Dear Curiosity Journal,
On Saturday, I traveled to Kinstone megalithic gardens near Fountain City for a writing workshop led by author Tracy Chipman titled, “Betwixt, Between, and Beyond – Writing with the Ancestors”. We were twelve women, encircled together, surrounded by stone, gathering to turn inward and seek depth. The hostesses held the space with a loving intention that cultivated openness, vulnerability, interconnection, tears, and healing. We practiced embodied presence, wrote, read, told stories, meditated, walked through the sculpture garden, and connected to a trilogy of ancestors – blood, land, and soul. I’ll share some of the sentences that bubbled up for me.
What is an ancestor? Defined by death –
Where are they now, but in the past tense –
A character playing in memory recall –
A heroine, a life lesson, an ethereal soul –
When skin and bone no longer set your boundaries,
You expand into love, longevity, and liminal space.
From betwixt, from between, from beyond –
You stroll through spirals of light –
You leave a trail of feathers –
If the physical is the fruiting body of the fungi
We now connect through the unspoken undercurrent,
The mycelium mass of the infinite, shared by all.
~Joy
