Kathy Link’s Womanifesto - in four parts
Not the Moon
Through the mist of morning I saw a beautiful old woman sitting on a bench.
She wore a coat of many colors.
Her eyes pierced my soul.
I sat next to her and we watched the sun rise.
She took one look at me and said
You walk in fear.
Don't you walk in fear no more girl, don't you walk in fear.
I've been beaten
and I've been bruised but walking in fear never changed a thing.
I looked back at her and said
When I'm beaten and when I'm bruised I don't
walk at all.
I run.
As fast as I can in the other direction.
I was trying to be funny, you see.
She looked at me like she did not think
that was funny at all.
She looked at me like that had been exactly her point.
We sat and watched the sunrise.
After awhile she said
They've been telling his story for a very long time
now.
I said
Yep.
They sure have.
I wasn't being funny now.
Somehow I knew exactly what she meant.
They've been telling his story for a very long time and it's always the
same.
He took the land.
He took the sea.
He took the forest.
He even took the bees.
He needed the honey.
He enslaved the animals and some of the people too.
Raised by Him, the children
lost their magic
Like butterflies that got the fairy dust rubbed right off
their wings.
He claimed woman and called her His own.
He said she came from His rib.
Sounds like somebody needs an anatomy lesson.
He killed his sisters and his brothers and his daughters and his sons in
His name.
He took and he took and he took some more.
He even tried to take the moon, and went and stuck a flag in it.
But we
know the moon is the one thing he can't have, don't we?
Maybe next time he'll
try and stick a flag in the sun.
Then we'll see how far he gets!
She laughed so hard that I smiled even though my heart was bleeding.
She sighed and said
They've been telling his story for a very long time.
He took.
He takes.
He will keep taking.
I said
I can't argue with that.
She said
There is another story.
She has her story too, you know.
She said
She is no innocent in His story.
She tells it like she owns it.
For reasons of her own, she probably invented
it.
Spoon feeds it to him she does.
But she has her story too.
She said
She is the mother and father
Who tells their stories while rocking you
gently to sleep.
She said
She is the son and the daughter
Who care for you in your last dying days.
She said
She is the sister and the brother
Who love you unconditionally and accepts
you as you are while gossiping about you at
the same time.
She tells her story
While tending to the poor and the sick
And kowtowing to the rich and the
pompous.
Sometimes all at once.
She has been everywhere.
She has done everything.
She has been everyone there is to be.
She has borne witness to His story
and has held her own softly to her breast.
She is not a victim and she knows it.
She knows it.
She knows it.
She knows it.
She is you.
She is me.
She has borne us in death and walked with us in life.
The old woman looked at me one last time and said
Won't somebody please
tell her story?
Won't somebody tell it now?
Won't somebody please tell her story?
And when you tell it tell it loud and
proud.
The sun had risen.
She stood up and walked into the morning dew.
I sighed.
Embedded Gold
I was talking to my friend about a trouble or two and
After our conversation
was over
I said ‘Thank you for giving me that insight o-friend-o-mine'
I took pause and
My body lurched at the idea that somebody else gave me
insight
I became slightly nauseous at the thought of
What I have become here on Earth
I almost had to break out the smelling salts,
actually
If somebody else could give me insight then wouldn't it be called outsight?
Like an outhouse?
If somebody else had an answer,
Then wouldn't we all have stopped asking
questions by now?
We really wouldn't need language at all, and especially
not the Question Mark.
If I am seeking a Truth and find it
In the shape of another
In the words of another
In the heart of another
Then what have I really found?
Somebody else's Truth?
If I am not that person, then their Truth becomes
my falsity
Because I am Not Them
And They are Not Me
This little conversation - about my trouble or two that is - occurred
On
the day of the morn that three ideas came flashing across my mind
In the
early morning light of the sun
Call them the three little pigs
Call them a gift - or even a curse - from
the Holy Trinity
Call them three lightening bolts that happened to hit their
mark
Call them me, myself and I finally waking up
Call them what you will
But They rocked my world like the three brave little
soldiers They are
And went and stuck around
Three comrades of the self that I had forgotten
Fragments of a Truth once
known
Like a shattered mirror reflecting the many colored pieces of my soul
They stole it from you....
They stole it from you....
They stole it from you....
Somebody's lying...
Somebody's lying...
Embedded Gold...
Did the all allusive They steal myself away from me?
When They told me that
I was not ok and the Truth became a lie?
When I believed that I was less
then who I am?
When I believed that I was less than worthy in
my own glory?
When I believed that I needed a Man or a Woman or a Child or a Dogma or a Guru, or Reassurance or a Car or a Boat or a House or a Compliment to make myself complete?
When I believed that I was not enough?
When I believed in the words of another
instead of the song of my soul?
I let Them steal it right from under me - the Truth of I Am
And once it
was gone I gave myself away
To the highest bidder
To the lowest bidder
To my Guides and my Teachers, on any and every plane
known and unknown, forgotten and unforgotten, real and imagined, and all
that passes between
I became a feeder of the lie
Not a seeker anymore
To the Son or the Sun
To the Goddess or the Moon
To my husband
To my wife
To my lover
To my sister
To my brother
Steal the Truth right from under me They did
I'll be ripping that one back
from Their very arms
Thank you very much
That's quite enough of that now
Because you see,
I gave myself away
To alcohol
To drugs
To sex
To religion
To patriotism
To separation
To the Gods of Immediate Gratification to my Demanding Supplications
To
the ranting and raving of a Mother Culture gone mad
I gave myself away
To Coca-Cola, sugar and Levi jeans
To Explorers and four-by-fours
To a split level house and 2.3 kids
To the Image of What Could be if I Were
Enough
Because the Truth was stolen
I gave away my intuition
I gave away my strength
I gave away my power
I gave away my responsibility for my own existence
(I mean, if you're going
to give yourself away, you'd especially better give away THAT.... isn't that
like the point of it all in first place anyway?)
My fathers and grandfathers gave themselves away for Sex
My mothers and
grandmothers gave themselves away for Security
All because the Truth was stolen
And replaced with a lie
They lied
We lie
The Truth is
I have enough
I am enough
It is within
Right here
Right now
Embedded Gold
Embedded Gold
Embedded Gold
...and who are They anyway?
Victory Soft and Sweet
I look at my image on the curved part of a spoon when I was 3.
A tablespoon.
"Ugly" I whisper softly to the spoon.
So sad to be ugly at 3.
I sigh.
I want to look like Buffy on Family Affair.
It just wasn't happening.
I see my reflection in the backseat window ten years later.
I was sitting
in the seat behind the driver's seat.
"Homely." I whisper softly to the window.
So sad to be homely at 13.
I sigh.
No Brooke Shields was I.
At 22 I stare into a full-length mirror.
Too tall.
Too fat.
And what is up with that hair?
I sigh.
At 30 I watch other women purposely preening in the mirror.
Anxious to catch
their own likeness.
I have always purposefully avoided mine.
That was before I remembered.
I looked at my image on the curved part
of a spoon when I was 3.
"Ugly" I whispered softly to the spoon.
I have pictures of myself when I was 3.
Not Ugly was I.
I was Downright Adorable.
Damn, was I cute!
To Hell with Buffy!
A nagging thought hedges around the outside of my mind.
Hemming and hawing
until I acknowledge it fully.
If I was wrong then...
Could I be wrong all those other times too?
Over and over again.
I pronounced Ugly.
I was wrong.
I take it back.
I look at my image in the curved part of the spoon.
I make myself whisper 'Beautiful'.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
To counteract the spell I put on my 3-year-old self.
And my 13 year old self.
And my 22 year old self.
And in that moment she returns to me.
From beneath the deepest depth of regret she rises.
From the
most unrealistic of expectations she awakens.
Myself returns to me.
She softly whispers with me words of praise.
Sweet words.
Soft words.
Wonderful and true words.
She has returned.
She knows her worth.
And she basks in the sunlight of her own well being.
She flashes me a brilliant smile and whispers I tried to tell you.
Oh how
I have missed her.
I welcome her with open arms.
Peace in the Valley
The first time I knew I was beginning to heal, was the moment I came to a dead halt and stopped.
I stopped searching, looking, wondering, analyzing, postulating, theorizing and bullshitting. I stopped needing, wanting, hoping and wishing for what I do not have and have never had. I stopped running. I came to a screeching halt, and I stopped. I smiled. I took a deep breath and sighed.
Somewhere deep inside, I knew I was starting to heal. I experienced a flicker of healing. It was slight, barely noticeable, but I knew that the process was beginning. It was there and it was real.
It was not the kind of healing that comes in an epiphany, a flash of light, a sign from the Heavens, a sudden, inspirational, body-tingling flood of insight coming from nowhere. Unfortunately, it was not that kind of healing at all. Wouldn't that have been nice?
It was not the deep resonance of God shouting from on high "My child, my child, I have healed Thee, go forth and prosper." Again, I could have used that in my life many times.
It was definitely not my adolescent fantasy of a Spiritual Awakening, which is more like a cheap romance novel anyway. My ample breasts push themselves forth from a flowing white night gown. My silky, long blonde hair cascades onto my shoulders and down my back, over skin as smooth as buttermilk and as soft as a newborn fawn. I kneel and pray by my bedside as divine light illuminates me and I become Holy forever and nothing bothers me at all anymore. My Knight in Shining Armor rides up and carries me away to some version of Heaven or Perpetual Ecstasy. My Healing wasn't anything like that. Neither is my sex life.
I don't think that any of those versions of healing exist. We have it in our hearts and minds that it could, and it should, and wouldn't it be nice, and if I just do that or be this, or stop doing this, than I will be healed, I will Know What It's All About, and Everything Will Be Okay. I will be okay.
My healing started small and felt real. It did not come from dogma, although I like to think some of it comes from my dog. It did not come from a television show, and it is not something that I ingest (like alcohol) or shed (like pounds). Even if that kind of healing does exist, I'm not sure of what, if any, long term value that it holds. Pop a pill. Heal. Wear off. Pop another pill. Heal. Wear off. Pop another pill. Heal. Wear off. Get the drift? It's an input/output kind of thing.
What comes to mind when I think of that kind of healing is Las Vegas , or Disney World, or your pick of the nightly dramas and/or sitcoms that plague the airways from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. from Sunday through Saturday. That kind of healing is nice and neat, with happy and explainable resolutions that fall into nice little categories. Stimulus and response. Cause and effect. The good are redeemed, and the bad are punished. And most of us bourgeoise live some version of happily ever after.
It was not the kind of healing that occurs in the commercials sandwiched between the nightly dramas and/or sitcoms either. "Buy me, buy me, buy me, and you will become what you want to be, be, be, be, be...because you are not okay as you are, are, are..."
That is not the kind of healing I am referring to. Been there, done that, and have concluded that either it does not exist, or does not work. Either that or I just don't get it - which is also a strong possibility.
My healing started out to be the exact opposite. It started with a small flash of insight that everything was going to be okay, and to just hold on and Stop. And that everything was okay as is. Everything is okay as is. So I Stopped. I Stopped. Even though so much was wrong, nothing I was doing was making it right, I Stopped what I was doing. I could Stop and the world did not stop turning, and I was Okay. As is.
My healing comes at great cost, and is messy and sticky and muddy, and gross, and there are no classifications, and there are no nice little neat categories to put it in. There are no good guys are bad guys and no black and white resolutions. Sometimes my healing is strong, and there are days when it is not. And believe me, I have scars and scabs to prove my journey. I fall down, and I start to go, but I Stop again. I don't have to reach for anything anymore, and I never did.
< back to the main Womanifestos page
