EDYTHE: THE SPOILS OF WAR
My name is loaded with stories I can tell myself. Any one of them can latch onto guilt, blame, and shame. There’s another choice, though—it’s one that involves dropping judgements and dropping into breath. In the past, I’ve tried to numb or distract. Now, I’m stepping into it. This is work that I do regularly with a group of women, The Radiant Temple Sisterhood, led by Elisha Clark Halpin and Megan Moore.
My stories have a consistent thread. They all revolve around learning how to hold a dichotomy--hold two polar opposites--it’s the story of “both/and.”
I guess the common thread is,
1.)look for the shame, blame, and guilt,
2.)follow the thread there, and
3.)start tellin’.
So, when I first did the “Name exercise” during my SEED New Leader’s Training in 2013, that’s when I really started to investigate the meaning of my name. I always knew that I was named after my Grandmother, and that she began with the spelling Edith, but later changed it to the spelling, Edythe, which is my spelling, and is the Old English spelling. When I looked up the meaning of the name, I realized that it literally translates to “The spoils of war” and this just blew my mind. It signifies all the blame, shame, and guilt that seems to be sewn to my soul.
The work that I’m doing now with Wildly Radiant and The Institute for Intuitive Intelligence is getting a metaphorical seam ripper--actually, sometimes it’s more like gently unraveling some tangled fabric in places, because it requires tender and tedious unraveling in some layers, for the specific threads of shame, blame, and guilt, these threads--because these threads are often bound to a Mother Wound, which is Bethany Webster’s work…You can find all the links to these references in the “seeds” page of my website.
The spoils of war are--they are basically, pirate’s booty--my name means pirates booty! My name’s meaning is the treasure that was won by means of people killing each other and then the people that did the majority of the killing took off with the loot and I am the loot. Seriously, I don’t want to feel the gnarly stuff that accompanies the belief that my soul was won by means of bloodshed, rape, and pillage--that’s a heavy story that I’m carrying about myself.
When I look back--the truth is that I’ve been called to shed a specific thread of self-judgement. When I can do this, I don’t shed or release that just for me--that’s an ancestral baggage--releasing all the stories that are passed to me subconsciously through my ancestral lines and otherwise, that no longer serve me--(if they ever did.)
So, when I absorb the energy of projections, I’m often self-perpetuating the myth that me, as a woman, I am inherently inconsiderate. As a white person, I’m inherently inconsiderate, because of deeds of ancestors and we continue--certainly we are part of a paradigm that exists because of this story, which is--supremacy--to dominate and take (which was the story that this country was founded on)--that is heavy--and luckily, it’s meant to be that I came into the world at this time and I have the privilege of speaking of this and making choices--these choices can’t be made for the better of all if I don’t make them within myself, so it’s here that I break that thread.
I am not stitched to being the spoils of war. Am I a treasure? Yes. I am a treasure because I have choice and because I have unlimited capabilities and because we all, through alchemizing these old stories, and turning them to gold--can make a more aware and cognizant choice toward loving, toward gratitude, and we can shed the beliefs of lack and the fear that there is not enough. It’s that fear that there is not enough that leads to inequity and war and hoarding of treasure.
Part of the visuals of my website are stitching because I feel stitching, in particular, my name--in stitching this, I’m seam ripping the part that is sewing that shame of guilt or blame to my soul, and I’m releasing that--I’m untangling that from me, and I’m letting that go--it does not serve me--and it doesn’t motivate me--what motivates me is connection, and sewing my story together so that I can be the light for others to do the same. And to show my vulnerabilities and to expose my fears by looking at them and going into them. This is the work that we all must do to sew, or sow, the SEEDS.