When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.
~Maya Angelou
Safe travels, Ruth. Your brilliance will continue to guide us as we fight to make equality and justice for all a reality. 💗
A poem for our times from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
–When someone says, “We’re saying the same thing.” Say, “We are not saying the same thing.”
–When someone says, “Don’t question, just have faith.” Say, “I am questioning, vato, and I have supreme faith in what I think.”
–When someone says, “Don’t defy my authority.” Say, “There is a higher authority that I follow.”
–When someone says, “Your ideas are seductive.” Say, “No, my ideas are not seductive, they are substantial.”
–When someone says, “Your ideas are dangerous.” Say, “Yes, my ideas are dangerous, and why are you so afraid hombre o mujer? ”
–When it is said, “It’s just not done.” Say, “It will be done.”
–When it is said, “It is immature.” Say, “All life begins small and must be allowed to grow.”
–When it is said, “It’s not thought out.” Say, “It is well thought out.”
–When they say, “You’re over-reacting.” Say, “You’re under-reacting, vato.”
–When they say, “You’re being emotional.” Say, “Of course I have well placed emotions, and by the way, what happened to yours?”
–When they say, “You’re not making any sense.” Say, “I don’t make sense, I am the sense.”
–When they say, “I can’t understand you when you’re crying.” Say, “Make no mistake, I can weep and be fierce at the same time.”
–When they say, “I cant understand you when you’re being so angry.” Say. “You couldn’t hear me when I was being nice, or sweet or silent, either.”
–When someone says, “You’re missing the point.” Say, “I’m not missing the point, but you seem to be missing my point — What are you so afraid of?”
–When someone says, “You are breaking the rules.” Say, “Yes, I am breaking the rules.”
–When someone says, “That’s not practical.” Say, “It’s practically a done deal, thank you very much.”
–When it is said, “No one will do it, believe you, or follow it.” Say, “I will do it, I will believe in it, and in time, the world may well follow it.”
— When it is said, “No one wants to listen to that.” Say, “I know you have a hard time listening to that.”
–When it is said, “It’s a closed system, you cant change it.” Say, “I’m going to knock twice and if there is no answer, then I am going to blow the doors off that system and it will change.”
–When it is said, “They’ll ignore you.” Say, “They won’t ignore me and the hundreds of thousands who stand with me.”
–When they say, “It’s already been done.” Say, “It’s not been done well enough.”
— When they say, “It’s not yet time.” Say, “It’s way past time.”
–When they say, “It’s not the right day, right month, right year.” Tell them, “The right year was last year, and the right month was last month, and the right day was yesterday, and you’re running behind schedule, vato, and what in the name of God and all that is holy are you going to do about it?”
–When they say, “Who do you think you are?” — tell them … tell them who you are, and don’t hold back.
–When they say, “I put up with it, you’ll have to put up with it too.” Say, “No, no, no, no.”
–When they say, “I’ve suffered a long time and you’ll have to suffer too.” Say, “No, no, no, no.”
–When they say, “You’re an incorrigible, defiant, hard to get along with, unreasonable woman … ” Say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes …
and I have worse news for you yet — we are teaching our daughters, and our mothers, and our sisters … we are teaching our sons, and our fathers, and our brothers, to be just like us.”
“An uneasy reaction to the word Goddess is common among women. Thousands of years of repression, hostility, and conditioning against a Divine Mother have made a deep impression on us. We’ve been conditioned to shrink back from the Sacred Feminine, to fear it, to think of it as sinful, even to revile it… Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divine in feminine form.”
~Sue Monk Kidd
The Lady of Guadelupe/Frida Kahlo by Fabian Debora
In the past they burned us, because they thought we were witches. Just because we knew what to do with herbs outside the kitchen because we knew how to dance, how to seduce, how to pray. Because we moved with the cycles of the moon.
In the past they burned us alive because they knew that we are witches. So now we cast spells with our mouths pieces of our hearts spill out. It is incredible, the power of a woman who is not afraid to say ‘no’.
No we won’t sit any longer while you ponder on our rights. On our rights to give or not give life. On our rights to make another woman our wife. On our rights to be safe, to get paid an equal wage. To have a voice, in a place where we might make a change.
It is incredible, the amount of ways they have slayed just to keep us small. If they could’ve they probably would’ve burned us all. But they couldn’t with fire so they did it with words. Laid down laws to determine the amount of our worth. They kept us in contracts. They separated our circles. Erased us from pages and made labour saving devices our saviors.
It is incredible how quickly knowledge can fade. How much effort was invested to lead us astray.
But we will notcome quietly.
Well, there’s another thing they tried to take away. Our rights to exclaim our orgasms ecstatically. We will not come quietly. We will open our mouths and let our spells spill out. Cast poetic prayers into the night so that every woman can hear the howl of her sister’s delight, reminding her that her voice deserves to be heard.
Let her jaw drop. Let her shame stop. Let her body scream under the self pleasure of what it means to be a woman who can speak freely. You see words, they carry meaning. They have fooled us for so long that ‘no’ means ‘yes’. So much so that I’m almost impressed. Except I finally discovered they’re right.
So I’ve claimed back that ‘no’ as mine. Because every ‘no’ I throw against their forces is another ‘yes’ I retain for my own self-worth.
It is a spell cast for my own protection. It is incredible, the power of a woman who is not afraid to say NO.
And this old witch? I’m done with broomsticks. I’m done with ‘know your place’. This witch knows that some knowledge just won’t fade. That every woman is my sister. Through the hubble and the bubble and the toil and the trouble we grow stronger when we cast our spells together.
We entered the fire. Now we rise from the ashes and we are holding our candles and lighting our matches until the night becomes lighter and our voices can grow because we have remembered we are witches and we have learned to say ‘NO’.
