The trauma is both Flame and Pyre
Clear your lungs, become the Fire

Consider this your Trigger Warning.

Typically this is a day that fills my whole being with joy. Beltane. May Day. The kickoff to spring where the flowers have burst into life, renewing my core. I felt it initially, the spring fever of April and its murmurs of potential, but it has since solidified into a weighty mass keeping me anchored to the couch, cursing out my window at the never ending burden of existence.

Great! Another opportunity for growth and healing! Fucking yay.

I roll my eyes at the scribbled notes for vapid, backlogged new moon blog posts at this whole trope of “follow your bliss!” 🤢🤮 I understand that yes, it is a wonderful thing to do at any time, but… it hits my guts like questionable clams. It reeks of the love, light, and white linen platitudes that kept me away from taking my first yoga classes a decade ago.

How am I supposed to “follow my bliss” when doing so has always made me the ringleader of the shit show? When “following your bliss” seems a privilege allowed to those born into that privilege in the first place? What does following your bliss mean when bombs are dropping in an active genocide and billions of dollars get funneled to perpetuate the war machine and basic healthcare is getting ripped away from millions at home?

How can one “follow their bliss” when the only reward for going through that phase of growth and healing festering traumas is MORE OPPORTUNITIES to do so in the future?!

TL;DR: Don’t watch Baby Reindeer if you aren’t ready to face some shit!!

This spring is not butterflies landing on meadow flowers. It is the burning fever of rage born of the broken hearts of humanity (and my own personal bullshit, of course).

This endless swing of the pendulum between such bright hope and feeling so connected to everyone and everything, and the inevitable despair that accompanies this as the world around you refuses to reflect and act within any shreds of decency, let alone compassion. It’s almost as if there were no initial optimism then there might not be such a great fall in the first place.

Find your voice

There has been a repeating theme as of late, a series of synchronicities that a screaming on all fronts at decibels that can’t be ignored. Write. Share your story. Resolve the fear of being seen. Start that YouTube channel. I hear this, read this, stumble across the message in unexpected places; the matrix clearly manipulating this message into existence.

Fine. But I’ll complain about it the whole time!

A blockage in the throat chakra is no news to me, it’s something every energetic healer I’ve seen has brought to my attention, and like any good shadow it remains a mystery. For anybody reading with extensive astrological knowledge, you won’t be surprised to see a Scorpio Pluto at the IC in third house, in a grand water trine with Chiron conjunct Jupiter in the 11th in my natal chart, opposite a Taurus Mercury.

I hate to say it, but I already feel lighter in writing this. I only hate to say this, because it just proves everyone else right when they see my gifts, and its crystal clear in my natal chart- and yet it somehow remains a mystery to me. The resulting emotion is anger, making that Gemini Moon Square Mars another slap in the face as Astrology continues to make me a laughing stock. It’s infuriating how on the nose it can be. And so, because of my bossy ass chart, and all the you-tube readers that won’t stfu about it, I start to write it out and forge a path forward. I have no idea what it looks like, but I’ve really been working on tackling one giant task one small step at a time.

How We Got Here

The tattoo I did that day.

Two years ago, as of April 24’, I moved back to Portland uprooting my entire life in order to save it.

Having found myself at the receiving end of yet another drunken, unrecognizable man’s flailing fists bringing the tally to 4 out of the last 5 relationships, I was brought to an all time low. Somehow, at the age of 30, I had become an expert on the spectrum of dysfunctional relationships leading to domestic violence.

I’ve had to feign dead, cower in the kitchen from an axe attack, had someone break their hand as they made mince meat of my face. Separated from family because they thought I was sleeping with my brother. And then their brother.

All before I was 20.

I wouldn’t receive my first stitches until 25, from that Great Love- a person I fell head over heals for when I was 17 and he was 25, who would pop in to my life at the most inconvenient times and always I would follow, a fool in love. The arresting officer made a comment on how I “really know how to pick them.”

Oh honey, you have no idea. (Can we also take a moment to send a big “fuck you” to that officer?

And we wonder why women don’t report these things).

While these are my first stitches, they certainly aren’t my first scars since this Great Love also loved his knife almost as much as high octane alcohol, and loved to show me just how sharp it was by marking up the pale skin he adored so much. He’d even go on to tattoo his initials on my body after I found my way in to my dream career- with out my consent. Luckily, soon after leaving the hospital, the Universe would introduce me to an old crush who, I would later learn, had quite the fetish for beat up and bloodied up women. We would sneak around bars where no one knew him and his girlfriend as I scrambled for peanuts of self worth in the presence of someone who could find beauty in my very fucked up situation. During a visit to Seattle, where I was in a band, I would wake up on the receiving end of a sexual assault for the unknownth time, from yet another “nice guy” trying to help a girl in need. When your very first memories are colored with dark secrets that just find new ways to manifest you lose count. I didn’t have a 26th birthday that year. I had “Fuck 25.”

I thought I had chosen my next romantic partner wisely, which with the gift of time is now so far beyond laughable; choosing a scrawny, skeleton of a man who I knew I could take in a fight. When our paths separated after the cycle perpetuated itself once more, I knew enough was enough and texted a friend to call 911 immediately. This time with the law. He had taken to pouring my paint all over the carpet, the walls, and smashing doors to ensure I would never get my renter’s deposit back, and the paint left a trail of prints around my neck showing the intentions of evening. I found the pack of cigarettes he was raging over in between the couch cushions right after they photographed me, but the hot salty tears clouding my vision did not prevent me from lighting up and rage crying at the officers.

I found in myself this incredible capacity for forgiveness, the judge agreeing that this is an alcohol problem and not a violence problem. I hold no bitterness in my heart towards this person to this day, and found my capacity for forgiveness quite astounding as I prepared to move on to the chapter. This forgiveness did not come with the allowance of them back in to my life, it was time to follow the things I wanted to pursue after all this time— and guess who came to help me relocate?

Unexpectedly I found this forgiveness extending to someone I thought would only ever be a “friend”, because gosh darn it, I’m a nice person and people change.

How we wish they would change…

As someone who used to have no issue packing up and leaving town to blaze a new trail I already had learned that no matter where you go, there you are. I just never realized the extent to which that goes.

So at 30 years old, facing new scars, and a brand I never asked for, on the reflection of the only person who has been the common denominator in a literal lifetime riddled with c-ptsd. No stranger to dark ideation the suicide attempts were ramping into hospital visits, and one disturbing sound like the sudden bell of a text message would have me huddling under my drawing table like a Cold War duck and cover drill. I knew something had to change.

Everything had to change.

The Chosen are the ones who Choose Themselves

It’s been two years from that point, where I left all of my clients in my blossoming tattoo career and the promise of steady income. To pack everything up and move to a city once again foreign to me, with no support system, no job lined up, and nary an ounce of willpower to even get out of bed.

I’m not as far as I’d like to be, but I’m light-years from where I was.

Last year, in April 23’, I hit new lows brought on from my divorce from my psych- meds, thinking the Universe was telling me it was okay to be off them. It was not. (Unless it was just to show me how much I needed them). This opened the doors for an endless barrage of suicidal ideation at the slightest traffic inconvenience, let alone the major shifts of job loss, home insecurity, and no income. Every moment not spent in hyper vigilance, trying to gauge the energies and intentions of everyone around you get invaded with “just jump off the bridge. The ledge. Into traffic.” Or, “Great. The Dog has to go for a walk again - or you could just go hang yourself in that emergency room parking garage.

How can someone rebuild a life, let alone a career, when the thought of needing to wash my hair this week sends me into a nihilistic tailspin who’s only way out is the emergency release trigger? I went from the interview for the shop I’m currently at, drove home, turned around and drove myself to the Urgent Care clinic. It only ever gets more serious every time the ideation sneaks back in the periphery. Since welfare insurance doesn’t give a fuck about you I was told I could be seen as soon as July. It’s an emergency, I insist. This bitch is going to lose it. They gave me a refill of my old medication, and they canceled the appointment the week of. Doctor was out of office or something like that.

The good news is that the state canceled my health insurance along with thousands of others in January so I no longer have to worry about welfare health discrimination. I just had to find a way to get my life-saving medication the same week that I had 2 new firsts in life.

For the first time in my life I couldn’t afford to pay rent. And the first time I ever ran out of gas in my car. Unable to purchase my own food, fuel, or lodging I find myself in a position I swore at the age of 24 that I’d never find put myself in the position to rely on a man financially and I am doing just that. I turn 34 in 3 weeks.

The silver lining is that I at long last have found someone who loves, respects, and downright worships me, and I am safe.

He is more than happy to help me in this slump, as the economy crumbles around us, and the “luxury” of getting tattooed is no longer a priority. People can’t afford shit. He has a stable job, and I am reduced to a perceived infantile position. A louse hanging on the flakes of his integrity. Forced to prostitute my energy (as in social media, not actual sex work- I hate people too much to share my gloriously-shaped booty with them) for peanuts as we can all barely tread the waters of late stage capitalism and the military-industrial complex.

It’s enough to ruin a beautiful Beltane.

It turns I have a lot to say, and it falls on deaf ears time and time again. Perhaps its the eternal plight of the artist to put your whole being into what you do only to have it snubbed by ill-informed consumerist culture, to see your craft to which you’ve devoted years to be bastardized by charlatans and silver tonged snakes prioritizing manipulations tactics over any substance or reach for mastery. This is not to say that I am in the category of mastery, but at least I care enough about people to devote my life towards a semblance of it.

I express this anger, this unadulterated rage because apparently I have to. It’s sits and festers into a gout beyond it’s original comprehension and runs deeper than I have any inkling in to. The Patriarchy keeps destroying everything we love, consumes without abandon or compassion, ruling with the iron fist of homogeny.

Beltane speaks of fertility, so if you’re going to fuck

Fuck the imperialism and the patriarchy.

Fuck genocide

and fuck staying silent.

I do not light I bonfire, this day.

I become it.

I have spent so long in the dark,

it became me.

My flame feels small today, a matchstick in the sea of black, but I am no stranger to the valley of the shadows. Since my “spiritual awakening” in 2020 (I accidentally met my soul during a perfectly sterile parasympathetic nervous system reset guided meditation like the good atheist witch I once was) I have gathered many tools that slowly reduced the number of hours slept each day from 12 to 8, and I can now usually get in the shower weekly with minimal grumbling. Still a shut-in and a hermit I’ve learned how to pull away from outside energies and really tend to, and rediscover, my own. I glimpsed, for just a moment, true bliss for the first time in…. Decades?

Before I can say bullshit like “follow your bliss” we first have to find a way back to it. When we have be preconditioned to do the opposite, it’s a journey that it much easier said than done.

Even though I type this into the void, perhaps there is a reader or two has resonated with something here, and if so, won’t you join me in finding out what this healing path means? It is my intentions to share the simple, small things and baby steps that have led eventually to some semblance of self-empowerment. I’ve started to remember who I am, and while my path will be different than anybody else’s, hopefully I can eventually help another remember their Light.

My name is Larissa.

Water Nymph. Daughter of the Gods. Light heartedness and laughter incarnate.

I am a member of the Divine Feminine Collective.

She is rising

And she is pissed.

Are you experiencing intense feelings too?

What is your Divine Feminine raging about?

Feel free to comment below and give her some space to let it out.

Tending the Fires of Fear and Rage this Beltane