“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Oh, you learned that verse too well, my sister.
That’s what they expect, after all.
Be a nurturer, a supporter, a giver.
It’s your holy calling. It’s what women do.
Give until your creative well is empty,
until your back is broken,
until you are crawling on your hands and knees,
eating dust from a trail
that someone blazed before you.
Go ahead.
Lick some more of that dust, dearest one,
until it chokes the music and the poetry right out of you.
No one taught you how to receive, of course.
Why would they?
You are so tame now,
so much easier to control
when you’re half-starved
and bleeding from wounds
that never heal.
Receiving…yes…that dirty little word,
that unblessed state of being,
on the opposite shore from giving
where they don’t want you to be.
Get in the boat,
take the oars,
go anyway.
It is lush and wanton there,
where the Wild Woman lives in the trees,
feasting on mangoes
with sweet succulence dribbling down her chin.
It is velvety and halcyonic there,
where the Wild Woman lies naked in the sand,
as the foamy waves kiss her feet
and the stars become jewels in her crown.
How do you receive?
Through eyes that see the resplendent beauty of the world
or through filters that render it all in sepia and gray?
Through a mouth that tastes the pungency of life
or one that craves insipidness?
Through a heart that beats with joy
or one that hardly beats at all?
Through a stomach that fuels your sacred calling
or one that rejects vitality?
Through a yoni that glistens as a gateway to the cosmos
or one that has fallen asleep?
Listen, my sister, and I shall write you a new verse.
It is blessed to give, and it is blessed to receive.
It is time you learned how.
Copyright © 2016 Jennifer R. Miller. All rights reserved.
Astonishing. And true.