written: 4. 16. 2021

I learned what it meant to be a woman when I was 35.
It was the year I learned that I could harness my power and truly create life-
My life.
Little sprouts of life in others.
Life, like the organic substances around me:
Plants,
Small humans.
Life, like the energy in the air:
To be bright
To be love
To be dark
To be hate.
Life like the intangible:
The future
The unknown.
I learned what it meant to be a woman when I learned I could create life or death.
That the soil, rather rich and sweet or rocky and toxic
Could still produce a beautiful tree-
Like the trees that push through the concrete on my street -OR-
Like the plant that isn’t strong enough to grow no matter how rich it’s soil.
I had the power to be either.
I learned what it meant to be a woman when I learned that my next step was only mine and whatever direction I pointed, that would set my course.
I learned I had that power.
When reactions to emotions I believed to be warehouse settings,
I could watch coming at me like the motion in a matrix and I could hold them between my fingers like a bullet slowly whizzing towards my chest.
I learned what it meant to be a woman when I learned that my presence could produce or deflate life in others.
When that knowing, changed behaviors.
I learned what it meant to be a woman when I understood that even at my lowest, I was still WORTHY;
when I learned that I could not be diminished.
I learned what it meant to be a woman when on that spring day I stood with feet bare and wild hair in the wind and every version of me stood with hands outstretched, each on equal ground.
Identity.