A Week The River Began to Speak

Reuniting the Waters

I have just come through a week that feels less like a series of days and more like a doorway—one that opened quietly, then widened into something unmistakably alive.

The Grand Canyon has been stirring in me for some time now. Not just as a place, but as a presence. A memory. A calling. And last week, something began to organize itself around that call in a way that felt both cosmic and deeply, bodily real.

I am not an astrologer, but I listen. And the skies last week were loud - marked by the convergence of a New Moon, a Solar Eclipse, and the Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse. There was a sense, even before anything unfolded, that something was asking to begin.

And then the circles began.

On Tuesday, I sat among women I did not know, gathered around a cauldron in ritual with the gifted ritualist Katherine Scaggs. The focus was clear: restoring balance through the divine feminine. One by one, we offered our intentions to the fire.

When it was my turn, I spoke aloud a prayer I had written—to gather the “just right women” for a Grand Canyon expedition. Not simply a river trip, but a ceremonial journey to tend to the waters of the Colorado River.

I released those words into flame. Watched them rise as smoke and ash, joining the prayers of strangers who, in that moment, did not feel like strangers at all.

The next day, Wednesday, I hosted an online gathering with a Chinese light language singer, guiding us into the terrain of voice, embodiment, and ancestral integration. My voice—particularly along my mother’s mother’s lineage—has been its own path of healing.

During one of the practices, my tongue touched the roof of my mouth, and something shifted.

A presence arrived—unexpected, unmistakable. Ganesha.

Playful. Clear. Almost amused.

The message came through not as words, but as knowing: protection, and the removal of obstacles. A clearing at the threshold of something new.

By Thursday, the threads were weaving faster.

In conversation, the idea emerged—what if we carried water from the Colorado River all the way to the sea? What if this journey did not end at the canyon’s edge, but continued, completing something that has long been interrupted?

The spark caught.

There was talk of routes, of connections, of the possibility of calling in a woman with the right skills to captain such a passage. Something in me shifted from imagining to believing.

That evening, I led a circle of ten women for ancestral lineage work. But the path there was anything but smooth. I forgot my drum. I had to turn back. I was delayed by a train. I arrived late—something I simply do not do.

And yet, I was not flustered.

I felt… redirected.

Earlier, I had been on the phone with a longtime river friend, asking her to share my vision with others. What I met instead was resistance. A kind of subtle gatekeeping that felt strangely like a dam.

That word stayed with me.

A dam.

On Friday, I found myself in yet another circle, this time gathered around a bowl of salt. Each person added something—a small, physical offering infused with intention—honoring the threshold of a new era.

When it came time to step forward, I placed sand from my first Grand Canyon trip in 2015 into the bowl. I spoke my intention: to call in a healed Colorado River. To reconnect its headwaters—just miles from my home—to the Sea of Cortez.

The person before me had added sand from the Ganges River.

Later, I would learn that these two rivers sit almost exactly opposite each other on the globe—180 degrees apart. A mirror across the Earth.

The salt itself was a blend of Himalayan and sea salt. Mountain and ocean. Origin and return.

I left carrying a small container of that mixture, alive with the prayers of more than forty people.

By Saturday, I was sitting among elder women speaking about happiness—its science, its cultivation—when the gathering dissolved into sound. A gong bath, offered by one of my own students, now playing with the awakened presence of her maternal lineage moving through her.

And there, in the resonance, it came.

Not as a thought, but as a remembering.

I have been in ceremony with the Colorado River for over a decade.

My upcoming permit for September 2026 marks eleven years since my first journey through the canyon. That same journey from which the sand came. The same sand I had just offered into the salt bowl.

Even the permit itself had come through an energetic practice during my menopause sabbatical—a time when I was working deeply with fear, especially around men, and reclaiming something essential within myself.

Nothing about this is random.

In the sound of the gong, the vision clarified:

We are to carry water from the Sea of Cortez to the headwaters.

We are to bring that water into the canyon—to the ancient Vishnu Schist, to the deep body of Gaia.

We are to mix these waters—mountain, river, and sea—along with the salt infused with prayer.

And then, we are to return that water to the sea.

A cycle restored.

A relationship remembered.

A flow, undammed.

The name came as simply as breath:

Reuniting the Waters.

As the gong bath ended, a small, almost comical moment sealed it. A piece of chocolate was placed in my hand. Inside the wrapper were the words:

Don’t be afraid to start a new chapter.

The wrapper tore as I opened it.

And I felt him again—Ganesha—smiling.

I am beginning to understand that being the permit holder is not logistical.

It is ceremonial.

It is a role I did not seek, but one that has, somehow, chosen me.

And so I name the mission clearly:

Reuniting the Waters is a ceremonial river journey through the Grand Canyon. It is an offering for the healing of the Colorado River, and through it, the lifeblood rivers of this Earth.

We will carry water from the sea to the source, and from the source to the depths of the canyon. We will offer these waters, along with salt infused with collective prayer, to the oldest exposed rock of the Earth.

And then we will return that water to the sea—back to the Sea of Cortez—completing a cycle that has long been broken.

This is not only about water.

It is about consciousness.

About releasing the patterns that have dammed our flow—within ourselves, and upon the Earth.

It is about remembering our place in the great, living system of relationship.

And choosing, together, to restore it.

And so it begins.

I invite all of you into this prayer ceremony with me by following the journey on the Ancestral Streams social media accounts:

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You are all invited to pray the dams down with us.