Meeting Barn Owl Medicine Woman
The Owl Medicine Woman: A Journey into Stillness
There are times in life when the noise becomes overwhelming.
Not necessarily the noise outside of us, although there can be plenty of that too, but the noise within. The endless stories our minds create. The questions that seem to circle without resolution. The constant need to understand what cannot yet be understood.
This painting was born from one of those seasons.
For many months I found myself caught in a whirlwind of thoughts, trying to untangle situations that seemed impossible to make sense of. The harder I searched for certainty, the more elusive it became. It felt as though I was chasing my own tail, trying to solve riddles that only grew more complicated the longer I looked at them.
Then one night, during a particularly restless time, I found myself drifting into a vivid dreaming journey.
Out of the great mists of dreamtime, a woman appeared.
At first I could only make out her silhouette, but as she came closer I noticed her unusual beauty. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes wide and knowing, her lips full and warm. White feathers framed her features, and I realised she was both owl and woman.
There was something immediately familiar about her presence.
Not familiar in the sense that I had met her before, but familiar in the way certain places, songs or dreams can feel as though they belong to your soul.
She looked directly at me and spoke a single word.
"Stillness."
The word landed inside me like medicine.
I remember wanting to laugh because stillness felt like the exact opposite of where I was. My mind was racing in every direction, creating stories upon stories, trying desperately to find solid ground. Yet something about the way she spoke that word made me stop resisting it.
"Come upon my wing," she said. "Let me show you."
And so we flew.
To my surprise, I didn't need to cling tightly to her feathers. I simply rested against her wing and allowed myself to be carried. There was a deep sense of trust in that surrender.
Below us stretched vast landscapes. Cities, roads, smoke and noise. The familiar busyness of human life. We flew high above it all, not escaping it, but witnessing it from a different perspective.
At one point, the owl woman circled above a great plume of black smoke rising from one of the cities below.
"What lives at its centre?" she asked.
As I gazed into the smoke, I slowly recognised it.
The smoke was mine.
It was made from all the worries, fears, unanswered questions and mental clutter I had been carrying. All the things that had been demanding my attention and draining my energy.
As I reached towards it, I felt a strong pull, as though I might be swallowed into its darkness. Before that could happen, the owl woman let out a tremendous cry.
Anyone who has ever heard a barn owl will understand what happened next.
Her call pierced the sky like a wild woman summoning her sisters home.
Moments later, four more owl women appeared in the distance, flying towards us through the clouds.
Their arrival filled me with awe.
They carried themselves with immense wisdom and power, yet there was nothing intimidating about them. Their presence felt loving, ancient and deeply reassuring. As they circled around us, something extraordinary began to happen.
White feathers started growing from my fingertips.
At first I was startled, but very quickly my attention shifted away from the smoke below and onto the experience of growing wings.
The more my wings expanded, the less interested I became in the chaos I had been fixated on.
The smoke still existed.
The problems still existed.
But I was no longer trapped inside them.
Instead, I was circling them from above.
Witnessing them.
Breathing around them.
Creating space around them.
That was when I began to understand what the owl woman meant by stillness.
It wasn't the absence of movement.
It wasn't the absence of problems.
It was the ability to remain spacious in the presence of them.
One of the owl sisters spoke directly into my heart.
"A new flame has been lit for you, my dear."
Before I could respond, another sister let out a mischievous cackle.
"Only if she finds her broom."
The others laughed.
Naturally, I became completely determined to find this mysterious broom.
I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, but I wasn't about to let them down.
Leaving the sisters for a while, I travelled further into the dream.
Beyond the cities.
Beyond the smoke.
Beyond everything familiar.
The air became softer and the stars brighter. I felt accompanied by tiny wind spirits who seemed delighted to carry me through the night sky.
Eventually I arrived in a small galaxy filled with scattered stars.
As I looked at them, something awakened in me that felt both ancient and childlike. Perhaps it was the artist in me, perhaps it was simply my inner child, but I found myself instinctively connecting the stars together like a giant cosmic dot-to-dot.
Slowly, a shape began to emerge.
My broom.
Made entirely from starlight.
I gathered it into my arms and laughed. Of course it would be hidden among the stars.
When I returned to the place where I had left the owl women, they had vanished. In their place stood a great sphere of light.
As I stepped into it, I felt an overwhelming sense of coming home to myself.
Rooted.
Grounded.
Connected.
I understood immediately why I had been sent to find the broom.
There was work to do.
I began sweeping through the hidden corners of my inner landscape. Old fears, outdated stories, inherited beliefs and dusty cobwebs were gently brushed away. I opened windows where there had once been walls and cleared pathways where confusion had settled.
Then I spread my wings.
The winds came.
The black smoke began to break apart and disperse.
As it did, I noticed tiny air elementals swooping through the currents, carrying away fragments of confusion and helping restore clarity to the landscape of my mind.
When I eventually returned to waking life, I could still feel the presence of those wings.
Not physically, but energetically.
They created space around me.
Perspective.
Protection.
The stories that had felt so overwhelming before the dream had softened their grip, and in their place remained the medicine that the owl woman had first offered.
Stillness.
The following night I dreamt of the sisters again.
This time there was no great lesson.
Only welcome.
We sat around an ancient fire and shared rose tea beneath a sky filled with stars. The eldest sister gifted me a cloak woven from deep blues and purples, adorned with moons, galaxies and constellations. She told me it was to be worn whenever I sought clarity of sight and wished to remember what truly mattered.
When I awoke, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
I wanted to paint them.
I began with the first owl woman, the youngest sister and the one who first emerged from the mist carrying the medicine of stillness.
This painting is my tribute to her.
To the guide who taught me that healing does not always come through finding answers. Sometimes it comes through creating enough space around our questions that we can hear the simple wisdom waiting beneath them.
May this Owl Medicine Woman bring a little of that stillness into your life too.
And may she remind you, as she reminded me, that even when the smoke feels thick and the stories feel endless, there is always a part of us that remembers how to spread its wings and return home.
