chippewa Valley and skinny dipping until the sun came up, vulnerable to the water.
As I grew up into my early teenage self, I started my life path, the one I am currently riding haphazardly, into spirituality and physical wellness. It felt like a form of grieving as I watched the only grandparent I had slowly deteriorate into nothingness. The only grandparent with that I felt connected on an astral level. She was very religious and prayed every night, but our spiritual connection always felt deeper than her religious constraints. There was something so absolutely witchy about her. I trusted her intentions even when she didn’t verbalize them. She was my mom's best friend, too; the relationship my mom dreamed of having with her two girls, but ended up only having with the oldest (spoiler: I'm the youngest). Lavalle was a strong woman and became a single mom to my mother during a time of war, so she had grit. She raised a lineage of strong women and was goofy, too. My earliest memory with her is coloring in the same coloring book, me hogging the left page and her on the right while she hummed in my ear. I loved spending time with her. She let me be a kid, an act of unconditional love.
When her soul left us, I was out on a camp excursion in Upper Peninsula, Michigan, working at my first camp as a Senior Counselor. I didn’t have service and once we arrived we celebrated the start of our adventure with some cliff jumping in Lake Superior. I was the first to jump off, landing in the wet oasis, treading water in an effort to slow down my adrenaline-filled body. I took an inhale and felt an intimate feeling. It felt like my grandma. I took mental note of the time, 7:43 pm, for later reflection and spent the night singing around a campfire with my collective. The next morning, once I got on wifi, I was woken up to missed calls and alerts about my grandma's passing. The cause of death was a seizure, taking her last breath in my mom’s arms on the bathroom floor, a complete karmic cycle for a mother and daughter bond.
Time of Death: 7:43 pm.
That morning, we meditated around the fire and gathered old driftwood, Lake Superior’s beautifully crafted bones, for the fire starter. With the extra bones, I built a windchime and left it in the center of my cabin as a gift to the spirit, Lavalle.
I was arriving in Bayfield, freshly back from my road trip and in an unprocessed state of healing, contention in my mind. In the days following my departure from the city, numerous unexpected things happened that I had no choice but to accept and process later. What I forgot to prepare myself for was the lake’s mystic qualities of drawing out avoided feelings once you dive into its flow. My pain was brought to my attention, and now it was time to deal with it.
I spent the stay with my dear friend Idun and her family, which felt like my family, roaming around the islands together and sharing many glasses of communal wine. My relationship with Idun shifted rapidly into an overseas long-distance relationship lasting up to three years. It was overwhelming that we saw each other again. Spending the last few years being there for each other through phone calls, facetimes, & letters but now encountering our growth in real-time. She is a fellow writer, who is bilingual in Norwegian and English, and our bond consists of the words we speak to each other. We are affirmative and support each other through verbal appreciation. It has always been like that since I can remember. A great relationship to accidentally transform into long distance. Visiting her Bayfield family consistently feels like a European vacation off the water. The dinners are meticulously planned with a charcuterie hour filled with bottles of local wine, freshly caught fish, smelly cheeses, worn bread, and so much laughter in the air followed by a lovely dish of locally sourced goods and infinite conversations.
The couple, Mike and Kathy, are outdoor folk and true environmentalists who respectively live off the land & give back in unexplainable ways. They have infamously housed many young foreign exchange students, proudly presented in photographs around the home. From their storytelling, I can conclude that they have given unconditional love to countless teenage kiddos, like little Idun. That's why Idun calls them Mom and Dad because it's her truth. I found myself emotional about it throughout my stay as Mike told stories of Idun like a proud father who watched his little girl grow into a full-fledged woman. The family successfully proved to me that familiar bonds do not have to be blood; the roots don’t need to go deep. Soulmates can arrive in all forms. I see that with Idun and her family— a profound companionship. I, too, felt it when I hugged them goodbye. I had a deep urge to miss them like they were my own parents.
I can think of various times searching for beach glass, agates, and bones along the lake with Idun. We healed similarly, processing next to each other through sedative movement. Our healing came in the form of practices like hiking and walking. It was no surprise when I caught us doing it in the Apostle Islands three years later. Three years later where we have become seasoned with adult happenings. We have done the big heartbreaks, big moves, shifting of consciousness, and grueling self-examination. Now, we were looking for ease, for the tension to finally break; a sigh of great relief. We were searching to contextualize our exhales sharply to the back of our throats, sending vertebrae straight. We needed flow.
We needed Mama Superior.
So we swam to her over and over again. We waded in and out of her cavities, drifting in between sets, bodies shivering; I felt proud of us at that moment. We did it. We got through some hard things. It all builds up to this one moment: wallowing along the water, giggling, wafting into oblivion, yet always returning to shore and finding sand between toes with our tired arms. It was a ritual to cleanse ourselves from harm and find pureness again. A fluid new beginning, a reset of bodily properties— Lake Superior, with its purifying capabilities, acts as a guardian angel for some.
Water reflects you like immersive therapy. It brings humans back to our primal state, which was stolen from us during new age capitalism. What you feel about large bodies of water, compliments what you feel in yourself. When I look at the ocean, I feel rage and love but also rage. When I look into myself, I feel rage and love but also rage. In coastal habitats, “you’re really in tune with natural forces – you have to understand the motion of the wind, the movement of the water. By being forced to concentrate on the qualities of the environment, we access a cognitive state honed over millennia. We’re kind of getting back in touch with our historical heritage, cognitively.”1 We have lost grasp of our reality in our evolving digital age. We ignore that we can solve problems by resulting to nature and instead hide behind quick fixes and yummy vices. It fogs up our neural pathways, believing that avoidance is similar to the act of letting go. We forget we are animals, too. We forget we rose out of the same ground that houses our footsteps. What if we didn't have all the distractions? What if we turned to Mother and observed what's reflected back?
To arrive at the sea is synonymous to healing.
I go to water when I need to remedy. Process. Find something.
I go to water when I need to circulate through myself.
It scares me endlessly. With every stroke or paddle, I am aware this salty swell could swallow me up. If I do not work with it or take the time to read it, my body could become shipwrecked. It has similar tendencies to trauma. It scares me to dive into my subconscious memories and recall every moment someone purposefully hurt me, even in my innocence before I knew trust was subjective, but shadow work is how we remain afloat and not another lost sail. Then we become better for ourselves and our people.
Being back in the water, inside Lake Superior's aqueous cavern, I was met by my inner child that was withering away inside my core. I met her and reintroduced myself, and told her:
“I am sorry they hurt you, but it was never your fault. You can finally heal and I will protect you and no one is going to hurt you again.”
*** LOOK HERE - If you’re wanting to heal with me, feel free to take space and journal with the help of some prompts I have crafted for my friends <333 ***
Dr Mathew White, an environmental psychologist with BlueHealth, a program researching the health and wellbeing benefits of blue space. 2013 research, Happiness is greater in natural environments.
love love love your words are insane