“The Goddess is always with you”, she said. It wasn’t a polite blessing, more a statement of fact. Rosalind had been my best friend and unrequited crush for ten years, and I was leaving town.
She was, and probably still is, a gifted mystic, and was the first person to touch me with energy in her hands. It’s a big part of why I fell in love with her. That larger than the world feeling of love when the energy is flowing with touch is what I think of, what I feel, when I experience love, still.
I went on to become a priestess of Love Herself, Aphrodite. I dedicated to Her and as I did, my heart and body and energy were blown open. It took at least a year for the body and soul sense that Love Herself was there behind me, inside me, part of me to thin out. She is still here when I reach for Her, although sometimes I forget how.
I learned that the Goddess of Love is not as advertised. She’s about honour in love, and the courage to be vulnerable and wholly myself, the largest, truest part of me. She is the voice that tells me to love myself, to say the hard but true thing, to reach out to repair the relationship after messing up, to take the high road and to do the right thing. She is the voice that tells me it’s okay to dance naked in the moonlight on an open field, because the moon is so big and my body, all of it, is sacred.
She is the voice that calls me to claim my sexual body, to let in pleasure and joy and savour it. She helps me know that nothing about me is dirty.
She is the naked woman in the moonlight, hands entwined in my hair, breath hot on my neck, the skin of Her breasts brushing mine, our bodies lithe and strong, wholly occupied to the limits of my skin and beyond.
She is the orgasm that bubbles through, leaving me laughing, and the one that leaves me open, exposed to my self so deep that I shake with tears.
Lately, in these times of pandemic, I have been spending a lot of time alone. I have been learning to translate the feelings of wholeness that I feel when skin to skin with another into other ways of feeling completely real, present and connected with the great flows of the Divine and with myself.
I have found Her in music. I play piano every day and lately have been improvising, playing out what I feel, listening deeply to what is needed as I do when I am priestessing or making love, and allowing it to flow through my hands. It is imperfect, and that is just fine, but it allows that energy to flow. Sometimes I record it and sometimes, it passes, ephemeral prayer and connection.
I have found Her in dance – I’ve taken to joyful dancing in my kitchen to multivoice a capella covers, bluegrass and anything with a rhythm and voice that fills me with connection and joy.
I’ve found Her in myself, literally feeling Her within my skin, Love that is always with me.
Art: Truth is Beauty, a sculpture by Marco Cochrane
