Approach to the Inmost Cave

After I walked away —
from the marriage, the family, the life I had built —
I thought I had entered the wilderness.

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But the real desert came next.

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A head-on collision
with a drunk driver sent me spiraling.
A second one, months later,
finished what was left of the old life.

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My career — the last hold of identity,
the last mask I still wore — was taken from me.

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It was the final undoing.
Not out of punishment,
but initiation.

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I had no choice but to surrender.
So I did.

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I etched it into my skin —
“Surrender,”
tattooed on my right foot,
a vow written in ink and intention:
to walk this earth as I truly am,
no longer hidden, no longer masked.

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          My feet had carried so many roles.

                    Now, they carried truth.

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I moved into the cabin —
a quiet sanctuary tucked into a horse ranch,
surrounded by silence
and stripped of everything familiar.

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There were no voices but my own.
No shadows but mine.

No gods, no guides.  

Just breath.

Just me.

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And so,
I allowed.

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I allowed the tears that had waited decades to fall.
   The buried screams to rise like howls in the night.
      The pain I had numbed,
         The rage I had swallowed.
             The grief I had disguised as strength —

                 The wounded girl..

                    The silent wife.

                       The starving mother.

                   The never-functioning daughter.

               The people-pleasing sister.

            The career woman hiding behind her success.
I felt it all.

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In that sacred stillness,
I met myself.

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All of me.

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The wounded girl.
The silent wife.
The striving mother.
The over-functioning daughter.
The people-pleasing sister.
The career woman hiding behind her success.

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Every mask fell.
Every identity burned.

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And what was left was raw.
Tender.
Vulnerable.
True.

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I saw my patterns.
My maladaptive coping.
The ways I had abandoned myself to be loved.

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And I grieved.

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Because no one prepares you
for how lonely healing can be.

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Especially in a culture that doesn’t understand
the soul’s dark night —
that path of descent that looks like madness
but is actually holy rebirth.

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The family had their meetings.
Their judgments.
Their confusion.

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But I was no longer living in their paradigm.

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I called to the earth.

     Not for answers.

           But to be held.  

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I was walking the underworld path —
the Heroine’s Journey —
where healing is sacred,
where silence is sanctuary,
where no one else can walk it for you.

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And yet… I wasn’t alone.

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There were whispers in the quiet.

Wings I could not yet see.

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Not in white robes,
but with warm meals,
rides to appointments,
blankets in the cold,
and hearts that listened without fixing.

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They were my witnesses.
My holders of space.
My holy company in the cave.

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It was in that dark,
without the mirrors of expectation or performance,
that I met the truest version of me.

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The woman beneath all roles.
The soul before the stories.

I died into the quiet.

And what rose was not a name,

but a knowing.

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And I began, ever so softly,
to remember her.