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’.
She finds herself in a place that makes no sense. The people around her do things, mean things, thoughtless things all the time. Why did they act this way? Where is the Love? She knew in her heart that Love was key – the juice of the Universe. But she couldn’t find much love here. Just confusion and fear and pain.
Spirit Bear 🐻 came to her and comforted her in this crazy place. Bear stayed with her for years, protecting and comforting her whenever things in this crazy place got too painful and confusing. But gradually, over time she got sucked into the confusion around her. She made the mistake of thinking that the adults around her knew what they were doing and she started trying to do what they did, act how they acted. Bear was still there close, but she simply lost touch somehow. 🐻 Bear slowly faded from view.
After years in this place, she acted like she belonged. She was still so confused but she pretended that she knew what to do. She forgot about Bear. And she forgot about the power of Love. She became caught up in vying for power and status and money.
But one day she looked around and saw how empty her life was. The power and the status and the money didn’t fix anything or make this place any less horrible, any less confusing. What was the point of all this?
She began searching for “the point”. First at church, then in meditation and spiritual booksand healing modalities. 🐻 Spirit Bear drew closer then, but she didn’t really notice. She was too busy searching for “the point.”
One day in the midst of meditation, a beautiful, ethereal light being 🌟 came to her and showered her with love, so much love. She was left shaken and wide awake. Oh yes! Love was the point! She remembered now. She connected with this beautiful star being ⭐ many times and felt better. She began to write ✏, filling journals with thoughts and feelings abouther lifeand all her questions about this crazy world. But sadly over time, she got distracted and pulled back into the chaos and craziness of the world again. She stopped writing. She stopped connecting with her star being. She forgot.
This remembering and forgetting happened again and again to her through years of living in this crazy place.
Then the dreams came. She dreamt of another life as a Native American woman who lost her love and wandered grieving until she was healed by Mama Earth 🌎. In this other life, Mama Earth taught her to open up and love again.
She dreamt of this other life again and again. She LIVED an entire other life in her dreams!
The dreams shook her to her core. And they loosened the grip the crazy world had over her. She wanted to know more about this dream woman and her life. She learned how to explore dreamspace so she could explore this other life, this other reality. And her Spirit Bear soon showed up there in dreamspace.
She wept when she saw 🐻 Bear again. She held on and melted into Bear’s fierce softness. She began consciously calling Bear to her every day. And she began taking her troubles and questions into dreamspace. There she found answers – specific answers that fit for her. She began to slowly unravel her confusion and get glimpses of “the point”, her point.
She began to 🖌 paint and dance 💃 just for the joy of it. And the more she did those things, the more she felt like herself – her real self. She began to sing 🎶, first humming then joyfully making up little melodies that she sang to herself. She remembered how much she had loved painting and dancing and singing when she first came to this place. She remembered. And she began to love again.
And one day while she was happily playing with paint, her star being ⭐ returned showering her with love – Big Love that cleared away even more confusion. And she could remember who she was and what mattered when she first came to this crazy place. She remembered her point. ❤
