“You can waste a perfectly good life trying to meet the standards
of someone who thinks you’re not good enough
because they can’t understand who you are.”
~Barbara Sher
Be Yourself
Winter Woman
“When winter comes to a woman’s soul, she withdraws into her inner self, her deepest spaces. She refuses all connection, refutes all arguments that she should engage in the world. She may say she is resting, but she is more than resting: She is creating a new universe within herself, examining and breaking old patterns, destroying what should not be revived, feeding in secret what needs to thrive.
Winter women are those who bring into the next cycle what should be saved. They are the deep conservators of knowledge and power. Not for nothing did ancient peoples honour the grandmother. In her calm deliberateness, she winters over our truth, she freezes out false-heartedness.
Look into her eyes, this winter woman. In their gray spaciousness you can see the future. Look out of your own winter eyes. You too can see the future.”
~Patricia Monaghan
Be Subversive
Birthing True Self
If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.
Today I Rise
“Where are you
little girl with broken wings but full of hope?
Where are you
wise woman covered in wounds?
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
Today is the day I will not sit still and give in anymore,
today I rise.
I am bruised but I will get up and walk again,
today I rise.
I don’t care if you ignore my beauty,
today I rise.
Through the alchemy of my darkest night, I heal and thrive,
today I rise.
I move through the world with confidence and grace.
I open my eyes and am ready to face
my wholeness as a woman and my limitless capacities.
I will walk my path
with audacity,
today I rise.
I reconnect with the many aspects of myself.
I am in awe of the reality I can create.
I am a queen,
I am a healer, a wise woman, a wild woman.
I will rise and be.
I am a rebel I will wake up and fight.
I am a mother and I am a child.
I will no longer disguise my sadness and pain,
I will no longer suffer and complain.
I am black and I am white.
There’s no reason to hurt.
Where are you? Where are you?
I call upon Kali to kiss me to life.
I transform my power and anger,
no more heartache or strife.
The world is missing what I am ready to give,
my wisdom, my sweetness, my love
and my hunger for peace.
I weep with the trees and the rivers
and the earth in distress.
I rise and shine and am ready to go on my quest.
Today I rise without doubt or hesitation,
today I rise without excuses, without procrastination.
Today I call upon my sisters to join
a movement of resoluteness and concern.
Today is my call into action,
to fulfill my mission without further distraction.
Today is the day,
today I will start,
to offer the world the wisdom of my heart”
from Films for Action; filmsforaction.org
The River of You
“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves”
~Jiddu Krishnamurti
How did Krishnamurti get so wise? Time alone with himself. Time alone in stillness.
Give yourself the gift of time away from the world. Sit in stillness and explore your thoughts and feelings. Do this and you will eventually learn to stop looking to the outside world for answers or satisfaction.
The outside world is not your problem. It is not your solution.
Get still.
Explore the river of you.
The entire Universe is waiting within.
☾☽
“The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is.
Self-knowledge has no end – you don’t come to an achievement,
you don’t come to a conclusion.
It is an endless river.”
Judy Chicago – Just Create
THIS
What a great article about the creative process. And what a #BadassWoman!
When Judy Chicago’s piece, The Dinner Party, was first shown 40 years ago. It was maligned by most art critics. Revolutionary art usually is. But Judy simply kept following her vision, kept creating. And the rest of the world eventually caught up to her.
Now in her 70’s, Judy Chicago is still a take no prisoners kind of artist. I’m in awe.
I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling, that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized world. I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.
~Judy Chicago, 1979
Read The NY Times article here.
“… She wants everyone to see her art and to understand it, so that it might change them and the world.
And it has. Once your eye is trained to see Chicago’s imprint, it is everywhere, and unmistakable. It’s in Petra Collins’s menstruation-positive T-shirts; in the forthcoming installation on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. by Zoe Buckman of a huge uterus drawn in neon tubing crowned with boxing gloves; in the pink “pussy hats” that are worn in opposition to Trump’s election. Images like these — symbolically overt, politically and anatomically in-your-face, forcing a public confrontation with sexism — are all descended from Chicago’s imagination…” ~Sasha Weiss, NY Times
🌙