I Want To Know How Human You Are
Can we be unmistakenly human? Are we willing to dive completely into the full human experience without holding back?
How human are you? I mean, really human without masks, protection, and deception?
I invite you to read Taylor Rose Godfrey’s painfully beautiful essay on being human in Elephant Journal with an open heart and mind.
I Want to Know How Human You Are
In a pained society longing for connection, community, truth, and understanding, it’s important that we not spin out on spiritual consumerism.
I use my words to challenge humanity to take a step back and re-evaluate the ways in which our humanness, our character, our integrity are the perfect display of the spiritual.
How can we integrate our spirituality into our everyday lives?
As a mother, a writer, a lover, a Shamanic doula working in the realms of birth and death, a body and breath worker who’s overcome the struggles of single motherhood and sexual and physical abuse, I have nearly seen it all. I’ve encountered skinned knees, ripped clothing, and dirty skin making my way to “good enough.”
I’ve never made enough money, but I’ve always been soul rich. And the work on the ground has brought me much gratitude for my beat-up truck and hand-me-down winter boots, despite how unpopular they might be. Finding my place in the world as a “white” woman of mixed cultural backgrounds and having overcome so many struggles early on in life has not only left me gifted, but for a very long time, separate.
I’ve been in spiritual communities that wanted nothing but to see me small. I’ve been in churches that couldn’t accept me because I was broken. I’ve dated men who played the perfect spiritual warrior, but lacked the integrity to show up to the plate when it was time for the hard conversations. I’ve witnessed a handful of ways people could come off as “well put together,” or at least safe and trustworthy, only to find out there was no room for authenticity there.
As an advocate for healing and a mother pioneering the safety and advocacy of future generations, it is my calling to pull the fables out of my personal story and break down the personalities that have kept us from connecting at the core—the place that we are all human. Raw. Vulnerable. Hurting, and looking to come more into unity. The place that we can take off the mask of spiritual identity and meet one another in our tender heart space, in a way that is practical, safe, and loving for all—especially the elders and the children.
I want to know how much we can strip these layers and come back to our primal human nature. So, here’s to realness.
I don’t care how spiritual you are. How long you can melt in the sweat lodge and meet your ancestors. How many peyote journeys that have blown your mind, or how well you can hold Crow pose. I don’t care what planets fall in what houses on your birth chart, how many crystals you have, or how vegan your diet is.
Honestly, I don’t.
As intriguing and valuable as these experiences are, ultimately, I want to know how human you are. Can you sit at the feet of the dying, despite the discomfort that arises? Can you be with your grief, or mine, without trying to advise, change, or maintain it? I want to know that you can show up at the table no matter how shiny, chakra-aligned, or complete you are, or not. Can you hold loving space for your beloved in the depths of your own healing without trying to be big?
It doesn’t flatter me how many online healing certifications you have, that you live in the desert or in a log cabin away from society, or that you’ve mastered the art of tantra. These things are great. But what matters to me is what you did with it. Can you come down from the high and attend to the laundry? Clean the toilets? Create magic in the mundane?
What turns me on is busy hands and planting roots. That despite how tired you are, you make that phone call, board that plane, love your children, and feed your family.
I have no interest in how well you can ascend to 5D astral travel or have out-of-body sex. I want to see how beautifully you integrate into ordinary reality with your unique magic, how you find beauty and gratitude in what’s surrounding you, and how present you can be in your relationships.
I want to know that you can show up and do the hard and holy things on this gorgeously messy earth. I want to see that you can be sincere, grounded, and compassionate as equally as you are empowered, fiery, and magnetic. I want to know that even during your achievements, you can step back and be humble enough to still be a student.
What’s beautiful and sexy and authentic is how well you can continue to celebrate others no matter how advanced you’ve become. What’s truly flattering is how much you can give despite how full you’ve made yourself. What’s honestly valuable is how much better of a human you can be, in a world that is high off of spiritual materialism and jumping the next scapegoat for “freedom.”
At the end of the day, I don’t care how brave you are. How productive, how popular, how enlightened you are.
At the end of the day, I want to know that you were kind. That you were real. I want to know that you can step down from the pedestal from time to time to kiss the earth and let your hair get dirty and your feet get muddy and join the dance with us all.
Taylor Rose is a mother first, a pursuit in which has inevitably shaped the remainder of her life’s meaning. It was through motherhood that she learned patience, presence, fragility and strength, and seeing that life is our gift to us. Wearing many hats of servitude, she is a writer, somatic therapist, childcare worker and birth & death doula.
The core of all her work lies in showing up fully for life’s most sacred rites of passages: birth, death, and every transformative breath in between. She encourages healing through sacredly witnessing deep traumas, destigmatizing shame and body needs, owning authentic embodiment, redeeming the power of one’s voice, and living out our sovereign birthright. Her foundation is built on the redemption, remembrance and resurrection of the primordial feminine current.
As a writer, she believes that telling our personal stories and highlighting important nuances helps to break down stigmas and indoctrinations, catalyze a spirit of restoration and lifeforce, and embody a level of divine healing and wisdom. She believes the voice is a tool for anchoring in divinity and pioneering humanity into future paradigms.
(Inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s poem, “The Invitation.”)
What was your experience of reading about being human in this essay? What shifted in your perception of yourself and your purpose here and now?
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Michael Swerdloff
Providence Holistic Counselor, Coach and Reiki
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