Carrying the Battle: A Reckoning with the Dark Feminine
Every year at this time my nervous system speaks. A traumatic event reverberates through many other life experiences that were harmful to my body and my spirit. The threads of systemic narcissism, sociopathic men with weapons, the lack of accountability and consequences at all levels and timelines. To carry this knowing with you is a simultaneous hardship and freedom—a kind of wisdom and grief that can bring with it a very sacred rage that must be tended to carefully.
This morning I had my first biomagnetism session of 2026. With magnets placed all over my body with thorough intention, I felt my fascia and lymphatic system wake up, like a wave of gentle electricity moving through my legs and upper body. Like waking up after a long slumber—moving, shifting, releasing. We spoke about things that may be draining me, not serving me to carry, and some surprising things came up. Our conversation swayed from one fascinating idea to the next until the single sentence "carrying the battle" stood out to me like a loudspeaker. In the moment I felt the shift, but it wasn't until the ride home that the grief returned to me. From young Diana to now, carrying the sight of the harm, the empathy for life and love, and mostly my endless well of love for this earthly place.
Why? I thought. Why are these men in the world trying so hard with all their might to destroy it all?
As I drove home, that inner battle began to translate itself to me. It's the tightening and holding in the fascia of the feminine wound against the narcissistic reign of men. The toxic masculinity that somehow is hell-bent on horror, harm, murder, rape, and all its forms. I forget—or maybe I hadn't come to the full understanding—that I hold and carry this horrible awareness with me every day, and even wage internal battles that become stuck inside me and so draining to my systems.
The scream is still so suppressed, deep in my heart, the pain. And so I purge, my body at times forcing me to release when I continue to hold it within.
My experience with Lyme disease was with very angry and malicious pathogens, much like the male narcissist, clawing at me from the inside, draining me and using my power against me, slowly depriving me of healthy blood and dysregulating my system almost constantly. Systematically breaking me down on many levels. I dreamt of the creatures and bacteria in my body. I would reach into my abdomen and pull out black worms that would tighten around my wrists with rage, trying to survive as I was exposing them. I pulled them out of my back, my bladder meridians in my dreams. I saw them often and fought them with all my might in the dream space. As I slowly moved into treatments, I remember dreaming of a giant pot of boiling water on the stove, stewing a blend of herbs, and inside were floating dead wormy parasites. I woke up in relief. Finally, proof that I was beginning to win the fight.
In my lifetime I have had numerous crossings of paths with this male narcissistic energy. It's all too common, no matter how small or hidden, still creating harm in the world, in schools, communities, places that are supposed to be safe. When I was young I struggled so deeply with the brutal awareness of this kind of harm. Why me? Did I deserve it? I felt helpless to the lessons and even angry at times at not knowing what the point of this experience was. I remember screaming at the universe to give me some understanding and got nothing in response. What was I supposed to do, simply witness? I wanted to stop it all, tear it all down and watch it burn.
This battle is old for me, as ancient as stone, and has been with me for what feels like lifetimes. The anniversary of watching a coyote be ripped apart and killed by hunting hounds looms. On a crisp February Sunday morning, my son yelled to me from the bathroom, "Mom! There are dogs tearing through the garden!" I ran to see. My first instinct was to run outside and confront it all. Multiple trucks pulled up and a bunch of men, armed and in hunting gear, were suddenly all over my property. In the chaos I had not seen the coyote, but as I saw the men simply standing there watching the dogs, I asked, and they told me. As soon as I realized what was happening, I tried so hard to catch the dogs, to use my entire body to interrupt the harm, to use my body to cover the coyote. I was so unbelievably horrified and shocked. They just stood there. Something was so very wrong with these guys. So I went full-on lunatic. I had to. Everything in my female body was screaming at full force. I chased them off the land. Some fled early. Two remained with me as I pushed them back into the roadway. I suspect I cast a curse on them all, but particularly those two. I could see a kind of remorse or a breath of humanity in their eyes, but it was far too late for any of that. It was almost as if they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into, and here they were in the face of it. In front of a woman who was mirroring their inner ugly right back at them. In that moment, looking at these two little wounded boys in the street, I understood that their karma was already in print. I didn't have to do anything, really. They would already pay in the next life if not sooner. They had broken some kind of sacred code, an earthly understanding, and nothing had ever given them permission to do what they had done on that day and any other before it. They were undeniably fucked. And as I pulled back my rage slowly, I kept that knowing with me.
In the days and weeks after, I held many rituals big and small. I shoveled up blood from the coyote's body in the snow. I was bleeding myself as the tears fell and my rage swelled and expanded. My cycle was brought on by the sheer trauma of it all. I burned herbs, I sang songs, beat the drum, smoked the peace pipe, and had other women come to hold more ceremony with me for support. Not long after, I heard a lone male coyote respond to me one night and sing just behind my property. I felt he was male, calling for his mate perhaps. His song of grief filled my body with awe and emotion. A sacred gift only I was able to feel. Perhaps in response to my prayers and keening for the spirit of the murdered coyote. Somehow I knew with absolute certainty that this coyote's song was an integral part of the healing process for us both as well as the land.
A distant neighbor brought me a fresh deceased coyote in the weeks after. She had witnessed it get hit by a car. Everyone else left its body in the road, yet she paused and went through the trouble of transporting it to me. Somehow she knew this was also part of the healing for me and all the spirits here. I spent a lot of time with the body of that coyote. I was able to grieve alongside it. Its paw, placed in my hand, fit perfectly over my entire palm. I offered up proper ritual and eventually transported it deep into the forest where I know the coyotes dwell. We placed it within a circle of elder cedar trees and sprinkled herbs and flowers all over and around the body. My daughter and I sang and beat the drum. It was a ritual of deep grief, yet also a message to the coyotes, an offering, a giving back of a body that was taken without permission, an attempt at healing from such a brutal violation. Years later I went back to the spot and found perfectly clean bones. I took a few home and now use them for spells to protect this place from further harm.
Within all the aftermath I squirmed with that same old question. Why me? What the hell did I do to deserve to witness such horrific harm?! I guess I was asking the wrong question all this time. It was never about what I deserved and didn't deserve. It was never about anything I did or didn't do. It was a calling. A calling from a place so ancient and so alive. Deep from the bones of the earthen forest and all the sentience it holds, it was calling to me directly. And so I had to learn to truly understand what the message was, and what must I do with it. For weeks I saw coyotes in my dreams, just being with me, some snarling and snapping at me, challenging me, pushing me forward. Testing my rage and how far I would take it. This felt like a kind of initiation into their world, something I hadn't imagined for myself—a shamanic entrance into a feral place within me that was becoming and beginning to unleash. This was a strength I actually needed. You see, in order to alchemize the narcissism in the world, you need to become its worst nightmare. You've got to have a scary feral wildness within, which in turn becomes scary to the weakness in men.
Moving forward, with the help of an increasingly large group of Vermonters who had experienced similar violations, I began the task of speaking publicly about what happened, raising awareness, challenging the status quo, or ruffling feathers as I've heard. My story sparked outrage and spread quickly in all ways. Some facts were twisted slightly, things about me personally were incorrect, but I didn't care. It was the horrific part of the story I needed people to hear the most. The farther I went, the more narcissistic people I met—some women, mostly men, even some women in powerful seats who were outnumbered and whose voices were hushed over the noise of bitching and whiny men in seats of power. And right out of the textbooks of psychology on narcissistic tendencies, they began attacking my character, but first and foremost my mental stability. Most people in my community kept quiet, as if to completely turn away from me and my actions, as if I was the problem. And yet again, there I was standing in the middle of a harmful and dysfunctional family, not unlike my childhood, but now in a larger community. One that I thought I had some belonging in. One that I thought I was safe in. This process was the single most brutal awakening of my life, and the threads of it still remain. The isolation, the "how dare she" attitude, the unbelievably clear compliance to a system that's supposed to protect wildlife yet promotes hatred and bias against wildlife and separates the good ol' boys from the public, giving them free reign on the forest. No checks and balances, no enforcement of regulations, and zero consequences. Sound familiar?
So here we are today in a world seemingly full of narcissistic men in power, destroying everything that has been built for centuries. Trust, communication, attempts at creating healthcare, safety, and the list goes on and on. No checks and balances is a long story in history that has always remained.
My experience with the coyote taught me fiercely that my sensation of safety was always an illusion, and until a world is built around empathy and a collective humanity working towards mental, physical, and spiritual health of all, we will stay on this fresh little island of hell, imbalance, carnage, and horror.
The call of the dark goddess is an ancient path, one that asks for sacrifice and pain so internally. To experience such brutal violations to anything alive and part of the web of life is traumatic. Period. I was crucified by people around me, by community members in so-called seats of power and respect, for trying to call out the harm, for trying to protect what has the right to be here. But because I was shifting the status quo, I was the problem. Why do we want to remain in this collective sickness? What is it with men who cannot see beyond their own sociopathy? Why haven't I had enough time with men who are living with their hearts—imperfectly, but as best they can—in their own heartbreak they continue to reach for love and tenderness over and over again.
I carry pain too. So much of it. Lifetimes of loss and horror, beauty and love. Yet it is coded in my whole body that I do not have permission to project that onto the world around me. Do we need to teach our boys this? What is the solution to end this reign of men on the world?
The dark goddess reaches into the ether. She grabs hold of the web and transmutes the darker forces. Her weapon is her drive to protect what is holy and sacred in this world. The feminine, the divine, all that is good in the world. She calls to me every day, and I am so tired. So, so tired of witnessing so much.
The call plants a seed though. One that you can no longer deny and can not unsee. An awakening to see the truth of what has been hidden for too long and its time is up. So you see, no matter how painful it is to witness, we must come towards the truth, alchemize the lies and gaslighting, and become their worst nightmare. Which is, someone who sees through their mechanisms and tactics and is completely unaffected. Someone who reaches deep into the web and pulls those parasites out for good. Burning them to dust that feeds the soil for the future.
XO
Diana
