Sit back and relax my friend and let me tell you the legend of La Loba…
There is a woman named La Loba who lives in a hidden place, full of caves and shadows that everyone knows, but few have visited. She waits for the lost, the wandering, and the seekers.
The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She is known to collect and preserve especially that which is in danger of being lost. Her cave is filled with bones of all manner of creatures, but her specialty is wolves.
She wanders throughout the mountains and dry river beds of the wilderness, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, the last bone in place, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing. When she knows the song, she stands over the bones, raises her arms, and sings.
That is when the bones of the world begin to flesh out and become furred. The more La Loba sings, the more the creature comes into being. When La Loba sings so deeply that the ground rattles and shakes, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.
Somewhere, as it’s running, whether by the water it splashes as it runs in the river, or by the way the moonlight hits it just right, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.
It is said that if you wander in the wilderness, and perhaps are a little lost, if you are lucky, La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something of the soul.
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The story of La Loba is an invitation to us all.
At some point, an invitation to enter this wilderness place comes to us, and it comes to us from our very soul. It’s a call to be aligned with our truest self. It’s a call to embark on a journey to a place full of caves and shadows. It often comes to us through a deep inner ache. One we feel in our bones, from the bones we discarded on our path to try to become what our culture told us we should be.
When this invitation arrives, we have a choice to either go bone collecting in the unknown or to stay in the safe, familiar territory. The journey into the wilderness will be perilous. It comes with a price. It appears easier to not go. But the soul’s call can be hard to ignore.
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In her book, Braving The Wilderness, Brene Brown describes the wilderness as, “an untamed, unpredictable place, of solitude and searching, it’s a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared.”
Brown continues declaring the wilderness to be, “the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand. The special courage it takes to experience true belonging and connection is not just about braving the wilderness, it’s about becoming the wilderness. It’s about breaking down the walls, abandoning our ideological bunkers, and living from our wild heart, rather than our weary heart.”
So if your heart is weary and there is an ache in your bones, it might just be time to go into the wild of your own heart and start collecting every last piece of you that has been discarded and neglected.
Then, when the last bone is in place, and you know just the right song to sing, may you sing it until the earth shakes. May your bones begin to flesh out and may you run free into the night, living from your wild heart, rather than the weary one you left behind.
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And here’s the reward for the journey: Instead of being motivated by the guilt and shame of never being enough, you’ll feel motivated by your own innate, inviolable, ineffable worth and wholeness. You’ll live from a place of sovereignty, and freedom.
So tell me, what’s the song you’ll sing over your bones?
When you know what it is, I invite you to play it loud. Cause the ground to rattle. Dance in the moonlight, holding nothing back.
Bring yourself back to life.
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{Stay tuned for Part 2 coming next month! I’ll be sharing a very personal account of collecting and singing over my own bones.}
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