Recently, Jen Louden asked a bunch of brave, sexy, creative women, “How you are claiming your power, trusting it, and using it to transform the world right now?” The answers they gave are beautiful and inspiring. Here’s mine:
When so much in the world hurts, crushes, overwhelms and swallows us whole, I vow to feel anyway.
To open my heart, anyway.
It is the boldest, most radical act a person can do. Always has been, always will be.
I vow to feel the sky, and your tender tears, with my fingertips.
To know the rhythm of the ocean in my bones.
To reflect moonlight in my upturned face.
To wiggle my toes in rich warm sun-kissed dirt.
To bury my nose in your pungent stink and stay there forever.
To throw my head back in deep throated delirious laughter.
To take in the pain of the world and not shun it.
To look fear in the eye and smile back with radiance.
My heart is big enough for all of this and more.
I promise to be reverent,
untamed,
kind,
beautiful,
wild,
proud,
unbridled,
wise,
childlike,
passionate,
peaceful,
generous,
and wanton.
And to feel anyway, even when the world is crashing down around me. I promise you.
Take my hand. Let me show you how to feel anyway too.
It’s a risk. I know. Only the bravest can swim in tumultuous seas. Only a boat built from the strongest wood will survive. A sexton that’s true.
We’ll navigate by the stars. They never lie. Steer steady toward a tsunami of bliss, as vast and limitless as the horizon. It’s there shimmering for us under the bright sun.
I will illuminate your inner territory. You will pry my heart open wider and wider. A blood oath between us. Fuller and farther together.
Come. Be with me. Let me throw my arms around your neck and pull your body close.
I will delight you,
entice you,
tickle you,
torture you,
tease you,
exasperate you,
enthrall you,
bewilder you,
enrapture you,
mesmerize you
and love you.
Claim what you desire. It’s right here. Now. Breathing, pulsing next to you.
Like a whisper. Like the brush of a kiss, a soft exhale against your cheek.
This. Now.
A moment so real it crushes insignificance with its weight.
Open me like a living poem. I dare you.
Click here to download a copy of this beautiful collection of 47 essays, poems, photographs and videos. (no cost and no sign up required, it’s purely a gift.)