Hawk and Crow

On my morning walk, I saw a red-tailed hawk being mobbed by two crows: not an unusual sight where I live, but one that always stops me in my tracks.

Even though crow medicine is powerful stuff, I think most of you will be unsurprised that I tend to identify with the hawk in these situations. She circles the sky, often silently, while the shadowy acrobats caw and dive and disturb her peace.

This is how it feels when you struggle with a harsh inner critic, or intrusive voices that constantly fill your head with cruel or belittling thoughts. There you are, valiantly trying to make your way in the world and the crows of your mind are relentlessly poking and prodding you. You look around and all the other birds are doing their birdy things, but you feel saddled with the extra work of managing these incessant corvids.

On good days, I try my best to shift my perspective to the crows themselves, instead of painting the hawk as a victim. These crows are defending their territory — there is a predator in their midst. They have a job and they do it well. In a feathered world where conserving your energy is the ultimate goal of every day, here they are pouring out their most precious resource with abandon.

Try as I might (and lordy I have tried!) I can soften these harsh voices but I cannot eliminate them. Healing is not about excising or denying any part of ourselves, after all, it is about finding wholeness. My crows remind me that there are parts of me that are still fearful, still in need of attention. I may want to pretend they are not there, but they persist in their attempts to get my attention.

“I never do anything right.”

What elusive parent am I still trying to impress? How am I holding myself to an impossible standard?

“You are too needy, and selfish, and why can’t you focus on other people more?”

Who poured too much of themselves into me? Who modeled resentment and self-abandonment as the measure of maturity? How can I shift to a different mode of being?

“You are the worst!”

What does it mean to be the worst? When did you decide that you had to chase superlatives and since “best” was out of reach, you had to achieve downwards? What if you are just human, neither best nor worst, and comparison is a fool’s errand?

Look to your crows, my dears. Let them caw and croak. If you weren’t running from them, what wisdom would they bring?

Originally published on the Deerhawk Facebook page, October 2020.