Exposing Corruption, is a gift to the corrupted

Back in 2013, at the beginning of my implosion, I had recently turned 41. My birthday party was in my backyard. And to be honest I had a hard time enjoying it. I knew something on the scale of walking into moving propeller blades lay before me. A dark forbidding was unshakeable in me for well over a year.

My kid, delightfully magical themselves, gave me the sweetest card that day. On the cover was a woodland nymph. An ethereal creature I had a very deep connection to. How could my kid know this was the real me? The part of me unexplored, magical, powerful, and unknown, most especially to me. I wept to receive it, not aware of how much heavy lifting she herself would do to facilitate my own consciousness in the years to come.

Kids are amazing that way.

And so it is with me. Months after my party as the dark of fall descended, I made my way to the library. I went there religiously every day. I had no idea what I was looking for, in fact I knew on some level I might be hiding there. Having left my corporate job I honestly had no other idea of what to do with myself.

It was on my way home one night I turned on the car radio and caught Yusuf Islam’s song, Father and Son. The lyrics struck a bell of knowing in me:

How can I try to explain? 'Cause when I do he turns away again
It's always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away
I know, I have to go

On its face, reading the prescience of it, I knew a break with my father was coming and it did, 5 years later. I, of course, denied this knowing. We share that above-mentioned birthday, by the way, July 8th, mine in ‘72, his in ‘46. A fateful day, no doubt.

And so, after a slow boil, hallmarked by love, caring & deeply uneasy moments from my teens through my adulthood, I had the courage this past summer to hold a mirror to my father, to show him, in detail, his own corruption. All of these moments collectively strengthened me and brought me in concert with the power, magic, and vulnerability of that nymph.

And now I am resolute and resolved in my own body and being. I in fact have surpassed the woodland nymph and now embody the High Priestess. Rachel Pollack, famed Tarot scholar, describes her power as:

the truth she knows cannot be broken down into words and explanations

I have practiced this myself. I receive my own kid's ability to point to my corruption as the gifts that they are. The gift and opportunity to grow my own consciousness. And I, hopefully – prayerfully, have become a firewall for them. Keeping at bay the generational trauma that is thick on both sides of their family tree.

The way up and out, through all of this, has not been easy. It’s deeply inconvenient being a vector for truth. And it certainly doesn’t win you any popularity contests – most especially within your own family. But if consciousness includes everything and judges nothing, maybe that cohesion and oneness is its own reward. Now that I’m here, in this moment, I can say that that is what’s true for me.