There's a lesser known Hindu Goddess I stumbled upon as I traipsed across the interwebs...
She's the Goddess Akhilandeshvari, The Goddess of Never Not Broken.
I don't claim her or own her- her image has not been something I've grown up with and yet whenever she graces my presence I have the innate knowledge that I have always known her. We haven't spent a lot of time together but the time we've spent has been intimate and awe inspiring. She's seen me at my most challenged, even when it was so dark no human eyes could make out shapes or lessons. From a deep pit with seemingly no way out she peaked over the ledge as I crawled and clawed my way up the sides, thirsty, dirty and bleeding with desperation and hopelessnes creating a lump in my throat and wells at the corners of my eyes.
She didn't offer me a hand.
I fell back a few times tumbling to the bottom- more scratches, more bruises, bones broken, muscles torn. I learned in the dark where my body met the landscape. Aches and pains screamed out to me from places of myself I hadn't talked to for a great long while- the loudest most blood curdling screams came from places so hidden, off the beaten path, and without directions that I had managed to erase their existence altogether until that moment when I felt them rip open.
I struggled and my wounds spread. As my wounds spread light poured in- illuminating images of tears, and sighs, and traumas, and stories, strength and weakness, vulnerability and power. Flickering images connected one after another creating resplendent backlit stories where I was antagonist and protagonist, observer and observed, nothingness and universe. As my light grew so did hers, reflections of reflections, lifting me out of the pit which was suddenly full of pathways made visible and easily traversed.
As my wounds sealed over she faded into the distance but there remained a phosphorescent glow emanating from the path I had taken. As I looked behind me I saw the long trail of my story, lamplights hung where I needed them most.
You might not know her as Akhilandeshvari.
You might know her as Heartbreak, Grief, Suffering, Loss, The Tower or DISASTER.
She remains NEVER NOT BROKEN to remind us that "The wound is the place where the light enters you {RUMI}."
Take this darkness REVOLUTIONARIES, take these hardships, these marginalities, these struggles and most importantly these WOUNDS because (as the Collective Tarot Reminds us):
"Do not be afraid. Do not get stuck in Oppression. Coping. Trying not to change. You cannot control the disaster. The change is inevitable. It is our nature to preserve ourselves. Our dreams. Do not be afraid. The Star awaits."
In Broken-ness,