Older Skin

There are some good things about growing older every line and wrinkle is like a badge of honor. I consider the marks on my skin similar to how soldiers view war wounds. I have a story for most of them and it is usually a fairly heroic one. A story in which I have to be blunt , and spread out a little bit to thin, in fact thinner than i should of. Like the men who go to war and tell tall tales. I think for me connecting to each line or scar on my skin is a connection to the fact tha the flesh is just a costume. A costume of incredible strength and great courage. Yet intrinsicly vulnerable as shown by the scars. The great encasment that makes us human and connected to our love and our pain. My body has explored the joy of being connected to skin. The little girl who dances in the rain, even through that little girl is really 29. I remember that day, the rain flowed so strong we had a bit of a river in the street in front of our house. I remember looking out at it falling, so new, cool. Rain reminds me of possiblities and endless rebirth. I grabbed my little kiddos and we ran outside in the rain. In that one moment, I was free. I was like a child, and I was connected to my skin and my heart and to Mother Earth herself. That moment one moment in one lifetime is a blessing. My kids still mention that day. We stood out in the street and splashed and laughed and didn't care who thought we were crazy. All three of us there in the moment were all children together. Skin can be a blessing, it helps us connect to the joy that our spirit can feel. Skin also helps us connect to the pain of this world. Every line on ones face from stress, every hurt dealt in anger. Its all recorded in that awe inspiring wrapper. The older I get the more I can look at someones skin and see their wisdom there. I see older women and I can see the "old wisewoman" in her. I see that crone so many fear. And I love her and respect her for her spirit and her gifts. She has lived through much and gave even more. Society tells her she is washed up, like a dishrag used one to many times and left to rot. To those who find her wisdom threatening she is a ugly old hag who needs a good plastic surgeon. To those who love her she is a beautiful mature woman who is in the fullness of her being "whole". She sees no imperfection in the lines on her skin. The sag of her breasts do not cause her to fear. She embraces the spirit of ageing. She knows in that is a kind of wisdom that one can not buy from a plastic surgeon , shrink, or even a guru. Its a wisdom that only one can gain by experience. This lovely old wise woman, knows that in essence women are life. Women are that great intangible God like essence, we are magic just because we are. There are those who hate us for that, and therefore they justify their violence against us by hiding behind some divine cause. The mutilate our sweet baby girls in africa and the middle east , and many other places on our beautiful planet. They cover us in effort to control their own "lusts" , and see women as the down fall for all of man kind. What they fail to see is the power in that. The power they admit we have, by saying one woman she will remain nameless but her name rhymes with steve actually cause all of mankind to fall. That is a large concept, and in it are hidden the true essence that is woman. In efforts to "control" the "sinnful nature" of woman, they make woman in to a subhuman. They strip her of her sexuality, either by mutliating her genitals of view maybe seen as extreme, but it is only as extreme as the treatment of woman has been around the globe. Women suffer needlessly at the hands of those who are afraid of her power. Woman is life giver, she nuturer, she lover, mother, sister. She is joy and pain. She is all things. We can make a baby in a petri dish, we might even be able to grow one in a lab, but nothing can nuture a child and bring it into being a warm loving human being as a mother can . At her best in Mother hood, woman is more than heroic she is The Goddess her self, giving life and seeing it come into its fullness. When one has the ablity to raise and develope actual human beings, that is power. That is power to change the planet. Our sexuality is the root of what we are. It is what anchors us and keeps us grounded to mother earth. We are like her in so many ways. When they mutilate us or create images that are ridculous that we buy into. They take some of our power away, we give it to them. We they say you are fat, your breasts sag, your wrinkled and unexceptable, and we answer yes you are right I am a horrible shell of what a woman is. They win. Our bodies are not up for inspection, we do not owe the mass media , menand other woman, only pretty views of what the essence of life is. Even in the desert there is beauty. Its harsh landscape speaks of majesty and grandeur. Sometimes we can only appreciate the wisdom of the desert with the experience that years can bring.

By far the worst mutilation of all..is the one of the mind. It is sad but there is alot of sad depressed and lonely women. Who do not see the wonder they are. There minds have been alter for some beyond repair.The dark moistness of despair they feel at the thought of how imperfect the world sees them. Those lovely young women who starve themselves to death. Those tormented souls who eat out of the fear of their own emotions and then rid themselves both of the food and their feelings by wretching it up. These lovely young women are our future. This future generation of women needs our crones and our wisewomen. We need your spirit and strength to see past the world and into another one.
Love and embrace what you are and fundamentally what you are not. See the beauty in your own reflection and in that moment you have began to walk with the divine herself.