The Mother Goddess has been calling me for a long time. Lifetimes, perhaps. Threads from every corner of my life, thin as a spiders web, clear as fine crystal, weaving around me, drawing me home.
Today a memory came to me, of a sweet, classically beautiful girl who I once worked with. We were sharing a shift at our local retail shop one afternoon and during our lunch break she pulls out a rice cake from her bag. A single rice cake. Through the corner of my eye I watched her slowly eat it, like a bird, the smallest bites, until it was gone. When I asked her, “Is that all you have to eat? Do you want some of my [insert actual food here]?” To which she replied, “No, I’m full.”
I went out and bought rice cakes that night. A 31 year old woman, I went out and bought rice cakes because of course, they had to be the secret ingredient to having the rail thin figure this girl was rocking. A 31 year old woman, I went out and bought rice cakes and ate then as a snack nearly every day for a month.
Today this memory came to me, swirling with all the other reflections of how the patriarchy as left me tired and desperate and disconnected from my power. How my nourishment was for so long based upon fitting some sick beauty standard, how my self-love was drowned in fears of sexual inadequacy. How even my spirituality has been bowing to white male teachers and exotic male dieties and rigid instruction from volumes of texts written by men, by men, by men, for men, for men, for men.
I’ve spent so long trying to heal my sacred rage, by playing their games. By continuing to oppress the parts of myself that are so big and loud they don’t comfortably fit and I’m over it, with tears of recognition of everything bottled up and laying wait, I’m over it and I’m done holding my questions for the end and
I’m
not
sitting
down.
There is something growing within us, and if you are feeling it to, please know you are not alone. I am here, we are here, don’t you dare cover your beautiful shoulders so men can meditate in peace. YOU are the embodiment of a power repressed for centuries. An indigenous wisdom.
Let them prickle in fear.
Let them eat rice cakes.