An embodied sacred seed for Peace

Pilgrimage into presence. A journey across land, grief and grace.

I recently returned from a journey I can only call a pilgrimage, though there was no specific temple, no road clearly marked, and no certainty of what would unfold. I said yes to assist in a Movement Medicine workshop in Israel, guided by my teacher, Ya’Acov Darling Khan. It was a soul yes. A gut yes. One that bypassed logic, fear, and hesitation. Yes to showing up in this historical moment, in a space that felt like the eye of a tornado. A place where I came to offer something steady and real, a gesture of presence, a quiet act of care. I came as a guardian at the threshold, not to decide what passes through, but to stand where pain meets possibility. To hold a field where truth could be felt in all its ethical complexity. I said yes to holding space in lands where the ground trembles with memory, rage, ancestral grief, and political division. To listen. To witness. To feel the geography of home loss and displacement. To remember that every life matters.

I don’t claim, nor want to hold the full truth of what is unfolding. But I came to serve with awareness and respect. I came to be with what is human, unresolved, painful, sacred. And to hold in my heart and in that space the unbearable grief in Gaza today. Grief that does not cancel others, but asks us to remain present, to remain human, and to stay open. I walked with the intention to contribute to something quietly healing, to support others doing the same, and to hold a space where balance, justice, and dignity could be felt, not declared, but danced.

I consciously came knowing that this fractured territory is not only spiritually charged, but also alive with unprocessed fear, trauma, loss, violence, and survival. To walk into it as a space holder is to step into a nervous system that has been activated for generations. I came not to teach, not to rescue, but to resource, to regulate, to support. To be one body among many, trying to create an inclusive field where grief can move, where breath can return, where dance can soften what has gone rigid in fear.

And I only came because I knew this work would be deeply conscious of the present moment and awake also to the hurt that is being caused in Gaza. This was not separation or choosing a side. It was a way for me to come physically closer and sense that geography with my body and bare feet, its people, its ancestral sorrow, and to bear inclusive witness in silence. To hold a place of balance, where the heart remains open even when the world breaks. I stood not for one narrative, but for the voices on every side who have gone unheard: the dancers, the healers, the mothers, the fathers, the survivors, the children. The ones who carry grief without language. The innocent ones who are in this very moment being killed and tortured.

Holding space where the heart breaks

I knowingly arrived at a time of deep unrest for the country. And for some reason, part of this journey had been a deep call for me to walk in Jerusalem, with an offering to the land, a soft pouring of feminine energy of Cacao Sagrado on its skin, a liquid earth energy that nourishes and heals hearts. A sort of anointment. Accompanied and protected by Abuelo Tabaco, a more masculine energy that protects and connects. 

A very personal private ritual done on its sacred stones, under its olive trees, on the land. A prayer that the three circles, three faiths, three stories, might one day find their way to forgiveness and peace. A private conversation between that land and myself. I had imagined that moment as deeply important in my journey. But on the day I was meant to go, the city was on fire literally and metaphorically, and some tension rippled through the streets. Fires burned. Sirens echoed.

And my body said no. The message was: you will come, but not now and a door closed. And as often happens, I sensed life had other plans. I was told to take my prayers elsewhere. And so, in the silence of this altered journey, amid all my grief, something ancient unfolded within me. Though I could not walk the stones of Jerusalem, I carried the prayer through the land in another way.

At Nova, where an attack had happened some time ago to a group of dancers near the Gaza border, we stood as a team of witnesses, each bringing our own prayers and our own medicine. The silence was thick with memory. The wind carried what could not be spoken aloud.

Here I offered Cacao and Tabaco for the earth that had witnessed too much. I drummed and sent my prayers with tangible inner grief to the all directions as the earth and air shook constantly with the loud sounds of bombs. Praying for the ending of this injustice. For the innocent souls that in this moment are being silenced forever across a ‘border’. For the trees, silent witnesses of the human atrocity. It suddenly became a journey for me of becoming the Mother Earth, in prayer and presence, as a witness to what the human soul is capable of, in both its violence and its longing for peace. What mattered most to me on this journey was to carry no flag, no agenda, only a heart committed to truth, compassion, and deep listening.

Throughout the day, I was drawn again and again to the eucalyptus trees present, silent watchers, memory keepers, protectors. I would rest my hand on their bark and listen. Their stillness held a sorrow I could feel in my bones as well as a childlike innocence of gratitude that came in the form of a gentle branch silently dancing across my face and brushing my drum.

I found myself whispering again and again to the Earth: I’m sorry. Please forgive us.

This was my offering, not to fix but to feel it in my bones. Not to cleanse but to carry love where memory has burned. With the certainty that any path forward must begin where no one is denied their humanity and everyone is allowed their sorrow. 

One human soul saying to the land: I see you. I feel the grief you carry. May peace return to your body as it returns to mine.

Stepping into the role I always carried

Through this week long journey, I was deeply grateful for the inclusive team of Movement Medicine teachers in Israel who welcomed us with such generosity, courage, and openness. There was no “us” and “them.” There was only the dance. The grief. The witnessing. The trembling beauty of being human together.

Alongside my teacher, Ya’Acov, I felt not only guided but deeply safe, emotionally held, and respected. I could give fully because I was being seen clearly by a respectful, steady masculine energy. I was held in a sacred way, with no other expectations. It did not overshadow. It made equal space. And in that gentle field, I softened and I rose. I offered my dance as a beating heart rooted in earth and flowing like water, warm like the fire and ready to fly through the air.

Somewhere along the way, I gave myself permission to finally step fully into the space of my Heart Medicine Woman. A fierce gatekeeper of justice. A witness. A vessel for healing energy. A place where my feminine energy arrives not as opposition, but in complement, to support and be supported. Rooted power. Fertile presence. Embodied wisdom. This, to me was the real alchemy.

This is what I bring. This is what I carry home.

Returning with the prayer

And while I was there, something unexpected rooted the journey even more deeply. I had the chance to see family from my country, Venezuela. People I hadn’t imagined I’d reunite with so far away. My paternal grandparents memory very present in that home, woven into the very fabric of the path. It was a quiet homecoming of its own. We as Venezuelans in this moment are also carrying the story of lost homes, of emptied homes, of land taken and stories erased. A story shaped by colonization’s long shadow and the weight of the current political dictatorship and violence, felt deeply in our body and in our heart. This too is part of my offering. The inheritance I carry is not only in name or blood but in the unseen threads that support and shape my work, in the prayers I release for the land and the homes everywhere I go, in the quiet acts of remembrance that speak beyond words, art, poetry, song and dance.

And always I am deeply grateful for my husband’s gentle tending of our own home as this creates the space from where I can stretch and bring by offerings to the world. For that and for him my gratitude is boundless.

So I now understand that the pilgrimage was not to Jerusalem, but to what that meant for me. It was to the sacred heart of the people. To the way pain softens in a shared field. To the way tears are a form of prayer. To the way movement becomes memory and memory becomes light. To the necessity of holding a clear witnessing gaze to the injustice in the world. Of being a safe harbour.

We danced. We held each other. We witnessed what is often too large to name. And in that holding, I saw that the real work begins here: in coming back to the heart. Making an inner home for it. In letting peace begin inside. In planting small, trembling seeds of presence and trusting they will one day grow. This wasn’t a perfect offering, but it was a true one. And it has changed me.

Tending the space within

As I return, what stays with me most are the questions this journey asked of me. Not only about the land and the people, but about myself. How do I hold the parts of me that still carry conflict, that are in deep opposition? How does fear move me? How does rage move me? Where in my body does peace begin? This experience brought me into deeper contact with the many opposites living within me, not only the masculine and feminine but also the emotions, energies and forces that pull and push, rise and fall. The part that moves, protects and holds structure. The part that listens, softens and yields. The part that violates and attacks. The part that forgives. The part that rises to defend its own. The restless and the calm. The light and the shadow.

What would it mean to let opposites meet not in tension but in trust? To allow each to respectfully speak its own truth, to express, to dance and to be witnessed fully in that dance? It feels as if now the journey truly begins. Not out there but inside me, inside all of us. In that meeting place I begin planting from the center. Not from urgency. Not from fear. Not from rage. But from something more grounded, more whole. And maybe for me that is the only place true peace can take root.

And for you, if you pause for a moment, where in your body can you feel the quiet presence that holds all of who you are, the dance of opposites, the conflict? Can you offer it to the dance? Can you offer it to life?

May the ripples reach where they are most needed.
May the grief find its voice.
May the land feel less violence.

This was a small seed for peace.
And I pray it roots deeply for all our relations,

With love and presence,