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| Violet - Emily's Spirit Doll |
Dear Julia,
Here is the story of my Violet Medicine Doll...
On the weekend of the Swan Blessing Spirit Doll workshop I had only recently discovered I was pregnant. I had been keeping this delicious, mysterious secret inside. Only my husband and I knew and we were surprised at how deep and dark the knowledge felt...how wrong it would be to talk about yet.
I had been sleeping and dreaming a lot and was just starting to get waves of nausea when I woke or during the day when my mind wandered the dreamworld. A lot of my dreams felt heavy and I was having flashes of past life traumas. I started taking walks in the morning by the river to let these feelings flow through me and away. I was drawn again and again to a patch of violets growing in the shade along my walk. Their delicate smell made me feel better, like the flowers understood the important work I was doing and gently supported the secrets within me. So I came to the workshop with these violets, knowing that the doll I made would be a Violet Medicine Doll, one who could travel the darkness of my dreams with me and remind me of the delicate beauty to be found there.
The journey the Swan Blessing took me on was surprising but perfectly synchronised with the energies I've described...
I gaze into the pool and see the face of my other self. She is tall, slim, queenly. She shifts from being black haired and young to silvery and old. Sunshine and moonlight. Masculine and feminine. She is a desert woman, Bedouin.
She works with the plants of the desert, the ones that bloom in oases in the moonlight, and survive in cracks and crevices and caves. Slow dripping, seeping water underground. Women’s mysteries.
She sings the song of the desert, she calls these plants into life. She tattoos the journeys and knowledge of her people onto her skin. She bathes in underground pools at night. She is strong, powerful, respected and loved.
She binds her wisdom when white men arrive to “study” their nomadic way of life. She puts a halt to the growth cycles. She will never share the songlines, the stories. The plants will die and wither away to dust, unnoticed in their secret places. She has forseen the destruction white man will bring so she will not pass her knowledge on to her daughters. She will not burden them with the secrets.
The binding is tight around my waist, my solar plexus. I cannot be true to myself. I cannot reveal the full extent of my wisdom, or pass it on to the baby in my womb. I am withholding, withering inside. I feel sick to my stomach.The sister of the well hands me a knife to cut the binds and I hear my other self begin to sing the desert heart song again. Her wisdom is free and it flows through her, through the desert sands and winds and the moonlight, through my open centre and into my baby. I feel the unfolding of my mysterious violet baby just as the desert plants unfurl and come to life in the secret dark places.Together we will find the balance again of sunshine and moonlight, masculine and feminine, learning and intuition, spirituality and grounding.
I place seven violets inside my doll for each chakra and a sprinkling of Uluru red earth at her heart and feet to ground us in this land, connect us to our songlines and dreaming tracks. She carries the sacred gum in her medicine pouch. This baby will know the songs of the desert and the ocean, the blinding sun and the darkness. All the polarities.
The doll dances and sways forward. She knows where she is going and where she is from. The strength and fragility of violets drifts from her like a sweet scent that you almost can’t catch except in your memory.
