Rebecca Jo Dakota

It’s stuck. This thing in my nervous system. Somewhere I can’t even see it. It bothers me every day, this old feeling of striving, of “not good enough.”

Can I nudge it out to daylight? It’s in some pipe underground, or something, covered, in the dark. I need to see it to get rid of it, right? Where is the light going to come from to allow me to see this stuck thing? The flashlight on my cell phone won’t help.

The light can come from my heart, I guess. But my heart was scarred nearly 30 years ago, and the scars are still intense. They grip my heart with fierce fingers. So, can light squeeze through there?

And then, where is the love going to come from to allow this heart to open enough to let in the light enough to begin to see into the stuck places?

I think I’d better lie down on the earth now, on the grass, in the shade. Let Gaia tell me what to do.

Later: She said, “Just give it to me. You don’t have to drudge it up or exhume it. Let it be dead, this thing that hurts you. Let it be dead. Let go. I will take care of this old energy for you, clear it. You’ve actually beaten it to death many times. And you’ve beaten yourself, too.”

“Beaten myself, too?”

“Yes, by judging yourself. So harshly. Stop, my dear child. Just stop. You did the best you could with the tools you had at the time. You’re a different human now.”

I swallowed hard but believed her. And so, I let go.


Rebecca Jo Dakota writes for joy. A longtime resident of New Mexico, she loves the sky, bakes blue-ribbon pies, grows poppies and cultivates friendships.