Once upon forever ago, I was asked: “Who are you? Don’t talk about your job, status, race or nationality, just tell me who you are, deep inside…”
That question was deep indeed… It was an invitation to set out on a journey that would lead to real self-discovery, through de-and-then-re-construction. For only through losing the aforementioned job & status, and through stripping my truest identity of meaningless identifiers such as race or nationality, would I be able to define the New Me, made of the sum of all the ‘me’s that ever existed. Those myriad me’s are like blue corn kernels on a fresh cob. My wider (and wiser) self would slowly tassel out in the sun after long years spent blowing ancient dust off cob…webs of slumbering memory. Only after years spent alchemizing myself in the cocoon of introspection would I be ready to spread my wings and spin new stories, weaving a brand new tapestry of possibilities. For this endeavor I had to let go of many (if not all) assumptions of who I was, had been and would be.
For years I honed old and new skills, and gained deeper insights from every possible angle of self observation. I was forced to be SILENT to be able to LISTEN to my soul’s bravest call. While not truly alone on the journey, I was still very much a loner. Many people fell off my life; a few held on to the string of my balloon drifting away over the ocean; new people from the ‘New World’ joined my ride for a season or more; whilst the one in the mirror stealthily peeped on my progress, cloaked in a veil of convenient deception, softly arguing in an unspoken defense that deceit would lead to discernment. That unique kind of loving desertion led me to self-reCORNection.
In my soul search I first felt what corn must endure when crushed between the mano and metate (grinding stones). Even though it hurt like hell, I knew that the ‘cornmeal of me’ was to be pulverized before taking its new shape.
In the desert of my former self I had to redefine the particles of my humanWhite Sands into a new being made of many shades of Ligh, trading Gypsy for Gypsum, freezing steady motion to facilitate soul medicine. I had to let the once solid rock of my certainties sink down to the bottom of an ancient sea of emotions, to get beaten to the core by currents of pain meant to create new mountaintops, understanding why, on the crumpled map of turmoil, highs and lows create relief. The slow-forming shape of me would dissolve bitterness through soft rains of tears, and purge long-unadressed trauma through a soothing runoff. Slowly my soul fragments could be recrystallized into the core of a new me, eager to let the winds of destiny erode away any remaining impurity, revealing the retrieved pearl of my true personality, la perla devuelta.
Only then would I see that I was the human embodiment of a clay figure by Pueblo artist Roxanne Swentzell: a woman busy ‘Making Oneself,’ shaping her last coil into legs and feet on which she’d soon stand firm and strong.
Through soul scrutiny I learned how to build corn husk and salt dough dolls, resurrecting with organic sheath and malleable cornmeal versions of ancient me’s, letting my fingers reshape for them new beginnings, through lovingly soothing old bruises and scars. Apart from those 3D doll selves, other avatars of me and others taken from the sacred Book of Life were cast in the virtual pages of my ‘Me/WeBlog,’ the digital milpa where my stories set their characters free through revisiting problematic moments in Time.
In my soul sleuthing, finally, I learned to faithfully read the astrolabe of destiny, trusting that the stars would always help me connect lucky dots in the darkest of skies. I pledged to always believe, even in the midst of faint despair and total uncertainty. However insignificant or invisible I was made to feel at times, I made a point to remember that an interrogation mark is the mirroring half of a heart in waiting. The journey of self-discovery allowed me to recognize how every step on my transoceanic journey had been carefully crafted by the delicate hands of destiny, for me to pave the way for a greater version of me. I smiled at the realization that foreign languages and interculturality, former teaching endeavors, bursting creativity, my love for History and her myriad stories, all were meant to shape my search and define my new role. Apart from the artistic and linguistic endeavors I wish to keep pursuing, Hypnotherapy and Spirit Release Therapy have become the natural culmination of many years spent answering the question that started this introduction.
I could not be happier to have found a way to help other souls find their way back home too.
ReCORNectioN 