I am learning to listen to my body. It is a dialogue that should have begun years ago. It is a way of communicating I should have been shown from birth. But women are not taught these things by our patriarchal medical system. My body has been conversing with me all this time & I have ignored her, or I didn’t know how to listen, didn’t understand her language. In the past, I drowned her voice out with alcohol & drugs, with shitty relationships & perpetual self sabotage. It means so much work has to be put in before we can even begin a true dialogue. Perhaps this is why many women don’t come into their own until middle-age (interestingly also the time when our vapid culture tells us we’re ‘past it’). So much of what we’re actually taught is bullshit – a young woman can know all about split infinitives or front-loaded adverbials but very little about her moon cycle & the magic of her body. Women are literally goddesses. We can choose to create life from nothing (or not). This is why we must remind ourselves, and each other, that each of us houses a universe of potential. That is real power. It is why some want to control or censor, to legislate & protest against our agency. It is why the tradition is to pass us from man (father) to man (husband), as we are given rings of ownership & wear a white dress to cover up the ‘shame’ of our sexual pasts. It gives me joy to see that so many of us are moving away from that unhealthy paradigm – men as well as women. It is possible for a woman to know all of this & be in a loving relationship with a man – this is not about hating men, it’s about loving ourselves. So many people are beginning to understand that a truly equal world is much more than just pay or working opportunities (although they’re a start). A friend said to me once that the next revolution is happening here & now in our relationships & the way we, as women, are evolving them. This is so true. I wonder then if we have been held back for so long because the truth is utterly terrifying to some: that there is nothing more powerful in this whole world than a woman who has the full sense of her own worth.
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