Conjuring the Heart of a Warrioress
On phoenix wings, fire horse years, and the gift of a second life.
“You have officially earned your Phoenix wings in this fire horse year.”
My friend Akah sent me this message while I was still learning how to breathe around two titanium clips in my ribs. I read it once, then again, and then I sat with it for a long time, because some sentences arrive the way certain weather does. They feel like a hand on your back saying, yes, sweetheart, this is what is happening, and you are not making it up.
The Year of the Fire Horse comes around once every sixty years. In the old traditions, it is said to be a year of intensity. A year that asks for honesty. A year for women in particular, who have spent long seasons being agreeable, to find the part of themselves that still knows how to run. It is not a gentle year. It does not promise comfort. It promises truth.
I did not know I was walking into this kind of year. None of us ever really do. We make our plans for January. We pour our coffee. We go about our daily lives, assuming the ground beneath us will hold the way it has always held. And then a hoof finds your ribs on an ordinary morning.
I keep thinking about the symbolism of it. A woman, in the Year of the Fire Horse, was brought to her knees by a horse.
A week after leaving the hospital I’m rediscovering the new edges of my lungs, greeting this altered body, and feeling, with quiet awe, how both my life and I have shifted.
I am aware of the medicine in the very act of receiving. Each day I practice truly receiving this art—a powerful, feminine trait I’ve often pushed aside for fear of becoming a burden. Allowing love, care, and rest to settle into me feels like cellular healing, a gentle re‑wiring of what I once thought was weakness.
I nearly died that Monday in early May. On the other side, I couldn’t work, prepare food, drive, or care for my family. My sole focus became healing. In that space, I watched Patrick take on every one of my responsibilities, my female friends arrive with arms full of food and time to listen, and the need to survive forced me to silence the inner voice that whispered, “I can do it all myself; I’m not worth asking for help.”
Now I see that learning to heal is the deepest surrender. It is slow, intentional, and exactly the level of pause I needed to step into. My sisters remind me now, just as I tell new mothers, to linger longer in the raw cocoon before emerging. I’m trading the usual performances: children’s milestones, birthday parties, social obligations—for something quieter. Intimate conversations over tea. Slow moments in my garden. And soft phone calls from my bed.
In these subtle exchanges I feel the circle of completion: when I open myself to receive, others’ tender, nurturing and service oriented sides are given a chance to shine. I watch, I learn, and I honor this precious, raw space we are in, there is medicine here.
I wish the lessons hadn’t arrived with such a punch, but, this time will I learn to embody them?
As my body regains freedom, I ask whether the wisdom of this fire‑horse year will remain with me. I notice when I jump in to micro-manage the family, when stress spikes and my muscles tighten. I keep asking, “What else must I release for this lesson to settle fully?”
The phoenix does not flee the flame; she returns through it, and what burns away is already ready to go.
So today, as I rise, I celebrate my ability to sit with trauma and pain, to be present and brave. I honor not only the steady return of my physical health, but also the widening capacity to receive, and the depth of my surrender. I also celebrate what I have come to witness the love in others. Into the fire I release the part of me that feels unworthy of love and fearful of healthy surrender.
I bow to the phoenix, and I step forward, wings newly earned, into the light
