The Woman at the Top of the Tree
"I'm good at hiding things", she says.
She wears it like a badge of honour. Here is a woman who has gone through the unfathomable and remained unbroken. I knelt at the sore and aching feet of my Matriarch
and asked her what she has seen,
what she has heard,
the stories she has written and played out.
This is the most amount of time I have ever spent with her.
I am a soft
yet full
sponge in her atmosphere.
I do not feel equal to this woman,
how could I?
I have never had a relationship with this woman,
how could I?
After all that has happened and yet,
she is the roots underneath me.
I have spent decades trying to seperate myself from my blood
and have been entirely unsuccessful.
For I was an egg inside my mother when my mother was inside her mother.
And so now I kneel.
I listen.
Soaking up anything she has to offer me
because,
well,
she is the the oldest living woman
in a line of women I did not choose, yet can always learn from.
I'm finding a love I cannot describe when I sit with her.
A mirror I didn't ask for.
An echo I cannot pin down.
A voice I've known ever since I was that little egg inside my own mother.
I listen to every syllable of her rough tone in hopes of piecing together a map,
a way through.
I have spent this week gathering plant medicine to heal what ails her frail body.
Feeling desperate, at times.
I hear a thought rattle around on the train tracks in my mind.
If I can heal her pain
perhaps I can heal my own?
No, that's silly of course
...and yet...
This week my own daughter has shown a deep empathy towards her Great Grandmother's dis-ease.
She knows.
She can feel the power of her Matriarch.
We share her.
We share her story.
"I'm good at hiding things", she says with a cynical click of her tongue.
I slowly nod.
So am I,
I think.
I've made my own life, tried my best to seperate myself from my lineage,
only to find we share so much of the same story.
The flower cannot grow without the roots.
