I flow, 

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I change constantly,

    I am my grief, 

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        I am my joy, 

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            I am human, 

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        I am divine light, 

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    I can submerge when 

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I make the time. 

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Mikvah is an old tradition where we can enter a body of natural water and emerge anew. I grew up in the pacific ocean. My first love, she taught me at a young age that water is a holy healing source. Wherever I have traveled in the world, I found my way to water.  

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Now I live in Bulbancha on turtle island, a land surrounded by water. A land where we have built levees to keep her at bay and pumps to drain when she falls from the sky. Yet if I drive an hour to the gulf coast of Mississippi I can lay my body down in her. 

I use the practice of mikvah often in my life. I have a host of chronic and mental health diagnoses that have softened me to meet ritual as a healing source. Mikvah has a history with purity, of washing away. I have found profound reclaiming in asking the water to guide me, help me, hold me in our connection — but pushing away the idea that there is an ability to wash myself away. When I was younger I wanted to fix myself. Now I use our ancient tools of ritual to be myself and deepen my connection to spirit. 

I have done this practice alone and with my community. On joyous and somber days, sometimes I say these blessings in the shower after a hard day of work. I believe it is for the profound as much as the mundane. I wish for you to take my adaptation of our ritual as an offering. 

Be bold: you are entitled to create your own relationship in the now to the ancient.  

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A Mikvah Practice I Return To

I find my way to a body of live water, may it be an ocean, a river, a spring. 

I sit before I enter. 

I breathe so deep and so full. I breathe in the life force that I am. 

I hold up the sand, or dirt or rocks that lay at my foundation. I take a moment to examine them, I notice. In the pause I see its layered being and think of the layers I am holding that have come to weigh me down. 

I have come here not to rid myself but to ask for ease, respite and a new perspective. 

I pull out my journal, and I begin to write why I found my way to the water. In particularly potent times, the heaviness of what brought me here feels like a weight tied around my heart and lungs. The kind of grief or depression where I know release must come but I have been so consumed by it that any form of separation is terrifying, for I cannot imagine who I am without it. I will read out loud, to spirit, what I have written, then I will burn the paper. 

Knowing there is no separation, no what was or will be. 

I bury the ash in the wet sand, I thank the earth for holding and growing me.    

I enter the water. I notice the way the sun leaps on the water. In that space I believe I see G-d — I challenge you to look and notice what you see.

I sing as I enter: “water heal my body, water heal my soul, when I go down to the water in the water I am whole.” (You can find the melody here.)

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In the water where I am alone from people but connected to the water and the earth, I fall to my knees.

Sturdy in my body, sinking into the sand I say the blessing for immersing in a mikvah:

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Barukh atah Adonai Elohenu melekh ha’olam asher kideshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al ha’tevillah.

Blessed are You, O Lord, our G-d, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us concerning the immersion.

בּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְשָׁנוּ בּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָנוּ עַל הַטְבִילָה

I immerse my full body and head. 

Then I say the blessing again and dunk again. 

Then I say the blessing again and dunk again. 

I sit for as long as I need. I lift up water and look at the world in the drops that flow from my hands. I am filled with gratitude, I am held, I leave the water and thank it for sharing in this ritual practice together. 

Use this on your own, examine what comes up — there is no right or wrong. Last summer solstice while in a waterfall in Alabama I used this practice away from my travel companions to release the judgements I was holding in my soul after an intense period in life. 

The summer solstice occurs in the month of Tammuz. Maybe find your way to this practice on that day. 

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At The Well uplifts many approaches to Jewish practice. Our community draws on ancient Jewish wisdom, sometimes adapting longstanding practices to more deeply support the well-being of women and nonbinary people. See this article’s sources below. We believe Torah (sacred teachings) are always unfolding to help answer the needs of the present moment.

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Sources

What Is A Mikveh? My Jewish Learning

Queer Mikveh Project, Rebekah Erev Studio 

Mikveh Guide Jewish Voice For Peace 

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