What is Scared Space?
What is Sacred Space? Where is the place where you can access your higher self? Nature? God? Is it a place that can be defined? It is easy to think of an ashram or temple, or a mountain retreat center. Maybe depending on your upbringing, a stained glass windows and heavy doors create a feeling of the divine.
I sit with this question as I write, knowing that the idea of scared space has varied greatly for me through out my life. On my long subway commutes on the A train when we lived in New York City, my sacred space was the area I could shove myself onto a subway seat, plug in my earbuds, and close my eyes. No one could touch this peace inside me if the music was loud enough. When I would arrive home, my sacred space was my beloved Rockaway Beach Boardwalk, walking alongside the ocean at night. Hearing the ocean roar, and seeing the moon illuminate the water… there was nothing more sacred than that.
I have a small altar now, near by bed. On it are a few of my favorite crystals. A photo. Some candles. But it is often disturbed. Sometimes it is the place where I rest a glass of water and my phone before I go to bed. Sometimes it is moved around by my son, lining up my crystals into an imaginary train and spilling my goddess oracle cards around it. Does that make it any less sacred? I don’t know.
As mothers, we create sacred space in our bodies for our children. Our magical bellies serve as a promise to the divine. Let us hold a life inside, and we promise to grow that spark. To manifest cells into a human being. I often think the closest I have ever been to the divine feminine was the nine months that I walked with my son. We take part in a miracle. This taught me that the miracle is inside me. Its always inside me, and I can always walk in the sacred space.
I can’t go to my scared spaces as easily as I used to, but I can create them. I can BE them. I can connect to the divine, and I can allow others to do the same.