“Listen with your ears, your eyes, your throat, your abdomen, your toes…we can listen with everything. Imagine listening with your belly to the cricket on the stairs, the raven at the door.” - Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior

My son’s babysitter was here today for six hours, watching him while I engaged in assisting my long-time mentors and friends in their new virtual mentorship program. Bella just returned from a semester of college in NYC and had some time to babysit on her break. When it was time for her to leave, Ari broke down into uncontrollable sobs, knowing she is heading back to school in a few short days. After she left, he continued to cry for an hour, and eventually cried himself to sleep. 

As we lay there on my big, cozy bed, I held him. I stroked his hair and forehead and told him it was okay to be sad. Everything in me wanted him to stop. My mother-bear-ness just wanted more than anything for him to be okay, for his sadness and grief to disappear. As I held this awareness in myself, and didn’t act on it, another voice emerged. The voice of my inner alchemist. What she said was, just hold the vessel, just hold the space, keep him contained and let him feel whatever he needs to feel. Simply let it be without trying to change him. Sit next to him, cherish him, let him know you care. Let him be. I’m here, I told him, I’ve got you. I love you more than all of the stars in the universe. You are the most important person in my life. I’m so sorry you are sad, it is sad that she is leaving. I’m here for you. 

I wish someone could have done that for me when I was six. How much I longed for there to be space for me to feel something, for me to need something, for me to simply be allowed to be. To feel whatever it was in any given situation or experience. 

Why is it that it has become normal for us to be numb? A good child is the numb child who doesn’t react “negatively” by displaying any emotion. Why is this the gold standard we measure success by? As Ari lay crying, the more I allowed him space, the more his cry became like a little wolf cub’s howl. He was howling. It was so painful, so full of grief. It was a profound sound. I knew it was more than just Bella leaving. In that howl I heard the grief of almost two years of isolation, the terror of losing loved ones to a nameless monster that might come knocking at your door any second, the horrifying transition back into school settings where crying and being angry were not allowed. The drastically misunderstood and toxic mis-labeling that landed him in a disturbing classroom setting with no other options “allowed.” 

How is this normal? My child is a joy-bringer. He is non-binary, creative, neuro-atypical genius. His wailing was more normal than most of what I see as normative on a daily basis. I am proud of his wolf howl. I am aspiring to rewild and reforest myself with him as my guiding archetypal force. To allow myself to be messy, to honor the places inside that need to be held so they can howl. To untether my hair, and loosen my perfect buttons; to let my belly hang, full and free, and to not apologize for it. To relish in it. To dance on the bones of what is no longer relevant or in service to my entelechy. An act of revolutionary measures. 

For every time I have shushed him in public places, gotten angry with his scientific experimental messes in the house, I am making a space for his entelechy to emerge, howls and all. 

I am sorry, please forgive me, my son.

Neuro-atypicalness is showing up everywhere. It is emergent in the children who are showing up at this time. Maybe we could look at this differently. Rather than seeing it as a problem to solve, or a horrible life-ending disability. I know first hand how full of obstacles life can be for these children, their families and caregivers trying to exist in systems they don’t fit neatly into or at all. What if we held this multi-faceted atypicalness up to the light and turned it? What if we could see the insane intelligence that these kids embody?

What if this rewiring of the brain and neuro pathways is a stroke of genius, what if these are the very pathways that are needed for the coming terrain and the continued disintegration of what is no longer working? Our structures are breaking down, they can no longer hold; they are broken systems. Perhaps all of the extra sensory issues are actually superpowers. All of these extra sensory abilities may be what we need to form new pathways of communication and understanding in a world where our systems of communication are dramatically limiting us. What if the neuro-atyp brain is showing us externally what is going on in all of our insides, like a dramatic mirror to our shadows and souls. A melong designed to reveal our true natures. Perhaps the integral is showing up in the neuro hardware of these beings. 

There is a current flowing through us. A stream, the current of something that is both ours and not ours. A river of wisdom, and rhizomal information. The wind speaks, the trees inform us with their knowings, if only we are quiet enough to listen. This ability to lean back into this, not just to see the snow, but to know myself as the snow, not separate from it. To feel the cold wisps, prickles on my skin as snowflakes, to know myself as not separate from the webbing roots underneath my feet as I move throughout my day, awake or asleep in my world. These extraordinary children I sense that they are not separate from this knowing. They are tapped into the root systems, the underground caves, and the winged flights above. They feel the soft currents of air beneath the winged ones as if they were the ones in flight. They sense the water like little selkies ready to dive into the vast depths. What if these extra sensory extra ordinary sensate beings are being called forth by Gaia herself and all the supporting spirits of the planet? As we struggle to break down barriers of exclusivity and mental consciousness level patriarchal epidemic, what we need are beings that can traverse the realms and be willing to be open to multidimensional categorizations of being, to honor all life forms, both material and immaterial. What if we all could shift our minds to extra sensate thought? To include our bodies in the process, as harbingers of wisdom and information. How radical it would be to think differently about what is possible for our world and for ourselves in our daily lives. If we can only embrace our own quirk, that we are each infinitely full of juicy differences, yet all intimately and integrally hitched to each other, and to her. Our shoots and roots connect to all of the animal beings, nature spirits, and the network of support that cannot be seen with our civilized sight.