Molting

Feathers. They are everywhere. Our chicken coop is adorned with a fluffy, feathered floor rug. How nice.

Making their way in all different directions are our seven chickens and Mr. Fancypants, our grey used-to-be-feather-clad rooster. Still, for my sweet birds, nothing else has changed. Despite this yearly occurrence, the pecking order remains in place; crowing and clucking sounds echo from the wooden walls of their coop, and I celebrate the few blue and sometimes peach-colored eggs they lay this time of year. Winter hovers over our yard with cold winds and sometimes even snow. Nature is in charge here.

I get the feeling my chickens don’t even know they are molting. I often wonder, do we molt, and if so, would we know when we molt? Would it be a good thing, or would it expose our naked souls, leaving us both transparent and vulnerable? 

Forever, I have felt like a vessel emptied of its contents. We are a vessel emptied by continuous invalidation and belonging. To those who feed on damaged people like us, we are transparent. They find us, then keep us hostage. They have no mercy. Yesterday, my friend Justin described me as “molting.” He is intuitive and speaks from the center of his soul. Does he know something that I don’t? 

Along with many other maimed and mangled suffering souls, Justin and I have been on a journey that reroutes the path leading to who we were always meant to be. While I don’t know if chickens feel their annual fall-through-winter feather shedding, we feel our molting in many ways. 

Mostly, our pain is palpable. We shed tears instead of feathers. At times, we feel nothing; the numbing is the curtain that closes at the end of the devastation show and the darkness that ensues. We are frozen from fear and cannot bear the weight of our presence. There are no illuminated exit signs. Where have our survival skills gone? Perhaps they were rendered disabled by our captors. For so long, we have lived in darkness. Where to now? Is there a way out of all we’ve ever known? Can we even do this? 

Will we ever replace the vacant space in our empty toolbox with all we need to repair and strengthen our rust-ridden implements? Can we learn to slay the villains living within us that were implanted by sickening soul-snatchers? Those foes deemed us fodder for their insatiable appetite for boundary obliteration; they devour every part of us to satisfy their bloodthirsty sustenance.

If only we could dance through the pain from our tormented past and ease the hopeful evolution from all we’ve ever known. Where do we even begin? Will we ever find the entrance to this perilous path toward our healing? Will we find a purposed, peaceful self at the end of this pilgrimage?

I want to believe that in molting, we are shedding the cracking pieces our broken pasts have layered over our souls. Perhaps our molting is just the invisible and insidious process of losing the debris and devastation that no longer serve us. Maybe the events, people, and frozen feelings will all fall away, and we will feel the freedom and weightlessness we have always deserved and desired. After all, we were born to be loved. We were wired to give and receive validation and belonging. These were stolen from us by robbers who made off with our boundaries and self-worth. 

Shame on them! 

They blamed and shamed us. This journey our group is on has provided a safe place to learn our molting and allows us to bravely begin anew. This process will uncover the spark that has continuously resided within us. It formerly barely flickered away. Our internal candles were lit with the first beat of our forming heart. The layers of scars and scabs stacked upon one another, obscuring the spark, potential warmth, and illumination our flickering flame offered. But when those layers lay in splinters on the dusty dirt beneath our feet, we began to see and feel this flame and fed it with the oxygen that fills our newly expanded lungs. Our growing flame leads us to where the grass meets the path. 

We can now command our feet to move in a forward motion. Grass is greener, wildflowers are fragrant, stones and boulders that line the path’s edge are the perfect metaphor for where the strength lies in the crevices where our healing once hid. We will experience the gravity that holds them in place. Their station is the perfect example of the stillness we will employ to map our safe excursion from intended harm. We’ve learned that we can do this. 

Time is the glorious gift we unwrapped and will wear like a warrior’s cloak. Just watch us soldier on! 

Along with the gift of time and patience, we’ve been mentored by the sculpture masters who guided us in carving and creating the haven for our emblazoned souls. We sing a salute to the brilliance of our flame that flickers for all to see. And when sinister soul-stealers attempt to extinguish our light we will breathe deeply and provide oxygen fire swallows to become a billowing bonfire.

We are good. We are valid. We matter. We are savage. And we are free.