“The best thing about being authentic is that there is no image to maintain. You will delight some and disturb others, and none of it will concern the truth of your being.”
~Unknown
Art: The Energy of Me
by NancyL
Being Authentic
Let the World Hear You
“Be loud, my sweet girl.
Make some noise if you want.
Let the world hear your voice—strong, clear, and full of all the things that make you you.
You don’t need permission to take up space.
Care deeply, my darling.
Put your whole self into what you love.
Let your heart stretch wide, even if the world doesn’t always understand.
The depth of your kindness, your passion, your love—it is your gift.
Be brave, young one.
Bravery doesn’t mean you won’t feel fear.
It means you step forward anyway, even with shaky hands and unsure steps.
Your try is always a great feat.
You are beautiful.
You are gentle.
You are kind and sweet.
You are bold.
You are creative.
You are perfectly, wonderfully, uniquely you.
You are so many things—and so much more.
Never let anyone define you but you.
Because right now, in this very moment, you are exactly who you are meant to be.
And that is enough. Always.”
from Be Brave Mom
Art: Leap of Faith
by Lucy Campbell
My Body
“I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.
You may not use me as your factory.
Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.
This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back.
My life is a non-negotiable demand.”
~Marge Piercy,
‘Right to Life’ excerpt
♾
Image: Venus by Susan
Seddon Boulet
Kiss Your Demons and Heal
This is a good morning to kiss your demons
and change them into dark angels.
Do not drive them away or they will return.
Lust is not a demon but a dark angel filled
with un-created star nectar.
Anger is not a demon but a dark angel of healing fire
dancing in your amygdala.
Grief is not a demon but a dark angel bearing
seven oceans of love in one jar.
The demon of depression who lives underground
keeps Wisdom hostage, binding
her dark angel bones in delicious mycelia.
The dark angel of addiction brings gifts
under one broken wing, and uses the other
to help you fly, for one of yours is broken too.
If you do not bow to your dark angels, they will
possess you and you will have to act them out.
So breathe them in, let them become your
shouts and sighs, pants of lust and terror
in your lungs. Now exhale and dissolve them
into the clear ocean of awakening.
They don’t possess you, you possess them.
Your dark angels have become the blue sky,
a swirl of hummingbirds, tree frogs
discussing everything. But beware
of enlightened teachers who claim no darkness.
They will lead you into a deeper darkness,
the shadow that hides from itself.
Against your beautiful demons a true teacher
will never set your heart.
A true teacher will empower you to kiss them
with that kiss which the mind gives
to its most terrible thoughts,
so that names, images, teeth marks, hieroglyphs
of veins scrawled on the cave of your liver,
neurons twisted into Sanskrit
etching ancient spells into your hippocampus,
the rippling gristle-flower of sound in your bellybutton,
all disappear into one Body, this Body,
where you taste the starless wine of night itself
and give birth to tomorrow’s sun.
~Fred LaMotte
🌙
Image: Michelangelo
The Blanket Around Her
maybe it is her birth
which she holds close to herself
or her death
which is just as inseparable
and the white wind
that encircles her is a part
just as the blue sky
hanging in turquoise from her neck
oh woman
remember who you are
woman
it is the whole earth
~ Joy Harjo
🌎
Photo by Ruthie Martin
on Unsplash
Change Ourselves, Change the World
“The world which men have made isn’t working. Something needs to change. To change the world, we women need first to change ourselves – and then we need to change the stories we tell about who we are. The stories we’ve been living by for the past few centuries – the stories of male superiority, of progress and growth and domination – don’t serve women and they certainly don’t serve the planet.
Stories matter, you see.”
~Sharon Blackie
🌙
Photo by Benjamin Lossius
Do You
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle.
No need to be anybody but oneself.”
~Virginia Woolf
🌙
Tattoo Image: आत्मता मति
share the prayer of you