the way of the rose

on peace, portals, and the magdalene apprenticeship

i’m sitting in one of my favorite portals in the world — the cafe section at my local barnes & noble — watching snow fall while old school christmas music plays, and today, 12.20.24, is my little sister India Rose’s 24th birthday

one of the first things i ever remember wanting was a little sister — i have fuzzed over memories of being four years old, staring out the window of my childhood bedroom, and asking the stars to make that dream come true, i didn’t even know her yet — didn’t know what she would look like, or when she would come, but i knew she was coming — my soul has always known her

and now, all these years later, as i’ve walked the world with my sister rosie — who showed up when i was eight years old, and who spent the better part of her childhood in and out of hospital beds and doctors offices, who’s spent more hours in physical and speech therapist’s offices, and who i support my family in caretaking as she gets older (and more healthy, and more vibrant, and increasingly dependent on and independent of, us) and i am struck again and again, on how deeply our souls have always known each other — how our souls know each others by heart — how they always have

and how, many years later, i sat in a circle of priestesses, mystics, and children of mary Magdalene, and learned of the sacred path of the rose — an ancient symbol of love and truth, the foundation of the rosary, the path of venus in the sky, a direct connection to a divine love that lives on

sitting in this portal in barnes and noble, i’m thinking about the books that guided my life — the pages that were my best friends, an living companions, as i navigated endless moves as a military kid — an oldest daughter who was called forward, again and again, to make my dreams a reality, to live up to my potential, to be a shining example of what can be— of what has to be

and i think about the concentrated imagination and divine co-creation that facilitated those books, the stewarding role of those authors, to create those sacred blueprints, and revolutionary guide points, hidden between the lines of a children’s fairytale — the first place i remember learning how to hope, the first place the blueprint of a portal revealed itself to me— and how later, much later — as a burnt out adult, in a corporate job, stumbled on a book that wove the story of mary magdalene — and inevitably wove the story of my own spiritual liberation

and then even later, in the middle of a global pandemic, sitting in my childhood home, having left everything i build and loved behind in the city i had spent most of my life dreaming of

i walked into a barnes and noble that was surrounded by crows, and picked up a book about magic and fairytales and love and hope and sex and dreams — “to the stars who listen, and the dreams that are answered”

and these stories, they cracked open a set of memories, of blueprints — of a little girl who believed in magic, who wished for nothing more than a sister, who believed in fairies — and i felt her blossom up inside me again — felt her unravel, like an ancient spool of thread — and then her threads met the woman inside me

the woman who wields magic, who has been tasked with helping her sisters to awaken to their own magic, who laughs with goddesses and deities — who reads silly fiction books about fairies and who has had her heart broken and pieced back together more times than she can count

and together? together they are shattering, heart wrenching, control-destroying

and together they bring relief, belief, softening, opening trust

together they are constantly arriving — together we are constantly arriving

again and again and again

and it’s your time to arrive — if you’ll let it be