Lessons in Beauty from a Roadkill Turkey
Let rage have its place at the table, but not at the head.
My hip flexors want to hinge my body in half. I’ve had the feeling all day, the old protective pattern of tail-tucking, accompanied by a sense of collapse. I will bleed soon. My body feels animalistic, curling in to protect a vulnerable soft underbelly, throat tight to hold in words not ready for the daylight.
Dreams and in-between pauses have been bubbling with untethered memories and unspoken grievances all month long. Unless I slow down, turn inward, and coax the feelings I haven't had the bandwidth for, the hinges grip like rusty iron, causing shooting pains through my pelvis. It’s a pretty obvious equation to me now, but it wasn’t always so. The fear of feeling my own emotions used to make me recalcitrant. I had horrible periods then, absolutely debilitating. Now I know, the buildup of unprocessed grief, anger, rage, sorrow, and loneliness gets lodged into my hip joints. So now I listen to the animal of my body, and I give her time to grieve during my inner dark moon.
I’ve been doing this grief dance with my body every moon cycle now for nearly 10 years. I’ve processed a lot of difficult things, and I catch myself hopefully thinking I’m through it all, as if there’s an endpoint I’m striving for. Truth is, it just comes in waves. As I heal, new grievances arise. So now it seems I’m into the foundational layers, the family-of-origin stuff, and there’s something I’m excavating that I cannot fully comprehend. I sense my body wants to protect me, thus it’s hinging closed. ‘Respect the body’, I hear from somewhere.
As I lower myself into the emotional well, something significant surfaces - a memory from a dream. In the dream, I am confronted with a pattern of collapse that seems related to this feeling in my hips.
I am walking into a house, through a door with beveled glass that reminds me of my grandmother, and the glass in her sofa room where I used to take naps. The glass used to throw rainbows all over the room. Now I am walking into my first love’s house. There are other familiar characters from our past in the house, it seems there’s a party going on. He greets me exuberantly and draws me into the house for a tour. I feel a little awkward, we haven’t seen each other in a long time, and everyone here seems close. We walk into a study of sorts, which is lined with dozens of self-portraits of him on the walls. A liberating thought, was he always this narcissistic? I turn to face a man behind me, a dear old friend. I ask him, “How could you let him do that to me? How could you let him dictate your life too?” I turn back to face my old love and he looks down at me with true remorse in his eyes. “I am really sorry you know.” I begin to collapse inward, that familiar feeling of appeasement. I can’t let his apology in, and I can’t let my true feelings out. I feel trapped and sick, but I’m smiling saying it’s okay.
In reflection, my dream guide told me she felt rage come up in her own body after he apologized. The moment she said that I started weeping. It’s true, it’s there. Buried. I’m terrified of it. I’m so afraid of my own rage that I cause myself to collapse in order not to burn the house down and everyone in it. That’s how big it feels. She suggests I take this dream onto the land, into the woods, where I can safely begin to let it out and express it. My coming dark moon I will have time, so I begin to mentally prepare.
It’s getting colder, finally. A bizarre winter in Northern Michigan so far. Rarely has it dropped below thirty degrees, and it’s the nearly the end of January. I work up to the idea of trudging through the snow to walk my dog in these dropping temps when all I want is a hot water bottle on my belly and a cup of tea. But maybe the walking will help me stretch out and hinge back upright.
Walking gives my mind a rhythm to ruminate to. There is a relational loop that I’m starting to track. It’s been creeping up for some time, stalking me through my dreams, and waking me early from sleep. I am aware of being stalked. I want to just jump out and confront it. But I know that I have to let it see me from every angle, I have to feel every shade of its shadow, to know it intimately before I can allow myself to make a move. It must be felt, every terrifying wave. The anticipation of my ritual in the woods builds. It makes my wild mind feel less restless to have a plan in place.
I take my dream out with me for this little walk. My hips loosen a bit. The cold snow falls like powdered quartz. My eyes are drawn to the reflected snow under a lamppost for a moment. I see pinpoints of rainbow light, scattered sparkles of infinite intensity. How are these little snow crystals blazing with such luminance when it’s dark outside, and there is just this one puny light? I stand there completely engrossed for long enough to bore my dog. This is not collapse, it’s stillness. I can tell my mind has settled and retrained on beauty, and therefore I feel ready to venture forth.
On the drive out to my land, where I have this rage ritual planned in my head, I pass a freshly road-killed turkey on the snowbank. I turn around, I want to be with this bird for some reason. Pulled over with my hazards on, I tromp out under the slate grey sky, the blanket that never seems to lift for months, and I kneel down. Bright red blood is leaking from her beak. She’s dead but not frozen yet. She and I both bleed. She was free, now she’s freer.
On a county road where mailboxes are few, I hold this wild turkey hen dead in my hands, wondering about her life. Rarely do they live alone, was she the only one who didn’t make it across? I send word to her female flock that I want to take her somewhere and honor her body and then give her to the predators, but first I ask her for the gift of her wings. She agrees.
I ask myself, what now? Something about this turkey hen giving me her wings has changed my day entirely. What about all that rage that I needed to let out? My hips no longer feel rigid or rusty. I feel entirely surrendered, I notice. I get to honor the death of a being that before I came along, had no ceremony, and had no one to receive her gifts in death. This strange and beautiful exchange brings me out of my intense self-reflection and realigns me with nature.
I get back into my car and head for state-owned land instead, for a different kind of ritual. It is simple, and rather quick due to the cold. I lay her wingless body far away from the road, whisper to her, and pet her soft belly feathers.
Later, as I was pinning the wings out into a fan for drying, I couldn’t help but notice that death and beauty are intimately, gloriously intertwined. I couldn’t help but notice, that rage and love are as well. The more I acknowledged the feelings of my first love, the deeper the rage came from his betrayal. But when I look at these gorgeous feathers, gleaming golden and purple, everything else just drains from me. There’s something about surrendered beauty that again, unfurls my tail from its tucked-under, protective position.
I begin to wonder about doing ‘the work’. About the narrative that I must move rage out, that it lingers and gets stuck in my tissues if I don’t do something with it. I wonder what the point of slowing down could be, if it’s not only about feeling into the shadows. Maybe it’s just as important to slow down for beauty and light. Maybe it’s even more important.
My eyes begin to gloss over from ruminating on the ruminations. I take one last look at the wings splayed out, treated with borax to cure, and I hope that I am honoring her well. My endless questions are held in her embrace. My throat opens softly, releasing an unrealized clench without effort.
‘Respect the body’, I hear again.
‘Thank you’, I whisper.