#NOTALLMEN
by Jennifer Moorman Bolaños
This time I travelled to Vermont in my van, with my dog aboard. I was excited to be able to bring her with me, not leaving her home alone as I pursued ‘moving towards wholeness.’
The Man, self proclaimed as ‘the best sitter for Jennifer’, created the space for me to breathe. He brought the blankets, the pillows, his eye mask, and his whole self as he sat beside me. I asked him to do his ‘Mother, Father, God speech,’ as is our tradition to call in our ancestors to help guide our processes as both breather and sitter. I also opened my akashic records.
As the loud, evocative music began, I breathed, and moved my legs and the rest of my body to the rhythm. Soon I found myself on my knees, facing my mat, pushing my shoulder into the pillow, trying to birth myself. This was a familiar feeling. What was different this time, was not the intensity of my body, my shoulder pushing into that pillow, but the aggressiveness of my inner thoughts: repetitive: I want to Live. I want to live. I want to live. The intensity of my desire to experience life kept me pushing through my birthing process of self.
Once done birthing, I lay exhausted on my mat, belly down. It was then that I felt the pain of what I call my Trump wound. “Weird,” I thought to myself. “I thought I had healed that wound in previous breathwork sessions. I believed the pain to be gone for good.” I felt a deep disappointment of the Trump wound’s return.
The Trump wound was an actual wound I gave to myself cutting wood the day Trump was first elected in 2016. It was the wound of mankind to me; of how could we elect someone who so obviously hates women? I felt that yes, men had betrayed us. The wound was persistent through the years, but had recently, I thought, been eradicated.
Feeling my Trump wound, quite disgusted by it, a man laying on the mat next to me began to scream—Man Like, big strong, ferocious screams. He yelled “oh fuck,” and “shit”, and as his ferocious screams came out of his mouth, they traveled through the air driving right through my Trump wound. His manly screams, his oh fuck, and shit shot through my wound and came out the other side as bright white light—Transformed!
At first I thought, “Oh good, I am healing him.” I worked at actively trying to pull more screams from his body. Then I heard my voice, an inner voice say “Oh, you silly woman, he is healing you.” It was the most glorious feeling. Tears as I realized yes, really, #notallmen! Certainly a lot of men. Scarily, a lot, a lot, a lot of men, but not all men.
I realized that here, at this transpersonal breathwork workshop, I was surrounded by men, my sitter the first among them, who came here to work on themselves to return to wholeness—not perfect—but present—and strong. Had I not had countless conversations with these men over many workshops and many meals? These were good men. These were men who showed up. I cried to see it. #notallmen.
I needed to know it somehow, #notallmen—in order to move on, to live, and I wanted to Live.
I knelt before this ‘oh fuck’ screaming man who helped me to move towards wholeness, and I offered him a peacock feather in gratitude.
The sheer immensity of my gratitude overtook me as the scene changed to a quick vision of the shedding snake into the powerful movement of myself abreast a sea of fire horses bringing in the new. I rose above them as I raised my arm, holding a sceptre in my hand.
I rode the sea of fire horses, my sceptre held high, as I began to see the ashes behind us as civilization crumbled. I looked at the ash and thought, “This cannot be right.” Destruction is not the answer, we must envision what we want to build once the fire has completed its burn. It must be something we build together; men, women, non-binary people, people of all cultures, and religions, and manner of being. I began to see the borders dissolve and the planet return to her wholeness.
I then thought of Trump again, as I always seem to do—he was once a little boy—what happened to that little boy—what happens to all of our little boys? The wound is a portal, to what, to healing? Perhaps all wounds are portals.
#notallmen is a call to me not to abandon men, not to let the hurt I feel—the Trump wound divide and conquer us, me. The masculine and the feminine must unite, become one, move us towards the wholeness we seek.
Balance must be restored.
