Pearls
On music, love, and the honor of being a woman
This week I found myself inspired by the life I get to live. When I’m present enough, I find myself here — this place of illumination, where everything that’s always been in plain sight brightens. Heaven reflected on Earth. The way our outer world shows us everything already within us.
A few things came to me throughout the week. Pearls in the ocean of my thinking. Each one a different way of returning.
Early in the week I was hit with the magnificent time capsule that music is — and more than a time capsule, a way to return to a past version of myself and be with her for a while. To touch a part of myself that seems far away but is actually right there, singing along to a song she loved or cried to or screamed her lungs out to in her Suzuki Sidekick, at 16, windows down, sobbing — not fully understanding where all the rage was coming from, but knowing there was an entire world trying to convince her she was less than what she knew she was. And she would not fold. I sat beside her this week. I let her know she was right. And I thanked Rilo Kiley and Radiohead for making the return possible.
When I came back to the present, I had a conversation with a woman about how much we love ourselves — and it was so natural to hear it spoken without shame, without whispering, without worrying about how it might land. Just natural. And it makes sense, because our nature is Love. Underneath all the extra stuff — the layers of learned self-criticism and cruelty, the not-enoughness, the reaching for anything other than our own truth — underneath all of that is Love. For ourselves and each other. Returning to it is the whole work.
Today is Mother’s Day. And I keep returning to what an honor it is — not just today, but in the ongoing dailiness of being a woman. I am in deeper and deeper awe of myself and everything I get to be, every day — and I can have this experience because of the women around me. The mothers and sisters and friends and fighters and survivors and lovers. The ones who stayed. The ones who showed me how. Our bodies hold the universe. Our eyes hold the oneness we all came from. We are. We are. I am, the I am.
so much sweetness behind these words 💕