it is the artist in me, the dancer, the lover, the nurturer of life, of plants, of heart, that gets excited a every time I see my body, whether heavy or thin, whether ill or vibrant, it is then that I find my strength, that I find in myself to love myself, where I see the song of myself and praise it. it is there that I love my body because it curves, because it has hips, because it is me and the way it is beautiful in its fluidity, in its ever-changing form, in its womanness. it is then that I too, see myself the way a man might, that I see how my body is graceful, how natural it is to be graceful, to be all-encompassing, to be strong, in a quiet, enduring sense.

what is it about our culture, we desire all women to be girls, to go back upon their years, to become faceless and bubbly and obedient, like quiet sheep led to the slaughter, how is it that that our goddess, our only form of the divine in woman, is mary - a faceless, speechless creature, a creature with no personality, an orphan child, a child having a child through no will of her own, a creature with no will, no s desire. god raped her. of course, she was raped and forced to submit to god, and of course, god is man and every man is god. and every woman is mary, but mary cannot be a goddess. she is an immature woman.

the spark of the divine but woman mary has hidden herself, shrouded herself so completely that we no longer know her. no one knows her and little does she know herself. her secrets encapsulated within her.

but mary has other faces. there are the faces we dream about, these come at us in nightmares.

the saga of the american woman. every american woman taught to be demure, quiet , obedient, faceless. it is these women who are not marginalized, these who float to the upper ranks of society, through no will of the their own, for their they are the "good girls". for they are not woman, they are girls. but every woman has a secret passion, a buried, embering fire, an anger that will one day explode, to everyone's distress, because she has too long kept it controlled. she is trying to burn herself out, she is trying to torture to herself into submission, but and everyone knows, though not willing to admit, that the more we are accepted by society, the more we have lost of ourselves. she loses herself, she becomes enmeshed by society, and is angry, is jealous, by those who fail to fit the queue.

all my life encountered jealousy. all my life I encountered anger. all my life told that I was ungrateful, that I was privileged, too much the princess. all my life, someone always jealous of me because I was younger, because I had more promise than they did. because I had more hope. all my life, I stuck fast to my idealism, I sacrificed easy companionship for the stronghold of my ever-changing beliefs. all my life I strayed from the herd, in blind faith to another path, a secret, hidden, invisible path that I could sense only through an inner knowing, an intuition, and a grasp in the dark. and although these women have their companionship, their security, societyÌs approval, they are still jealous of me, because what they have is not genuine. they live in eternal fear of being discovered, of being known as an imposter, because they are really not as faceless as they seem. they have dreams, they have hope, they have a divinity that makes them holy, and yet they torture themselves, push themselves down again with all their might, so as not to be noticed for the giants they truly are.

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth