We each carry an aspect of self that has never been loved before.

A part that carries the pain of never having been met or seen, valued, wanted, or welcomed into authentic belonging.

A part of us that holds both the ancestral contracts of remaining loyal to suffering as love and the ancestral lineage of our magic, genius, and unique gifts that belong to this world.

This is the exiled self who lives within a cave deep in the caverns of our psyche, much like Medusa.

Hurt and rejected, cursed, and cast away to remain hidden while continuing to hold all of her embodied power, which, when unacknowledged, disrespected, and extracted from can turn into rage—at self, others, life, and God.

Taught to fear this aspect of self, we try to extract what we need from her while simultaneously trying to cut her head off so we no longer need to be in pain.

Yet, we remain stuck, in a loop, because we cannot cut the head off an essential aspect of ourselves. Rather, we keep harming ourselves in an effort to win at the Hero’s journey.

There is no demon to slay, only an exiled self to love.

This is what turns into codependency—because we are playing out this split that lives deep within us, and in the deep, mythological psyche of the collective narrative.

This is the part of us that often runs the show out of our conscious awareness, trying to get our attention through shapeshifting for people, manipulating, trying to be pleasing, performing as a means of extracting attention, lying, controlling, resentful demanding, unkind entitlement, and on and on.

We end up trying to find value in the external, horizontal world because the internal, vertical one is unrooted, disconnected, and a painful one.

After all, how are we to draw our self-worth and deep, grounded internal love from a source we’ve been taught not to trust?

An energy that’s been more discarded than cared for?

We need to feel wanted, seen, and loved to experience a sense of authentic belonging, in order to feel a certain level of safety.

This is a basic, human need.

When we do not feel loved, when we feel unrooted from belonging or connection to a loving, friendly source of life, the exiled self will mimic love and attempt to get needs met, maintain connections, and find safety (via control or approval) however it can.

We enter into codependency, which is a symptom of lovelessness that is both personal and collective since our culture is cut off at its roots.

We are trying to find safety in a love that has been made wrong and been hidden away from us.

This exiled self, this Medusa within us, is the wild, mature feminine—the primordial, deep, ancestral, wise, primal energy of the Mother.

The ground of existence.

The very nature of the wild itself.

The earth as us—nature expressing herself as us.

Just as the redwood, oaks, birch, ash, cedars, and hemlock trees stand as themselves.

This is the part of us that draws her power from the source of life itself, which is Love.

Love not for anything or to anything, but Love itself—that heals anything it touches and restores divine order, granting benevolent reversals and alignments of fate and destiny.

We cannot simply “do the work” to get rid of this pain; to cut ourselves of or find ways to rid ourselves of her pain is to cut ourselves off from vitality and our true nature.

Rather than this song and dance often masked as personal development or spiritual “work” on ourselves—gaining the favor of the Gods to grant us magical tools and trickery to cut her head off—we need to meet her at the entrance of the cave and acknowledge the lack of love and care, and make offerings there.

We need to perform healing rituals and ceremonies of communion.

We need to ask her what she needs from us to help her feel safe again.

We need to feed her wild hunger and give her the space, gentleness, and ferocious presence she needs to release her grief and emerge from the cave where we can integrate her and live with her, by her side, in sacred reciprocity and care, rather than trying to draw nutrients from something we are unconsciously starving off at the same time.

It’s risky because as we create the safety we need to encounter the exiled self, we heal our relationship with a part of ourselves that carries a lot of energy that will change our lives.

We won’t be able to live the way we are living anymore; we will come back into harmony with ourselves and, ultimately, the wild of nature around us.

We will once again become a healthy ecosystem that respects all of life rather than trying to extract from it while ignoring it and killing it off.

Tending to the grief of lovelessness heals our codependency, restores the lifelines of Source and Love within us, and helps us to heal not only this dynamic within ourselves and with others, but also the codependency of our collective culture that thrives off of extraction, control, and performing for approval.

Codependency is an ancestral inheritance we must heal through restoring our relationship with Love through our roots and into the great Mother of all that is.

We can dream ourselves awake out of this trance and no longer feel exiled from this world we live in.

More love.

Not less.

~