There’s a version of me that can go anywhere. Not physically, but internally. I can drop into meditation and be somewhere else almost instantly. I can see things, feel things, and understand things without needing to try very hard. It’s fast. It’s fluid. It feels like clarity arriving all at once. I was under the impression that this meant I was grounded, or at least connected to something deeper in a way that was useful. I’m starting to question whether that speed is always depth, or if sometimes it’s just another way I’ve learned to move quickly without fully staying inside of what I’m touching.
During a workshop, we were guided through short journeys without medicine—just a few minutes at a time—using a drum or rattle to move us deeper. I didn’t have either instrument, so I started tapping my hand against the desk and closed my eyes. It felt simple, almost mechanical to fall into a steady beat. After a few seconds, the rhythm began to take on a life of its own. It evened out and then deepened, like something in my body was syncing to it rather than creating it. This is when the melody came. Not something I thought of. Something I recognized as it arrived. I was humming. My voice followed without hesitation. The words came just as easily, almost as if they were already embedded in the rhythm and I was uncovering them one line at a time. I heard myself singing.
Who am I?
You are me.
Who are you?
I am you.
Who are we?
We are all.
The words danced in perfect sync with the beat I was holding and my voice carried them into notes that pieced together seamlessly as if these lyrics I had already sang and this song was a sound I had already heard.
Where are we?
In the deep dark woods.
In the deep dark woods.
The chorus repeated, steady and rhythmic, and as it did, the space around me began to take form as my song continued to take shape without any effort.
The trees that surrounded me were massive. Taller than anything I could fully take in, but spaced far enough apart that light filtered through them in soft, shifting patterns. The air felt cool and alive, like everything was quietly moving even when it appeared still. There was a sense of being welcomed, not watched.
Why are we here?
To dance and to sing.
Dance and sing.
Dance and sing.
Fairies appeared. We were the same size, all of us luminous, moving in a way that felt both playful and intentional. They gathered around, and without needing direction, we held hands and began to move together. A slow circle at first, then more fluid, like the rhythm I had started outside of the meditation had followed me in and was now moving through all of us. We were a joyful bunch, spinning around and around in a perfect circle. The air felt cold and crisp, but refreshing, and there were light showers falling onto our heads. It felt like a celebration of spring.
I was still singing, but it no longer felt like I was leading anything. I was part of it. The sound, the movement, the space—it was all happening at the same time, without separation.
Bask in the sun,
let it amplify your light.
Dance with the wind,
let it move you left and right.
Sing with the rain,
let it wash away the night.
During these words, the light changed. It didn’t disappear, but it dimmed, like something had moved in front of it. The space between the trees began to feel tighter, closer. The same woods, but now heavier. Less open. More contained. The fairies didn’t disappear, but they pulled back slightly, like they were making room. The trees were looming over us and we were all much smaller.
I saw a young girl—somewhere between a child and a teenager—walking through the woods alone. She wasn’t wandering. She was navigating. Carefully. Watching. Bracing. I knew it was my mom before I had time to question it and simultaneously I felt a sharp, immediate wave of fear. Tight in my chest, rising fast, almost disorienting in how quickly it took over. It didn’t feel imagined. It felt remembered. Or carried…? The woods around her weren’t empty. There were shapes moving just beyond her line of sight. Not fully visible, but present enough that you could feel them before you could see them, and when they did come into view, they weren’t subtle. Large, distorted, unpredictable. The kind of presence that makes your body react before your mind has time to understand what it’s seeing. She didn’t know how to face them, and neither did I. My body was screaming MONSTERS.
The fear escalated quickly. I could feel myself getting pulled further into it, physically crying and feeling an immense sense of being lost. Despite the tears rolling down my cheeks and the heat rising in my chest, a moment where I was fully inside it, I heard the words, “Be direct.”
I instantly stopped singing, pausing abruptly to say aloud, “STOP! Take me out of this.”
It wasn’t panic. It was clarity. My voice was loud and well-defined. As a result, the fairies in my vision quickly placed me on a cloud and lifted me out of the woods and into the sky. Held in something soft, suspended just far enough away, I could breathe again and I stopped crying. I could see the woods below, my mother still standing there, frozen, but I wasn’t inside the intensity anymore. I was resourced. I felt calm again. I said aloud, “Take me back. Now.”
I returned differently than before. I wasn’t inside her experience feeling her fear. I was beside it. Watching, but not merged. I was next to her, observing her stand frozen and could see fully what she was facing. An enormous, mythic creature, dragon-like with winged feathers, short legs, reptile scales, and dark iridescence. Its body moved with chaotic intelligence, colorful and alive, with sharp, uneven edges and teeth that felt exaggerated in their size and presence. It was ugly and beautiful all at once. It wasn’t hiding, and neither was she. There was still fear—deep, visceral fear—but there was also something else: She hadn’t run. And I hadn’t run. We were standing there, side by side, looking into the eyes of this monster. The eyes of fear.
And then the meditation ended.
This experience was different than other meditations because I usually enter through my mind. This time I had entered through my voice. Through rhythm and sound and something that felt less like thinking and more like being carried through vibration.
This isn’t the first time my voice has felt like it carries something more than just words. I’ve been told, more than once, that I’m too direct. Too intense. Not soft enough. That I can be intimidating, or harsh, or even mean and malicious. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand that feedback because sometimes it lands as truth, but more often than not it doesn’t match how it feels internally. Inside, it usually feels like clarity. It feels like seeing something and wanting to name it. It feels like wanting things to be better, more aligned, more honest. I can also feel the darker layer—the frustration when something isn’t clicking, the impatience when things feel inefficient, the charge that builds when I feel like I’m carrying more than I should have to. I recognize that when those two things combine—clarity and charge—my voice changes. It sharpens. It moves faster. It lands harder than I intend.
I’ve learned to manage it, to calibrate, to soften the entry point, to think about how something will land before I say it. For lots of reasons, that became necessary to engage with people and retain a relationship. Underneath that management, there’s always been a quieter question motivating me to shift gears: What happens if I don’t soften? What happens if my voice just comes through as it is? What if I let the fire out?
That’s where the fear lives. Not that I’ll lose my voice, but that my voice will have impact. That it will land too hard. That it will change something I can’t control. That it will make me responsible for more than I want to carry.
Sitting with that meditation afterward gave me the feeling that what I witnessed didn’t start with me. This meditation exercise was specifically designed for us to enter the witch’s wound. I think I entered an inherited wound. That over time, something powerful—especially intuitive, expressive, feminine power—gets distorted. Not because it is dangerous, but because it was never fully held. At some point, it became too much, too misunderstood, too risky to express without consequence. What I saw in my mother during that meditation wasn’t just fear of the dark. It was fear of encountering something bigger than she knew how to stay with, and if that moment was never completed—if the instinct was to turn away, to survive, to not fully face what was there—it makes sense that some part of that would carry forward as a pattern. A hesitation, a bracing, a quiet instinct to pull back just before something becomes too real. When I look at my own relationship to my voice and how I move toward truth and then sometimes sharpen it, or soften it, or manage it before it fully lands, I can feel the echo of that same pattern: control.
I don’t know if the answer to healing is that I need to make my voice softer or smaller or easier to receive. Maybe I need to separate the truth inside it from the charge that distorts it. To let it be clear without making it carry everything. To trust that I can feel something deeply, express something honestly, and stay. Maybe the thing I’ve been afraid of isn’t my voice. Maybe it’s what my voice touches when I let it fully come through. Maybe the work isn’t to avoid that. Maybe the work is to learn how to hold it.
