As Gloria Steinem once said: The truth will set you free…. but first, it will piss you off!
Why do such sentiments linger for so long? Because they strike a chord in so many. The attending ‘knowing’ lives silently in so many who do not dare …. until one does. Someone always has to go first.
Going first is not always fun. At some times – and still, in some places today – it can get you killed.
There is a price for going first… for laying claim to a voice too-long silent…. but we often forget: there is also a price for staying silent. And usually, THAT price lives on in generations to follow as having become the ‘model’ for how it should be. Thanks, but I’ll pass on all of that.
Here is something that many women don’t think of when they choose to go first: they have to make it up. They have to invent themselves…. invent their creations, often from putting one foot in front of the other…. and let the chips fall where they may. And when those chips do fall (as they always do), they become the provocations for the insights and discoveries that come and then, direct the next foot-fall. What is the alternative? Walking along the path where others have already cleared the way… to destinations undesirable to so many.
In a world of long-silent women…. women who sit on the ever-expanding powder keg of their own denial of Self…. the inevitable works its way into expression. The rage is only overshadowed by the outrage! And here is the trick: imagine how powerful the Crone becomes when her rage and her outrage are fully embraced within her… fully possessed by her… fully processed within her… and its expression is freed through the Grace of her Being. Unfuckwithable. Line in the sand. Holding her ground without the need to destroy. And sometimes, even that need cannot be denied.
Never vent and spew your Fire. Hold it close to you, knowing the power it will free in you. Take full ownership of it… and let it, first, transform YOU. Only then, can its continued emergence transform reality.
For generations that go back eons, women have bound the feet (both actually and metaphorically) of the younger women who follow. Often, the intention is to protect… to make these younger women inoffensive and hence, more appealing to those who might destroy them. The crippling of body, mind and Spirit is all just part of the price we pay for being born female. Such is the power of Being female. Even in today’s world, the effort to make women disappear and blend into the wallpaper… undefined… unclaimed…. is rabid in its desired outcomes.
That you are here makes it is clear to me: you will not go quietly into the night.
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(Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fine-tip-on-black-surface-3934623/)