There is an ancient Sufi poem I return to over and over. It is called The Conference of the Birds, written eight hundred years ago by a Persian poet named Attar of Nishapur. And every time I read it, I understand something new about why I spent thirty years looking for a version of myself that had never actually gone anywhere.
The story goes like this. All the birds of the world gather because they have no king. They are lost. Scattered. Each of them living a small life, each of them longing for something bigger than they know how to name. And a bird called the Hoopoe stands up and tells them there is a great king — the Simorgh — who lives on a distant mountain, and if they will just make the journey to find him, everything will finally make sense.
Thousands of birds set out. Most of them turn back almost immediately. The journey is too long. The valleys are too dangerous. The Hoopoe leads the ones who remain across seven valleys — the Valley of the Quest, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Understanding, the Valley of Detachment, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Bewilderment, and finally the Valley of Poverty and Annihilation.
In each valley, more birds die. Some burn. Some surrender. Some are dissolved entirely. By the time the survivors reach the Simorgh's mountain, only thirty are left.
And when they finally arrive — exhausted, humbled, stripped of every illusion they started with — there is no great king waiting on a golden throne. There is only a mirror. And in the mirror, the thirty birds see themselves.
Si means thirty. Morgh means birds. The Simorgh was them. All along.
I did not understand this poem the first ten times I read it. I read it with my mind. I read it looking for the meaning. I read it the way I read every spiritual text I could get my hands on for thirty years — hoping the next one would finally give me the piece I was missing.
I crossed oceans. I did every retreat. I got certified in breathwork, in shadow work, in somatic work, in energy work. I sat in circles with strangers and I cried. I meditated. I journaled. I traveled to Morocco. I traveled to France. I traveled inside my own body looking for a version of me that felt whole.
And every teacher I sat with, every modality I studied, every retreat I flew to — they were all pointing me back to the same place. But I could not hear it. Because I did not believe the answer could be that simple.
The answer, it turns out, is not simple. It is only close. It is only right here, in the body I have been walking around in this entire time. It is only in the mirror I have been avoiding for thirty years because I did not think there was anything worth finding there.
That is what the Simorgh story is really about. Not a mystical bird. Not a king on a mountain. It is about the woman who has done everything, tried everything, been everywhere — and who finally sits down long enough to look at herself and realize she has been carrying the answer inside her body the entire time.
The birds did not fail by not finding the Simorgh. They found the Simorgh. The Simorgh was them. But they had to burn everything they thought they were to see it.
You cannot find yourself by looking outside. You can only find yourself by burning everything that was in the way of you seeing yourself clearly.
This is why I built Fragment Assembly. Not to give women another modality. Not to add another certification to a shelf that is already full. But to hold up a mirror. To sit across from a woman who has done everything and say to her: you are not missing a piece. You are missing a system to receive what you have already found.
You have been to the retreats. You have done the breathwork. You have journaled. You have cried in circles. You have crossed your own oceans looking for someone to tell you what is wrong with you.
Nothing is wrong with you.
You are one of the thirty. You made it to the mountain. And the only thing left to do is stop long enough to look.
You are not broken. You are not lost.
You are standing at the mirror. She was always right there.
— The Hoopoe