The Shedding of Skin

She has gone blind.  Dead scales block out the light.  It is hard to move.  Her skin is tight, constrictive.  It is even hard to breath and she is uncomfortable.  She pulls her life force inward and tries to make herself smaller and her breathing becomes shallow.  What if she took up less space?  Would the tightness lessen?  Would the pain go away? Could she move again?

She feels a vibration on the earth and becomes still.  It is repetitive and getting stronger.  Something is coming.  She can’t see what it is and her heart beats faster.  She flicks her tongue to pick up the scent.  Not mouse or vole.  Something bigger.  It is very close and she holds her breath.  The sound stops and she slowly exhales.  She senses warmth coming closer and feels the movement of warm air over her blind eyes.

She can’t see the shape of the oldish woman who stands crouched over, watching her, but she knows something living is there. The warmth tells her that.  The woman turns her head, first one way and then another, examining what is on the ground before her.  She can’t tell if it is alive or dead and she watches for evidence.  Then she sees the long, thin, red, forked tongue dart out and move.  She decides to sit on an old tree stump close by and have a rest.  She wants to see what will happen.

The woman is grateful to sit down and her breathing begins to slow.  She lets out a long sigh.  It is good to be in the forest.  It is good to be alone.  Her chest still feels tight though and she tries to breath out the feelings trapped there.  She is grateful to get away from the family, to be alone with herself.  At the house, she tries to be as small as she can be.  She pulls in her energy and tries not to be a nuisance.  She knows that they don’t really like having her live with them but they don’t trust her to be alone.  She feels that she is a burden just by existing.  What if she took up less space?  She stays in her room as much as she can.  When she goes into the kitchen to make a cup of tea or some toast, she tiptoes, tries not to make a sound.  She cleans up after herself right away.  Her skin tightens, her senses are on high alert, her chest tightens with every small sound.

But, here in the forest, she can let go.  She can let her energy expand to greet the trees.  The forest is always happy to receive her.  She stops to talk to the trees and they have come to recognize her presence.  Her large, loving energy field is soaked up by them, like the sunshine, like the rain.  She knows their names.  She gently strokes their young, admiring their strong trunks and beautiful leaves.  She tells them how beautiful they are and thanks them for making oxygen for her to breath.  Sometimes she blows out her breath to them and giggles.  She likes to give back.

At the woman’s feet, the snake’s tongue flicks out again, picking up the smells.  She is hungry and needs to find food.  The urge to move, to hunt, to feed begins to grow.  She senses no threat from the other presence.  She senses a strange energy coming from it that she can’t identify.  It feels warm, like the sun.  The snake tries to move forward and her skin holds her back.  But not for long.  The growing hunger moves her forward and she tries again, pushing against the resistance, the constraining tightness.  The tension grows.

The oldish woman is rubbing her hands together now as she sits on the stump.  Her hands that have mastered so many skills over her years are sometimes stiff these days.  She thinks of how they stroked her new born babies, combed their hair with her fingers and held their hands to keep them safe.  She remembers sewing, knitting, and weaving.  She can still feel the graceful movements of painting, drawing, and dancing.  Her fingers were always creating, making, and mending.  She can still feel the tomatoes that she plucked and the resistance of pumpkin stalks, the feel of new peas coming out of their pods and the sting of the nettles she grew.  Her hands remember the feel of a horse’s coarse mane, the curly hair of her Border Collie, the soft fur of dozens of cats and the wool of her sheep.  The memory of pulling lambs, lifting day old chicks to the water trough and the soft lips of horses is stored in her very cells.  The knowing about the skin of thousands of people that she touched as a physio, the texture, temperature and flexibility is surely still locked away.  Did the experiences make her bigger? Did she get too big?  How did all of this get locked into a skin too tight?

The snake is still at work and finally, there is a tearing, a breaking open as the old skin sticks onto the earth and her nose breaks through.  Wriggling, her face breaks out and she can see again.  On she goes, muscles rippling, propelling her forward and the old skin releases scale by scale.  She is used to the freedom of graceful movement, not to being tethered by her own skin.  And now that her head is free, she knows what to do.  On and on, she draws herself forward.  More scales release and she slithers out of the dead skin.  As her ribs become free, she breathes deeply and the pain is suddenly gone. 

Finally, her tail is free and she slides out of the empty shell of herself.  She doesn’t look back.  There is no point.  Her hunger drives her forward and her tongue senses a mouse somewhere ahead of her.  Her bright, new, smooth skin allows her to glide easily, to breath.  There is room to grow here in this new skin.  She disappears into the undergrowth. 

The old woman has been watching all the time, learning from the snake.  She can almost feel the skin tearing.  She noticed that she was holding her breath, waiting for the moment of release.  She feels the tightness in her own body.  The self-imposed tightness of trying to make herself small.  Of trying to make her life tiny so that no one notices, so that she is not in the way, so that she is safe.

As the snake breaks free, the woman lets her breath out and then takes in a deeper breath. She wonders when her hands became fists.  She slowly opens them.  Then she puts them together, open palm to open palm like children were taught to pray when she was a girl.   They begin to move, mimicking the serpentine motion of the snake.  Back and forth, back and forth, her hands make an S- shape.  Then her shoulders and torso join in.

  The movement gets larger and she is swaying from side to side.  She hears a song in her head and sways to the beat of the music only she can hear.  And then the song erupts from her mouth as she sings.  The trees and stones feel the vibration of her voice. It feels like the wind.  A crow high up in a pine tree calls back.  But she doesn’t stop singing.  It feels good to take deep breaths and to hear her voice bounce off of the trees and stones.  She notices that her chest doesn’t hurt anymore and she laughs. 

She looks down and the snake is gone.  The empty skin lies at her feet.  Her own tight skin with the scales of perfection, of getting it right, of being enough, of being not too much and the constant anxiety do not serve her.  They are squeezing the life out of her.  She knows what she has to do.

In “keeping her safe” her adult children have squeezed the life out of her.  She recognizes their own fear of losing her, not knowing that they already have.  She owes it to herself and to them to shed the skin of safety and to expand into herself.  Maybe they won’t like it, but that is already the case.  It doesn’t really matter, she now realizes.  Life demands growth and she surrenders herself to the river of her life, here and now. 

She slowly bends over and picks up the empty snake skin.  The shape of every scale is there, the shape of the eyes, the tiny tail scales.  It is beautiful and yet unnecessary.  It weighs almost nothing.  How could something so thin be so strong?  Then she places it on the tree stump and stands erect, stretching out her stiff lower back.  She opens her arms wide as if to hug the whole world and lets out a big breath.  Lifting her chin a little higher, she sets her shoulders back and then smiles.  She will bring the love of the forest community back home with her.  The whole thing will be in her energy field; the trees, the stones, the river, the snake, the whole lot.  They are coming back with her to the house. This makes her laugh. Her kids wouldn’t approve of a forest coming into their tidy house!  

And then she begins to walk in the direction of the house, humming the song of her soul.  She doesn’t notice the nearly invisible scales falling away from her body and being scattered by the wind because she doesn’t look back.  There is no point.  The forest floor will know what to do with those.