The Swan In The Driveway

Recently, I awoke to find a dead swan in my driveway.

At first, I missed the obvious—that this was an offering, an initiation.

I called the Department of Wildlife, who directed me to the Department of Environmental Management. Their instructions? Put on gloves and a mask, double bag it, and throw it in the garbage.

I don’t think so.

What unfolded over the next 24 hours was a surreal mix of the comical and the sacred. There I was, harboring a dead swan the size of a small child, slowly decomposing in a garbage bag in the trunk of my car. I drove around, searching for a green space private enough to return her to the earth, all while feeling like a criminal.

And yet, the messages began to arrive.

“Clip the yellow flowers you placed on your altar after your mother passed. Scatter them around the swan.” “Pour honey into her beak. Anoint her eyes. Gather moss. Sing over her.”

She offered me thirteen feathers and whispered: “This is the medicine of the Great Mother’s love returning to your heart.”

She arrived on the day of the lunar eclipse, under the light of the blood moon. She offered more words: “Keep your eyes wide open in grief.” “The swan swims in the moon’s body.”

The heaviness and anxiety I carried until I could return her body to the earth was suffocating. I felt shame, fear, urgency. As if I were doing something terribly wrong, as if the very worst would happen if I got caught.

And then I realized—this is the collective energy. This is what so many women (if not all of us) feel. The silenced ones. The hidden ones. The ones who just want to feel safe enough to be who they are—to share their voice, their vision, their power.

The medicine women. The storytellers. The artists. The healers. The poets.

This shame, this urgency to hide, this fear of being seen—it’s ancient. It’s systemic. It’s been passed down through lineages and sewn into our nervous systems. I never truly knew my mother because she had already gone to sleep decades before her body died. She never let me into her story, only passed me the weight of it, like a mantle of shame.

And so I carry it. Every day. In fear.

Fear that I’m going to hell. Fear that I’m losing my mind. Fear that I’m demonically possessed for having prophetic dreams and seeing the unseen. Fear that I’ve missed my calling. That it’s too late. That I am a failure. That I have nothing of value to give. That I will never know what it feels like to be loved.

Can I enter into these wounds? Can I make this fear a prayer? Can I say yes?

A Reflection for You

What are the fears you carry quietly? The ones that have shaped your voice, your choices, your sense of safety? The fears passed down in silence or sewn into your bones through experience?

What have you hidden away to stay acceptable, unshamed, unseen?

Is there a part of you—creative, intuitive, wild, or tender—that’s been waiting for your permission to come home?

What might it mean to honor your grief, your fear, your longing… not as signs of brokenness, but as offerings?

What if fear could become a prayer?

Take a moment. Place your hand on your heart. Breathe. And listen. What is your swan trying to tell you?