A Mountain Lion Watched Us From the Granite Boulders

My grandmother Genevieve lived on ten acres out in the rural parts of Central Arizona, and along the back of her land there were granite boulders the size of small houses. My cousins and I loved going out there. We would spend whole days out there climbing over the huge quartz and granite boulders, jumping around, the sun hot on our backs, the desert stretched wide and quiet all around us.

From far off the boulders looked like one large hill. But they were really two ridge lines with a hidden valley between them, and you could not see the second ridge until you had climbed all the way over the first. We knew one rule out there. You did not go into the shade under those boulders in the heat of the day. The cool dark underneath them was the perfect place for the things that were also hiding from the sun, the rattlesnakes, and the mountain lions.

One day as teenagers, we made it across the first ridge line and looked out over the valley toward the second. And there she was. A mountain lion, perched in the shade, half hidden, watching us.

I have never felt fear move through a body the way it moved through mine in that moment. We began our descent slow and quiet, to not be heard or catch her attention. The second our feet touched the ground, we ran. Out there in the open desert you are so exposed, nothing at all between you and the thing that could catch you, so we ran and we ran. Each of us bent down and picked up a large stone to carry in our hand, just in case she came for us, and we did not stop until we were back inside the shelter of my grandmother’s house.

The oldest thing my body knows is how to run

One of the built-in safety mechanisms I have carried for as long as I can remember is to flee. Whether it was a mountain lion, or chaos inside a house, or anything at all that felt uncomfortable, my gut response has always been the same. Run. Then find a safe place to hide.

I know so many people can feel that in their own bodies, that pull toward safety, to reach a place where nothing can get to you.

The only power I know that comes close

I am a birth doula, and once in a while I assist the midwife, and I have been in the room for hundreds of babies as they came through. When a woman is deep in her labor process you watch a primal instinct rise in her. She uses her voice. She bears down. She lets the sound come up and out of her, a sound most women never knew they had until that very hour. At that moment she realizes it was her own roar, her own power, that opened the threshold and let her baby through to take its first breath.

As I have walked my own healing path, that same fierceness has begun to come through me. It comes when I hold a circle. It comes when I am asked to speak in front of people at a retreat. It moves in a similar way as a laboring mother, up from my belly, into my heart, and out through my throat. It is the deepest sense of truth I know. I become a kind of conduit, carrying something true from above and below, and the power of it surges like electricity through my toes and out through my fingertips.

The night my own voice roared

The roar is not rage. It is the moment your truest voice rises up out of your belly, through your heart, and out through your throat, and you say the thing that lives in you, whether or not anyone wants to hear it. The first time I felt mine, I was standing in front of fifty people at a retreat.

I stood up and I spoke with a certainty and a conviction I did not fully know I had in me. The energy in the room became tangible. I watched people begin to tear up. I could feel my own words landing and softening hearts, and I knew, in my body, that this was mine. This was the very power I had run from all those years, and here it was moving through me, and it was not going to hurt anyone. It was going to heal.

I speak with that same power when I talk about the potential every one of us holds to be sovereign, to be the creator of our own reality, to break the lines of generational trauma that were handed to us. I speak with it about the suffering that has happened to humanity and to our mother earth. It is the truest I ever feel, my voice, my power.

The cat scratch

That same night, at dinner, someone said out loud, in front of everyone, that she did not understand why I had been chosen to speak. That I did not really have anything to say. She felt that plenty of others would have done a better job.

One cat, scratching another. Woman to woman.

I have thought about that moment for a long time, and here is what I have come to. This is exactly what can happen when somebody finally climbs up and stands on top of their own granite boulder with the true power to speak. Just as you reach the peak, just as you are standing there proud and strong watching the sunset, another cat comes by and takes a swipe at your back and knocks you down. It is so hard to want to stand back up, because it did not come from a stranger. It came from your own tribe, when you least expected it, right in the middle of your own beauty.

You do this for the truth that lives through you

I gave up speaking for approval a long time ago, because it does not always come, and the one who takes the swipe and scratches deepest is sometimes the person who said they were my friend. I speak for myself now, and for the truth that has to move through me whether or not the room is ready to hear it. My voice rises even when I feel a hand reaching to pull me down, because the roar was never theirs to give or take.

The girl on the granite ran from the lion. The woman I am now is the lion, and I let the power finally come home.

If you are still running

Maybe you are the one still running. Still reaching for the safe place to hide. Still going quiet in the exact moment everything in you wants to make a sound.

I want to hand you something small. You do not have to roar in front of fifty people. Begin here. Start somewhere private, where no one is listening, let your voice make one true sound. A hum, a low tone rising out of your belly, whatever wants to come. Feel where it lives in your body, and let it be a little louder than feels comfortable. That is the lioness lifting her head. That is your own power, learning that it is safe to be heard.

Questions people ask

What does the lioness symbolize as an animal ally? Lioness carries the medicine of power and voice. She is the sovereign part of you that no longer shrinks or apologizes for taking up space, the one who knows her power was never too much, and who is ready to stand in her own truth.

What does it mean when a mountain lion appears to you? In many traditions she is a sign of power and sovereignty, a call to stop shrinking and take up your rightful space. For me, a mountain lion watched me from the granite boulders when I was a teenager and I ran. It took years to see she was showing me the very power I was running from. Your power was never the danger. It was always yours to stand in.

A gentle note: I am a somatic and energy practitioner, not a licensed therapist. This work walks alongside healing and growth. It is not a replacement for therapy or medical care, and many of the people I sit with do both. That is a good and beautiful thing.

If something in you stirred while you read this, there are two soft places to begin. You can gather with us in the Rewilding Hearts community, a circle of people learning to stand on their own boulders and use their voices again. Or we can begin together, just the two of us, with a free discovery call, twenty unhurried minutes with nothing to sell, only space for you to be heard.

Your voice was always yours. When you are ready, let it roar.