When You Heal Yourself, You Heal Me.

For 15 years, i believed I was broken. Fractured bones and bruised tissue. My bones demineralized and dissolved. Ruins of a human.
For a decade i believed this because of a diagnosis handed to me by the military industrial complex to shift the blame of my multiple sexual assaults on to me being maladjusted -maladjusted thus deserving of objectification not maladjusted as a result of it…Because i was maladjusted, i was never to be trusted and therefore could not trust myself.

Despite the lessons from my family, my community, the radical upbringing of my adolescent years, i was still vulnerable to the systems built to keep me in my place. I was vulnerable to poverty and displacement and feelings of desperation for my survival and finding my place in the world. Why else would I have joined the military? I shaved my head to pay my rent and realized, shit, i can't do this every month. I needed to get serious. What could be more serious and stable than the well established military industrial complex...well the prison industrial complex, but being light skinned and groomed to be a good brown, that was less likely to be my path. In my disadvantages there are still privileges afforded me so long as i align myself with white supremacy. That's how I've survived thus far. I can't deny that fact.
I continue to benefit from the proximity i have with white folk and their power and privilege that I gain access to by being palatable.

The universe presented me with a number of clues and nudges after I left the military. Sadly my physical emotional and spiritual  bodies and were too detached to hear and learn. It wasn't until I met my pup Kimbo in 2010 that the messages began to come in. It's been 8 years of lessons with him and many many adventures and more recently a trip to Oaxaca Mexico working with a group of brilliant healers that i was able to  at last begin stitching my 3 bodies back together in balance and harmony. Much of who i thought i was and what i believed to be true has been shaken and challenged. For the first time, i am open to this shift and shuffle and willingly move with nimbleness to adjust to the new information.
It was not only my time in Oaxaca, that was merely the nudge i needed to let go of what i was holding on to. Beliefs, hard wired, about who and what i am in this vast world we bumble through. i have such tremendous gratitude to the community of people who made that trip possible. i learned to listen to myself. Listen to my body, consider my impact on my larger community, my environment and did inventory on what i could realistically hold, and what i needed to let go of in order to do the work that Spirit is calling me to do. 
​Upon my return from Oaxaca, i was gifted with a visit from my Mother. My mother, my creator, my teacher, my heart. we are one in the same and yet so very different. Being with my mother in my home and we cooked, and rested, and put our hands in the dirt together. My mother is why i am so strong and why i am relentless. Gratitude for my mother for reminding me that we must find lessons in even the most devastating of disappointments and look for the glimmers of hope. 
After my mother left, i was gifted once again with an opportunity to do more healing. A prayer for connection to spirit and the plant medicine of my people - i had begun petitioning to the prince of flowers, Xochipili, for 3 years, was finally answered. The experience has forever changed me and at long last, i know exactly what i need to do to put myself back together. My spiritual and emotional body have finally resettled into my physical body. There are a lot of cobwebs here. I still have some decorating and cleaning to do.
When we heal ourselves, we can help to heal others. When we work to heal the generations of hurt before us we heal the generations of hurt ahead of us. When we work to reconcile our own transgressions to others and commit to do better we show others it is possible. This is what it means to be a good ancestor. We must do our work for ourselves and then for our community and further still, with our community. We must first begin with ourselves. 
Healing isn't linear, healing is more like a spiral walk out from the center around and around again relearning what we thought we knew and seeing more and understanding more profoundly. Healing is suffering, healing takes time, and is different for every single being.

To you my dear community; Welcome to the beginning of your healing, the middle of your healing, the restart of your healing. Wherever you are on your journey. It is yours and only you know where it needs to go. If you choose, I can walk alongside you in that process and share with you the lessons in healing I have learned in this school called life. Now, more than ever i feel compelled to offer support to others who wish to invite support. 

Thank you for those who have been teachers to me, cheerleaders, confidants, supporters, financial backers, spiritual backers, emotional dreamboats. Thank you, Tlazokamati, Gracias, Xtiuzu’u

Noxtim Nomecoyotzin
All of our relations

photo credit: http://www.ebonygalluzzo.com
​