Posted on Instagram on May 19, 2018

"I am so close, you can't see me. I am so much a part of you, you can not call my name. But I am with you. I am with you in the shadows. I
am with you on the rough edges, the paper thin cuts, the dark tunnels, the dry deserts, the burnt out places, the wounds too deep to reach.
I am with you there, in the unsolvable, the unlovable, the holy regret. I am with you in the grandest mistake and the missed opportunity. I
walk with you through your past, kicking over stones. I walk with you into the future, an unknown land. I sit with you now, wherever you
are. I do not leave or falter. When you think you can not hear me, close your eyes. When you think you can not feel me, breathe. When you
think you are alone, lie back. Open your mouth. Taste the love that pours slow and rich like honey, an unending supply."
(Lori-Lyn Hurley, Mornings with Mary @lorilyn)
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I could say so much about this one. I could talk about a childhood love for the sweet statue of Mary in my town's church. Of May evenings with my old aunts and their old lady friends, praying the rosary, the only child.
I could talk of years spent refusing it all. Christian patriarchal stuff, angels and Mary along with it, all closed in a corner and rebelled against.
Of how I wanted to be respected as a woman, yet despised women.
I could talk of a dark dark night of the soul - of dark dark days, and of how I passed hours of panic saying the "Salve Regina" in Latin, words learned during these long gone May evenings with a rosary chain in my childhood's hands.
I could tell you how I ended up claiming it back, my sweet Mary, my Holy Mother, past the what the priests would tell me, past the patriarchy, past the rulebooks - claiming back the sacred feminine, how I see it, how I feel it, how I need it, too.
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How I find refuge in her often, how I let myself sink in her open arms and let her embrace comfort me.
Without words. Without rules. Without holy books written by men. Without priests. Without someone approving of how I decide to do it - to live my relationship with her.
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How by doing this I claim back a piece of myself. How I go one step closer to being whole.
Always, all ways, all love