The air smelled of clouds and dust. Then the rain came. First, in spurts of light afternoon showers and then thunder showers are night.

I did what I love to do most. I sat by the window and watched it fall, and my writing flowed better than it has in a while. For the first time in weeks, the breeze was a cool cloak of comfort and rain drops fell through the open window and splattered on my back. The parts of me that had been parched and bare from the desert wave began to drink in the rain’s medicine. It’s as if I’ve had a pen full of dry powder and sand, unable to turn words out onto paper. Now, rain has fallen and turned the sand into ink, so that finally my hand can flow. It’s somewhat of an alchemical phenomenon, because it seems to turn the lead of my creative soul into inspired fluid gold.

I’ve never imagined myself as a river, but perhaps in some way, that is what I am, because these showers have made me feel like a river that is flowing again. I can see more clearly now why some women have written of finding the river within. Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks of the Rio Abajo Rio, the river beneath the river, when she described the wild soul or creative instinctual life force carried with the feminine psyche. Abby Seixas spoke of it in Finding the Deep River Within too, where she wrote: “When I drop down or go inside, I often have the image of an underground river that is always there, always flowing through me, from a source beyond me, carrying deeply nourishing, life-giving qualities.”

This must be what the watery magic imbued rain awakens within me, drawing fragments of my feminine psyche to the surface so that I become aware of my underground river filling, my creative resources flowing and my wild essence unfurling.

How do you connect with your rio abajo rio? Do the elements and whispers of the Earth ever stir something in this deep and mysterious place?