Kiva writes some of the most powerful Essays and Poems we produce, artfully getting our Gaian message out to the greater community. We’ll be regularly adding to the inspiring samples below.

“Terry Tempest Williams’ books evoke the grief, blood, communion and eros that is this Earth. Henry Miller delved, exposed, embraced and challenged. Diane Ackerman entices as she informs. Kiva Rose is a sensualist and provocateur whose words do all these things at once- caressing and evoking, provoking a new/ancient way of seeing, being, manifesting and believing. The world is a poorer place to the degree that we deny ourselves this level of honesty and depth of feeling, and richer for the words she has given us. They are not entertainment, though they interest and please. Let them break you open the way river parts rock, and then ride them like a pounding silken beast or wing-lifting winds in the direction of your passions and purpose.”
-Jesse Wolf Hardin (Codirector of ESP&SMWC, author of Gaia Eros )

"I hope you will go out and let the stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. Then you will see what medicines they make, and where and when to apply them. That is the work. The only work."
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of Women Who Run With The Wolves)

from “The First Forest”

I’ll take you back
to the trees
to the first forest
the myth held
inside stone
water
and the liquid
states
of the human
spirit

whisper then
walk closer
to every edge
follow
the spiral
down to earth
to the mystery
of water
rising to cover
everything
you have
ever known

listen to me
let me
bring you back
to the first
human home
the original
wood still
splintered
with stone
that rises
from the earth
heaving
with the
ache of fire
the birth
of myth
and landscape
the human
hands spiraling
stone and water

touch me
until I turn
to you
until I am
only a mound
of leaf mould
and a million
flowers still
smelling
of honey
and the
sweet scent
of new decay

hold these
handfuls
of scarlet
petals
and twining
vines
give my
body to
the sky

remember
the stories
remember
that all these
faery tales
are true

Dancing With the Broken Heart of Gaia: Embodied Bliss

“Bliss is not ‘found’ but revealed. Acknowledged. Allowed. Engaged. Embodied.” -Jesse Wolf Hardin

I watch my four year old daughter as she crouches naked up to her shoulders in the San Francisco River. Her head is dipped down as she drinks the cold water in quiet gulps while her hair falls in wet ropes around her face. She is effortlessly comfortable and completely aware, surrounded on all sides by the rich riparian green and raw red cliffs of the Gila Wildlands. A single vivid blue damselfly rests tentatively on one small brown shoulder. Rhiannon stops drinking to motionlessly watch her visitor with intent eyes and a huge grin. She waits until the damselfly takes flight on its own before she whirls in wild circles, growling and howling in wordless delight.

While I am watching her I cannot help but think that this must be the original and intended state of being: perfectly present and aware, a blissful extension of the land itself. That this wild-eyed child is the embodiment of bliss. And I also cannot help but feel my own bliss, constant here as it never has been before. Bliss not defined as a sense of carelessness or temporal happiness but as a deep seated knowledge of oneness with land and purpose, as a sense of no longer being lost or lacking for any needed thing.

I have not always been able to claim such a state of being. For most of my life I have wandered, searching and discontented, all too aware of every trouble and misery ever visited upon my life. It was a revelation to me then, when I discovered that life was not inherently ugly or burdensome, it was not even meant to be a mediocre tedium. Instead, I found that life was meant to be beautiful, a celebration and prayer manifest in every action and movement.

Unfortunately, it is this attitude of futility and cynicism that is most common. We are born into a culture that seems to believe there are certain sets of rules that must be followed. That life is a multiple choice test and that we must choose one of the preselected answers. What I have discovered is that truth and contentment (much less bliss) never comes as a prefabricated answer. That the only valid option is to invent a new answer and to realize that oftentimes the question itself is a fallacy. If the question is “how can I get through life as comfortably as I can_” or “How can I succeed just enough to get by_” then the question needs to be thrown out completely. The question should be more along the lines of, “What gives me the greatest joy_”, “What passion/purpose could I dedicate my life to_” and/or “What do I need to be whole_” If we are honest with ourselves we will find that the answers to these questions have very little to do with societal standing, monetary status or even comfort level. The answers to these questions will often frighten us because they will show us just how far we are from our own passions and needs. The questions will creep into our dreams and our internal conversations, regardless of our denial until answered with affirmation and action.

We’ve all heard of “finding your bliss” but in reality, bliss is not something that we can find. Bliss exists within us as an expression of the beauty and joy of Gaia. We need not search for it, we need only to acknowledge it, to embody it. But what does it mean to embody bliss, to own it completely_ To not see it as something outside of and separate from ourselves_ How to recognize and realize ourselves as extensions of Gaia, extensions of her beauty and bliss_

The answers are simple but never easy. What came easily to us as children will require work and focus to reclaim. To embody bliss is to take every step with intention, to be fiercely and fully awake.

And what does it mean to dance with the broken heart of Gaia_ It means rejoicing in the beauty of that little girl in the river even as we recognize and feel the pain of our people, of our planet. It means dancing with the joy and with the pain. It means being strong enough to experience everything completely. To take the agony and the joy as currents of the same body of water. It means knowing that it is better to suffer than to feel nothing at all. It means waking up every morning welcoming the dawn, knowing that our lives have meaning and purpose and that our connection to our Mother is well-nourished.

How can we embody bliss_ Once again, we must understand that bliss is not something outside of us, not something we can earn or seek out. It is something already alive within all of us. It is unfortunate that most of us live lifestyles that are far removed from the wildness or natural beauty that teaches us bliss through example. We must re-learn what we should have known from the very first breath.

The most essential ingredient in embodying bliss is a highly refined awareness. Although this heightened awareness is something all of us are born with, the time between then and now has often dulled that awareness into a numb complicity, and skills that should have been honed in childhood have atrophied into near uselessness. If any proof is needed, observe the habits of both a domesticated house dog and a dog that has either gone feral or was born wild. The difference in alertness, intelligence and instinct are remarkable. A house dog unaccustomed to being outdoors without a leash or to fending for itself will wander into traffic, ignore potential prey and nearly starve before it becomes aware enough to take care of itself. In the same way, those of us who have been conditioned by a normal American upbringing have been taught to ignore our feelings, stifle any tendency towards childlikeness and to confine physical consciousness to the gym or sex. We have effectively crippled our instinctual wildness. Our awareness will have to be awakened from dormancy and carefully nurtured in order to keep our senses alive.

The easiest and quickest way to engage our bliss is to seek out the little girl (or boy) that is inside us all. Usually, she is fast asleep or lost and wandering somewhere in our interior landscape. We all get occasional glimpses of her when we allow ourselves to eat a messy dessert with our hands, stomp through a mud puddle or lose ourselves completely in a beautiful piece of music. But for the most part we force her to keep her mouth shut and mind her manners. We still hold onto that antiquated Victorian saying, “children should be seen and not heard”. We’ve been taught to keep her under tight control and careful surveillance to avoid those curious glances and critical words we earn when we’re caught (grown women!) climbing a tree in the city park or singing offkey in the rain on our way to work. Part of bliss is being able to ignore the onlookers and quiet the critics through our total focus and engagement in play and experience.

Joy originates in the heart of the child and all of our wildness waits for us there. We need to find that little girl, let her sit in the flowerbed in the backyard and contemplate the animal shapes of passing clouds. We need to give ourselves license to play again.

We all know how easily innocence is lost, how simple it is to thoughtlessly embrace cynicism and the humdrum monotony of what we call everyday life. What many of us have forgotten is that we have the ability to reclaim that joyous sense of freedom and intensity. I grew up in a home where my childhood was virtually nonexistent, I was an adult with all of the weight the adulthood carries in our culture before I even hit puberty. For too long I saw the bitterness and tiredness of my mother and her mother when I looked in the mirror. A woman who had seen too much hardship and not enough joy, play or laughter in her life. I knew there was somelthing terribly wrong when I noticed that I woke up every day steeling myself to face the morning instead of celebrating the beauty of each new dawn.

Only as an actual adult, in my early twenties, was I able to properly give voice to that little girl. It was only then that I could give myself permission to spin in the dew-wet grass in the predawn morning hours. To allow myself to spend whole afternoons sitting in the tall grass watching a carnival of insects parading around me without feeling guilt at what I wasn’t doing or self-conscious that someone might see me playing. It was only when I found that little girl that I was able to become the woman I was meant to be.

Another way of embodying our bliss is to be open to our own feelings and experiences. To pay close attention how our daily lives affect us. The overwhelming joy we feel when our child greets us by throwing her arms around us or the peace and satisfaction we feel when finishing a project or meeting a goal or even the horror we experience when we watch the evening news each night. We need to tend to and honor these feelings. It is the depth (or lack thereof) of our emotions that gives us the capacity to fully experience bliss. If we play down our feelings, even when they are “negative” feelings such as dissappointment or pain, then we are numbing ourselves down. The less we feel, the less alive we are. Many of the most alive and blissfull people I have ever known were terminally ill. They were determined to experience and feel everything, to be hyper-aware even to pain in order to be aware of the razor edged preciousness of life. It can be hoped that not all of us need a time-frame placed on the days left to us in order to be that open to our experiences.

Perhaps the best way to open up to our own experiences is to realize that our feelings are not isolated and limited only to ourselves. To aknowledge that we are extensions of the Earth and that to deepen our connection to Gaia is to deepen our connection to ourselves. It’s important to be aware that the connection works both ways. The less separation there is between us and the Earth the more we will feel what the Mother is experiencing as well, including the enormous amount of pain She is suffering at the hand of our own species.

There are countless ways to solidify our connection to the land. It can be as simple as appreciating the amazing taste of locally grown fresh fruit or as complex as searching out and dedicating ourselves to that certain place that is home to us. The direct result of a deep connection with the Mother is an immediate and personal knowledge of how we are linked to each other and all other life. This eradication of separation from the Earth is the mainline to bliss. As long as our spirit and life are based in our love for the land we will never have any shortage of joy or awe in our lives.

In order to really own our bliss we must acknowlege that it is a state of being that we deserve. Too many of us get right up to the edge of everything we’ve ever wanted and turn around and walk away. Often this denial is triggered by guilt or a sense of not being enough to deserve joy or contentment. What we have to tell ourselves over and over again is that bliss is the state we are born into. It is not found and it is not earned. It is the birthright of every human being and it is only our imagined separation from the land, ourselves and each other that creates the illusion that we should ever exist in any state except bliss.

My daughter dances on the riverbank, arms open wide and spinning. I pick her up and I dance with her. We dance with the broken heart of Gaia in a world that is wounded and yet unfalteringly beautiful.

To embody bliss is to know our blessedness. It is to know that there is so much beauty in the world that we are unable to contain it, that it overflows and floods the world. When we open to the bliss we are carried by it on an undeniable current that delivers us back to the center of our own beings: wild, awake and authentically ourselves.

from “Sister (Shapeshifter)”

My first sisters
These pale-skinned trees
Juniper willow and alder
Under a full moons night

When the storms
Beat furious against
Tall rock walls
And I carry
Myself into
The heart
Of this raging
Wind

This vortex
Of spirit and air
No less breath
Than what falls
From my mouth
Spinning

My red hair
Spiraling between
Speaking lips
Giving voice
To the center
Of this world
Canyon bred
And bound

I take for my own
No human child
Only the spirit
Caught here
Within shifting skin
Slipping under
My seeking fingers

My sisters singing
To me in a low tone
The old songs
Beating the
Old rhythm
The birthing beat
Of every tribe

My sisters carrying
Me to the edge
Of cliff face
And riverbank
Pushing me
Pushing me
Sending me
Over every
Precipice
Until I fly

Medicine Woman

“They know wilderness, not as something other, but as an intimate part of themselves. And they know how to listen to its voices: whispered on the wind, written in stone, painted on streams and dappled in the shadows of htmlens and pine, choreographed into eagle swoop and coyote call, traced in sand and snow by paw and talon, tail and scat.”
-Barbara Walker

The Medicine Woman is walking alone into the early dawn, gathering the healing plants, bits of animal bones, seed pods, glittering stones and strips of bark. She is caressing each steady rock and unfurling leaf. She knows this land as her body and tends to it as such. She is an extension of this place as the place is an extension of her own body. Her hair is still wet from the river and is tangled with twigs, sand and flower petals. Her skin is as marked and scarred as the cliffs that jut from ancient earth. This volcano-born canyon is her home and she has been here a long time. Her quiet steps are evidence of this, with not a bird disturbed. No matter the color of her skin, she is native. The medicine she carries is for so much more than simple healing... and it is from the land. This land, the canyon that she walks through.

We are each medicine women to the degree that we consciously and creatively contribute to the wholeness of the world, taking responsibility for being cocreators of our evolving universe. While some of us may seem more adept than others, as humans and as especially as women we are born to be sensitives and empaths, and to act on what we feel. It is our voluntary assignment to aid the connection between the disparate parts of our own selves, between each other and the Earth... to heal what can be healed, resist what must be resisted, learn the lessons inherent in our mistakes, and apply those lessons for the good of more than our narrowly defined selves. To live and give wholly, and to wholly celebrate!

Later the Medicine Woman returns to her lodge, where a tall woman with dark hair waits for her. She will smudge the woman with the sweet smoke of sage and instruct her in the activities of the next day. Tomorrow the young initiate will gather wood and stones, preparations for her first sweat and quest. The Medicine Woman smiles at the memory of the fierce young woman, a counselor at a woman’s shelter, who is determined to heal her own wounds and to take healing back to the women she works with... admiring her stubbornness and passion. She silently prays that her student will uncover the vision of wholeness and healing she is seeking. The Medicine Woman turns from the brilliant orange and purple cliffs back towards the hill her lodge rests upon, as the sun begins to pour over the canyon walls.

First and foremost comes reconnection. While the medicine women is actively a healer, she heals by casting light on every htmlect and part, and helping to draw those parts back into participatory oneness and active balance. Sometimes she works by giving comfort, other times by disturbing and alarming, or exposing our dangerous illusions and painful wounds. As we see again and again here at this wildlands women’s center, there may be no stronger for tool for bringing us back to our authentic, needing, empowered selves or the planet we’re extensions of than a hotter than usual sweat lodge, and the a mind-quieting and heart-opening leap into the cold river water.

The tall woman with dark hair has her knees curled up to her chest, her body resting on a bed of blankets and leaves between an ancient ponderosa pine and a quartz studded boulder. She appears to be almost asleep, but not quite. She is, in fact, intensely awake, incredibly aware. She is waiting for her vision and for the star sprinkled dark of a New Mexico summer night to cover her. The last night of four spent without thought, without words. She is seeking out her own medicine, her connection to herself and Gaia. She is questing for her wildest and most complete self. And although this is her first quest, she will make the pilgrimage back into this sacred wilderness many times. She quests not just to find herself but also to maintain herself, a way of keeping earth, spirit and self in delicate balance. She will take her newfound knowledge back into the city she lives in, back into her community, back to the women she daily counsels.

The medicine woman in all of us draws sustenance, vision and power from the Earth herself:Gaia, and always through a particular place. It may be a sacred canyon, mountain or grove that she pilgrimages too regularly, or the ground beneath the city pavement where she walks. Likewise the lessons come not as free and easy handouts but as hard learned experiences and hard knocks. We become medicine women not by already knowing all the answers and having it all together, but by doing the day to day work of rising to our challenges and profiting from our mistakes. We see the world clearest not with abstract thought but through the eyes of uncontrolable laughter... and the veil of our tears.

Tears will fall to the thirsty ground during the long night as she battles fear and self-doubt. She will hold onto Medicine Woman’s words reminding her to be both gentle and stern with herself, to cling stubbornly to her dreams and her growing sense of self . She will press her face against the puzzle piece bark of the ponderosa pine and find deep comfort there. She will howl loudly with a heart that is strangely both aching and elated.

I can feel the tears as I write this, hot on my cheeks. My demons have been the self doubt and self sabotage that results from a life of abuse. Of thinking that everything I do needs to be instantly perfect. I don’t come to teaching easily, and I’ve only now fully accepted the value and responsibilities of the medicine that came out of both my life’s hard moments and tender rewards. The gifts we offer through our classes and writings come from the Earth and this canyon, but also from the willingness to learn from and deepen from what hurts... not just the suffering in our own lives but the suffering of the homeless child, the clear-cut forest or toxic beach. The love we give, the wisdom we share and this crazy joy that we feel, all pours from a vessel stretched wide by our honest pain.

Being medicine women means giving ourselves the love we deserve, and taking the time to be excitable little girls again. The medicine woman practices playing on her front lawn or in the river. She learns to love herself enough to create and meet challenges for herself, fiercely and tenderly insisting upon constant growth. She learns to surrender herself to her heart, her senses and the magic of the world around her. She finds ways to act upon the world as a willing participant, student, teacher, mentor, healer and inspiriteur. As an activist or conservationist, tree planter or war resistor, caring gardener, parent, daughter or ever-loving mate. As a conjurer of fine and healthy foods that make every eater raise their voice in praise. As one who sings to children, or protects a sacred canyon with her very life.

The Medicine Woman is waiting for the dark-haired woman when she comes walking back up the long hill to the lodge. She is tired, her long hair is tangled and her face is still streaked with tears and dirt. The Medicine Woman welcomes her with a clay bowl of nettle soup and the warmth of crackling wood stove. She listens intently as the woman cries gently as she tells the story of her quest.

Participating in transformative experiences can help us immensely in our journey to be as open and awake as possible. This can be through a four day solitary vision quest, a medicine sweat or the intense communion at a gathering of fellow wild women. Through such experiences we learn to be fully present, to take in every sensation as the wind touches our faces or water stroke our skin. We come to fully experience every emotion and to know how to express and understand them.

Nights alone under a tree above a river can be dramatic and even pivotal, returning to our original form before the fear and the pretense and walls that followed. But every day should be seen and committed to as if it were our quest as well, the quest to each moment completely inhabit our animal bodies and goddess souls, to make every moment decisive, taste every morsel, touch and help all we’re able. The medicine woman’s life is a quest to fullest live, and best give.

As a result of our sensitivity and commitment we may sometimes feel lonely, but we are never alone. We are part of an ancient lineage of medicine women dating back to the caves of the Pleistocene and stretching on into the distant future. And we are called now to come togehter. We are the webweavers, alchemists and nest builders, drawing together to circle, feast and dance, teaching each other new stories and new ways of wild being. We are looking for each other everywhere, in the wild wood and in urban drumming circles, in our mountain dreams and childhood poems. Blood calls to blood... and so we know each other, hearing in the wind our sister’s voices.

The Medicine Woman weaves a crown of aster, daisy and mallow flowers. She sits on a tall rock and listens to the distant singing of women growing nearer. They are walking through the cooling river, intertwining an old song with a new song. The Medicine Woman smiles and waits, weaving yet another crown to add to the heap. The song is getting louder, echoing softly from sun-heated canyon walls.

A Medicine Woman is a lives in service to herself, the land and her sisters, she is an open conduit able to both take in the power of the land and also to give back to the source with ritual and care, moon blood and activist fervor. Ours is a lifelong commitment to joy, gratitude, openness and wholeness. To walking in beauty, and at last savoring contentment.

There is a hunger in even the most tentative of us, a hunger for magic, for wholeness and vision that cries out for expression. We may feel that we are not strong enough, not wise enough, not yet ready. Yet we are all intuitive enough, sensitive enough, feeling enough to practice this Medicine, this necessary work... now. We know these are not simply esoteric teachings but the practical and spiritual knowledge for every day of our lives. We recognize that our connection to land and Spirit affects our relationships, how we raise our children and how much or how often we follow our hearts.

The path of the Medicine Woman is a lifelong one, the wildest path back, the spiral that leads always home, to self, Spirit and this beautiful Earth. This is the way to opening ourselves completely, seeing ourselves fully... finally being able to see the world as the magical, inspirited place it truly is. Then giving back our song, our service, our dance.

Between the hill and the river a small group of women are gathering. Some of them are gathering wood for a fire, others beginning preparations for a feast of wild foods.

Later will come the dancing, evoking animal fierceness and childish delight with our primal human bodies. The women wear feathers, bits of fur and splintered bones. Barefoot and breathing they move to the beat, melding with the choreography of river and wind. This will be the beginning of a long night of storytelling, rowdy laughter and hard-earned tears, vulnerable sharing and bawdy boasts. The Medicine Woman will climb down a primitive stone staircase to join them, smiling broadly at the beauty of wild women in their element. She will adorn each campfire illuminated woman with a celebratory circlet of flowers. The night will grow quieter, the moon will rise and the dance will begin again.