Day 1: Rebirthing

 

Written 2.18.22

I don’t know if this is a blog post, a journal entry, a travel diary entry, or an essay-I just know I needed to lay these words, emotions and thoughts down before the sun rose this morning. Thank you in advance for allowing me to share the spiritual journey I went on last night and the clarity and comfort it has brought me.

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I turned 50 last year but COVID meant I could not have the 50th birthday party turn up that I had been dreaming up in my wild woman head since before the pandemic. I had planned an over the top celebration. I wanted a night filled lots of food, friends and no kids allowed debauchery. I had even begun looking at places to rent. I wanted it to almost have a carnival or festival feel complete with booths and performers—- hula hoops, bubbles, a taco truck, booths with my friends selling their vintage, cannabis, and natural beauty products, some go-go dancers, a baton twirler, a couple of tables set up for donations to the Chicago Abortion Fund and the Chicago Community Bond Fund, and there was also going to be a weed rolling station with someone rolling for my guests who partake. I joked that it would be clothing optional and I imagined it would be a sensual event though I had been toying with a track suits and sequins theme, too. I had planned to be the night’s headliner and wanted to surprise my beloved audience with a burlesque routine and then we’d dance all night to my favorite party songs from the past 5 decades….but then I thought about amount of labor that would be needed to make this “Night of Divine Debauchery” happen and then realized that as I turned 50, what I needed most was rest and solitude. Apparently, this is 50.

So I decided that a solo trip was a better adventure to engage in to kick off the second 1/2 of my century and as of yesterday, a week before I turn 51, I have kept my 50th birthday promise to myself. Instead of spending time and money planning a party, I have spent the past few months planning a trip to Mexico City. For some, traveling solo may feel typical. But for me—someone with a working class background who never had the privilege of traveling for vacations as a child, the vast majority of my adult travel has been for work or for family trips. Women and femmes also must navigate our safety wherever we go and so planning a solo trip also helped me to work through my anxieties about being sexually assaulted or harmed when traveling alone. But here I am, in Mexico City, feeling fancy and free!

As I planned this trip, I decided to organize each day around a theme. I decided it was OK if I strayed from my plans but daily themes helped me to develop an itinerary for the week. Yesterday, was my first day here and was planned as my “Healing Day”. It was a day that left me feeling “full” as my Grannie’s sometimes says. My first healing practice was just to simply sit on the small terrace outside my airbnb and twist my hair while I let the morning sun melt all the stress of my “hurry up and finish so you can go on vacation” work week. I then got a much needed back massage and chiropractic realignment done by a young man who I am sure had magic in his hands. Whew, Chile, back cracked! 

Each of these healing practices alone constituted a perfect day as far as I was concerned. I felt no need to rush or over schedule myself. But I did want to do some deeper healing work and so late yesterday afternoon I joined a group of other travelers/strangers to participate in my first Tezmecal. Tezmecals are pre-hispanic indigenous Mexican healing ceremonies or rituals where a healer guides you through a spiritual journey while inside a tezmacal, which is a dome made of clay and earth and has very hot stones and herbs in the center to create an extremely hot and steamy environment. Our guides referred to Temazcales as the womb of Mother Earth. The rituals generally last between 1-2 hours and differ in ceremonial format depending on what region of Mexico the healer/guide is from. Our healer, Huituzi is Zapotec Nahaul and conducted our Temazcal in the Zapatec-Mayan tradition.

To begin, our guide served us Mexican cacao and then instructed us to pick herbs from a nearby medicinal garden to bring with us inside the Temazcal. He explained that we are all uniquely drawn to the plants that are designed to heal our individual illnesses. I tend to be energized and comforted by flowers so I picked herbs that had a blossom or a floral scent. He read the flowers we eac chose to offer an individualized healing message for each of us as we entered the Temazcal. When it was my turn he welcomed me back though it was our first time meeting and my first Temazcal.Yes, I was shook! He then said that everything that was supposed to happen will happen, and reminded me to get free and cry and even scream if I needed to. I entered into the darkness and sat along the curved wall feeling unsettled but prepared to go on the journey. Our spiritual guide said that the Temazcal allowed us to return to the darkness to grapple with the darkness and warrior within each of us and that it provided us with an opportunity to be reborn to face life’s battles. 

Once inside, he began feeding the pile of coals and reminding us of the mindset and spiritual journey we should allow ourselves to go on. He said to set an intention and mine was simply to transcend my preconceived limits of my capacity to endure heat and discomfort and to give into this process so that my heart and mind can open up to receive whatever the universe offers me. In the darkness he passed around bowls of aloe pieces and Mexican honey for us to rub on our skin and to taste. I rubbed both all over my body from head to toe. As he chanted and shared stories of the spirit animals that walked with us on this journey, he challenged us to give into this process. I turned inward and embraced the literal and figurative darkness of the space I was in. I found a pattern of breathing that was calming and maybe even energizing in hindsight. I began lightly massaging my arms, legs, shoulders, face, back, belly and breasts. The honey and aloe felt wonderfully slippery not sticky. I would sometimes even take the two pieces of aloe, that I had stuffed into my bathing suit and rub them along my skin. They were no longer cool but the slipperiness produced a calming effect for me. When the air felt heavy and hot, I changed positions by pressing against the wall for a cool spot or lowered or opened my hips to get closer to the cooler dirt floor or turning onto my side. It was when I turned onto my side that I realized I was using the same strategies I has used when I gave birth to my 3 children. No one was instructing me to, but somehow, when I listened to my body, it told me how to care for myself-movement, deep breathing, and self massage—all healing practices. It was pitch black inside so at one point, I even took one of my aloe pieces and slipped it into my bathing suit to put directly onto my vulva. It had been harmed and violated for much of my childhood and I felt the aloe was a wonderful way to offer it care and for me to allow my whole body to engage in the healing process. I was definitely uncomfortable covered in honey, aloe, sweat and dirt and under a blanket of intense heat in a very crowded space but somehow I also was at peace. I stuck my herbs in my hair so that I could use both hands to caress myself and keep my spirit calm as the temps and humidity continued to rise. I found myself smiling and licking my lips to taste the honey that was now dripping from my face. I moaned but noticed that they sounded similar to my moans of pleasure not those of the pain. I could hear others breathing as well-some deep and some shallow. We were in community in this moment. Our guide invited us all to cry and scream if we needed to. I was floating and the intense emotions and sensations I was feeling produced both a euphoric high and a deep calm. I felt powerful but also tender. I felt alive. 

Our guide then invited us to be vulnerable if we wished and to share if we needed to ask for forgiveness from someone. As people shared, he would provide wise counsel. His words to me after I shared who I hoped would forgive me were comforting and reassuring. A young man who was sitting a few spots to my right suddenly said he was feeling overwhelmed but said he thinks it was because he needed to scream and let out the emotions he was holding. Our guide invited him to scream. His wails and howls were intense and soon others joined. I just smiled at the beauty of our collective humanity in that moment. Hearing and feeling the vibrations of their screams and cries was really intense since the space was tight, small, pitch black, and extremely hot. I am pretty sure if someone had told me that I would have to hold this kind of space for a group of strangers, several of them white and privileged, before this moment, I may have not participated. But I felt nothing but joy, pleasure and gratitude because we all deserve spaces where we can just let go and be wild without judgement. I later overheard him talking to one of our guides after our Tezmecal and he said he struggled to let out his emotions when we were inside. The guide said,  “yes because out in the world, we are not allowed but inside the darkness and freedom of the Tezmecal, you were safe”. I also understood this as the way masculinity hurts men and prevents them from being emotionally whole and it made me happy he had that moment of refuge. His vulnerability allowed others in our group to also release all that they were holding.

And right when I thought I could not endure the intense heat and raw emotions any longer, our spiritual guide passed us oranges!! To be taken to a spiritual and physical point where you have never been and then be cared for with such tenderness so that you could journey on further, shook me to my core. This was akin to doula work or labor support during childbirth in my humble opinion. I thankfully ate the orange and its rind and settled back into my meditative space. 

I will confess that I was initially worried if I would even make it through to the end. At first I was thinking I should strategically sit by the door as I crawled into the unknown darkness of the Tezmecal but as I kept checking in with myself,I  realized I was actually OK. I wasn’t sure if I had lasted 15 minutes or 50 but I was aware I was no longer holding onto my anxieties about being able to endure this particular level of heat as a 50 year old (peri?)menopausal woman. I remember being out of my head and living in my body in a really intentional way during the whole experience and hanging onto every word, chant, and ritual our healer lovingly shared with us. This newfound practice of “getting out of my head and into my body” is one that I have been striving for as someone who historically has had to numb myself/dissociate in order to survive trauma and stress. As a kid dealing with the violence of child sexual abuse, I would use TV and books to leave my body/unsafe family environment to escape. I learned to zone out/dissociate and be hyper productive, which provides no space to feel, and sadly I sometimes am forced to still use these survival strategies in my adulthood. Dancing is one of few experiences where I have felt in my body throughout my life and I often return to dance when I am feeling disconnected and in need of grounding. I now work hard to stay in my body and to unapologetically name my pain (and pleasures) in order to decide what I need to feel safe, heard, cared for, and loved. If you know me well, you know I do not glorify or impose mothering/reproduction onto others but I do recall living in my body when I birthed my 3 children. There was immense pain and discomfort but I felt embodied and empowered during their births. There was pain and distress when I ran in marathons, too, but I intentionally checked in with my body throughout my races, to assess what care my body needed or to decide when I could/should/would push it further. In these moments, and last night, I thanked my body and spirit for showing up for me in ways I did not know it/I had capacity. Being embodied in stillness for me was a new and powerful sensation.

When we finally re-entered into the world anew, I knew. I gently stood up into my power and embraced the coolness of the night time sky. I accepted the gift of tea that our shaman offered us. Then I expressed deep gratitude to my spiritual guides/doulas for sharing their sacred healing ritual and the wisdom of their ancestors with me as an outsider. I marveled that I had survived. As I reflected on how I survived, the words of Audre Lorde floated towards me—“We can learn to mother ourselves”. I was indeed reborn. This is healing. This is freedom.

More on Temazcal: https://local.mx/donde-comprar/bienestar/temazcales-ciudad/

Author’s note: It took me over a year to share this piece because I wanted to be respectful of indigenous traditions, peoples, and lands that have a long a harmful history of being exploited and sullied by outsiders. 

I am reminded of María Sabina of Huautla de Jiménez in the Sierra Mazateca who shared the healing power of mushrooms with Western outsiders and the ways Westerners exploited her, her community, and their sacred rituals. Temazcals are going mainstream in touristy parts Mexico but I hope that folks tread lightly and respectfully when traveling and remember that it is a gift for someone to share their culture with us. I am deeply grateful for the journey I went on but do not condone cultural appropriation.