( I have a detail photo of the tattoo to put on a page with this story)

When Rio was born, I knew I'd want a tattoo to mark the passage into motherhood. A river, circling my left arm; the image seemed so perfect I never questioned it. But I was waiting for something.

And when Meredith, one of the women from my Witchcamp community, wrote to say she'd be offering tattoos in sacred space at camp this year, I knew what I'd been waiting for.

We gathered on the last afternoon, on the deck of the little arts and crafts building. I lay on a bed covered with a silk sheet embroidered with peacocks, looking up into the silver circle of sky formed by a collection of white birch and maple trees framing the bright clouds.

A dear friend had circled up with us and then left on a different path with Rio, part of the circle but moving in another direction. Martin sat at my feet, gently drumming while Meredith began the work. I'd told her I wanted a river, that I wanted it in the colors of my shawl, the blue one I wear to street actions (some of you may remember it from icons past). I talked about motherhood, and how I wanted the tattoo to be a mark of mothering. She drew it freehand on my arm, laid out a long line of rich color, and we were off.

As she worked, I sang and moaned and breathed and shouted. None of the experience felt like pain - I was acutely aware of it as ecstasy, the needle on my skin like a guide leading me out to the wild edges of myself and past there, into The Stuff The World Is Made Of.

The circle began to fill with allies: Water Mothers, Yemaya and La Mer and the whispering voices of storms. The waters of every living womb. The first mothers, stirring up life, echoing the song lifting unbidden from my chest as the sensation in my arm takes over, takes me out along a silver thread of ecsatic agony.

The Earth Mothers greet me there. The trees...there are no words for how the trees are present. After the ritual, a young man tells me he was calling to the tree spirits to help me, and that sounds so lame but I know what he means. Trees don't think and feel like people, but they do pay attention at times, and this is one of them. The birch hold me up, help me breath and release and expand my chest for another breath. I can feel the earth feeding them, smell the rich soil below us, hear the song of sky and earth courting each other.

I turn my face and see death there. Strange in this circle of life, but she calls me, the names of all the Death Mothers tripping over my tongue: Kali-ma, Cerridwen, Lachesis. They tell me that a mother is not just someone who guides souls out of the Otherlands; a mother is also tasked to guide them back into the worlds beyond this one. That every priestess at the crossing between life and death is a mother, no matter which direction the passage takes.

The Raped Mothers join them; Guadalupe who was Coatlicue tells the story of being raped by colonization, of bearing the child of her oppression - a new cult of mother-worship giving hope to the mestizo children also born of the rape of her first people. Caring for the fruit of her violation, the sons and daughters of her own body are also the sons and daughters of her enemy. There is a chorus of women echoing her, holding the babies of war and hurt.

This opens me up; it's the most painful piece of the tattoo, outlining the tender underside of my arm and as the needle moves over my skin, pockets of energy Id been holding in my body for years suddenly bubble into conciousness, moments of fear and pain in my own life. And then I feel them leave, floating away like soap bubbles and finally I am able to just watch them go. I don't need to hold that stuff anymore.

The ritual moves through periods of song and of silence; of deep breathing and wandering mind. A thread of the erotic. At one point I tell Meredith she is hearing sounds usually only my lovers get to hear. At another she tells me how incredible I am, how brave and strong. I've seen big tough bikers reduced to shaking tears over this, she says.

At the end, I am shaking in tears myself. After finishing the myriad blues, she takes up a needle full of pure white. "The light on the water," she says, and as she touches me with it, I feel all those gathered Mothers coming into my skin, sisters, allies, making a home in my body. I felt I would never be alone again; that in any dark moment I could call on the strength of that circle, of those Mothers. That I'll always have allies. They are of me now. I wept.

The tattoo has healed beautifully. It never reddened or itched, and has been peeling smoothly to reveal bright, perfect color. Meredith credits this to my grace and deep breathing. I credit it to her gentle hands.

We all felt that she simply uncovered the image that was waiting there, part of me already. It's a thing of beauty, and I feel so blessed to wear it.