Returning to the Light

By Olivia Morrissey

Returning to the Light navigates the winding and thirst-quenching spiritual journey that is selfsovereignty
and self-love. The collection of poetry and prose explores darker themes of addiction,
denial, co-dependence, saviorism and lost sense of self, and into the luminescent awareness that
is finding one’s own love, voice, power and truth once again. A journey for the individual and the
collective, this work weaves lessons from nature, masculine and feminine energy, and a higher
faith in coming home to oneself as the love one has always been.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Mar 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982234805

Olivia Morrissey

Olivia Morrissey is a woman with a vow to feel. She shows up as a poet, writer, healer, embodiment guide and beautifully messy human. More than anything, she is committed to the greater processes of all that brings her back to love– to God, peace, each moment. She is passionate about the wholeness of a human– their rage, compassion, longing, beauty– and reminding herself and others that they have always ever been love. She feels. She writes. She speaks. She shares. Reconnecting to her body and her feminine essence has been the most transformative and healing experience of her life– it is a gift she wishes to keep on giving to others. To experience more of Olivia and her work, go to oliviamorrissey.com.

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Copyright © 2021 Olivia Morrissey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system

without the written permission of the author except in the case of

brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Interior Graphics/Art Credit: Natalie Woeppel

Exterior and Interior Design: AnnaMarie Vaughan

Exterior Illustrator: Samela St. Pierre

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and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe

the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional,

or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly

or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information

of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and

spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in

this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author

and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3479-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3481-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3480-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913774

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/23/2021

For the omnipresent rumbling of all there has ever

been. For the soft and potent earth-shaking that

is the re-sanctified feminine. For the restoration

of Her truth and glory. This is for SHE.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Upon republishing Returning to the Light and witnessing its deep reception among the women I work with, I’ve come to understand this collection as a microcosm of the greater collective feminine wound and experience. Returning to the Light, beyond personal catharsis, is the modern-day story of Goddess Lilith: the first woman. It is a journey of the woman who has forgotten the force of her feminine magnetism, the rumble of her truth and the earth-shaking ability of her feeling. It is the story of the Goddess who abandoned herself to please the wounded first man who viewed her as lesser; the Goddess who fled in pursuit of her liberation and equality; and as I interpret, the woman who, after succumbing to the depth of her own rage, darkness and desolation, evolves to a space of compassion, forgiveness, reclamation and restored reverence for her own power and light.

Such is the too often wounded experience of the feminine nature: one of non-acceptance and shame, self-infliction and self-destruction, fury and retaliation, and finally, deep understanding and resurrection. There is a story of the Mexican deserts and mountains in which La Loba, the wolf woman, lives. She ventures, collecting the bones of the dead wolves and singing them back to life so that they may run into the horizon, transforming into cackling women. I have had the honor of embodying La Loba with this book. Returning to the Light is not just a collection of words– it is the gathering of my every last bone necessary for my own song back to my wholeness.

May these words and bones support your journey home to you.

Olivia Morrissey

Maui, Hawai’i

December 2019

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

A Letter to You

The Cave

The Choice

The First Taste of The Moon

The Return

The Light

About The Author

A LETTER TO YOU

This collection is my winding path from the cave of disillusionment and disconnection to my barehanded claw-climb out of darkness and my flight into the light. This is my journey of reclaiming my love.

We reach the cave the moment we forget that we are love simply because we exist— when we begin to believe, as determined by others, that we are unworthy, undeserving, un-sacred, un-full. And when we choose to consume such limiting, unloving falsities and accept them as truth, we’ve stepped inside. And when we are inside the cave, we live in a state of fear.

I shed layers of myself— stripped my loud, my bold, my light, my love— in an attempt to become something I hoped would grant me the safe company I had been promised in this twisting lifetime. I changed the shape of my body, my heart, and my spirit in this shadow contract in order to squeeze into a smaller capacity and receive what I thought would be the love I sought. I recreated and redesigned my movements, my thoughts, and my needs to shrink into the space I believed was being asked of me.

I changed the size and capacity of my lungs, the depth of my breath, the network of my capillaries; I lessened the white, the strength, the density of my bones, all in self-proclaimed honorary surrender to the supposed love I shook with bereft aching for.

I knew not yet to recall that the most potent medicine lay waiting, dormant, naturally and eternally within me.

This book is reclamation and healing. It is returning and re-membering. It is choosing the light and choosing to live in your own love. It is the journey back to truth.

May you never find yourself straying too far from you, and may you always remember your way back home if you do.

With love and with light,

Olivia Morrissey

THE CAVE

The%20cave.jpg

We chased sweet summertime. A year and a half of eternal sun. We ran from darkness, you and I together, without looking back.

But it caught up to us. And it hit us smack-dab in the forehead of the hottest of July days, and it was clear that nothing light was ever light without the darkness that makes it so.

The two are beautifully and frighteningly inseparable. They are one and always will be.

We were two halves trying to make whole. Incomplete on our own, so together we never could be.

— THE AWARENESS

                   There was a cool August breeze blowing

                   the day I knew I’d lost you

— CHASING ETERNAL SUMMER

                               This space

                               is haunted because of you

                               A real-life

                               living color

                               ghost

                               that spooks me

                               with nostalgia of us

                               Of our haunting

                               twisted

                               past

                               unknown

                               undiscovered

                               dark

                               untrue

                               We’re hurting each other

                               more and more

                               by the day

                               You touch her in my sight

                               because you know that it tears

                               for she is a woman

                               of all of my fears

                               Giving in to all vices

                               which you’d leave me to do

                               and I abstain from mine daily

                               to safeguard part of my truth

                               I hit you

                               with word-venom

                               and little coiled fists

                               a broken

                               broken-hearted child

                               holding on by frayed string

                               This space

                               and you

                               bring out a hurt

                               cruel

                               eerie piece of me

                               Maybe

                               after it all

                               I’m haunted too

                               Your stings give me no choice

                               but to fight back

                               this pain game

                               must be played

                               with two

                               And I don’t like

                               this thing I’ve become

                               I know that I’m haunted too

— HAUNTED

            Golden flame to golden flame

            wavering and ice-hot and all the same

            she yearns for the burn of the lesson she won’t learn

            in this cyclical ego game

            Moth aroused after golden flames

            she scars anew but her self is to blame

            burning but she is addicted to the game

            of golden flames to golden flames

— GOLDEN FLAMES

                   Your sweet sandy scent reeks of needing love

                   Your calloused hands

                   need soaking in bubble foam

                   your jaded ocean eyes