I was born in the beautiful city of Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan and lived there for the first nine years of my life. My roots forever remain there, albeit I had forgotten where I truly come from or where I belong. For over 30 years, I felt very uprooted, when my family and I moved to Germany in 1987.
For 30 years I felt like I did not belong and did not know what to do on this planet called Earth.In 2017, exactly 30 years later, everything changed, when I traveled back to my ancestral land and people.
It was a long trip on the Transsibirian Railway all through Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, While researching different embroidery traditions, symbolism, stitching and planting tree seeds along the way, I came more and more back home to myself. Altogether, I traveled over 10,000 km, this is nearly half of the world!
While traveling, a blind Shamana and a Kazakh embroidery elder both confirmed to me: "finally you came home and your roots and ancestors are rejoicing that you have finally rooted yourself home in your ancestral lineage of German, Ukrainian, Kazakh and Siberian roots”.
Oh what a joyful and reconnective moment, finally feeling whole and at home again! That feeling remained and deepened within me every time I continued to embroider or practice intentional creativity, such as when this doll emerged and came to life during a masterclass within the Womb Centered Healing Temple.You can still watch the recording in the Facebookgroup.
This doll is my Goddess of Kazakh Love and my heart's intention to attract my other half and to return back to my roots in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She carries within her herbs that I collected from the Alatau Mountains, Shymbulak in Almaty, Kazakhstan when I visited my family there last year.
Last year my dad and son came with me as well. My son was 9, turning 10, the same age that I was before I left my country of origin, Kazakhstan, to live in Germany. As for my dad, this was his first time returning back to his homeland, leaving for Germany 32 years ago. My father is of German background but was born in Siberia in 1950, right after WWII. He lived there for the first 15 years of his life before moving to Kazakhstan. So for him, returning and making peace with the countries that had kept him and his family like prisoners, has brought about a great deal of healing on so many different levels. I will never forget how he stood there in his family home, where he met my now deceased mother and spoke with a neighbor that he hadn't seen in 32 years. It was a special reweaving and healing of so many ancestral threads.
Although my mother died 14 years ago, all of her family still live in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I often receive the message from her that she died from cancer because she left her roots behind and was never able to experience that kind of reweaving healing work. I am wealthy in my ancestral roots and no longer feel uprooted and overwhelmed. As a destiny weaver, I bring together many ancestral threads from my different ancestral roots and weave them into the new emergent tapestry of humanity, a vision which I write about in my book, The Wyrding Way:the mysterious art of weaving your own destiny.
"Co-creative destiny weaving is my vision with conscious individuals holding their own unique destiny threads, bringing together ancestral threads and weaving those into an evolutionary tapestry of humanity. Because you and I came here for a purpose. To evolve humanity. Each destiny thread at a time".
Now that my ancestral threads and those of my father, mother and my son have been united, I hear the call of my beloved, who wants to lead a co-creative partnership in business and life together with me, a new form of wholemates, who join genius without the division of life/work. I envision that we both run an online/e-commerce business and a foundation for the preservation of all embroidered arts around the world side by side. Someone who, like me, has many different ancestral roots but would like to deepen those in Almaty, Kazakhstan, near my favorite mountain Shymbulak. I envision it like in my painting of this dear place, where my Womb Doll of Kazakh Love stands on the mountain top. Just as we can reweave many threads, symbols and desires in a doll, fabric or canvas, we can co-creatively weave our destinies.
This, to me, is the Wyrding Way, like the title of my book. Wyrding means weaving. All of my co-creative circles are based on the weaving of threads, be it through doll making, as in a self embroidered Womb Doll Matryoshka, Beregini Goddesses Symbols, Shamanic Dress, Paintings or Embroidered Cloths. Those are all rituals of reweaving past, present and future. This is similar to the three Norns in Norse Mythology, who are thus represented on the front cover of my book.
I offered a few co-creative stitching circles during my 13 Moon Bio Mystical Womb Healing Apprenticeship and have written an article about how that relates to womb healing and creative power from within:
Although the apprenticeship is almost over, I look forward to doing more of those co-creative story-telling circles and opening up space to rewrite them, while concurrently creating something new and sacred with our hands. Until the next playshop, please check my offerings here:
The idea of a Story-Crafts Cafe/ Circle is emerging. Anyone here interested in that?
Explore the options for getting involved in this temple space and nourishing your Womb Wellness and Wisdom here https://www.samamorningstar.com/ To learn more about Erika's experience in the 13 month Bio-Mystical Womb Apprenticeship check out her latest Podcast with Sama Morningstar https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqeVSLiTfNnwN8V0VMuI1mg/search?query=erika%20maizi
What a beautiful story, Erika... It always makes me cry, no matter how many times you tell it, in the book, here in the blog or on Facebook 💛 How wonderful that you were able to find wholeness in going back to your ancestral homeland and begin re-weaving your destiny because of it, such an inspiring, healing journey your have had.