I was wilful child.
My noncompliance, later grew into adolescent rebellion.
Somehow, I was born knowing I did not want to be a good girl.
And consequently, found myself on the receiving end of much shame and attempts to contain me.
Like many women, I have been judged, ridiculed, dismissed and abused.
I have been shamed for loving sex and celebrating my body.
I have been coerced into tolerating and at times abandoned myself as living the true essence of me,
felt just too damn hard.
It can feel dangerous and scary.
Isolating and lonely.
And deeply overwhelming and impossible.
After all these years of determined defiance, I still visit this place from time to time.
And when there, I am reminded why I can’t stay long.
Not for me.
Or the women and people who seek my support.
Maybe this non compliancy was passed from my grandmother, aunt and mother.
Maybe somewhere in the longings of all these women was a smothered desire to rise up.
To speak out.
To no longer go along.
To live the true, unfiltered version of themselves.
Unapologetically sexy, confident and alive.
I will never know.
None them are here to tell.
But their spirit lives alive and well in me and the daughter I am raising.
Don’t get wrong, it is sometimes scary as hell standing on this edge.
I often want to shy away as terror immobilises me.
Voices of “how dare you…” attempt to keep me small.
Our world relies on creating and maintaining good girls who grow into disempowered women.
And that shit doesn’t lie down easily.
A beloved friend recently sent me this poem as I was sitting in this struggle.
It rippled through every cell in my body and brought tears to my eyes.
The author, Ansel Elkins, depicts a pivotal point where Eve stands before the trees of knowledge and
speaks the words of freedom for the very first time.
This act of radical rebellion was seeded in her willingness to listen to the call of the forbidden and
begin to imagine what might be possible.
This same call is whispered in the quiet shadows of longings for so many of us.
Often pushed aside or abandoned through fear.
What if you were to notice your own rebellious whisper?
What if you were to pay attention and stay awhile?
What if you too, stood at the gateway and began to shed the entrapments of compliance?
What might be calling you from the forbidden side?
If you were to awaken those neglected, shut down parts of you, who would you be?
My work is all about creating those radical pathways that lead to claiming, living and celebrating the
new unknown.
We don’t need to face the burning gates alone.
We can walk in the footprints and reach for the hands of those who boldly went before us.
Step by sweet rebellious step.
Will you come with me?
Autobiography of Eve
By Ansel Elkins
Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
Between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake –
at once alive in the blaze of green fire.
