March your March with heart and care
Women women everywhere,
filled with hope as well despair …
Holding dreams of majesty
and ministry and melody …
Women living half a life,
struggling for their right to thrive …
Women living life in half,
rich — yet poor without their laugh …
Many voices, many hearts,
many cultures, many smarts …
Many women I admire;
Mother Theresa too was grand —
as Yousafzai’s Malala-land …
Yet the one I most admire,
is a Midwife whose desire
to rebirth me inside out,
did a jewel birth from doubt …
I was broken from within,
desperate, driven, dark and grim …
Everything I thought was “me”,
disappeared or fought to Be …
Worn and wilted from the fight,
torn and twisted into fright,
Midwife helped me shed my night,
showing me my right to light …
Courage, time, and love prevailed,
till this gal could once more sail …
Midwife did restore my being,
by the grace of time revealing,
that a woman dwells beside me,
holding, helping, love and guiding …
Who is she, this one inspired?
She is Me, my Self and I (ay ay)!
The poetry of unfolding into one’s Self is a constant mystery that captivates me. Compels me. There are many women (and men, children, animals, Nature) worth admiring in life. But my personal and particular revelation was that the beacons of light “out there” could only impress me, not reach down into me. For me, the word “admire” has a lofty resonance. It’s illustrious, yet somewhat impersonal. However the word “inspire” implies an intimate, personal quality. Until I became personally “lit from within” I could no more admire another than my problems and patterns which chained me to ancient chimes that always echoed “no”. These were the chimes of my heartbeat and they beat my heart insistently. The word “inspire” was further from my vocabulary than even “admire”.
Imagine having no one who inspires you.
Yet the outer world is full of them and so is History … from the famous to the anonymous and even the just-like-us of us. But History might just as well be history if you’re unable to live yourstory.
So I turned to Nature, and somehow forged a friendship with a tree. It was quiet. It didn’t judge me. It allowed me to be. To breathe. We breathed together. I could lay beside it. I could lean against it. I could be shaded and protected by it. I could observe it doing absolutely nothing, absolutely like me (but we know better — the underbelly is teeming with activity and that “teemwork” inspires growth :-)).
Through this mysterious rapore between me and the tree I became vulnerable, then willing, then hungry — for more. My appetite became my aperture became my guidepost became my glimmer of recognition; that there existed a woman within worth birthing, worth paying attention to, worth constantly breathing life into.
Women I admire … and Wo!men who inspire. Wo! I admire many but I’m inspired by one; my spiritual midwife who happens to be a man. A Wo!man.
For me it’s less about male or female than Energy. And who’s using it with love. Or just using it — or misusing it — as in mine. Mining my Energy by minding it is the way I try to live it. My midwife is a male but his Energy is All. His ability to consistently convey the sparks of my own worth emanates from the high altitude clarity of his attuned intuitive female. My midwife created a strong and supportive context for me to safely rearrange my molecular structure … and then reemerge. As Me. We never personally met (the beauty of his purity-of-purpose perhaps), and yet his perpetual devotion to assisting my renaissance was the remarkable and resonant pivot point of a lifetime.
My midwife was more available to the woman in me than the woman I was(n’t) to myself. My midwife helped me to discover the fragrance of my femininity, and then couple it with my masculinity. Now they live ensemble where “we” enjoy the synergy — and in joy, impart that fullness to others.
The success of my life is remarkably internal. I still long for acclaim and material rewards like so many others. But the pacing of my life … the nurturing of my soul … the promptings about what to do, when and how and where and with whom … emerge ever more from inner directive. That soothes me, even as I outwardly forge ahead with gusto. To “hear” how to conduct my life requires my becoming quiet to allow other delicate instruments to play into the symphony. Filtering out the noise of the world teaches me to patiently attune to neither the major nor the minor chords but rather the diminished ones. Their notes weave within the more obvious melody and become lilting metaphors that live between the fine lines of Life’s bittersweet music.
Women, and Wo!men. This is Women’s History Month and Thrive has asked us to focus on You! So let’s honour the Women, and the Wo!men, and any and all others who help the female spirit to flourish. Let’s keep renewing and replenishing and nurturing and astonishing and resonating and remembering to reach out — to each other and to our Selves.
And above all let’s Sync about love …
Originally published at medium.com