goddess river

She was raging when I sat down inside of her. As her spirit swam around my naked body, I shivered at her touch. I felt her pull coming from the back of me. She was pure power. From one moment to the next, I felt how strong she truly was. And without a chance to get my bearings, she took me.

There was nothing I could do to convince her otherwise. She was too forceful and too stubborn. She wanted me to move and so she moved me. I was taken from feeling calm and safe to feeling absolute terror. Any sense of support I had felt previously was taken out from under me. She was fierce as fuck. And I fought. I resisted. I pleaded. I swam against her current. But no matter how much I tried to convince her to stop, she raged on. And then I remembered what I had been told many moons ago: don’t fight her flow, surrender to it; fighting will do nothing but exhaust you. The struggle wasn’t worth it anymore. I had been struggling for far too long. The time came to let go. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it took all of the strength within me to let go fully. I had been grasping so hard to survive that I couldn’t even remember what it was like to soften in the way that was necessary to thrive. But I did it. Somehow I surrendered to her. I let her take control, feeling fully that I could have died in the process. But as soon as I softened to her, she seemed to soften to me. It was as if my relationship to her was dependent on my reaction to her. She was simply doing her thing as she always does. A realisation came to me that it wasn’t actually her trying to hurt me, but it was actually me getting in my own way. I was hurting me. When I resisted, she seemed to get fierce and push harder. But when I let go of that resistance, she held me like a mother. And it felt good. I was still terrified but even with fear present, I dove into a newfound sense of ease within my being as I let her take me. And as I became easeful, I could feel how at ease she was as well. She didn’t change a thing. It was me. I needed to take off my armour of protection in order to feel her gentleness. And then with sweet tenderness she took me to shore. As I sat upon solid earth once more, I bowed down to touch her. She received my touch and circled my fingers with her tendrils of love. I thanked her for always being there to carry me, to clean me and to soothe my dry throat but most importantly I thanked her for teaching me to let go. I thanked her for teaching me to go with the flow and not against it. I thanked her for teaching me that life isn’t about swimming upstream and resisting her pull. I thanked her for teaching me that as difficult as it can be to surrender, doing so yields the sweetest nectar of life. I know that more days will come when I will need this reminder. And I know that she will always be there to remind me.