The Lost Girls of Devon

by Barbara O'Neal

Breathe in suffering, breathe out peace. I

took in the darkness, the heat of anger, my own and that in the world, and the sorrow, and the greed, and held it. I imagined scrubbing the dark mass into something fresh and shiny, and exhaled, letting it go.

listening was the thing that could cure most ills, mind or body.

No magic. Only listening.

Most Western women had no idea that the divine could be female, or they’d been taught that it was secondary to the male. In these workshops, which seemed to be about party tricks, I gave them the possibility that maybe Spirit could be a Mother as well as a Father.

Love. Sexual love and motherly love and sister love and friend love. Love for the earth and all that was sacred.

I believed in wisdom, though I did not own it.

Love, I thought. It takes so many forms.

I let the grief of that child, that girl, that abandoned teenager rise and overflow. In the quiet room, alone with bits of myself, I could grieve.

It felt strange and painful and healing. It felt like forgiveness.