Always Through My Hands

I was gone for less than two hours when I came home to Hansel, at his wits end, with Phoenix in one of his fiery crying fits.  I simply walked over to my little boy and placed my right hand on his chest, closed my eyes, and began to breathe into my heart center.  Almost immediately he softened under my touch and his crying began to cease.

My sweet husband Hansel suffers from a chronic illness that many times strikes his body with pain for days.  The worse is in the evening when he struggles to fall asleep.  Many nights I’ve rubbed my hands together creating heat as I prayed for God’s love to work through me.  To use my hands as a ray of light–a beam of healing.  With my feet firmly grounded to the Earth I listen with my fingertips and soothe his body into slumber.

When I find myself in the presence of someone in sorrow or pain, without a word or any fuss, I simply turn the palm of my hand to face them and imagine my strength transferring to them through this gesture.  I do it secretly, so nobody knows.  And many times I do it to strangers I see in public–the angry person in the check-out line, the homeless soul that lives behind the shopping plaza, the driver who cut me off.

Then there is my paintbrush. Over the years it has become an extension of my hand.  How it willingly allows me to express myself.  But the real magic of this relationship happens through my hands.   I never grasp or hold the brush tightly.  Instead I allow the wooden handle to move lightly under my fingertips.  Sliding.  Gliding.  Twisting and swaying.

Pixie Campbell recently brought up the topic of femininity in her Summer SouLodge and asked us how we express it ourselves.  Of course the obvious ways of how I dress and the way I wear my hair came to mind–but both have never been really girly in anyway.  I thought of my love for moving my body through yoga and dance which I feel are beautiful expressions of my femininity, for certain.  But how does my sacred femininity flow through my day to day experience of life?  What keeps me connected to an even greater femininity found in the forces of nature and spirit?

My hands.

My hands are my greatest expression of my femininity.  They are a direct route to my intuition, my healing nature, my creativity, my inner warmth.

How I wash an apple, fold a pile of laundry, pet my beloved dog Nyla,  or plant a bunch of basil–my touch is always an expression of my own feminine nature.  I notice that it’s naturally different than my male partner.  It’s something our women ancestors knew innately and expressed so beautifully through crafts and the way they cared for their families, their space, the Earth.

But for me, it is a realization that has deepened my respect and appreciation for the feminine energy that flows through me and releases into the ones I love, the world I live in, and the creativity I express–always through my hands.