Rituals of Return: The Body as Threshold

On Cords, Release, and Remembering

Some years ago, I began seeing cords.

Not literal cords, but fleshy, sinewy ropes in my inner vision. Each one attached me to something that no longer belonged — old wounds, old identities, old ties.

I did what I thought I was supposed to do: I tried to cut them. Again and again... and again. Most of them released. But one refused.

I pushed harder. I tried with sharper blades. To use more force. But still — it would not sever.

That’s when something deeper in me gently said: stop forcing.

I stepped into the shower, letting the water hold me. And as the streams poured over me, I stopped trying to cut. Instead, I followed the cord.

It led me into a swampy, green-rich water in my vision — murky, thick with memory. And there, beneath the surface, I saw her: my six-year-old self. Waiting.

The cord wasn’t resisting because it was strong. It was resisting because it wasn’t meant to be cut. It was a threshold — holding the doorway to a part of me that needed retrieval. She was never meant to be buried. She was waiting to be brought back.

So I reached down and lifted her. I gave her what she had needed all along: recognition, protection, belonging. And in that moment, the cord no longer bound me. It had become what it always was — a guide, a path back to myself.

The Body as Threshold

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Our bodies are not just sites of memory; they are thresholds. Liminal places where past, present, and future meet. Where what has been silenced waits for us to listen. Where cords that feel like burdens are sometimes invitations to retrieve what we left behind.

This is why some practices of “cutting ties” never feel quite right. Not everything is meant to be severed. Some things are meant to be seen, honored, and released through transmutation.

Ritual Invitations

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Here are a few practices you might try when you feel grief or cords in your own body:

• Water Ritual (Listening, not cutting): Stand under running water (a shower, a stream). Instead of asking “what can I cut,” ask “what wants to show itself?” Listen for the image, memory, or self that rises.

• Threshold Practice: Close your eyes, place your hands over the part of your body where you feel tightness, weight, or tugging. Instead of forcing release, whisper: “What are you carrying for me? What do you need me to see?”

• Elemental Grounding: After the vision, give it form. Place your feet on earth, or pour water over your hands, as a way of sealing the experience in your body’s knowing.

These are not about speed. They are about patience, tending, and allowing what was hidden to surface when it’s ready.

Why I Offer This Work

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We as Black women live with the knowledge that safety is not promised to us in this world. That truth lives in our bodies, in our nervous systems, and in our lineages. And yet — the body still remembers how to guide us.

In my coaching containers, I hold space for this kind of remembering: the listening that reveals thresholds. The patience to sit with what cannot be rushed. The safety to retrieve what was lost, and to release what was never ours to carry.

The body is a threshold.

What cords in your life are not asking to be cut — but to be seen, released, and transmuted?