To Thine Own Self Be True

“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”

— Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act I, scene iii

But first, who is this: my Self to whom I am meant to be true? 

Surely the night that follows the day and then the night again is led by that Truth, which Truth I trust is my Self. And said Truth, when followed, is True North. 

I see: I am my own True North. 

How to locate her in the vast array of brilliance shining above and around me? Where do I cast my eyes to find her particular glimmer that upon seeing will be instantly-recognized and from which all lines will be drawn outward? 

Polonius reminds me I have a season of blessings in which to see, to pinpoint, to pattern my compass to Her. My karmic energy is vast and all-inclusive, my pendulum swings as big in my learning and grieving, as in my abundance and giving. 

The unicorn, like a stallion arrayed in a cloak, whose Pantone shade falls somewhere between Rubine and Rhodamine, watches over and envelopes me, its opalescent coat shimmering in the distance as I align my heart’s beat to her hooves’ deliberate steps and pauses. 

I gently and easily move my Self from the vast lapis lake, dropping off fear as I fill to overflowing the Courage I take with me to the top of the massive mountain range, where I find the mirror of Me reflected back in the rock’s golden Face, her eyes’ blue are remnants of the lapis left behind mere moments ago. Butterflies of recognition flutter from my midsection, no longer mistaken for or labeled as anxiety, my Sacral Chakra — overwhelmed with delight — takes flight, and I am atop the ancient wall (perhaps Jerusalem?) whose location is entirely inconsequential to what matters: my location on and to the wall, to the Grief itself. I see both sides now, my Courage (Strength) and my Matter (Abundance), sides of the Self that is Me. 

To mine own Self, to my Courage and my Conviction, to my Matter and my Meaning, to my Love and my Loving, I will be True. My north is my present moment. 

It is safe for me to spread my wings. 

My wingspan is wide and vast and here to hold.

My Self is Love contained within the span of my reach, my wings, my heart’s beat, my bigness, my seeing of You.

It is safe for You to be held within my Self’s Loving. 

My Self is found. 

My Love knows no reach. 

My Span contains for You. 

Between Rubine and Rhodamine:

My cloak waits to cover You. 

Lapis. Love. Lift. 

Letting go of that which no longer serves or sits in me. 

Letting go of the old, the other, the onus.

Opalescent unicorn of Self shining and lighting the way.

Feminine Primary Matrix cut and reconnected to the New Feminine: to my Self’s Own line of freshly-birthed ancient connection.

My blessing season stretches heart-and-year-round. 

I Believe In Magic

I believe in magic.

And moonlight.

And the witchery that is womanhood — the BEING of a woman. I’ve seen it written that “we are the granddaughters of the witches they forgot to burn,” and I sometimes wonder why (women) — why (I) am so overlooked, so talked over, dismissed, talked about, told I intimidate, told to tone down, told I’m too much, had my words — which I weave out of and from the magic in me — the magic that IS me — taken, consumed, and used, to transform (his) very world, and then witness the credit for said total transformation claimed by a him and not the potion my Love brewed and which he guzzled down, while his eyes consumed me. 

I believe in magic.

And moments.

And with meaning, I stepped onto the North Carolina coast at midnight on May 27, 2021, and there she was in full view, the oceanic pull of her splendor casting its luminosity on me was instantaneous. Overcome with her beingness, of being in her presence, of my Self awareness in all of my own beingness, I burst into tears. And my tears mingled with my bigness, for which my Being is the sacred container holding all of Me.

Moonlight is magic. 

I believe in magic. 

And the magic of a seed, planted in a row, underneath a taut string, stretched from pole to pole, stretches beyond its original container and grows and grows, giving greenness and good-ness, and the garden glows with the abundance of what started in a simple and small buried shell. 

I believe in magic.

And in Me. 

And the bigness of my Love, of my container and my capacity to hold not just for and as Me, but for all those who have, and have yet, to pass through the magic of my Loving, of my Knowing, of my Holding. What does this magic of Me feel like? 

My magic is me no longer overlooking my Self, no more staying silent while words and worlds are being discussed over and around Me; I will not dismiss my own inner witch or her ways; if I am to be talked about, it is I who will do the talking, and “intimidation“ is yet another iteration of the age-old hunting and burning for that which you are incapable of experiencing. Tone up, not down. My muchness IS my magic.

To experience the moonlight, just step with intention onto her shore. She is here to flood and to cover you with every shimmer of her splendor, illuminating beautiful You. 

I weep at the potency of my own spells. 

2020: A Personal Review

1. Like Rip Van Winkle I awoke in February-ish after a long (not) sleep — which sleep is 2019 in review, which was the year I released (not by choice) more than half the blood in my body. Doozy of a year that 2019, but I’m here to review 2020. And it was in 2020 (after aforementioned almost died in 2019 when I couldn’t walk from my bed to my sofa down the hall without the wall’s assistance and a four-hour nap on arrival) I laced up my runners again. I exhaustingly ran one mile, took a nap, and two days later ran it again. I must have run that beautiful mile with a nap fifteen times! Then I woke up and ran three miles on a Monday in June. My naps got shorter the farther I ran (but I’m not sure the correlating factor wasn’t the homegrown hugs and fresh garden produce I was consuming on the daily). And suddenly it was September and I was bent over weeping while full-out living at the base of a mountain on which I had just run FIVE miles. In October I decided to run 13.1 miles. I didn’t run them, but I decided to. It was a good year for empowering and powerful decisions. Socks were an unexpected major theme of 2020 and consumed not a little of my online content and crowd-sourcing solutions for my blistered toes. 

2. Another decision — profound and powerful in its creation moment — in March, which I’ve always known comes in like a lion, delivered details to me about my parents’ (then) current situation, which details (dad’s cancer diagnosis was our Christmas gift in that 2019 year I’m still not reviewing and his journey with it was already very much underway, mom full-time giving and giving and giving and getting I could see not enough in return) initiated a divine download and I decided (or was it already decided as things divine often are?) I was moving back home, back east, back in with my parents, back into the home and the hearts (my own at the fore) that have received, held, and helped to heal me more times than one Arminda in one lifetime might reasonably expect. And as my Self, for the first time in all those times, I came home, covering 2,458 miles to get here, wearing no socks at all.

3. Weeding, seeding, growing, (re)planting, watering, weeding (always with the weeding), cultivating, mulching, harvesting, cutting back, then the dying. This, the life cycle of our garden, the garden about which I cannot write right now without weeping, could be the simple summary of my 2020. For my dad, the master gardener, I donned gloves fitted for my small hands, and went to work. I cleared brush, I pulled weeds, I laid a brick pathway, I moved dirt, I dug holes, I watered the entire greenhouse, I hedged potato mounds, I created new beds for planting, I built a retention wall, I hauled yard waste, I organized by color, size, and shape, I took instruction, I wore out my first pair of gloves, I spread mulch, I measured rows, I planted sweet peas, beans, chard, tomatoes, peppers, squash green and yellow, cucumbers, flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, and five more pepper plants we definitely did not need but he needed them planted. I placed the first green bean in his unresponsive fingers, on the underside of the surgical tape securing a needle whose purpose was to deliver nutrients that bean (could but) would never give to him but so desperately wanted. I took a picture of that bean in my dad’s hand. I still have that picture. 

4. Being alive and sad and happy and running farther than I have ever run, while wearing socks when I decided to wear socks. I got all the way up to ten miles in one consecutive run. I did those ten in December 2020. I’ve never felt so alive and fully wholly conscious of my aliveness, of what my body did in its own behalf — how it regrew itself from the inside out — just so it could support my decision to be alive and sad and happy and running as far as I want — all at the same time. Good times, 2020. Good times. 

Planked Awareness

The aged wooden planks beneath my sandals reverberate just enough with each step to ignite my almost anticipatory sensory system, which is apparently the factory default setting in this body of mine. Sounds, smells, every leaf brand new to me as if for the first time, although I have been walking this same boardwalk plank through this ever-shifting bog garden for at least as long as many of these trees have been stretching toward their crowded skyline. 

I lean over the edge of the railing, putting as much as possible of the presence of the boardwalk behind my direct line of sight, minimize other visitors whose presence is audibly known, and initiate a manual fade on that feed line taking more concentration against my already-bogged sensory system. I’m looking for the knobby knees of the Bald Cypress trees that have gathered here, collected themselves into their own community amongst the ducks, the almost-always shallow side swamp to the larger but still-connected lake of some collective committee’s making, and down-stream and almost hidden from the other deciduous, but dirt-dwelling trees. 

I smile out loud and my laughter bounces off the nearby bamboo, dense in the aggregate knowing of its usefulness amidst any negative (and obviously completely false) rumors that sometimes get dropped by a passing robin too self-absorbed with his own shade of red to be bothered by what his beaked notes might mean to the wide-open ears of the bamboo below.

Next to me (and invited into my self-constructed cone of connectivity) on the elevated boardwalk, as I lean into my lean (those cypress nodes are consuming all of my attention), Curt points to a beautiful tree above my head and asks whether I know its name, his tone clearly indicating he is not asking, he is teaching. I do not recognize what appears to be a beautiful evergreen foliage, delicately interlacing her way through the intricate and interconnected branches of the treetop she calls her own. 

His grin immediately fills all seven acres of this luscious green garden space as he announces, “It’s the Bald Cypress!” 

My delight and my shock startle the birds in the branches above. I am immediately aware that this anticipatory sensory system I call my own has failed to focus on the two necessary parts of one self-sufficient ecosystem. The Bald Cypress’ knees so captivated me I did not overlook, but actually under-looked the very creation of this majestic multifaceted dweller on earth or underwater achiever. I am internally brought to my own knees, my sensory system recalibrating in real-time, coding my newly-propagated desire to always look in as many directions as the cypress stretches itself: up, down, around, under, and over me. I shift my lean back into full-standing alongside the Bald Cypress, my sandals exit the boardwalk planks; I leave only the remnants of my laughter to contribute to the aging of the planks.  

Transcendent Love

The music begins to play softly in the background, like the perfectly-picked soundtrack to my beautiful life. I close my eyes and drop. . . down . . . into my heart, my holding space for all things and for nothing, where I see everything because I have closed my eyes to the nothingness. It all drops away, the thoughts I am so attached to keeping and believing. In their place I substitute nothing but my breath. I am with the I am. Nothing more. And it is the everything.

My attention is brought back into the now with the crinkling of paper, the forced skidding of my laptop being pushed aside, the weight of an object’s placement on the desk next to me. Opening my eyes I see my beautiful mother “quietly” placing a bag of Bojangles’ seasoned fries onto my desk along with a large cup of their sweet tea, Love’s offering on full display. I smile at her and choke back the immediate tears that surface with my thanks. She smiles back and gently closes my office door behind her as she leaves me to my meditation and my sweet tea. 

At this season of our lives, my mother and I are like Rumi and God: “like two giant fat people in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” Roomies as we two are, bumping, seeing, and loving each other couldn’t be easier or more joyful. 

I had an understanding, a knowing, with my Self fourteen months ago when I drove across the country from LA to North Carolina to move back in with my parents: that for the first time in my life I was coming home as my Self. Returning here to the very home that saw me through the (self-created) trauma of moving to a brand new state as a fourteen-year-old, and the blame I attached to my parents for my upheaval and upset, and also to the home and the arms of my parents that held me and my three-year-old daughter at our exodus’ end in leaving the abusive marriage my Self barely survived. Fourteen months ago I came home again with my arms and heart wide open wanting and needing nothing more than to hold and Love my parents through my dad’s cancer journey, none of us knowing where his journey would lead us, but knowing we would arrive together, our wide-open Self-recognizable hearts intact. 

I hold precious and close to me these fourteen months now of my mother’s Love: my Love for and with her, as well as her Love for and with me. We two: hearts full of the nothingness and the everything of nothing but Love. 

My mother doesn’t drink sweet tea. She doesn’t believe anyone should drink sweet tea. It is, for her, an insult to God to partake of this substance that is hurting or harming these our physical temples housing our hearts. 

What my Self no longer believes bumps into my mother’s Love bumping back into me with random gifts delivered silently to the soundtrack of my beautiful life: a paper bag filled with my favorite seasoned fries crinkling and the thumping down on my desk of a vat of sweet tea (my own reusable straw inserted in its lid) while my eyes are closed and I meditate in the corner, opening them to see the vision of my mother’s Love hovering. 

My heart captures and honors this vision of Love transcending the beliefs we have been so attached to keeping. I smile and giggle as I tuck it away into my heart’s cavernous nothingness, holding it for the always, the everything, the I am. We two, my mother and I, are here in this space, this Love, these our hearts, sweet tea and tenderness very much intact. I’ll definitely take fries with that. 

Axis of Power

I never believed or thought anything about my hair except it was long and I liked it that way. Sitting next to my husband of under two years watching the holiday movie, The Family Man, starring Nicholas Cage and Téa Leoni, I was absolutely smitten with Leoni’s entire on-screen vibe, adorably short hair, included. I spoke my affection out loud, “Wow! I love her hair so much” and like whiplash from being hit from behind, my world’s axis was grabbed by its throat, my flailing hands scrambled to pry away the fingers of the perpetrator, too alarmed to admit the only one present and beside me all along, was my husband.

“You can never cut your hair,” was the coolly, leveled-at-me one-line throat punch I didn’t see coming. Assuming he was joking, or playing with me a little bit because of course he liked my hair, but it was my hair, up until that moment that it wasn’t. There had been a transference of power, of ownership, of axis, and I had not known my body was the battlefield and the bounty in one. “What do you mean, ‘I can’t ever cut my hair’?” I bandied back, skipping my words over to him, keeping my lightness and heart holding onto that which I believed to be mine, never not for a moment until this moment now ever considering the possibility I possessed something that could or would be taken from me. He did not skip with me, nor did he hold my hand while I was playing right there next to him; his words sliced with a razor’s edge, “Your hair belongs to me. It’s part of our prenuptial agreement. You can never cut it.”

(We have no such thing and never ever not for a moment of breath coming out of me was spent on my hair’s discussion or to whom it belonged or didn’t belong, over who held the rights to its length, style, design, or its color, all of which were hanging in this unbalanced breathless space between us and next to me here on the sofa, Téa Leoni paused on the screen in front of me, adorably short hair on semi-permanent display).

I didn’t know I could stand my ground, hold my position, resist his infiltration. These were not the lessons taught or the tools, like scissors, I had been shown how to use. I didn’t want to cut my hair, had never wanted to cut my hair, had cried for days in the second grade when my mother traded me a sucker for a haircut (my sister betrayed me, used her words to convince me this was a great idea, a beautiful outcome guaranteed, and when the deed was done and I stood looking at my shorn head in shock, she claimed the sucker as her own even though the hair stolen was mine and had nothing to do with her; she had not grown it, it did not live on her head, no loss was living in her heart) and suddenly not being “allowed” to do so was my body’s axis being forcibly removed, transferred, claimed, pillaged and my hair’s destiny was now someone else’s plunder. And the rapist and pillager was sitting right next to me.

Never to not be right next to me ever again for any and for all visits to the hairdresser who was no longer mine to claim because my hair was no longer mine to have and to hold. Rather, the self-appointed general assumed his power pose with a half smile (reserved for the lesser ranks) on his salon-facing face, orchestrating, visioning, and directing the handling of each lock I had loved. Bound in the black smock of complicity, my neck held, but not supported, in the sink’s cradle, my scalp burned, the flames stretching, reaching, licking the entire circumference of my skull, the shame I felt smoldering inside showing itself only briefly with one tear’s escape down the side of my face not facing his, while my tresses were transformed into his vision of a great idea, of beauty guaranteed, was to me an unrecognizable mass of Barbie. Bleached-blonde. My Self muted in this his strategic coup against my crown. Shame became my shroud, my sense of Self buried deep beneath the public-facing Barbie hair head held by him, proudly parading his trophy (wife) through one multiple of five years, the scalping, like an honor killing, repeated every 3 months, always standing in his power pose over me: bound, held, and burning for his pleasure, in spite of my ever-present pain.

And in the morning of the fifth year I saw my Self in the mirror and She said to me, “I miss you. I love you. You are still here. I see you.” My tears like a raging river washed clean the battlefield of the body (turned bounty) I occupied and I staged my own revolution: my reclamation of Self. And the lessons I had not been taught were instead forged in the fires of my quarterly burnings, branded on my heart, and I brandished my Love of Self like a pair of deftly-wielded scissors and cut my Self out of that five-year fealty, leaving only those Barbie locks — belonging never to me — in my wake, waking in the sovereignty of my own shorn head and the axis of my own power restored.

Curiosity

I have noticed the absence of curiosity and creativity in me is a byproduct of being out of integrity with myself. So perhaps curiosity isn’t what killed the proverbial cat, but rather the perpetuation of my own damaging and self-minimizing behaviors that kills, or at the very least smothers, the curious in me. Great news: No cats were harmed in the creation or covering up of anyone’s curiosity! PETA will be so pleased.

Liz Gilbert talks about following her curiosity, and invites her readers to do the same, in her marvelous book, “Big Magic,” which I have read no fewer than five times. Its being remembered by me in this moment of putting words on the page about curiosity is perhaps my inner counselor nudging me — yet again — to explore this trail of breadcrumbs that feels suspiciously like a rhythmic pounding in my own chest, one beat for every metaphorical breadcrumb, leading me deeper into what I hope will find me falling down a rabbit hole where I will land in my own Wonderment. Because Alice shows me how to explore, how to say YES, how to be “‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ . . . (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).” And then Alice’s laughter invoked the admonishment of the Queen to “[believe] as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” 

Six impossible things (at least) I’ve believed since breakfast today:

1. I am seen.

2. My voice matters.

3. Credentials are a matter of perspective.

4. I am a writer.

5. I can make all my dreams come true.

6. I possess all the inner resources I need to accomplish all that I imagine.

As an undergraduate student I was required to take a 100-level English course: Freshmen English, essentially. I randomly selected one of many classes offered to fulfill the requirement, knowing nothing about the class or its professor, other than it was a box to check and the class I selected was not being taught by a grad student. I had no idea the impact that class and that professor would have on my life. 

Debra Monroe — in her purple tights, sometimes green, black (most often) witch’s broomstick skirts, and curly strands of hair that insisted on liberating themselves from any attempt she might have made at securing them in place — was the breath of life I inhaled the moment I walked through her classroom door. She represented, embodied, and modeled for me everything every cell in my body longed to believe it, too, could BE: smart, well-read, articulate, funny, a listener, a looker between the lines of life, a teacher, a friend, a woman in ownership of her creativity, engaging, a mentor, a writer, liberated. 

I relished every single lecture, devoured every piece of feedback (and my god! her feedback on my writing was voluminous!), took copious notes I still possess today (30 years later they remain a prized possession), signed up and showed up for every single office hour opportunity available to me, took additional classes she offered not because I had much (a little) interest in her subjects, but because I had a vested interest in her BEing-ness, her “muchness,” as Alice’s Mad Hatter shows me is even a possibility because perhaps before Debra, I didn’t know because no one had ever shown me, there lies a latent muchness inside of me. 

Today my curiosity in the form of my beating heart reminds me to remember that once upon a time thirty years ago, a marvelous and magical woman named Debra delighted at my seeing Heathcliff on the Commons (she even wrote about that in one of her published papers), encouraged me to keep putting words on the page because my words were good, introduced me to follow my curiosity in my reading of D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Chair,” inspired me to declare English as my undergraduate major, entrusted her dog to my care outside of school hours, responded to my finding her on Facebook, and today follows me on my social media platforms, telling me still I am seen. 

“You’re not the same as you were before,” he said. You were much more. . . muchier. . . you’ve lost your muchness.” is perhaps just a reminder from the Mad Hatter who masquerades as Curiosity, itself, a suggestion that perhaps it’s time to breathe in again the deep inhalations of what it is to be in integrity and alive in my own words. 

The Void

Thursday is my birthday. In the days leading up to the anniversary of my arrival on planet surface I am reflecting on what is mine, on what I have gained, on that which I have inherited, so much of which goes unchecked, as it were, living in the very breaths I breathe, the lens through which I experience and take in the world around me. This, then, is my annual Self review, an accounting and an acknowledging of the various lines of energy I hold inside of me and all that I have consciously chosen to keep because it is in service to me.

Family. I am part of a large one, very large. I am situated smack in the middle, fourth of eight, 2nd of three girls, that leaves five boys before and after me, plus two parents, whose lifelong love story continues to inspire, surround, and connect us all. 

“Slooooow down,” came the booming directive as if from the Void. Not that I ever go to the Void, none of us do as it’s expressly forbidden to cross over that barrier, even in jest or curiosity. Not that I am so curious, mind you, because I assure you, I am not. I am — oh please allow me to introduce myself — a rule keeper to a fault. Sometimes I like to describe myself as the poster child for obedient. Who would I be without the rules that define and guide me? Goodness, that’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it? Oh my! I just glimpsed the Void asking myself that very question about who I might be without the rules and there I was — untethered with nothing to hold onto and nothing holding me. 

Deep breaths, bring it all back to right here, to the center, to the place that grounds me. This beautiful bubble of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. I know my way in and around this bubble, which is exactly why I’m the emissary here greeting and meeting with you today! What a pleasure and a joy for me to share with you everything you certainly did not ask to be told! Here’s what we are definitely going to stay away from — the edge of the Void — because I do not want to be responsible for you overstepping or tripping or on purpose walking into a space I do not know how to navigate. Trust me, the Void is not catalogued in my PPS (Personal Positioning System) and, therefore, a dark and scary place. 

Okay! No dark and scary here on my watch! I am your consummate guide to right here, to right now, to all the things I’ve been told I know to be true. I am also happy to tell you that as a bonus — because I feel inspired and directed to say so — I will also happily tell you what you should not do or think about doing or support anyone else in their doing of it because, well, that would definitely fall solidly under the category of what I have been told I know to be wrong. 

Please keep your hands and arms inside the bubble at all times. I will answer all your questions at the end of our tour. And, of course, all of my answers will be absolute and certain, because I am well-trained and know all the answers from a lifetime of learning the answers to give. Certainty is so reassuring, isn’t it? Alright, then, let’s all take a big step together away from the Void. Annnd another step. There we go and here we go, off to explore the where we are. 

I Know Love

It’s easy to preach from the pulpit, to talk at and about what life is and what relationships are not, to suggest knowing a thing — any thing — without being in the thing. Except I have been there, gotten through to the other side by way of fire-walking. That kind of lived experience has a way of leaving permanent marks on feet and hearts and hands that clung to ropes that burned as my hands squeezed tighter, misbelieving the rope was the truth and if I could just maintain my grip it would lead me to the promised land. 

What is it I profess to know? What is it I am preaching from the pulpit of my life path? What truth(s) have I earned the right to know? What stories do the scars imprinted on the bottoms of my feet and the fleshy tables of my heart know to be immutable, regardless of your certain interpretation of me, which opinion is derived only through a lens of your own projections? 

I know Love. I know Love intimately because I have known its opposite: Fear. I have lived with Fear as he raped me of my innocence, tore from me my childlike wonder and assumption that Love was a magical bestowment that like fairy dust just sifts its apportionment onto worthy girls and boys who say, “Yes, I do to, with, and for You.” But the dusting I received wasn’t the light of the fairy realm; it was from a much darker place, replete with doubt, uncertainty, and the questioning of every single truth I had been (force) fed from the time I started consuming solids.  

Fear and I moved in together, where he slept by my side, night after terrifying night, always taking (never asking) that which he told me was (rightfully) his, and what I had been told was no longer mine to hold, to honor, to preserve. My “I do,” was Fear’s free-roaming and irrevocable hall pass. 

Fear was the misidentification of Love, taught, fed, and held up to me as a counterfeit that looked like M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E, the endgame and highest achievement, whose checked box would grant me entrance to a magical kingdom of bliss and being my best self because I would be in service to someone (him) else, and servicing (him) was the exchange asked of my precious Self, along with the additional and usual quid-pro-quo of such an arrangement: the cleaning, cooking, and carrying of babies, etc.

Love spoke to me, reminded me of her actual Truth(s). After years of Fear pounding in my ears, forcing my every move, my heart struggled to hear (to understand) Love. Love was persistent, as Love just is, and never stopped reaching out, reminding me of her presence, her presents, and her path for (as) me. I learned to hear and to listen to Love, as she guided me back to the dusting of light, restored me to that which is the true identification of Love: not M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E, but as Teilhard de Chardin says, “Love is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.” Love unites; Fear divides. 

I know Love. She is soft, gentle, kind, vulnerable, compassionate, forgiving, open, curious, deep, wide, funny, filled with grace, communicative. Love is Me. Your projections have no belonging here inside of the Love I Am, not because I don’t love you, and not because your thoughts and opinions don’t matter, but because these your thoughts and opinions are Fear masquerading counterfeit to Love. And I know Love.  

Banished

Circe sent her lover to the sea after he touched, took, and filled her with the promises, (stolen) virginity (only once), and empty air he committed to another woman. Her transmogrification and banishment of him became the scourge of seafarers the ocean over, while Circe, herself, was banished by the god of the sun, her father, to an island, where men continued to dock their ships, overstaying their welcome, misbelieving they could touch, take, and fill Circe’s spaciousness. Her mastery of Self coupled with her sacred skill set of creating potions from plants, she transformed those (unwelcome) men into the outer expression of their inner animals, their physical forms finally manifesting their true masculine.

 Lot’s wife was sanctioned to salt the earth, rather than be elevated as its salt, just for looking back, forever labeled a disobedient, one who abandoned her husband, her faith, her god, left behind by the husband beside her, banished by the faith for which she walked away in the first place, punished instantly by the god above her. 

Brothels overflow with women whose life-giving abilities are invaded, stolen, bought and sold (by and for men), while the women who no longer possess the right to say YES are labeled whore, slut, cunt. Being banished to a tent in the wilderness until she is clean from bleeding her monthly dues must seem the balming reprieve of Gilead to every woman who enters therein, only to drape the weight of men’s reach again as she lifts back and walks through the canvas door, feet hot on the sand.

My feet retain scars from the hot sands I have walked. I have had labels hurled at and stuck all over every part of this life-giving body of mine. I have tasted more salt from the runoff of my own tears than I believe one body should be capable of producing. Banishment is the birthright I claimed through the rebirth of my Self. 

An ultrasound declared me the pained mother-to-be of an ovarian cyst, larger than a baseball, filling my womb. Surgery would be required to eliminate this growth, for safety, for preventing complications, for preempting pain. Pretend she’s in the tent: NO sex. So simple. But he was itchy. He needed to scratch. Not ask. Just take. Penetrate. Explosion like the Death Star. Immediate. My abdomen imploded. Shards of ruptured cyst bursting and banging against one another and the hallowed walls of my uterus. Unconscionable Pain. No admission of guilt or responsibility. He swore me to silence: “Tell the doctor it just ruptured on its own. We don’t know why. She said that was a possibility.” 

I have birthed a child. My womb filled with a donation I sought and paid for with my obeisance, obedience, and objectification. My YES lived a life of solitude amongst thousands of NOs accumulating dust over years of disuse. “Wait six weeks before intercourse,” the doctor advised. “Your stitches are extensive and you must have time to heal.” The tent could only provide me sanctuary for four weeks before he came in unannounced and unwanted, throwing back the heavy canvas flap, bleeding and breaking me once more. Who would you be without an all-access pass to my tent? 

“If you loved me you would satisfy me,” he reminded me daily. 

“Don’t make me go somewhere else to have my needs met,” he threatened from inside of me, as if my 3-5 times a day complicity in allowing him in and against my Self wasn’t enough. How do you satiate the insatiable?  

“Don’t make me go Circe on you,” I thought to my Self, knowing I had no power over the animal he already was without any potions or wishes from me. Banishing my shrunken Self from him was the only option for me to exercise. I called on Circe, through whose eyes I could see the truth of who he was. I turned and looked back, just like Lot’s wife, not out of disobedience, but to remind me where I had been is not where I would ever go back to again. The one abandoning was me, not put out, up, or on by any man. The leaving behind of this man, his god, and all their labels was mine to choose and to do. 

Perspective, purpose and power are what I now carry in my womb. My own re-birthing through this my banishment is a banner I proudly wave, welcoming my tribe, the multitude of others just like me. Here, my banner reads: Rest. Revive. Be reborn. There is life after banishment. YES lives here.