On a sunny spring day several years ago, my partner and I decided to walk one of the ancient granite mountains in Georgia. There are three of them, and they have all been around for generations of indigenous peoples long before we were here. There are many stories of the reverence with which the tribal people treated these ancient formations. In the last 100 years, they have been quarried for granite, but were recently reclaimed for nature preserves or recreation areas.
This day we began to walk up the mountain, heading for the top. I stopped to take pictures a couple of times and left my water bottle behind at one spot. When we went back to get it, we paused and considered our options.
I asked SA which way, and he said if it were up to him, he’d go that way, and pointed off to the right around the mountain. I suggested we follow his leanings. He’ll always say that he knows direction, but not route. He also can access memories…knowledge that is not his own, but that occasionally guides him if he is listening. Regardless of what was leading him, I respected the guidance he was receiving, and when he suggested that he was being drawn a different direction by a “memory”, I wanted to honor that. Little did I know the gift at the end was for me. He followed a memory through the quarried stone, the pine trees, around the ridge and into a quiet corner of the mountain. We came upon a grassy area surrounded on three sides by rock. Out in front on the rock ledge were 3 more enormous boulders, larger than 4 adults put together.
The grassy grotto took my breath away for the power emanating from it. We sat on one of the large boulders and just looked at it. I asked SA if he was going in, and he said this place wasn’t for him, it was for me. As I gazed into the space, I felt “unworthy” to enter. It felt like the inner sanctum in a cathedral and I wasn’t allowed in.
But after a few minutes I understood that this place had something for me and we had been led here so I screwed my courage to the sticking place and determined to do whatever it required of me to enter.
I stood up and approached the edge of the grass. I asked for permission to enter and heard in my mind “Take off your shoes”. I took off my shoes. This was holy ground.
I breathed deep and slowly stepped into the grass, now feeling welcomed. The grotto is only about 25 square feet. I walked in about 15 feet and sat down among the moss. I was suddenly filled with a sense of elder wizened women surrounding me. Women who had delivered babies on rocks, tilled the ground and harvested fruit for their families. Women who had borne children in the traditional way. I felt welcomed as one of them, and eventually came the wisdom, “you are worthy”. For a child of mental and emotional abuse, this was an overwhelming notion. I am worthy. Worthy of what? Of goodness, love, wisdom, joy…my heart’s desires. I cried and released some of the chains that I was using to deny myself Life. I began a relationship with the Grotto and the spirits of women who have gone before me. The Grotto calls me back frequently to center and connect with the Sacred Feminine.
