My Juno Magazine interview- My Life My Way

Rachael CrowBlog, Uncategorized

 

My Life My Way

Alice Ellerby speaks to Rachael Crow, healer, intuitive energy worker and drum maker, about the strength of surrender

Your latest book is called Cancer as Initiation. What does initiation mean to? An initiation can be anything that changes your life. As women, we are initiated by our bodies: our first period, motherhood, breastfeeding, end of breastfeeding. Those initiations are mini deaths. You become a mum and your life changes; that old you has died. Even when you start your first blood – you’re not a child any more; that old part of you has died. So, coming at cancer, it was the initiation of looking death in the eye. This is the death: the biggest initiation of life, which might have been stepping over the threshold into death or into wellness, but in a different way to how I’d been living before.

How did your illness change your relationship with your womb? I’ve been doing womb work for 30 years and I’d learned so much about myself through my womb and my cycle – it had been a real spiritual journey for me. At the beginning, I was absolutely determined I was keeping my womb, but I got to a place of realising that there’s so much more to life than womb work . I reached this point of surrender when they said the tumour in my womb was too large to do a hysterectomy. The fact that she’s still there… she represents an altar to what I’ve been through. She’s this really sacred part in my body. Why did I get it in my womb? Was my womb absorbing all of this density, cancer, whatever it is, on my behalf, to keep me safe? Ultimately we can never know, but just holding that question is interesting.

How did facing death bring freedom? Coupled with my practice of meditation, I just have this belief that we live forever. We are not this mortal body. It was interesting to sit with both the grief of leaving my family, leaving my children, and the thought that, wow, I could be free of this body and this illness and this life. And it was powerful to know that in the freedom of surrendering to death, I’m really choosing life. In working with people with cancer, they almost feel that by facing it, they’re inviting death in – they might manifest it. But you have to face it to be free of the fear.

How important was ceremony in your cancer journey? I love ceremonies. It’s what I’ve spent my life doing with women – celebrating their periods, celebrating their births, pregnancies, menopause, all of it. There was a time when I had been scheduled for surgery – they were going to take the ovaries – and it got postponed for two weeks. In those two weeks, I had a bleed. How many women get to know when it is their last ever bleed? I called the women, we went down to the river, I stripped off naked, they painted me in red ochre, I went into the water and I offered my blood to mother earth. I released my past life. Ceremonies also help to form your community. Those women, they would just be there for me. And I think that was testament to all the women’s circles that I’d held. It was time to let them hold me.

Are there other occasions that give you a chance to rebirth yourself? For women, I think we have that opportunity almost every month: that’s the bleed. You can dive into that death threshold if you choose to. If you strive to keep things the same all the time, you’re not opening up to the opportunity of initiation and the mystery that brings. It’s really hard for human beings to allow the unknown. To be in a place where we don’t know what’s happening can be really magical. We live under the illusion that we can control life, but we can’t. There is the opportunity to surrender every day in every moment. That’s the spiritual way of living.

How difficult was it to sell your business? The first time I had the diagnosis, I carried on working. Although I thought I was doing a lot more self-care, I was still in the stress of being self-employed. I’d been running Moon Times for twenty-odd years. It was time for me to let go, but it was another surrender. I worked with a business coach and she helped me visualise the right parents for it, and when I did that, it flowed really easily. It was a massive weight off my shoulders and amazing to be able to focus on my healing. You need to trust that you’ll be looked after. A group of friends set up a GoFundMe so I had money coming in to help pay towards things. Whether it’s the Universe that’s got your back, or your mates, or your partner, or your family, you have to trust you will be taken care of.

You gave everything to your healing. What has come since? If it doesn’t have beauty, joy or love in it, I don’t go near it. That’s my new life. It’s not stress. It’s not anger. My life is much more simple now than it was, which I love.

rachaelcrow.co.uk

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