Storytime: Cast It into the Water

A little story of a ritual I performed. It was very cleansing and symbolic, and I want to share the experience in full and in detail. Enjoy!

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The hearing is over and I am free. Legally. Energetically. Cyclically. I walk in the door to my apartment, and just take a breath. There's one more ritual to do to complete this process, and it's something I am doing personally for myself. Generally speaking, I'm not one for rituals, at least not performative ones. They make me feel a little awkward and embarrassed to do. A bit like having to go in front of the class and recite something from memory. But this is something I am going to do and no one will be watching but my Spirit Team.

First, I have to change my clothes. I'm wearing the type of clothes I wear to the office, which amounts to a long-sleeve green-striped shirt and the nicest pair of jeans I have. And while I love my black boots with a bit of heel, they're still a little tight and will not be suitable for walking in the woods. Plus, I can smell the stress on me and I don't like it. Seems like I can smell everything these days, including the oxygen content of the air I'm breathing and how much is in it. Which is bizarre, but that's just how it is right now.

So, a less nice pair of jeans and hoodie go on. But I delay and want to sit for a minute to just absorb what has happened. "I'm divorced," I tell myself. It's a little hard to believe at the moment. I put the paperwork away and sit at my desk. I try not to think about how I'm going to have to change my name on everything, because that's a little overwhelming. I'll get to it when I get to it. I also try not to think about anything else I have to do to wrap up the life I just left behind.

Instead, I sit at my computer for a little bit. Time skips forward rather quickly. Before I know it a couple of hours have passed. I'm procrastinating and I know it. I need to drive up to the lake to do my ritual, and that's 30 minutes up the road. I don't really feel like driving. But I need to do this thing, so I sigh, get up, and go get my wedding ring from the jewelry box in my bedroom.

I open up the little black box, and there sits the only ring I possess among the earrings. I don't much like things on my fingers. They get in the way of doing things and I am remarkably talented at roughing things up that are on my hands. As soon as we went into separation, I put my wedding ring in there knowing what I wanted to do with it. I didn't want to just throw it away in the trash. That felt really disrespectful to myself.

Taking the white gold ring out of the box, I turn it in my fingers and look at the 12 tiny diamonds along the band. I put it in my pocket and suddenly feel remarkably like Frodo from Lord of the Rings. Well, we are going to mirror that experience. Just water instead of fire.

I can feel Seraphel smiling and making jokes about that in my head. "Cast it into the water, Kyrie!" And I see him superimposed over Elrond from the very scene in the beginning of the movie where Elrond is trying to get Isildur to throw the Ring into the Fire. Laughing, I get my keys, put on my tennis shoes, and head out the door. I need new tennis shoes, I think. And I do. We'll address that another day, though.

The road out to the lake is filled with standard levels of traffic for that time of day. It's early afternoon, and people are leaving work early. I should be done with my task before rush hour starts. On the way, I see a whole side of the road blocked off from a truck that crashed. It feels symbolic. It also means I'll need to take another route home. Also symbolic. Taking another path home.

In the car, I chat with my soul family, verbalizing the telepathic conversation we're having. But mostly I'm quiet. I can feel 'Yanna hugging me as I drive. I think I cry just a little, and that's all right. It's part of the ritual.

Once at the lake, I get out at the visitor's center. The sky is blue and crisp. Fall is here, and the trees are just starting to show their color. In the parking lot, I go to take my shortcut path to where I want to go, but I see it blocked off. A group of people are practicing archery. Instead of heading to the trail, I suddenly decide I want a shirt for this park. I have a shirt from every place I like to go, except here. My ex-husband always said we didn't need one because we always come to this place. I secretly disagreed.

I feel I simply must do this right now. I must right this wrong. This doesn't feel like a distraction. It feels like part of it.

I head into the visitor's center and find a red-orange long sleeve shirt with the park's logo on the back. I like the color. I don't have a shirt this color, so I get it and a hoodie. They don't have a hoodie in small, so I grab the medium and try it on in the store. It's not like I'm taking my clothes off, and there's nobody there but me and the clerk behind the counter. It fits, and I go with it.

Now, I feel I can go do my task. Dropping the clothes off in the car, I walk over to the trail and make my way to what I call "The Point". It's just one peninsula in a lake full of peninsulas. For the moment, there's no breeze and no one else around. I am alone as I walk under the pines and oak trees. Birds are chirping, but since it's afternoon, it feels quiet and sleepy. Even the light feels heavy and lazy as it shines through the leaves. All I can hear is the lake lapping against the shore, sometimes softly, sometimes loudly, and my feet crunching on the pine needles.

I talk to myself a little as I go. I don't remember what I said, but it breaks the silence. After about a mile, I reach The Point, which is the where the trail dead ends at a tumble of dark granite boulders that drop 10 feet to the water level. It's my favorite place to go and relax, because there's one spot just off the left side of the trail where two trees are the perfect distance apart for a hammock. The boulders increase the noise of the lake, so you can hear the water sloshing between the cracks below.

Instead of climbing down the boulders right at the end, I find I want privacy. "Go left along the boulders and follow the shoreline," my soul says to me. So, I turn left and follow a deer trail along the boulders. The tennis shoes I'm wearing make walking on these rocks a little perilous. They're covered in reddish-brown silt and clay and have a tendency to tip when you step on them wrong. Eventually, I make my way over to a large rock sitting out in the water. It's a tiny little hop to go from the shore to the rock, and that's no big deal. Though, suddenly I worry I'm going to slip and fall off the rock. Perched on the boulder, I tell myself I am not going to fall in and to stop being silly worrying about such a thing.

The water is clear and I can see down a few feet. There aren't any fish. I think about how funny it would be for a fish to eat the ring and a fisherman to catch the fish and find themselves in possess of a wedding ring out of the fish's stomach. A boat goes by on the opposite side of the lake.

I look around to make sure I'm alone. Except I know I'm not alone. Looking back up at the edge of the trees, I can sense my Spirit Team is there watching from a respectful distance.

As I was walking to the rock, the words for what I want to say started coming to mind.

So, standing there, I take a deep breath and pull the ring out of my pocket. I hold it up in front of my eyes, focus on the opposite shore through the circle, and begin to speak.

"Let this ring stand for all the karmic cycles now closed. Let it stand for all the lifetimes on Earth and off Earth now closed. As I cast this ring into the water, let all those cycles and lifetimes be released from me. Release them from my soul, my bloodline, and my family both Earth and stellar. So be it. Yena allena."

Then I draw my arm back and throw the ring as far as I can into the lake. It sails through the air and disappears with a soft plunk and a flicker of silver. It is done.

I fight the urge to turn around immediately. But damn if I do not feel exactly like Pippin, impatient and suddenly antsy. My hands gently tap my hips as I try to stand still, and I find myself going, "Well, that's that..... Now what?"

I can feel my family gently chuckling at my "Now what?" Very softly in the back of my mind, I hear, "Now, we dance!" It's a quote from something. I don't know what it is but I recognize a quote when I hear it. I try very hard not to laugh. I fail.

"Savor the moment," my soul says. So, I savor the moment. For a moment. I realize I don't really know how to feel. There's a lot going on under the surface, but nothing coming up. I feel like I should feel this exhilarating rush of completion or emotion or something. Instead, I feel this very hobbit like, pragmatic nature bubbling up. I find I want to dust my hands off like I've just finished planting a seed in a garden and go on with my day. I don't want to cry. I don't want to scream. I don't want to yell. I don't want to do anything but sigh and say "Well, that's that then."

I'm this way about a lot of things. Things that throw people into histrionic emotional expressions, I experience as very pragmatic and calm events. Things that people experience as pragmatic and calm events, I experience with histrionic emotional expressions.

Still perched on the boulder, I let this battle play out. This feeling that I should be much more emotional than I am is fighting with what I actually am feeling. Is there anything wrong with feeling simple completion? Do we have to have big emotions about this? Maybe I just don't have big emotions about this. Maybe all the big emotions are done and released. "Hmm," I find myself going.

"We can go now," I hear in my head. Seems that battle needed to play out, then. That's why she wanted me to stand there a minute.

I follow the shoreline back towards the trail. There's an exit point here I found while fishing that leads to a deer trail that goes back to the main path. I find this exit point, and decide I need to sit down and let my energy settle. So, I sit on the roots that form steps leading up from the shore. I can feel 'Yanna, Seraphel, and Allie sitting with me. We don't say anything for a while. After several minutes of just staring at the lake and watching a boat wake slowly progress through the inlet I say, "Okay, now I'm ready to go home."

As I walk back, I can hear voices of people coming down the trail. I wonder if they heard me while I was doing my ritual. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Does it matter? Well, no, not really.

I get in the car and head back to the apartment. When I open the door, there's one of my cats meowing "hello" like he always does. Taking off my shoes, I say in my best Samwise impression, "Well, Eddie, I'm back." And I can't help but smile at the parallel.


I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

--Kyriel