One year ago today, I had abdominal surgery to remove a number of lymph nodes, which would finally grant me a long-awaited cancer diagnosis. Today, my hair is growing back in curly and a whole shade darker, and for the first time in three years, while I am under preventative treatment for osteoporosis, I’m not currently in daily pain.
Year over year, I’m quite literally a walking miracle!
Yet, I’ve been finding it hard to reconcile parts of my resurrection.
Happy Easter to me?
In the last six months of personal psychotherapy, I’ve been doing intense work via EMDR to heal my relationship with my body, after it was ravaged and rendered disabled by disease, cut open almost a dozen times, and then, thankfully, cured by poison. I wrote about some of previous experiences with this particular therapeutic technique—which is incredibly effective for processing complex trauma—in On Sacrificing Ourselves on the Altar of Dignity (fyi, this is also an evergreen read about the importance of creativity in times of strife), saying:
[T]he process of EMDR mirrors that of the REM portion of the sleep cycle, where the parts of the brain that are responsible for thinking and feeling are able to communicate with the parts of the brain that are necessary for survival. By creating a waking space for these bits of the brain to talk to one another, we can recover whatever is trapped in the survival brain, and allow it to be processed and released by the thinking and feeling brain.
When I tuned in to my body, and asked what it would need to heal, what came up right away was a feeling of spiritual betrayal.
I am a spiritual person. I trust the unknown, and I work hard to keep my relationship to The Mystery active and healthy and loving. And for a while now, I’ve been experiencing a spiritual schism while trying to maintain my center as a spiritual person.
See, throughout the last few years of medical mystery and deep disease, I cultivated and nurtured deep relationships with spirits and creatures of the natural world, as well as turned to divination and witchcraft in order to survive. I built altars and gave offerings to Hecate, had spider experiences with Loki, fostered a relationship with the crows in my neighborhood, invited multiple ancestors into my daily practice, and read Pema Chodron, Ram Dass, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
In many ways, I was ready for the moment when an ER doctor (correctly) told me a midnight MRI looked like some kind of cancer had metastasized to my spine. “The worst things happen to the best people.” He shook his head. “Try to find the shimmer in your days.” And for thirty-six days in the hospital and three months between being sent home and finally receiving a diagnosis, no one contradicted him.
I trusted the path and prepared to die.
This experience offered some truly stunning opportunities for clarity that I am genuinely, no bullshit, no toxic positivity, grateful for. It was a chance to truly take stock of my life thus far, as a full story from beginning to end, and to experience a pleasant and surprising satisfaction. If that was all I was going to get, it’s been enough. I don’t know much, but I do know what that particular blend of freedom tastes like, and it’s pretty tasty, all things considered.
I also planted seeds of a new and continuing life. Book beginnings and grad school applications and SMUT CLUB meetings. Just in case!
I lived long enough to tell the tale.
I wrote one hundred new pages. I got into grad school and started a master’s program. SMUT CLUB just celebrated its first birthday!
But spiritually?
Somewhere along the way, I began tending to the flame of a sacred rage over what I had been put through, what I had surrendered to, and what I had grinned and bear-ed and processed and survived.
Somewhere along the way, and despite my new lease on life, my faith quieted, and my connections atrophied.
Somewhere along the way, a pervasive feeling of spiritual betrayal set in.
A few weeks back, on the equinox, I had a light-bulb moment!
Of course I was feeling disconnected, abandoned and left behind. The relationships and practices that had gotten me through my near-Death experience had run their course because I was now living in a new story! Spirit relationships are often more transactional, more purpose-driven, than human relationships. They’re for a reason and a season. And they don’t owe us closure, and they don’t even promise to say goodbye when they leave!
My problem wasn’t that I was disconnected, or alone in the wilderness, or even left to figure out recovery and next steps by myself. My problem was that I was still courting Death spirits when I need to be getting to know the spirits of Life.
Enter the Greek God Apollo.
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Apollo is the Greek god of healing, divination, and the creative arts. He is the representative and representation of light and the Sun. He is the lover of all nine muses. His twin is Artemis, goddess of nature and the hunt. Apollo rules over wisdom, knowledge, and spiritual enlightenment. He rides a chariot, sure, but he’s hardly a bad boy. In fact, he is the ideal of Grecian society and culture.
Despite his ancient status, he is very much a figure of the zeitgeist! We even have a word to describe things that are like him:
Apollonian
/ ˌapəˈləʊnɪən /
adjective
Once I said hello to Apollo, I quickly realized we’ve been in conversation for most of my life! And it made total sense to me why he would step forward as one of two spirits (the second being the muse of comedy and light verse, Thalia) to teach me about Life during a personal 6/Lovers year.
But enough about me!
What does Apollo have to offer all of us in this One Collective Year?
First, he’s connecting us to our collective sense of unity, awe, and raising our eyes to the sky through his involvement in a historic moment in space exploration. The missions that first brought men to the moon were all named after Apollo, and just last week, NASA launched the next spacecraft headed to the (dark side of) the moon, named for his twin, Artemis.
Second is the synchronicity that pinged me while learning about Apollo from George Lizos, author of Secrets of Greek Mysticism, who was on the SITS podcast two years ago. George teaches about the Delphic maxims—the keys to fully receiving Apollo’s light and wisdom—which were publicly inscribed on a column in the forecourt of Apollo’s temple in Delphi for everyone to see.
The Delphic Maxims are:
Know Thyself
Nothing in excess
Surety brings ruin
At the beginning of the year, I wrote “One Idea for a One Collective Year.” My one piece of advice? Know thyself. Why? So we can be our truest selves, so that we may exist more fully in community, and the evolving world at-large. Now it looks like we’re being asked to add two more aphorisms to the list.
(I even wrote about our Artemises, our twins! — “Being ourselves can be a lonely path… But it doesn’t stay a lonely path, and in fact, the relationships you build along the way will be more satisfying because they are meeting the you that you are molding.”)
It seems as if Apollo is speaking to all of us this year. Bringing us into the Sun. Reminding us of our light. Offering his when we cannot connect to ours. Telling us to continue to court the core of our very being, as well as the shifts in our shape. Aligning us with our muses. Teaching us how to sing and dance. Reminding us to stay flexible and to keep it simple, sweetheart. Whispering wisdom of blessed ignorance, open-mindedness, and new ideas.
If you haven’t already, open up a window, light a candle, and welcome in some sunny, springtime energy. Say hello to Apollo, and ask him to bring you into deeper relationship with your Self, as well as Life itself. Be here now.
