Let your hair down feel the life in your breath embrace your animal body laze in the sun ground in the moist earth flow with the rivers run with the wind. Get to know your inner wildness the internal springs, caves, nocturnal beasts and invertebrates the forgotten place where you hide your wild self the creature of instinct and intuition. Be wild. Let yourself go where your heart wanders when you sleep dream about flying high and diving deep and finally realizing who you really are.
Fiery new moon and potent seed point today. Every creation begins from a tiny spark… What will you commit to doing this spring? Focus, set intentions and take action now.
Lots of women are online today lecturing the women who marched in one of the Women’s Marches across the country. Apparently, lots of women feel the need to dictate to other women exactly how they should protest… even telling them not to feel happy about a peaceful march, insisting that the peace and joy the marchers experienced was all bogus because the crowd was “too white.” Lots of women are also lecturing other women about the best way to support minority women. Lots of women are judging and guilting and dismissing other women today… Is this really helpful?!
Sorry ladies, but you don’t get to define me. You don’t get to dictate what my protests look like. You don’t get to guilt me simply because I’m a middle class white woman. You don’t get to tell me what kind of sign to carry or hat to wear when I protest. You don’t get to dismiss me because I marched with a smile and didn’t scream in rage and burn shit. You don’t get to poo poo my commitment because I don’t protest the way you do.
I will choose when and how I take political action. I will choose when and how I speak out and act. It is MY choice, NOT YOURS!
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When one group lectures another about how to behave and how to feel, it sounds suspiciously like old patriarchal Bullshit to me – even when women do it to other women.
EVERY woman needs the space to take political action and express herself in the way that’s most appropriate to her WITHOUT being judged and lectured by other women – and that includes white women from the suburbs!
We won’t fix this mess by telling one group of women to shut up and stuff their feelings, their needs, their wisdom in order to serve another group of women who now take precedence.
We want change, right? Real change? That requires creating a space where ALL women can dialogue with each other and be heard with respect and love. That’s true inclusivity.
“The language by which we have been taught to dismiss ourselves and our feelings as suspect is the same language we use to dismiss and suspect each other.”
“My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you sicken and die of them, still in silence?
… And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” ~Elie Wiesel
It can be difficult to follow the current political news, much less act on it. So much of what is happening now is crazy and scary. I try to hold this quote from Elie Wiesel (above) close to my heart.
Sometimes I have powerful negative feelings bubble up when I see what’s happening in America today. I feel deep fear and anger and even hate at times. That’s ok. Those too are normal human emotions. It’s all spiritual grist for the mill – even the crazy ugly stuff.
Denying or stuffing my negative reactions to the news doesn’t help anyone. Denial ties me up in knots. I lose my ability to act. But if I can allow myself the space to feel whatever I’m feeling about the chaos around me, no matter how uncomfortable, I come out the other side stronger and clearer and more capable of acting from a space of love and compassion.
Can you stand at the edge of fear and hold to the truth of who you are? No matter how big the abyss of fear feels, it is nothing in comparison to your truth. When you truly know yourself, fear is merely a tool that the Universe uses to get you to pay attention.
