The Flava is Pink

Some people don't do pink, I understand, or only certain shades, maybe some veer towards the magenta but feel stifled by rose tones, others, like me, drool over the softness of shell pink while others never wander far from the warmth of coral. The boys in my son's Pre-K class don't go anywhere near any kind of pink, and made my son's cheeks pink with shame when they learned that he'd gone around as the Pink Power Ranger the previous Halloween. I had done nothing to warn him that this might happen when he'd expressed his desire, in fact I was delighted with a boy who was drawn to the feminine. I can't imagine what could be better in a world short on softness.

Amazing isn't it how in our esteem, respect and even love for our peers we sometimes lose ourselves bit by bit, sacrificial victims to belonging, tearing off pieces of our own essence in respect for the strength of another's opinion. We will never know all that's been lost in the game of pleasing parents, pleasing peers, pleasing the love interest. Even in marriages we lose pieces of ourselves for which the "better half" has no room out of general disinterest, outright dismissiveness, distrust, arrogance, or enculturation.

Long before there were therapists the kinds of people we now call shaman practiced the art of Soul Retrieval, journeying into astral worlds to retrieve pieces of people who'd grown ill because of soul loss, who had lost zest for life having given up parts of themselves that didn't hold up to that which threatened, shocked, suffocated or neglected them. I once watched a shaman performing a soul retrieval on a man from the middle east, a man who as a child has been aware of the presence of nature spirits and other ethereal being no one else saw. When he was told that in fact he could not trust his experience, he must have been only dreaming, he lost that piece of himself, just offered it up like that in order to sustain the bond with people he loved.

Years later while separated from them, living in New York, on meds for depression, I watched a shaman work on the man. People do shape shift depending on what nurtures or strangles their souls from moment to moment. Under the sway of the shaman's intense commitment to his authenticity and freedom I saw this man's soul start to flower, I saw his skin grow pink, I saw a sacred little boy return to him, a boy that no one wanted. I want that despised boy around, that boy who sees nature spirits, who doesn't threaten me even if he may have access to more wisdom than I. And I really want that boy around, that one who likes pink. But what can you do? So many shame-infused beliefs prey upon our most tender, inscrutable, innocent and vulnerable parts, and there is no shortcut to learning to protect them, to sensing their loss, much less finding a way to reclaim them. I was moved this week to read my friend Joe Monkman's blog entry about this sort of thing. It inspires me to find sufficient room for my obnoxious parts, the embarrassing parts, the ones still pink at the roots, the ones I suspect some people I respect would have contempt for. BTW, Joe is the shaman I describe above. I am thankful that in this age of materialism, atheism, and heavily mediated "spirituality" I've been able to learn from a man as intuitive, sincere and careful, a soldier of love.