Edge Dweller
let things fall apart before you begin to mend
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Edge Dweller
I tear away layers.Expose edges, find the threshold, and feel for the path with hands, feet, and heart.
Trembling limbs, bare hands, pounding heart.
I clutch a fragment of a map (but will it help me find my way?) Snatches of phrases, scribbled notes, curious and cryptic, line its margins. Thoughts half-formed, ideas falling apart, scattering needing to be restrung.I journey to find the tree of self-knowledge, and when I do, I climb like a bear. I am there, at the northern edge beyond the world. Electrified by the aurora, I follow the current and make my way up branch by branch.
Here, the sun is weak and remains tethered to the horizon. How ordinary its rising and setting seems compared to the magnetic, compass-spinning madness of the Borealis.
From the uppermost branches, I look down and see where I’ve been and where I come from. Winding paths, deep valleys, safe caves, dangerous places, old haunts.
In the thin air, my head swims, and my lungs burst.
I die.
In my death, I see my fear. I feel it, know it, honor it. I witness my wounding. Weeping, I bathe my wounds. Tenderly touch them. I take a needle of purifying fire and stitch. The stitching becomes a weaving.
Warp, weft, wound, a new cloth is born, both shroud and swaddling,
I wrote the poem Edge Dweller back in 2017 as a way to understand what was happening in me as my old systems of belief underwent a radical shift, a death, really.
Perhaps you’ve been in that place too. If you follow a shamanic path, you’ll know it as an initiation; if you’re more in tune with Western religion, you'll recognize it as a dark night of the soul. If you’re a Jungian, it’s a kind of shadowwork. If you’re just a regular person not too familiar with inner work, you might just be in therapy for a breakdown.
The poem was written after a visual journal was constructed that invited imagery to coalesce that helped tell the story of what I was enduring.
When what we have always believed and known no longer supports us in our inner lives, and we begin to recognize the inadequacies and the inconsistencies and see that the foundation was not so firm or supportive after all, it can easily feel like everything we have ever known is wrong. Reality isn’t actually what we thought it was.
What is true? What is real? What do I actually believe?
Those are big questions, and when there are no answers immediately forthcoming to offer explanations, we find ourselves in uncharted territory, without a map, compass, or companionship. We walk a dangerous path. On one side of the edge we walk is the terrifying possibility of meaninglessness and nihilism. On the other side is a new reality where things work differently than we were originally taught to think. Reality is bigger, more expansive, and far more mysterious than we previously allowed for.
It took my mother’s death nine years ago today and her suffering in the years leading up to her passing to shake the foundations of my faith. For two years after she left this earth, an already cracking foundation finally began to collapse.
Dis-integration is terrifying. This is why I’m always so glad that by the time the real collapse came, I was already initiated into creative depth work and had both a community and mentor to help me hold to the edges.
Having a process to unpack and understand what was happening was invaluable. It allowed me to construct stories, narratives, and images to show and tell what I was experiencing.
Dis-integration is the opposite of what we usually pursue: integration, wholeness, balance, and completion. Yet, there was a certain freedom to be found as things were falling apart. There was also the challenge of stepping up and owning the opportunity to really think things through and construct a belief system that was truly my own, anchored in deeply held old beliefs, as well as weaving in new discoveries and experiences.
As uncomfortable as it was to suffer the collapse of my entire worldview, I discovered that I could actually enjoy being an edge dweller. To this day I consider myself as residing on the edge.
Now that nine years have passed, I’m sensing that a cycle is coming to a close, and a new inner landscape is opening up. Some parts of my faith that I had laid aside are returning. They are reconsidered and reimagined in ways that are informed by what I learned when everything collapsed. New things have arrived to complement and expand what was already there, and some elements are brand new, though in reality, they have always existed and are very ancient. I had but to discover them.
After nearly a decade, integration is finally beginning. That is the central message I want to convey. Inner work, transformation, healing, and repair take time. As uncomfortable as it is when things have come apart at the seams, it’s a mistake to rush to mend them. The destruction is necessary to provide the fertile matrix from which new ways of thinking, believing, and being will arise. To walk among the ashes and rubble of what was once your life is painful, but it also yields treasure. Some things will have survived the crucible. The dross, now burned away, reveals the gold within. One age, stage, or phase of life gives way to another, and we rise older, wiser, more authentic, and more real than before.
The experience of a dark night of the soul or a metaphorical death as an initiatory experience is universal. It can feel like our whole world, identity, and belief system have evaporated. The feeling is one of confusion, vulnerability, and often anger as if one has been abandoned or betrayed by what was. While there is an urgency to react to rebuild and repair as quickly as possible, I caution against this. The experience of collapse, while difficult, is a fruitful one. It is an invitation to pull apart, test, and develop confidence and trust in your own ability to discover what it is that your soul needs to evolve and ascend to higher levels of being.
Collapse may come through death, diagnosis, divorce, financial loss, or something more benign like retirement, an empty nest, or moving. Whatever presents itself, it is likely that the cracks in your foundation were already beginning, and the current event is the final catalyst for disintegration, but also the creation of the compost from which a new you will grow.
How have you experienced a collapse of faith or belief? What allowed you to move through that bewildering time? What has felt like an initiatory experience or a dark night of the soul in your life? How did you return stronger and more authentically aligned in your inner person after a time of disintegration?
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.
Thank you for reading Hedge Mystic and participating in this vibrant and growing community of creative, spiritual humans. You are always welcome here, appreciated, and loved.
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Our journey together begins February 1st.
If you’re intrigued by working personally with me and being part of a small, select group of kindred spirits and like-minded artists, click on the graphic below to access all of the details.
I woke to the Moon and North Star this morning. It was still somewhat dark but I felt the need to greet the morning and just be. Just “ being” started a swirl of thoughts and questions about the Divine, Father God, the Earth/ Mother connection and the Son/Sun. All of those things taught to me as a child in Sunday school and as an adult in church came into question by my present Crone self. I’m thinking that so much has been kept away from us by those wishing to maintain control over our lives and beliefs. It’s confusing and disconcerting to say the least, this breaking away from the traditional mainstream way of thinking. What I am beginning to see is the connection to spirits of all living creatures and starting to understand the subtle flow of the seasons as one moves into the other going unnoticed by most people. When my mother died it was a true awakening for me that life continues even though the body doesn’t. We continue on just in a different way. The seasons ebb and flow like the ocean and we ebb and flow from one stage of our life into another and into another. I’m realizing that the Divine is in everything and in all of us, not hidden away in a brick and mortar building made by man to be visited on Sundays. I heard the first songs of the birds and the call of a fox this morning as the sun was rising and the day began to get brighter. I don’t think I can possibly imagine any better church to sit with the Divine. All of us greeting the morning and giving thanks together in our own special way. I still don’t understand the aspects of the Divine but perhaps I’m not really meant to. Perhaps it’s just accepting that it is.
When I start to think about life—birth to death in linearity I wonder when where it became circular and realized I went from “fix it (the problem)” to there is nothing to fix.