Wild Territory
It’s Your Life. Own it.
“She never smoothed her wild edges.
She never stopped writing new chapters.
She fell.
She rose.
She danced.
She unraveled.
She let go.
She evolved.
She was a tangled mess.
She was strong.
She was fierce.
She was brave.
She was a badass.
The ocean was her therapy.
Grace was her religion.
She lived like there was a fire in her veins. e.
Forgiveness was her freedom.
She lived like there would never be enough time.
She lived like there was fire in her veins.
She lived.”
~Katie Yackley Moore
Stand for Love
“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
~Fred Rogers
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Image: Artist Unknown
Like the Moon
And if you are to love,
love like the moon loves.
It doesn’t steal the night.
It only unveils the beauty of the dark
~Isra Al-Thibeh
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Moon Photo by Nancy L
“Just” a Mother
“It is not female biology that has betrayed the female, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed more than one hundred years ago, it is the myths and stories that have been told about her, what has come to be believed about her – even by the female herself.
In the Christian West, it is common for a woman to be described or to describe herself as “just a mother”. It is common for “barefoot and pregnant” to connote powerlessness. Simone de Beauvoir suggested that it was as mother that woman was most fearsome, so it was as mother that she was enslaved.
Yet there are cultures in the human community where a birthing mother is described as a “great warrior” – going to the gates of life and death, to heave and push a soul into the world.”
~Glenys Livingstone, PhD
Lounging on her Lion
A Little Bit of Soft
Why do we spend all of our precious soft?
trying to be hard
talking like we’re hard
dressing like we’re hard
pretending to be hard
moving like we’re hard
acting like we’re hard
writing like we’re hard
living like we’re hard
until we wake up one morning
stone
cold
hard
and we’d give anything
everything
to feel a little bit of
soft
~Max Mundan
~~~
#getYin
Natural Love
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
~Billy Collins, Aimless Love
❤️
Image by Nancy Lankston