like turtle hatchlings orienting toward the dawn
like turtle hatchlings orienting toward the dawn
+ i was recently on a podcast
Dear beautiful human,
We are on an extended vacation, back to the hot and jungle-esque environs of the Gulf. It’s everything we hoped for and more, the turquoise waters at times so clear there is no known color to describe them, just the term iridescence arising again and again as it wraps around our bodies; fish the color of sand, darting around their luminosity occasionally giving them away; sand as fine as confectioners’ sugar. Don’t get me wrong, the sun is unforgiving, blinding at times, and when there is no breeze, the heat and humidity become a fortress, an impenetrable wall, and i have to regulate my breath at times to not panic. It’s the both/and of all reality. The sweet with the bitter. The darkness streaking light. Learning to embrace this is the sacred hard of being alive.
The birds are exquisite, Roseata Spoonbills currently my favorite with their flamingo meets pelican vibe --though the ospreys and terns, the brown pelicans, delicate white ibises, crested caracaras, the black skimmers and the great herons and egrets alongside so many gulls are endlessly curious and diverting. I find myself pulling out my phone often to look them up, to see which are vegetarians, which omnivores, where they roost and nest, ospreys for examples on light poles or open, dead tree tops.
Almost every beach is a bird and turtle sanctuary and for this, i am grateful and even weepy at times, walking gingerly by the sections of dunes and beach blocked off because of turtle eggs. It has been many years since i’ve aided in the miraculous trek of hatched turtles to the ocean. The last time was in Wilmington, NC while i was finishing grad school (which feels like a hundred years ago) and participated in this mysterious and sacred process by covering holes, removing any left-behind human debris, and mostly staying out of their way so that they could do what they knew to do.
What guides the hatchlings is the light of the horizon -- the slow arising dawn -- and that orientation toward the breaking light brings tears to my eyes.
That journey, not unlike our various rites of passage, is perilous. I remember the temptation to pick them up and get them to the water was unbearable. The trek is arduous for creatures that are about two to three inches in length.
To be birthed, and then to move through a shifting landscape on instinct, on hope, on an embedded and embodied call woven through the body is perhaps a vital and pulsing metaphor for all of existence here. Earthside.
What orients you, dearest human? What call do you follow, and where does it come from?
Like the hatchlings, i believe we are made to listen to the internal intelligence of our essence, our deepest desires and dreams, what brings us alive. It can take a little excavation to come to know that which is really us, what the desire beneath the reference point is. For example, wanting to be famous, i believe, is rooted in an abiding and primal desire for connection. For seeing clearly and being seen. For expression. For purposeful living. Can it be twisted into something without soul, without true feeling? Yes. It can take on manifestations that are not intrinsically satisfying, as we see every day. However, the desire itself felt to its root system is sacred and good. It is a map. A map for embodied living, for the triune intelligence of how we are built – sensation, feeling, intellect.
And this internal map can then help us find the signposts, the breaking light of the horizon that we already know, instinctively, is ours to follow. The form it comes in is less important. The substance of that light is what matters. And, how we know it. How we know this is your light to follow.
You cannot know it if you do not know yourself first.
The capacity to recognize that which is true comes from living an embodied truth. From knowing the inner voice of Being that speaks gently, softly even, but clear as a bell.
I invite you to pause here, dearest soul, and ponder.
The systems of the world we live in have already handed you maps, and some have been helpful i imagine, and others have not. Most likely, very few of these maps have taken you back in, toward the voice of your soul, toward your true self, your intact being-ness. But that is there, waiting for you. You are there, waiting.
And though this thread of Being, you experience all Reality, the Divine milieu, where “all the elements of the universe touch each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
More on how to orient and rediscover the inward voice in the next essay.
It was such a privilege and fun to be on the Heartventures podcast a week or so ago, and talk all the things — the immigrant experience, Academia, how i shifted into the work i’m doing now, my connection to place, to ancestors, which is one of my life’s guiding lights.
I am so excited to be traveling with them this fall to Greece and Scotland (eeeeeeeeekkkk), and to lead workshops at the intersection of embodiment, story depth work, and reclamation of the Feminine.
Check out the podcast here.
If you’re interested in traveling with us, find more info here.
