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Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief,
turning down through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe,
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering,
the small round coins,
thrown by those who have wished for something else.
David Whyte
My very essence was not affirmed.
So I took it all and kept it inside.
Mom was emotionally unavailable
and perhaps she kept me small for different reasons.
I was not affirmed.
But then also,
maybe my essence was uncomfortable for her.
Maybe she didn’t want me to stray too far outside the boundaries/the lines.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
The divorce rate between women and our bodies is sky-high.
We’re told our worth is our beauty, our glory is our youth, and we’re told this so often we swallow it as truth.
Beauty culture clamors, ”Change yourself, rearrange yourself, shrink, shape, and buy!” We slather our skin with promises, but our bodies never seem to comply.
”I’m choosing this,” we say, ”because I prefer to look this way.” But what about that small inner voice that says, ”I sort of like it…but partly I don’t feel like I have a choice.”
The industry of patriarchy has told us that beauty is pain, and we need beauty to win this survival game. We concede and so internalize our oppression, holding our bonds in place with our own perceptions.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
If you’re exhausted, rest.
If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.
If you don’t feel the urge to make something new,
just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry
I can’t stay, mother.
I love you, but I wasn’t born to please you
I wasn’t born to make you happy
or give your life meaning.
I wasn’t born to rot under your wings
like an unhatched egg.
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
Lucille Clifton
I never feel more given to
than when you take from me –
when you understand the joy I feel
giving to you.
And you know my giving isn’t done
to put you in my debt,
but because I want to live the love
I feel for you.
To receive with grace
may be the greatest giving.
There is no way I can separate
the two.
Ruth Bebermeyer
Thank you Haley