She Carried the Sword So I Could Remember the Stream

A Journey Through the Woven Threads of the Feminine Lineage and the Hidden Father Wound

The Dream That Opened the Door

It started with a dream.

One that refused to fade with the morning light.

In it, I was in a forest—half-wild, half-sacred—being chased by a pack of wolves. I was vulnerable, exposed, without a top or bra, and just as the wolves were about to reach me, a half-man, half-horse being emerged from the trees. A centaur. Except it wasn’t just any mythical figure—it was Justin Trudeau. Odd, I know. But dream logic speaks in symbols, not politics.

He led me to ancient ruins with tall white walls and high shelves. There, in a round hall, he reached for the only object in the room: a teddy bear. He handed it to me, and when I touched it, it transformed into a soft blanket. I wrapped it around my exposed chest, and in that moment, something shifted in me.

At first, me and my husband laughed it off—too much pizza late at night, my husband said. But something deeper in me knew this dream was important. Symbolic. Sacred.

And then a memory returned.

The Jungle Waterfall Memory

I was probably around 13, still living in Mexico. Every time I stepped into the shower, I’d close my eyes and imagine I was somewhere else—a sacred jungle, where stone and waterfall met. I’d pretend I was an indigenous woman, standing under the cascade, connected to earth, spirit, and water.

It felt ceremonial. Real. Familiar.

Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t pretending. I was remembering.

As that version of me—the jungle woman, barefoot and alive—may have been the only time in my youth I allowed myself to feel my feminine energy fully present. Free from performance. Free from needing to be strong. Free from the fear of being "too much."

The Pattern Unfolds

These two seemingly disconnected moments—the dream and the memory—became twin flames lighting the edges of something I hadn’t dared name: I didn’t know how to feel safe in my own softness.

And I began to ask why.

What unfolded was the long, braided thread of a pattern I’d lived but never fully seen.

Personal History: The Men I Married and the Roles I Played

I’ve been married twice. Both men were kind souls in their own ways. Neither were abusive. Neither were cruel. But neither were emotionally present in the way my nervous system longed for.

My first husband, an American man, used to say, “It’s better to be ignorantly happy. ”At the time, I understood what he meant—don't overanalyze, enjoy the moment, don’t dig too deep. But to me, it always felt devoid of presence. Like a dismissal of everything that lives beneath the surface. Like my inner world didn’t have a place to land.

That marriage didn’t work out.

Then I met P—my current husband. Another kind soul. And yet, once again, emotionally unavailable. Paul lives with Asperger’s, which brings unique challenges in emotional attunement. He’s here, but not always with me. And while I see and honor his truth, I can no longer ignore what my own inner feminine has been trying to say:

“I am tired of being partnered with ghosts.”

I didn’t marry bad men. I married men who mirrored what I had internalized: That emotional unavailability is normal. That kindness without depth is enough. That I must do the emotional labor for two.

But the more I see, the more I realize… this wasn’t just about the men I married. This was about the emotional imprint I carried from childhood. And even further back—from generations before me.

Ancestral Insight

I didn’t grow up thinking I had a father wound.

My dad was there—until he wasn’t.

When I was about 6 or 7 we moved from Mexico, City to Guadalajara, but he had to travel to Mexico City for work, often gone for months. The distance crept in slowly, quietly. And just as he stopped traveling, he suffered two strokes. He survived both, but something in him never returned.

He became emotionally distant—depressed, withdrawn. And we didn’t talk about depression in Mexico back then. We didn’t talk about anything that wasn’t functional. So we adapted. I adapted—by leaving. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. I left my home, my country, and the final illusion that I could rely on masculine presence.

As an immigrant in the U.S., I stepped fully into my masculine energy. I hustled, planned, structured, led, controlled, fixed. I did everything those before me had to do to survive.

And in doing so, I carried forward the same pattern I had witnessed growing up. The same pattern I had inherited from my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.

A Matriarchal Line of Masculine Embodiment

On my maternal line, the pattern is undeniable.

My great-grandmother’s story with her father is absent—a silence I could never fill. My grandmother was raised not by her mother or a present father, but by a military uncle who ruled with iron rather than care. My mother, though she speaks fondly of her father, was raised by a passive man in a home where her mother ruled with intensity and control.

Women leading. Women hardening. Women over-functioning.

The message was loud: If you want to survive, you must carry the sword.

And now I see that I, too, took up the sword. Not because I wanted to—but because no one showed me how to rest in the stream.

Collective Lens

So what happens when generation after generation of women are forced to survive without emotionally available masculine energy?

We become strong—but also brittle. We become leaders—but we lose our softness. We learn how to survive—but forget how to receive.

And the men?

Many of them were never taught how to feel. How to stay. How to be present in their own skin—let alone hold space for someone else’s.

So the feminine goes chasing for a place to rest, and the masculine doesn’t know how to hold what it cannot fix.

So we over-function. We chase perfection. We burn out—and then we blame ourselves for being tired.

And all the while, that 13-year-old girl under the imagined jungle stream of a waterfall—the one who knew how to feel sacred, how to be without effort—is still waiting for the world to feel like a place where she can return.

She is not naïve. She is not dramatic. She is the true feminine self—The one I buried beneath decades of self-sufficiency.

And now, she is stirring.

Now, I see it.

The sword in my hand isn’t shameful. It was passed down to me in ceremony—from women who had no other way. But the waterfall? The waterfall is mine. The waterfall is the place where my feminine belongs. It is my birthright.

And she—my feminine—is no longer asking me to perform. She’s simply asking to come home.

I no longer need to recreate emotional unavailability in order to feel safe. I no longer need to lead with armor in order to be worthy. I’m beginning to understand that safety isn’t the absence of pain. It’s the presence of self-trust.

Maybe I don’t need to keep bracing. Maybe I don’t have to prove I can hold it all. Maybe I’m allowed to soften now. So I lower the sword. I listen to the wolves quiet down. I take off the armor. And I walk barefoot, into the warm stream of this long forgotten waterfall.

About the Song:

She Waited in the Water is a song born from memory and metaphor—an ode to the sacred feminine self we silence to survive, and the moment we finally remember her. It is a gentle invitation to reclaim softness, presence, and the emotional truth that never stopped flowing beneath it all.

Because this time in my life, I’m not chasing anyone. Not a partner. Not a parent. Not a ghost.

This time, I’m just coming home.

To me.

To her.

To the woman I’ve always been beneath the armor and shield that have weighted me down for so long.