While in the hospital last year I experienced an awakening. As my treatment progressed, self-care was my primary concern (as a mom self-care is often neglected). I slowly became accustomed to caring for my own vessel as I might a new babe; therein it is fitting that patients here were given Johnson & Johnson’s baby wash to bathe.

In bathing, as I was cleansed with this scent of infancy, under a large rain-like shower head I was overcome by beauteous imagery. I could envision myself, as myself, and also of a diety carefully bathing, and from the soapy froth forming creation, light, and life; A goddess carefully combing her hair and the lose strands that fell becoming new beings, out of the coils- bits of divine DNA. How carefully she would need to care for herself, to keep all of existence in balance. Every move the being made, having an impact on heavenly bodies and their atmospheres, on the weather of the cosmos- all related to her own equilibrium.

I went to then mediate, and write on this. I felt a humbled and yet honored sense of connection as I had been gifted a vision that I might best be able to understand the powers that be, and how to grasp the importance and lesson of caring just as delicately for the life that is me. My heart swells with disbelief and amazement for the images bestowed upon me, which are beyond my normal scope of thinking. I am in awe of how such thoughts came to me, and of considering: why? I continue to wonder of this experience and recognize new meanings for my own being, and for others, for the earth, nature, all of which are in need of care, as even a mother deity would need, in order to keep the everything well cared for. I think of the advice on airplanes to put on one’s own oxygen mask first, and on the idea that “cleanliness is next to godliness”, — I appreciate that in letting myself accept the open arms in a hospital setting, and baring myself to the unknown, I Iet in a light that I had been warding off while not taking the same care with myself, as I had others, and thereby not leaving space for the divine to enter.