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2

Survivor's *GILT*

A prompt for you this week.
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Here’s a snippet of a much longer recording I made this morning while I fumbled around & figured out an arrangement for Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide”.

Of course it wasn’t until mid-song — wrapping my voice around …I’m gettin’ older too… — that I felt a little catch in my throat.

It’s April 13th — the day 11 years ago that I was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma cancer.

And because of that, this date also marks the beginning of my transformational descent into the underworld, my utter dissolution in the dark womb of my shadow cocoon, the explosion of imaginal cells readying me for flight…

You know… my healing journey.

Born With Shadow As My Light, 2021 (A Baba Yaga themed commission from my dear friend Hannah - after an illustration by Ivan Bilibin)

Healing arises through both hard physical labor and total surrender to the greater Mystery. I know that with certainty now.

But eleven years ago, as I waded through the surgeries and scans and infusions by day and just flung myself on the floor of my Boston apartment wishing I had a God to sob to by night…it was confusing.

Some part of me deeply understood that Western medicine was only going to get me so far. I knew I wasn’t going to survive without figuring out what it meant to surrender as an act of faith- faith in something far more vast & mystical than my then young (and definitely not religious) mind had yet connected with.

In Latin, ORA ET LABORA or PRAY AND WORK.

In alchemical terms, that’s what’s required to transform your “stuff” into “gold”. You have to surrender to the nigredo, “the time where our spirit most deeply feels the anguish of separation from truth.” You have to let yourself dissolve to find your gold.

Share Image. Word. Mystery.

So I’m sharing my morning jam session with you not because it has anything to do with the lifecycle of a butterfly or the archetypal journey embedded within the alchemical process, but because one of the slowest things to heal has been this connection to my voice. Because when I open that channel…well, there’s a lot of shadow living there. I’ll write more about this some time here. But for today?

I’m celebrating having emerged from the depths holding some real gold. Today I’m celebrating by singing.

A PROMPT FOR YOU:

ORA ET LABORA. For what in your life have you committed to both hard work & prayer? Where are you moved to combine tangible, material-world action with an open invitation to the unseen hand of the cosmos? Take it to yer notebook.

You can also feel free to reach out to me any time if you’d like to share. I love to witness these stories.

And if you’re feeling moved by the Mystery, you can donate to the Expect Miracles Foundation SAMFUND for Young Adult Cancer Survivors which supported me in the early stage of my healing journey with tangible financial resources to start my new life. Thank you.

With Love,

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Image Word Mystery
Image Word Mystery
Authors
Lisette Murphy