Cassie Premo Steele

World's First Ever Facebook Co-Created Poetry Book!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:20:00 +0000

This poem was Co-Created on Facebook by Cassie Premo Steele and Facebook Friends as part of Wednesday : poems, the world's first Facebook co-created poetry book, coming May 12, 2013 from www.unboundCONTENT.com

For more information, check out the video for my Kickstarter project that harnesses the power of social media to co-create the book's publication.

Tale of Two Vals

I have two Vals in my life. The first is

a psychic who longs for a wife. The other

sits on an Atlantic teal island escaping

the poltergeist. Both are finally finding

ways to breathe. I tell their tales today

so you, in your life, can gain some ease.

Before Val 1 returned to the delicious

river of her youth, she was maudlin, and

rarely saw the sun. She survived eviction.

She worked overtime, even on holidays,

but never came to desired fulmination.

Val 2 went to the middle of the ocean

to escape the flood. The rain continued

for months, and yet she waited for the

glitter rainbow that did not come.

It took Noah 40 days, but the Vals

needed 53. They are women, and

quite dichotomous in their bulbous

anatomy and their relationship to

the Almighty. They didn’t build a

boat, you see. They moved to Inuvik

to have a flat land where they could

expand and be. So can we. So can. We.

There they found a comrade. The first

Val chose a calico, and together they

created a fiesta with a newborn mouse.

Elton John sang to them, they danced

and drank and laughed and cried in

every room of that crow nest house.

The second Val needed a fresh place

to go. It was cold. It was the opposite

of musical and frolic, and, all alone,

the worldwide web became her hope.

From that winter island, her avatar sent

out the truth of pain and starve that

women ate like beams of sunshine

until they were belly full and glow heart.

And here is where the wheel of the day

turns as it makes its way: the Vals stayed

faithful. Not in a wife and Mary-Martha

kind of way. More like Magdalene, that

rambunctious ball of sin who rolled the

stone away. You, too, can do this today.

Take your nudiustertian dreams from

the day before yesterday. Pack them on

your back and go away. Find a comrade

on your path and play. Open yourself

to work and flood and land and laugh.

Open to cold and alone and a hungry

belly begging for hope. Forsake the older

vow and stale joke. Refuse any longer to

choke. And from this Val place within,

feel the soft violet beginning to spin.

In this way, we can win. We can. Win.

___

Hello, April.

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:33:00 +0000

Hello, April. The month of my birth. You kind earth flower lady. You teach us to blossom into what we are worth. In your arms, we are all babies.

Cassie Premo Steele’s Co-Creating Newsletter

April 2013

This month’s Co-Creating Word: WATCH!

~Watch last week’s news feature story about Cassie’s coaching business!

~Watch Cassie’s TEDx video on Writing as a Way of Calming, Centering and Making Meaning!

~Watch Cassie’s Kickstarter video for the Wednesday : poems book, which recently was launched and successfully funded in 9 days!

Join Cassie for April’s events and WATCH your own worth blossoming!

~~~~

Writing, Reading, and Creating with Cassie Premo Steele

Thursday, April 11

7-8:30 PM

Jasper offices in the Arcade

1332 Main Street

Columbia, SC

Interactive. Fun. Relaxed. Inspirational. FREE!!!

Join Jasper Magazine’s Salon Series as creativity coach Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D., shares the tricks of her creativity coaching trade as well as some of her most recent writing.

As an award-winning writer, poet, novelist, and columnist for LiteraryMama, named one of the 100 Best Websites for Writers, Cassie Premo Steele will lead this combination creativity workshop and reading.

Come with your Q’s about creativity and writing and get some great A’s!

~~~~~

EARTH JOY WRITING at SALUDA SHOALS

with Cassie Premo Steele

Saturday, April 13

2-4 PM

Saluda Shoals Park

Irmo, South Carolina

$25 workshop fee includes all supplies

Join us for a special birthday edition of Earth Joy Writing as eco-poet and creativity coach Cassie Premo Steele leads a workshop on the theme of PLANTING on her birthday!

This month will also feature PAINTING led by Barbie Smith Mathis, as well as the usual mix of mindful meditation, conversation, journaling, and time in the beautiful and blooming natural world of Saluda Shoals Park.

This will be quite a special day!!

No previous experience in painting or writing is necessary, no writings are shared with the group, and everything takes place in a supportive and nurturing environment.

REGISTER BY CALLING 803-213-2053 by Thursday, April 11th and then meet in the Environmental Education Center and then move to various outdoor locations.

~~~~

WEDNESDAY : POEMS

Virtual Book Launch Party!

Wednesday, April 17

5-6 PM

on the world wide web

An exclusive gift only for backers of the Wednesday : poems Kickstarter project, Cassie will lead a live teleworkshop to share poems from the forthcoming book, behind-the-scenes tips about doing a Kickstarter crowdsourcing project for YOUR creative dreams, and take calls and questions about collaboration, social media, and the amazing power that gets unleashed when we combine women, their creativity, and the web!!

Become a backer today! http://kck.st/WKwU9r

Coming in May:

THE CO-CREATING SHOW

Wednesdays, May 1 and May 8

Noon-12:30 PM ET

A series of two interviews with America’s foremost creativity coach, Eric Maisel, on Cassie’s Co-Creating Show!

WEDNESDAY POEMS BOOK LAUNCH

Wednesday, May 12

All day, all around the world!

The launch of WEDNESDAY : POEMS, the world’s first poetry book co-created with Facebook friends!

Mark your calendars!

More details soon!

Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.'s Co-Creating Coaching inspires people to write and create in alignment with their deepest selves and the wisdom of the natural world.

The Cross, and Fire, and Green

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:13:00 +0000

Part 1: The Cross

The cross is made of wood, and on some days, I am, too -- torn between the bark of protection and the yearning to keep growing as I reach my roots deep into the dark soil for the strength to do what I came to do.

As a child, I looked at the wooden and polished grains of the pew in front of me, and I traced my fingers over and over the wood in rhythm to what the priest was saying. For me, even then, at the age of seven, words were connected to the body for me.

And silence.

Many years ago I wrote a poem – so long ago that it no longer exists except where it was published in a print journal in the years before the web. The poem was about this moment of writing on the wooden pew, tracing my finger as the priest went on and on.

The poem is called “You write what you cannot say.”

You write what you cannot say.

You do not go to church any more,

but even now, when faith has returned

to you in the form of a woman,

you know that God is also in some

measure a man, who gave you this

blessing, this curse, this plan.

…

In the last year, I have begun to feel the possibility of returning to the Catholicism of my childhood. It began last February, when a priest came to give me the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick while I was the hospital after a mini-stroke.

I wrote about this, too, in a poem that will be in the book of Wednesday : poems I co-created with friends on Facebook:

Humble your spirit before God,

said the priest. I was fraught.

I did nod.

I was alone in the hospital.

It was night. He had oil.

I gave gratitude.

Then rose the opportunity for attitude.

To hell with meditation, I said,

and started breathing.

This is growth, said a friend.

This is truth, said another.

Renew, said my mom.

I just wanted my own bed.

And a good meal.

And my daughter.

…

I am willing to give up garrulous

in order to keep going on this

perilous journey.

I know now what the deep Ahhh

is worth. I will keep digging. I am

the diamond I will unearth.

Part 2: Fire

Diamonds are produced under intense heat and pressure. I have felt this in me, too, on the way to digging for diamonds – the tendency for setting a fire that consumes myself.

I have written about this, too, in a poem just published last week:

Her mind is a desire machine,

she wants more, wants better, wants beyond her means.

Her mother was a philosopher and she taught her

the balance of beauty in Aristotle, not too much,

not too little, this is what makes enough, her mother

said, but did she listen? She became a poet instead.

…

Last October, I went to my birth state of Michigan twice in one month for two family funerals, and at the Masses for my Aunt Ruby and Great Uncle Barney, I felt in the candles and the incense and the gatherings of cousins smoking outside church, that there might be a place for my fire in a larger context.

In the circle of family and blood and memory and faith, I felt home for the first time in many years.

I was not too much – my extended family also had such spilling passions and miracles and mishaps, and deep, deep love for our ancestors and all things living in our memory.

I was not too loud – my extended family also laughed that loud, also celebrated the crazy story told over and over until it did not hurt anymore and actually became quite comforting.

I was not too alone – I had this one’s eyes, and that one’s mind, and the other’s heart.

And what I had forgotten – like the times my sister and I stayed with an aunt or cousins while my mom wrote her dissertation and after the summer of my parent’s divorce – they remembered all this for me, and had pictures to show me of me.

I walked today in a forest that had had a controlled burn, and I thought, I am not only the cross of my childhood self and the wood she carries in her body, I am also this fire that provides protection to the trees and harnesses the heat necessary to open new seeds for the coming season.

And it brought me to green.

Part 3: Green

Winter seemed to stay late this year. I cannot remember waiting for the warmth of sun like I have this year since my childhood in Minnesota when there would often be snow on the ground on my birthday on April 13^th.

The buds on my cherry trees in my yard have seemed paused these last few weeks, as if they were waiting for me and my wooden bones and fire heart to catch their breath and find some kind of balance.

And then I remembered Easter.

After years of celebrating the Spring Equinox and letting Easter be reduced to baskets of candy and plastic grass, I have come to what feels like a full circle of growth in the woods of my life.

This morning, I will attend church with my friend.

As a former Protestant theologian who left oceans of both faith and pain behind to begin again in a new land, she and I have decided together to try a new church where neither of us have been.

It will not be a Catholic Church. Not this time. Not when the green within me is so new.

But she knows the stories of the pew, and the stroke, and the priest, and the diamond, and the fire, and the funerals, and the circle of ancestors and faith and memory.

And she’s willing, in the future, to go to Mass with me.

~~~

Check out my Kickstarter project for the world's 1st Facebook co-created poetry book!

http://kck.st/WKwU9r

Cassie in the news!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:18:00 +0000

Big news! I was just interviewed by Nate Stewart of WLTX about my Co-Creating Coaching, the Wednesday poems book, and my successful Kickstarter project!

It will air on WLTX News 19 tonight at 5:00 pm ET if you're in the Columbia, South Carolina area.

And I'll post the link as soon as I can.

~~

Thank YOU, my wonderful writing coaching clients and readers and backers and friends. I am grateful to you for years of support as I walk the path of my passion and purpose. I am blessed by your presence in this world.

~~

For those of you who want to know more about my Co-Creating Coaching and all the exciting co-creating I've been doing, check out my website at www.cassiepremosteele.com

You can sign up for my FREE Co-Creating Newsletter there. And when you do, you'll instantly receive a copy of my talk at the South Carolina Arts Conference, "The Cycles and Seasons of Your Creative Life."

Another Kind of Good Friday Agreement

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:28:00 +0000

I looked out the window from inside the warm bus carrying me and the other kids home – out onto the snow covering the hill on Good Friday afternoon. It was April in 1974 and there was still snow.

I looked at that snow and asked myself why this day was called “good.”

It seemed bad to me. It seemed to me that people should call something what it was.

I was seven.

I was a little kid growing up in a tiny Minnesota village with a population of 300. My sister, who was two and a half years younger, was still in kindergarten in the little village and went to a neighbor lady’s house after her half day of school. My parents bussed me to the town over the hill, with a population of 30,000, where they worked at a Catholic college, so I could attend a Catholic Elementary School—Saint Mary’s. I loved that school. But no one else who attended Saint Mary's lived in my village. So, I was alone on that bus.

We were very Catholic.

I remember being in church one time when my mom got sick – it was like a kind of heart thing – like a spell, and fainting -- I don’t remember exactly. This was right before my parents announced their decision to divorce to us when I was eight.

From the perspective of a 45-year old woman now, I can see that being in church may have been the only place she could completely let go into all that was happening, then.

Let go and allow herself to fall and be picked up.

So, as a kid who felt and thought deeply, Good Friday, it seemed to me, should be named for the truth of what it was. Bad. Killing. Death.

In naming it Good Friday, it was as if people were trying to skip too quickly to the happy ending. I was in the middle of a kind of bad Friday phase of life myself, and I knew enough to know that the happy ending doesn’t come all at once.

You can’t skip the pain. You can’t skip the loss. The anguish, the tears, the horror, the fear, the terrifying paralysis and the empty edge of alone.

The way the black hole that seems to be surrounding you becomes the black hole you eat and swallow and lodge in your belly, at the core of you.

And how long it can take – decades – a lifetime, to carve it from the pit of your stomach and put it on a plate in front of you and look at it and say, “Here it is. This is it. This is what I will no longer eat.”

And then learn to feed yourself again. Not to fill the black hole but to be united with the plant life that offers itself to you – you, a living being, the plant, a living being – both of you coming together in mutual respect.

Like the Eucharist.

So last night was Holy Thursday. And today is Good Friday. And although I have not attended Mass regularly for decades, I am feeling a return to my faith.

I will go to church on Easter Sunday with my best friend.

But first, there are three days. And I don’t want to call it Good Friday just yet. I want to take this weekend to stay present with everything the crucifixion represents.

The sacrifice. The terror.

The coming to judgment. The witnesses.

The condemnation. The truth.

The walk carrying the cross.

The simple request for a sip of water.

The tenderness of that moment when someone brings it to your lips.

The sadness of those around you who are mourning your death.

The kind word to the criminal beside you.

The outstretched arms.

I want to make another kind of Good Friday agreement – with God, with myself.

Here’s what I’ll say:

“I’ll not call this good yet, God.”

He will nod.

“I’ll stay here on the cross a while longer.”

He will look into my eyes.

“I’ll pray from the depth of my black hole of fear and abandonment.”

He will say nothing.

“And You – You watch.”

Dear Pope Francis: An Open Letter in the Form of a Poem by a Catholic Woman and Her Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:56:00 +0000

Dear Pope Francis

Hello and congratulations! You cut a fine shape

in that gown and you really know how to work

a crowd. There are a few things I want you to know,

though, Papa Francesco. And since knowledge

means taking us to the ledge, let me come out

with it so you can see: while I was relieved

to hear the name you’d taken, I also want to

take it beyond serendipity into revolvolution.

The Church took her time and taught me to

breathe. I grew up green on Sundays, saw

my mother try to be a good wife, and when

she crossed that bridge into annulment,

it was with your predecessor’s sacrament.

Immaculata nuns taught me to love life.

We are part of all creation and the opposite

is hate-- is what I heard Jesus saying as I

knelt and felt the words and music resonate.

But now there’s an elephant in the room.

And it’ll take a crane to lift it up and out.

What I’d like you to do is follow your model:

listen to the birds and hear what is vital.

Not the glory and greed and shenanigans--

not the subatomic gumption to exculpate

some and leave others in asphalt frustration.

No more hijinks of conquer and stratification.

It’s time for action. My mother’s word

for this (and she’s a Eucharistic minister)

is sacrifice. What we mean by this is that

it’s time for you to put your umbrella up

and include all of us in your shelter from

the slurp and rain. The gays. The women.

The ones you consider fallen. The ones

you cause such pain. What you need to

know is that we know how to disentangle

longing into some place very comfortable.

Beyond consolation into warmth without

the fuss. Transforming restless motion

into exuberant being: that’s our thing.

And here’s the thing, Pope Francis:

You need this. You need us.

Love,

Cassie

P.S.

My birth name is Mary. She co-created

this poem with me and my friends, too.

P.P.S.

I look forward to hearing back from you!

___

This Wordy Wednesday poem was co-created by Cassie Premo Steele and Facebook Friends.

Visit my website at www.cassiepremosteele.com to learn more about the forthcoming Wednesday : poems book, and my recent, successfully funded Kickstarter project, and my deep dream to get on the Colbert Show, and my TEDx talk on writing, and my writing and poem songs, and my writing and creativity coaching.

13% away from full Kickstarter funding! Lucky 13, 13, 13!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:29:00 +0000

I launched my Kickstarter project for the world's first Facebook co-created poetry book offically last week on Facebook, and I am happy to announce that the project is 13% away from full funding!!

(Cassie dance.)

13 is my lucky number.... I was born on April 13th, which is also the day the Kickstarter project ends. This is 2013, and there are 13 moons in a year. And now we are 13% away from co-creating the Wednesday poems book which includes poems I've co-created each Wednesday with friends on Facebook since 2010.

Last week, I performed 4 poemsongs from the book with musician, Susanne Kappler, so in praise of 13, here is the video of our performance that night. The poems follow, along with the link to the Kickstarter project ...so you can make 13 super duper lucky!

Watch the video. Sing along with us.

Here's how.

Do This

You ask me how to make your dreams come true.

Don’t be a dunce. Of course I know what to do.

But don’t get excited. I don’t have commandments,

a handy list to calculate the common denominator

of fear over glue. You know me by now. I’m a guru.

So I’ll say: Get in the saddle. Be a ninja. Listen to

a waterfall. Play. And you’ll look at me as if I’m

speaking Swahili instead of bonhomie and say, “Hey!

Are you on morphine? Give me some concrete

perspective here! This is my dream!” And I become

redundant (at least to me) and start to spell it out.

Even the classifieds are not in a paper anymore.

Stop the shameless selling. Inspiration is not a

formula to tout. Bazinga is funny because Sheldon

does not shout. Grateful is the gateway to be wise.

You don’t need an optometrist to see with new eyes.

Do what mothers do: be quiet for a long time for

development to materialize. Find a tribe. If the one

you are in is a jailer, exonerate yourself. Let the

revolution catalyze. Come out. The opposite is

homicide. It’s about a worldview. Ideas start inside.

Go into the dumpling of your skin and find

integrity within. It doesn't take a psychic (or if it

does, she only helps because she’s punctilious).

You don’t need what you think you must have: not

that job, that man, that title, that money, that

layaway plan. You can’t implant metamorphosis.

Even Athena wore an aegis. It was to protect her

from this: toxicity, duplicity, and complicity.

All the things that split. Dreams are born in unity.

Wear your shield as Athena did, and you, too,

can grow her dream of this: democracy, domesticity,

felicity, simplicity, authenticity and synchronicity.

Now stop putzing. Do this. Do. Right now. You.

~

Go beyond luck and create your miracle.

Here's how.

Creating is like Praying

Creating is like praying.

You may not sit in church or mosque or temple,

but you place your fingerprint against

the altar tilth in benediction just the same.

Paint. Play.

Creating is like praying.

You may not be baptized in pluff mud and salt water,

but your parched soul will go sailing

low before rising like a crane.

Dance. Rave.

Creating is like praying.

You may be reluctant to exhale your pride

and perplexed by what is marginalized,

but then openness and gratitude take the reins.

Write. Say.

Creating is like praying.

You may not know the ritual for Japanese tea

and find the pomade of a preacher yucky,

but insulation gives way to amazing entropy.

Sculpt. Shape.

Creating is like praying.

You may judge the bronchial encyclical cockamamie,

and abhor the nimble stealth of judicial stymie,

but huckleberry fruit comes from a heartbroken tree.

Sing. Sway.

Creating is like praying.

You may perch upon the branch and fear jumping

into the whirlpool of sin, but one day you will

dive, spectacular and fearless, and just begin.

Act. Direct. Dream. Teach. Pave the way.

Social networking is a revolution. Revolve.

Here's how.

This is How a Revolution Starts

This is how a revolution starts:

Your heart, in the rain, a change.

One egret, in illustrious flight—

Your heart, singing at the sight—

Suspended belief, shattered grief—

Phenomenal changes come into being.

I mean the phenom, like an atom,

begins twisting. The way rain can

transform into steamy fragrance—

then become an effluence, a river—

or snow, melting, from a mountain.

I stood in rain like this once, felt

the vacancy of shadows under my skin—

as if larceny had taken place within—

an inner hug, a piquant shrug,

a spicy giving in to love and rum.

I gave a plethora of thanks to the skies—

let go into laughter and mesmerize—

said, “Hello, turtle,” gave him a pistachio,

and he carried my hubris away on his back.

This is how a revolution starts:

Your heart, in the rain, a change.

You give up wanting to be omnipotent—

You spend days creating, verklepmt—

You give in to beauty, you are kind.

You work with nature and what you find.

You hike through mountain, river, and rain.

Your heart, it changes, and you do it again.

This is how a revolution starts:

Your heart, it changes, and you do it again.

Co-Create your own change.

Here's how.

What the Moon Sang as She Was Leaving

Everything spectacular is broken.

Like a pearl that ruins the shell it opens

Birthing its alabaster dharma to awaken.

You are broken like this.

You are ready to awaken, too.

Everything scared starts as penumbra.

Shadow serves a banquet at the table

Where lunatic fringe sits next to karma.

You are scared like this.

You are also eating this meal through.

Everything pensive gets convoluted.

Halleluiah sings jazz about the difference

As we prepare to leave and rise to apogee and soar.

You are stuck like this.

You are ready to end the war.

Everything refulgent is molten at its core.

Sequestration doesn’t ever really work

Because hearts can open doors.

You are a house on fire like this.

You are the ceiling and the floor.

Every crash comes from lack of focus.

A newspaper reports the voluptuous,

And the chaos, cacophony, and score.

You are distracted like this.

You are ready for so much more.

Every jam potentially produces juice.

Turn that tourniquet loose to find that

Earth has grapes and moon has olivine.

You are fruit and round and sweet like this.

You grow and change and you are wine.

Are you ready to awaken?
Here's how.

Facebook vs. Twitter: It's on!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:28:00 +0000

Yesterday I had the launch of my Kickstarter project on Facebook to co-create the world's first Facebook poetry book.

And in the first day, we got up to 68% of our funding. Looky here: http://kck.st/WKwU9r

This fast response is a testament to the co-creative power of Facebook to connect and bring people together in supporting their deepest creative dreams.

It's what I've been doing since 2010 in co-creating Wordy Wednesday poems each Wednesday with Facebook friends. And now, with the support of my Facebook friends who backed me yesterday, I will be publishing the world's first ever Facebook co-created poetry book. Watch this:

But that's not the end of the story. Because...

Twitter, it's on!

Here's what I'm gonna do today: tweet the mess out of the Kickstarter project and see how many backers from Twitter I can get. Here's the link, twitty birdy: http://kck.st/WKwU9r #cassieoncolbert

This is, by the way, the first ever blog post I've written about Twitter. So...

Is Facebook the big 68% giant who got the ball rolling but now Twitter is poised to come in with the final 22% and send it over the cliff?

This is not only a story about an ecofeminist poet in South Carolina and her little book of poetry she co-created with her friends.

This is big. It's about how we connect.

And what will come next.

Stay tuned.

#cassieoncolbert

Co-create the world's first ever Facebook co-created poetry book!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:21:00 +0000

Today is the big day!!!!!! I have been co-creating poems with friends on Facebook since 2010, and today I am launching my new Kickstarter project to support the production of the Wednesday : poems book. Here's the link to find out how to co-create with me! http://kck.st/WKwU9r

And today, Wednesday, March 20th, as a special gift...I will will be giving one copy of the new book, LEAN IN, by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, to one of the people who backs the project (leaning in!) by midnight TODAY on Wednesday, March 20th! I am giving this book in honor of Kate Fox, who was the first backer for the project. So in honor of the way Kate Fox leans in and leads as an empowered woman, it will be called the Kate Fox Prize. Here's the link to back the project: http://kck.st/WKwU9r

You can help back the project and be entered for this prize -- and gain access to my backer-only tele-call about social media, marketing, crowd sourcing, and Facebook and Twitter co-creating for as little as $1!

Please share and like and tag and retweet and comment and reply and jump all up in today's spring equinox Wordy Wednesday love train! I'm at www.Facebook.com/Cassiepremosteele and www.Twitter.com/premosteele

With Gratitude and Co-Creating Hugs,
Cassie

Opening: the theme for today's Earth Joy Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:44:00 +0000

Today at the Earth Joy Writing workshop I'll be teaching at Saluda Shoals Park, we will be focusing on the theme of OPENING. Here is a poem I wrote this morning on this theme:

Opening

It starts with a shift.

A mind reaching out

or in. A decision to

begin. Beyond lose

or win. Like a dream,

what is blends with

what could have been

and is now possible.

One heartbeat skips

its usual shift and jumps

ahead to become hope

coming true. For you.

It is easier than you

think. Because think

is a tiny thing in

comparison to be.

Every flower opens.

The mouth of a baby

bird. Lips forming a

word. Rivers. Leaves.

You are this, too. Today,

open beyond what you do.

The tree you sit under

did this, too. And grew.

Watch this great video featuring photos from past workshops and an original song by Susanne Kappler:

The workshops are held the second Saturday of every month from 2-4 pm. To register for the next one, on the theme of PLANTING, call 803-213-2053.

And sign up for my Co-Creating Newsletter at www.cassiepremosteele.com to get a free copy of my South Carolina Arts Conference talk, "The Cycles and Seasons of Your Creative Life."

Facebook showers blessings (and it's not X-rated)

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:24:00 +0000

Since 2010, I have co-created poems on Facebook each Wednesday by asking people to suggest a word in a comment box below my status update, and now all these poems are being gathered into a book called WEDNESDAY to be released by unbound CONTENT on May 12, 2013.

Here is my status update on Facebook for today:

Dear Wordy Wednesday People,

We are smack in the middle of Mercury retrograde, much of the country is under a blanket of snow, and this is the time of year when winter seems to have taken warmth down for the count.

But HOLD TO HOPE, Wednesday Wonder Warriors, for behind the scenes we are moving forward:

1/ the deliberations for the cover art contest are continuing and we will announce the WINNER next Wednesday, March 13th

2/ the video for the Wednesday poem book Kickstarter project is in production and will be unveiled on Wednesday, March 20th

3/ we are working to typeset the manuscript so YOUR NAME is on each and every page of each poem you helped co-create and

4 / YOU are about to help launch the world's first Facebook co-created poetry book, and by transforming this (sometimes snarky/ obscene/ distracting / annoying) technology into a platform for art, connection, meaning and beauty, you, by the law of karma, are about to OPEN TO SPARKLY SHOWERS OF BLESSINGS IN YOUR LIFE.

Namaste, Peace and Love,
Cass

P.S. Dear Blog Reader, If you would like to join in the Wednesday fun, please friend me at www.Facebook.com/Cassiepremosteele

P.P.S. And if you would like more help moving through this late winter season, sign up for my Co-Creating Newsletter and get a FREE copy of my talk for the South Carolina Arts Conference, "The Cycles and Seasons of Your Creative Life," which will be sent speedy quick to your email inbox for your immediate reading pleasure. Thanks!

Check out this Earth Joy Writing video!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:10:00 +0000

Enjoy this wonderful video with photos from past workshops and the original song, "Clarity," by Susanne Kappler.

Join us at Earth Joy Writing this Saturday, March 9th from 2-4 PM at Saluda Shoals Park.

$25 for time in beautiful woods, writing, meditation, and opening to your creative self!

Call 803-213-2053 to register!

March: Listen to the beauty #writing #eco-feminism #meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:26:00 +0000

MARCH

Listen to the beauty.

Listen to the song.

Say what needs to be said.

There is no wrong.

Everything is open.

Opening is long.

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There is No Wrong

In an article in the May/June 2009 issue of Spirituality & Healthmagazine, Barbara Schramm reports something that we can now open to hearing in this season of Opening. A pilot study was conducted that gave patients with fibromyalgia the opportunity to practice writing, meditation, and spiritual guidance. The researchers concluded that those who “adhered to the meditation and writing protocol reported significant relief.”

Have you tried meditation? Take one hour this week and set aside time to explore meditating.

You might find a class at a local yoga or meditation center near you.

You could subscribe to a meditation service that puts one in your inbox 5 days a week -- or purchase a meditation CD. I’ve listed links to some I use regularly – for myself and with clients – at the bottom of the newsletter for you.

Or you could just sit. Just sit. Focus on your breathing. Count to five on the inhale. Count to five on the exhale. Don't worry if nothing happens. This is the point.

There is no wrong.

The thing about meditation is that there's literally nothing to it.

We're not used to this. We humans are busy doers, schemers, dreamers, and people who like to get 'er done. Meditation trains our brains to relax. Even if you think, "Nothing's happening, this is stupid," keep going.

It's not as important what "happens" during your meditation as that you just sit there and give it (yourself, your mind and body and spirit) time to work.

But it's not really "working." It's more like "being." Try letting "being" do the "work."

Don't do anything. Just sit there. And listen. Listen to the song within you that connects you to everything around you.

In this song, there is no wrong.

If you listen to this song, you will begin to feel its right effects in the rest of your life.

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March Events:

EARTH JOY WRITING AT SALUDA SHOALS PARK

Saturday, March 9, 2-4 pm

$25

Eco-poet and creativity coach Cassie Premo Steele offers a monthly workshop based on her new book, a new version of the Artists’ Way for the green generation. Each session is designed for participants to reduce stress and feel greater peace and balance in one’s life through journaling, experiencing the beauty and wisdom of the natural world, and creating community. Participants meet in the Environmental Education Center at Saluda Shoals Park and then move to various outdoor locations.

Our theme this month is OPENING.

Here are some comments from last month's participants:

"There was a great balance between instruction and reflection.... A calming yet rejuvenating experience."

"Today's workshop challenged me to expand my perception and open up to taking in new and different ways to experience my surroundings."

"Today's techniques on focusing and observation will help me greatly. I am a fairly new writer and am learning to notice detail and nuance."

"Today I learned I have many gifts and talents, all with great value. I must share these with the world once again."

"I felt a oneness with nature. I felt the energy shift around me and I felt my own energy shift. I want more of this feeling every day."

"This is a beautiful park and a very nice space for your most enlightening Earth Joy Writing sessions. I especially enjoyed being outside and Owl Seeing. I loved the circle, music, and meditation. And yes! I did get CLARITY! about looking at my life and being totally grateful for my life."

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Jasper Magazine's "Pink Issue" Launch Party

Friday, March 15, 7 pm

The Arcade on Main Street

Columbia, SC

Celebrating an issue devoted entirely to women in the arts, with poetry by Cassie Premo Steele, Kendal Turner, Anna Howard, and Debra Mc Queen, music by Susanne Kappler, dance by Kiyomi Mercadante, plus readings from the new book about Columbia artists, The Limelight, and MORE!

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50 Shades of Green:

The Paradoxes and Promises of Women on the World Wide Web

a Greening the Mind Presentation by Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.

Wednesday March 27, 7 pm

Russell House Room 304 on the USC Campus

Come hear a free presentation about current research into left brain and right brain thinking, the feminization of the internet, the surprising roles oxytocin and dopamine play when we are online, and the possibilities of new ways of co-creating with the earth in this interconnected world.

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THE NEXT BIG THING!

Wednesday: poems

by Cassie Premo Steele

coming from Unbound Content

May 12, 2013

To read more about my next poetry book that contains poems I co-created with Facebook friends each Wednesday since 2010, click here:

http://www.cassiepremosteele.blogspot.com/2013/02/its-wordy-wednesday-and-heres-next-big.html

And be on the lookout for my next Kickstarter project to help support the book’s launch!

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Co-Creating Client Feature:

Marie Currie, Wise Writer and Creative Gift Maker

I have been working with Cassie in private sessions since last summer. I wanted to take my writing to a deeper level. Cassie knew exactly what I needed. As we began the sessions I could see how my writing wanted to reach further into my belly but I was afraid that it wouldn't be good enough. Cassie not only helped ignite deep creativity in my writing but her coaching has inspired so much within my life. It has been a catalyst for all these sparks lighting up. She has a way of being that just makes me feel so comfortable. The fear falls away and she gently guides me to myself, which in turn has caused me to open to other people.

While working with Cassie, I wrote, submitted, and had my first articles accepted for publication. "The Door Within: Entering the Crone Years" and "Practical Ways to Open the Door Within” will appear in Crone Magazine, Issue #7 "Mothers and Daughters" for this coming fall. The articles help women embrace the beauty within themselves as menopause approaches. I am currently working on a children's book and I have some other writing developing. I plan to submit more articles to magazines as well.

My creativity is taking off. I made a few gift baskets for some children and adults during the holidays and I loved it. Now I have a gift basket business sprouting. The name is "Marie's Creative Gifts From The Heart.” (Call me at 803-730-4054 if you want to order baskets for the coming spring holidays!) People are so pleased with my baskets. I put my passion for life and uplifting spirit into them. I want people to feel special when they send and receive them.

It is obvious to those close to me that there is something different in me. My confidence and joy keeps expanding. More opportunities arise. Cassie shared herself with me and it has brought me courage to be myself. I know that working with Cassie opened me up to the abundance I am receiving.

Blessings~

Marie Currie

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Here are links to some of my favorite sound healers, fire starters, and star charters. Click and discover and OPEN!

http://www.aleyadao.com

http://www.brainsync.com

http://www.daniellelaporte.com/#

http://www.marieforleo.com

www.planitwiththeplanets.com

http://www.ryanspirit.com

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Want to be one of my featured Co-Creating clients in the future?

My individual coaching, writing, talks, and workshops teach people ways of co-creating harmony, healing and empowerment through the practices of writing, everyday creativity, and living in relationship with the natural world. I work with clients locally and long-distance by phone, Skype and Facetime.

Learn more at www.cassiepremosteele.com

Call or text me at 803-420-1400

Sweet Breath | Another Poem for Baby Ruby

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:11:00 +0000

My Aunt Ruby with her second grandchild, Lisa

I got an update from my cousin Rene about Baby Ruby today. She is doing better, and the mama is heading home from the hospital. They are keeping Baby Ruby for one week to continue with antibiotics to make sure the lung infection is completely gone.

As soon as I read the email, I started thinking about how my Aunt Ruby, Baby Ruby's great grandmother, passed away because of a lung infection last fall. I started feeling how we pass things along in families-- not just biologically, but emotionally.

And so here is my second poem for Baby Ruby.

Sweet Breath

I imagine us circling you, there,
in the clean hospital air,
surrounding you where
you are.

But we can't. We live so far
from the birthplace
of cars and are
busy.

We are sorry. (The word floats
up my throat and I feel
the sharp mirror of
worry.)

Your great grandmother smoked.
(There. I've said it.)
And it took her
away.

Do the ancestors really
haunt us this way,
coming back in our
bodies?

(I think of the cigarettes
I buy and hide when
my own self gets
lonely.

Or guilty. (There it is.) How
the smell of blame lingered there,
in the air at the funeral
party.

(This is over.) So I pull
the choke from my throat
and throw it away in the
garbage.

My words rise like ashes
so you might forgive her,
my cousins, finally, for
dying.

May we forgive her, and him,
and them, and her, and him,
him again, and all of them,
each one.

Forgiving each one until
there is nothing left.
And so I forgive
me. Me.

There is nothing left
to forgive. Nothing left
of guilt, anger, pity.
Nothing.

Just the sweet breath of a baby
coming into this world, and
already doing so much
healing.

Prayer for Baby Ruby

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:23:00 +0000

My cousin Rene just called to say her first grand baby has been born. Her name is Ruby, and she is named for Rene's mom and my Aunt Ruby who passed away last October. Ruby is having trouble breathing and has been placed in NICU. Rene asked for prayers, and I pray through poetry. So here is my poem.

Prayer for Baby Ruby

I stand by the road.
A girl is crying.
I take her hand.
Her mouth opens.
Her heart is singing
with loss. She has
not yet learned
to breathe in the air
of this world.
Where is your
mother? I say.
She is not willing
to answer.
Her breath
threatens to
leave her.
Lie down here,
I say. Our family
circles her body
and becomes her
bed. She lets go
of the watery
world behind
as we breathe
for her. Her eyes
open wider.
She is full of
love. The air
comes in.
She begins
to dream
of her life ahead.

On mentors and artists and creative friendship

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:00:00 +0000

During a time of stuckness, the kind of inertia that many creative people occasionally endure, I had started going to a yoga center regularly, and the physical movement allowed a creative movement within me to begin again. Wanting something deeper than I could, at the time, express through language, I had begun to paint.

Summer turned to fall, and the yoga center had a one-year celebration and asked me to compose an anniversary poem and display a few of my my paintings. During the evening’s festivities, a tall, professorial-looking man who taught yoga classes at the center came up and commented on one of my paintings.

“I think I’ve seen that before,” he said.

A bit fearful that he was criticizing my work, I quipped, “Only if you’ve been in my bedroom recently!”

His bright blue eyes flashed, and he laughed. A friendship was born.

Later, someone told me who he was: Philip Mullen, one of South Carolina’s greatest painters, whose huge works honor the walls of the University of South Carolina’s Koger Center for the Arts, whose work has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and Smithsonian, and whose prolific career includes thirty-one years as a professor of art at the University of South Carolina, from which he retired as Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 2000.

But this is not how I met him. When I met him, I used the label, “yoga teacher” in my mind. When he met me, he used the label, “aspiring artist” in his. In this way, our friendship was born out of illusion—and out of the truth that depth does not come from surfaces or labels or the first impressions we get from the social exterior. He had turned to yoga after having to leave tennis; I turned to painting during a time when words were failing me. Interestingly, our friendship was born in a context of change and loss. These, I would discover, are also major themes in Philip Mullen’s work.....

This is the beginning of my essay about my friendship with Philip Mullen in the new book, The Limelight. His art also graces the cover of the book.

To purchase a copy of the book and meet and greet and celebrate with the book's writers and artists, please join me this Sunday, February 24 from 5-8 PM at Tapp's.

Info is below.

The Limelight – A Compendium of Contemporary Columbia Artists, volume 1 will release on Sunday, February 24, 2013 with a launch party from 5 – 8 pm at Tapp’s Arts Center on Main Street in Columbia. The $15 admission to the event includes a copy of The Limelight ($18 after 2/11/13), music, food, and the opportunity to gather signatures from authors and artists in attendance at the launch. For couples wishing to share a book, admission is $25. There will be a cash bar.

The Limelight, published by Muddy Ford Press, LLC, is the first volume in a serialized collection of 18 first-person, narrative essays written by professional Columbia authors and artists about professional Columbia authors and artists. It is the sixth book to be published by Muddy Ford Press since February 2012.

Among the authors in this collection are Cassie Premo Steele, Janna McMahan, Ed Madden, Ray McManus, Don McCallister, Jeffrey Day, Aida Rogers, and Michael Miller. Subjects include Pat Conroy, James Dickey, Nikky Finney, Gilmer Petroff, Stephen Chesley, James Busby, Blue Sky, and more.

The Limelight is edited by Cynthia Boiter, editor of Jasper Magazine and author or Buttered Biscuits – Short Fiction from the South (Muddy Ford Press, 2012).

For more information or to pre-order copies, please go to www.MuddyFordPress.com. Books are also available at Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. You may contact the publisher, Dr. Robert Jolley, at publisher@MuddyFordPress.com or the editor, Cynthia Boiter, at editor@JasperColumbia.com or 803-622-6606.

See you Sunday at Tapp's!

It's Wordy Wednesday! And here's The Next Big Thing!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 05:00:00 +0000

The amazing South Carolina poet Susan Laughter Meyers, author of the forthcoming My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass, tagged me for The Next Big Thing, a series of self-interviews making its way around the blogosphere among poets and writers, one by one. Thank you, Susan. You can read her self-interview at her BLOG.

Below is my own self-interview answering the set of questions that is traveling from blog to blog as a part of The Next Big Thing project.

What is your working title of your book?

Wednesday: poems will be published by Unbound Content on May 12, 2013. (This is my publisher, Annmarie Lockhart's birthday. My last poetry book she published was released last year on my birthday, April 13th, so we thought it would be fun to continue this. Incidentally, we were also born in the same year, so numerologically we are totally in sync.)

Where did the idea come from for the book?

In 2010, I started an interactive poetry writing practice on Facebook. I called it Wordy Wednesday and asked people to suggest a word in the comment box below my Wednesday status update. Here's the very first poem I co-created in this way, from June 2010, just after the BP oil spill in the Gulf:

What genre does your book fall under?

It's poetry. But it's also a new genre-- co-created poetry, community poetry, collaborative poetry. It has elements of ecopoetry and political poetry and spoken word. As poets, we always tap into the zeitgeist, the spirit, the feelings in the air as we write. In these poems, I do that in a much more grounded way-- because these people are my friends, and I've known some of them for twenty years, and I can sense how the words they suggest reveal their deepest yearnings,

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh, I had a lot of fun with this question! First, I asked my friend, the poet Daniel Dowe, who writes the introduction for the book, who would want to be, and he answered, Tom Hanks. And then I asked my publisher, Annmarie Lockhart, who she thought I would be, and she answered, Meg Ryan.

Hmmm, I said to Annmarie, I've always wanted to be played by Drew Barrymore.

And then Annmarie said she would want to be played by Mary Louise Parker.

And then we laughed, remembering that they'd been together in the film, Boys on the Side.

And then I heard about this new film that's coming out this spring, called To the Wonder, and I decided that was a good answer, too.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The world makes poetry just as the world makes love.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

This will be my third poetry book published by Unbound Content, an independent, woman-owned poetry publisher in Englewood, New Jersey. They've also published two musical poetry albums I've co-created with Russ Eidson. You can find excerpts and reviews and links to all of them at my website, www.cassiepremosteele.com

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I co-created the poems every Wednesday (except for my twice-yearly offline breaks) from June 2010 until January 2013. So two and a half years of Wednesdays.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I don't know of any other poetry books like this one. It's a little bit Mad Libs, a little bit Rubix Cube, a little bit Words with Friends. It's that rare and precious thing: true meaning on the internet.

Above all, it's a testament to our ability to have EMPATHY for each other-- across geographical and emotional distance. I feel incredibly grateful to each and every one of the people who helped co-created the Wednesday poems with me.

So, here's my song to THANK YOU for your EMPATHY:

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The name of my writing and creativity coaching business is Co-Creating because when I teach workshops and work one-on-one with people, I co-create with them. We create a shared space where creativity happens-- and that's never solo, as much as we might buy into the myth of the alienated hermit artist. All the artists and creative people I know and love have been successful because they are connected, in very deeply meaningful ways, with the people in their lives, with their communities of ancestors and families and cities and towns and readers -- and also with the natural world around them, the most vital part of our earth community.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

The poems are meditations, advice columns, confessions, daily news, gossip, and prayer.

Here are a few. I'd love to hear what YOU have to say about them! Feel free to comment below or write to me at www.cassiepremosteele.com

THE NEXT BIG THINGS ARE...

Part of the fun of "The Next Big Thing" project is that we get to tag other writers to write their own blogposts. Be sure to check out the ones I tagged:

Lisa Catherine Harper writes about the new anthology, The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage, which she edited with Caroline Grant and is coming this March from Roost Books: READ MORE!

Cindi Boiter writes about the anthology, The Limelight: A Compendium of Columbia Artists, which she edited and just released with Muddy Ford Press: READ MORE!

A Sister Survivor Birthday Celebration for Audre Lorde

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:20:00 +0000

Today is Audre Lorde's birthday!

She (along with Anne Sexton, Gloria Anzaldua and Joy Harjo) is one of my favorite poets. But Audre was also a philosopher, a novelist, an essayist, and an activist. In celebration of her birthday today, I'm sharing a chapter from my book, We Heal from Memory. It's long. It's deep. (I've omitted the footnotes; you can look in the book if you're feeling scholarly today.)

The ideas in this essay form the bedrock for so much of my writing and teaching that I consider it essential reading for all of my friends, students, clients, and readers.

Settle in with a Kombucha and enjoy.

"We are sisters and our survival is mutual":
Audre Lorde and the Connections between Individual and Collective Trauma
from We Heal from Memory: Sexton, Lorde, Anzaldua and The Poetry of Witness
by Cassie Premo Steele
(Palgrave, 2000)

Audre Lorde was, as she described, "a black woman warrior poet" who lived from 1934 until her death in 1992, after a 14 year struggle with breast cancer. Lorde was, in many ways, a survivor who worked tirelessly to end the many silences in black women's history. As we turn now from tracing Sexton's individual trauma of childhood sexual abuse to examining the connections between individual and collective experiences of trauma in Audre Lorde's life and work, we will see that it is the context of a collective history that makes the critical difference in reading an individual's life and work. At the individual level, "Unless childhood trauma is resolved through reparative experiences, including psychotherapy, components of the trauma will be incorporated into the pattern of family life in the next generation."

In this chapter, I will explore how both a collective silence about black women and an individual silence within black women are results of traumatic histories. I will trace the historical roots of these silences and show how Lorde's work both follows from and reacts to this legacy in black women's history. To date the criticism on Audre Lorde has not usually been done with sufficient attention to the multiple aspects of Lorde's existence. For the most part certain aspects of Lorde's writing are highlighted, and others are left in shadows while the critic focuses on a singular aspect of Lorde's identity, as a woman who is lesbian, feminist, black, or a cancer survivor. There are critics who do engage with the multiple aspects of Lorde's self; however, they do not explicitly connect these elements with their historical contexts. Only three critics place Lorde's work in a historical context. Taking its lead from the work of black women themselves, my reading of Lorde's work is founded upon the importance of recognizing the multiple aspects of the black women's work and of placing the work in historical context, both within dominant tradition and within the tradition of black women's thought itself.

American historians' neglect to record the atrocities suffered by ethic minority groups of people, psychiatry's and psychology's theoretical foundations have limited contexts and tend to be ahistorical, in a sociopolitical sense, making invisible the experiences of large segments of the population who have been historically oppressed" (Root 258). To acknowledge the multiplicity of black women's existence and to fit this existence into its history and tradition is to work against the historical silencing of black women.

This chapter will focus primarily upon the historical causes of this silence: the silence imposed upon black women from the outside, the silence imposed from within, and the possibilities of ending silence. In the section below, I will examine how a history of oppression engenders a collective silence. As Bruno Bettelheim has written, "What cannot be talked about cannot be put to rest; and if it is not, the wounds continue to fester from generation to generation." In the following section, I will show how a history of trauma engenders an individual silence, a silence within the individual, a silence at the heart of the identity of the individual. Lorde's work shows how these silences are connected and how it is fundamental to one's survival to end the silences. As an example of how Lorde's poetry witnesses to the silence, let us examine the poem, "A Litany for Survival," from 1978.

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon
this illusion of safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent we are still afraid.
So it is better to speak remembering
we were never meant to survive.

We can read this poem as a call to witnessing trauma, the experience of knowing you were not "meant to survive." Until the event is told, the silence becomes a fear which invades all aspects of the survivor's life, as in Lorde's poem. A silent survivor who has not told her story is one whose silence contaminates her life, distorts the memory, makes it--the memory, the life--evil. This can manifest itself in various ways, such as a feeling of a lack of relation to others, or feeling a sense of lack, feeling one has a heart of stone, or finally, feeling that one is responsible for the atrocities one survived.

In Lorde's poem, we see the effects of trauma (which is here not only personal but also collective as in the history of African Americans): living both inward and outward, before and after, as the trauma shifts the inside and the outside, both spatially and temporally, so that the event becomes the ever-present now within the survivor. We also see the effects of silence: the fear that leads to lack: lack of love, lack of food, lack of nurturance. It is a fear that becomes generalized, projected onto the world ("the sun may not rise"). It is a fear that perpetuates the silence unless we "speak/remembering": speak our remembering, and "speak/remembering/ we were never meant to survive": speak the
stories of what threatened, and continues to threaten, one's survival.

This silence, this aloneness, is ended by speaking to a listener, one who cares enough to, together with the witness, participate in the reliving of the event. In her poems, then, Lorde invites readers to witness to the truth of the destruction that has been survived.

For Audre Lorde, ending silence is the first and most important step in ending both the political oppression as well as the psychological oppression of black women. Lorde provides a model for coming to speech--even in the face of fear, even in the face of fatigue, even in the absence of memory, even in the absence of feeling.

History and silence, or silence from without

We might wonder about the significance of the silence of Lorde's critics regarding black women's history. Their silence is connected to a corresponding silence regarding black women's sexuality. Both of these silences--the silence about black women's history and the silence in black women's history--point to the profound connection in history between black people's sexuality and racism in America. Dating from slavery, black women's sexuality was owned and used by white slave owners in two main ways: for the reproduction of wealth and labor through enforced pregnancies, and for the depositing of white men's desire in a system where white women were seen as chaste under the "cult of true womanhood." Thus enforced mating, pregnancy, childbearing, and rape were routine experiences for black women under slavery. Furthermore, marriages between black men and women were outlawed under slavery, making it impossible for black women to be "respectable women."

The following account by historian Winthrop D. Jordan makes this clear:

"In the West Indian colonies especially, and less markedly in South Carolina, the pattern of miscegenation was far more inflexible than in the other English settlements. White women in the islands did not sleep with black men, let alone marry them. Nor did white men actually marry Negroes or mulattoes. Yet white men commonly, almost customarily, took Negro women to bed with little pretense of concealing the fact. Edward Long of Jamaica described the situation: 'He who should presume to shew any displeasure against such a thing as simple fornication, would for his pains be accounted a simple blockhead; since not one in twenty can be persuaded that there is either sin; or shame in cohabiting with his slave.' Negro concubinage was an integral part of island life, tightly interwoven into the social fabric . . . . Sexually, as well as in every other way, Negroes were utterly subordinated. White men extended their domination over their Negroes to the bed, where the sex act itself served as the ritualistic re-enactment of the daily pattern of social dominance."

Even after slavery ended, the Reconstruction prohibition of relations between whites and blacks and the systematic lynching of black men, women, and children contributed to the continuation of "the daily pattern of social dominance."

As the only black woman to address frankly the issue of sexuality in her time, Ida Wells-Barnett believed that "existence was a phenomenon in which belief and action could not be separated," (Braxton 137), and to this end, Wells-Barnett addresses lynching as a feminist issue in 1900 with her essay, "Lynch Law in America." Wells-Barnett analyzes lynching as an institutional threat to the black community, a threat which covers over the reality of real sexual violence of white men upon black women. As a way of upholding the cult of true womanhood, the law held that "no white woman shall be compelled to charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the investigation of a court of law" (72). Thus whenever white women claimed sexual assault, black men (and the women and children who refused to tell white mobs the location of their relatives) were lynched routinely in America. Underlying this practice, argues Wells-Barnett, is the truth of the matter: "The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes" (74). Here Wells-Barnett alludes to the history of sexual exploitation and rape of black women by white men both during and after slavery. It is this history that resulted in the repression and silence surrounding black women's sexuality.

In a pattern typical of such a history of oppression, the "true" story of the event is left behind and is replaced by an "official" story that obscures the violence, the force of the history. Angela Davis' essay from 1971, "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," attempts to refute the "official" story by reading through the silence about black women's lives under slavery. In her essay, Davis refutes the Moynihan Report, which argues that black women "assented to slavery" by being "related to the slaveholding class as collaborator" (201), as one example of an "official" story of
black women under slavery. By paying attention to this silence in the "official" story, Davis is able to reconstruct the "true" story, a story that documents the violence surrounding black women's sexuality under slavery: "she had to surrender her child- bearing to alien and predatory economic interests" (202); she was subjected to "the slave master's sexual domination" (212); and she was ultimately imperiled by "the most elemental form of terrorism distinctively suited for the female: rape" (213). As remarkable as this essay was--it was the first such attempt to read through the silence of black women's history, and it was written while Davis was in prison--it did not gain a wide audience. The nation--in 1971--was quite simply resistant to giving up its belief in the "official" story of black women under slavery.

The silence surrounding the history of violence regarding black women's sexuality was only recently given its proper theoretical context in Darlene Clark Hine's 1989 essay, "Rape and the inner lives of Black women in the Middle West: Preliminary thoughts on the culture of dissemblance."66 Hine argues that because of the historical threat of rape and sexual violence toward black women, a culture of dissemblance has developed in which black women keep matters of sexuality silent and private so as not to be abused by the larger society which would construct it in other, more harmful, ways. In order to protect themselves, black women "created the appearance of openness and disclosure but actually shielded the truth of their inner lives and selves from their oppressors" (380), and often, I would add, from themselves. As a result, "stereotypes, negative images, and debilitating assumptions filled the space left empty due to the inadequate and erroneous information about the true contributions, capabilities, and identities of black women" (383). It is for this reason that the stereotyped dichotomies of Mammy and Jezebel, representing the split between spirituality and sexuality, so persistently haunt the forms of subjectivity for black women in America.

Trauma and silence, or silence from within

Thus far we have seen that the history of violence and oppression for black women in the United States is accompanied by silence. This silence is imposed upon black women from the outside--through the force of institutional law, educational authority, and cultural norms. Yet these external forces are not the only reasons for silence. There is another silence, a silence from within, that further enforces the perpetuation of black women's silence. This silence is, as we will see, a traumatic silence, a silence resulting from trauma. While black women indeed have endured multiple oppressions in American history, the trauma at the core of their oppression is sexual. The enforced use of black women's sexuality under slavery, compounded by generations of sexual violence, together mean that black women must not only struggle against multiple oppressions from outside, from the exterior, but they must also contend with a legacy of silence at the interior of their being.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall, in her essay "The Women of Bronzeville," remarks that the images of black women as "matriarch, whore, bitch" persist in literary works by both white and black writers, which might lead to the question of whether there is something deeper at work in these images than simply negative stereotypes. In their research on incest, Herman and Hirschman write that survivors have "a sense of being different, and distant, from ordinary people," and they also note that "[a]lmost every one . . . described herself as a 'witch,' 'bitch,' or 'whore.'" Similarly, researchers find that among survivors of sexual abuse there is a legacy of silence caused by "passive resistance and dissociation of feeling" (Herman 750). We might wonder if these images of black women in our society and the corresponding silence regarding the origins of these images are so persistent precisely because they originate in deep, historical ways from the psyches of the survivors of rape and sexual abuse themselves. It is precisely this connection between the silence imposed from without and the silence imposed from within that Lorde's work examines. As we will see, Lorde shows us that the collective, institutionally enforced silence for black women is accompanied by an individual, psychically enforced silence within black women themselves.

Audre Lorde's autobiographical narrative, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, tells the story of a black lesbian woman coming to consciousness of herself through her history: a history of traumatic violence toward black women. The main character, Audre, becomes conscious of her race in the second grade (58-59), which teaches the reader that identity-formation is a process that develops over the course of a lifetime. Later, Audre learns to connect her identity with history when, as a young adult working in Stamford, Connecticut, her friend, Ginger, tells her about Crispus Attucks, the "first cat to die in the Revolutionary War, in Concord, Massachusetts. A Black Man" (131). This causes her to ask, "What did that mean about the history I had learned?" (133). As Janet Brice-Baker writes, "Maintaining the slavery system depended upon creating a distorted image of Africans, concealing their true history, and presenting the distorted version to both Black and White Americans." With her question Lorde begins her quest to end this concealment of black history.

Yet, not only does Lorde have to contend with the silence of black history, but also of women's history, and lesbian history: "It was hard enough to be Black, to be Black and female, to be Black female and gay" (224). Lorde's project is to write the myths and histories that were invisible to her as a "Black female and gay" woman coming of age in the 1950's: "There were no mothers, no sisters, no heroes. We had to do it alone, like our sister Amazons, the riders on the loneliest outposts of the kingdom of Dahomey" (176). The invisibility of these myths and histories, as we will see, is a result of individual and collective trauma.

While we will see later in chapter eight how Lorde finds positive spiritual and sexual roots through her mother and the history and myth of Carriacou, her own personal history contains much pain. In curiously non-introspective ways throughout the narrative of Zami, Lorde relates incidents of sexual molestation and impropriety. While Lorde's lack of self-reflection about the incidents has led critics to ignore their importance, we can see this lack of self-reflection as itself one of the results of a legacy of a sexually traumatic history. Lorde narrates seven such incidents in which black women are sexually violated or threatened by men--four white men, one black man, and two men of unspecified race. In so doing, Lorde shows how the silence about sexual trauma can and must come to an end--simply by beginning to speak.

The earliest scene occurs during one of the "summers of my earliest days" (48) between Audre and a man in a comic book store, a "fat white man with watery eyes" (49): "His nasty fingers moved furtively up and down my body, now trapped between his pressing bulges and the rim of the bin. By the time he loosened his grip and allowed me to slide down to the blessed floor, I felt dirtied and afraid, as if I had just taken part in some filthy rite" (49, italics mine). In describing the incident as being lifted up and back down again into blessing as a baby being baptized, Lorde connects the incident with religion. However, the blessing comes not from above as in traditional Christian thought, but from below, from the earth. Later Lorde will describe sexuality as a blessing from below, from the earth, as well.
Lorde again connects abusive sexuality with religion as she tells of witnessing the practice of the principal of her Catholic elementary school, Monsignor John J. Brady, a racist priest who tells Audre's mother that "he had never expected to have to take Colored kids into his school" (60): "His favorite pastime was holding Ann Archdeacon or Irene Crimmons on his lap, while he played with their blonde and red curls with one hand, and slid the other hand up the back of their blue gabardine uniforms. I did not care about his lechery, but I did care that he kept me in every Wednesday afternoon after school to memorize latin nouns" (60). The fact that she says, "I did not care," shows her own inability to deal with the feelings surrounding these incidents. But despite her lack of feeling, Lorde shows that speaking is the necessary first step. The numbness and silence surrounding the abuse will have to end, as we will see, in order for Audre to heal from these events.

Subsequently Lorde foregrounds the scene of her first menstruation during her fifteenth year by telling of her knowledge of sexuality: "But four years before, I had to find out if I was going to become pregnant, because a boy from school much bigger than me had invited me up to the roof on my way home from the library and then threatened to break my glasses if I didn't let him stick his 'thing' between my legs" (75). This threat tobreak her glasses is significant for two reasons. First, it shows the relation between class and the threat of sexual violence, as we are led to conclude that Audre's mother may not be able to afford another pair of glasses and certainly would be angry if they were broken. Second, it shows the importance of reading for Audre, even at the age of ten: she is returning from the library in this scene and she eventually goes on to become a librarian.

What happens after the threat is not narrated; instead, Lorde connects her fear of her mother with her own loneliness as a way of explaining what happened: "I was afraid my mother would find out and what would she do to me then?" is followed by "I was always so lonely in the summer, particularly that summer I was ten" (75). After the incident she gets home late, "washed myself up" and "got a whipping for being late" (75). She spends the rest of the summer trying to find books in the library that might tell her if she is going to be pregnant. So when her period finally comes four years later, at the age of fifteen, she is relieved that she is not pregnant.

The most emotionally charged incident of sexual abuse occurs in high school, when Audre's best friend, Gennie, shows up at Audre's house late at night with a scratched face after fighting with her father who had been drinking. As Gennie tells Audre, "And when [my father] drinks he doesn't know what . . . . " (94-95). Audre refuses to ask her strict parents if Gennie can stay with them, and so Gennie leaves alone to deal with her "good for nothing call himself father" (96) who is "using that girl for I don't know what" (101), as Audre's mother phrases it. One of the intergenerational effects of traumatic violence is silence, which is here marked by Audre's mother's silence, by her inability to say the words for what Gennie is experiencing. These silences inflict themselves on subsequent generations from within, and such internalized silence leads to devastating consequences: Audre hears of Gennie's suicide the next day.

The incidents continue in Audre's young adulthood. After she moves out of her parents' home, her landlady's brother "closed the door to my room and said I was a nice girl and I wouldn't have to pay him for moving me if I'd just be quiet and stand still for a minute." Here there is a paragraph break, and then Lorde writes, "I thought it was all pretty stupid, and he got cum all over the back of my dungarees" (105). In the paragraph break is the silence that stands in for the emotions surrounding the incident. Also after Audre gets pregnant by Peter, a white boy she'd met at a Youth Labor League party with whom she had slept "since it was expected" (104), she has an abortion which leaves her "with an additional sadness about which I could not speak" (119). And later, she writes, as an adult she "got out of being raped although not mauled by leaving behind a ring and a batch of lies" (182) to a "Black brother" (181), a "bastard . . . stronger than I was" (182).

The results of these incidents manifest themselves in the inability to feel feelings and the inability to speak about them--and these results affect her in other ways as well, such as at her father's death when she feels numbness instead of grief (147). And in Mexico, she tells her older woman lover, Eudora, that she doesn't like being made love to (169), another sign of blocked feeling caused by sexual trauma. Audre starts therapy in the fall of 1955, when she is twenty-one, because "There were things I did not understand, and things I felt that I did not want to feel, particularly the blinding headaches that came in waves sometimes. And I seldom spoke" (214). The pain, whether physical or emotional, and the silence go together, along with the lack of understanding and the feelings. Thus while Zami is the story of an individual, this story is also connected to a larger, intergenerational, collective context. In telling her story, Lorde is also telling the collective history of African women under colonization and slavery, as well as the collective history of all women and girls, like Gennie, who live through or die from sexual abuse. In speaking out about her silence, she is providing a model for collective and individual healing.

Testifying: speech in the face of silence

Let us examine Lorde's strategy of speech more closely to show how these individual and collective silences are connected. As we have seen, the collective silence regarding black women's sexuality has been enforced through a history of institutional force. At the same time, we have seen how the silence of black women themselves has been enforced, not from an outside force, but from within the individual woman herself. This is because, for the survivor of a traumatic event, silence is not simply a command from the other but the very condition of the possibility of survival. In other words, the individual survives precisely because she does not consciously experience the event; this means she does not remember the event in a narrative way, but only through flashbacks and dreams, and therefore, she cannot speak of it, she cannot tell the story. How then, does Lorde move from this state of silence to speech?

The answer lies partly in the work of black feminist lesbians who, in the late 1970's, provided the context in which these silences could begin to be broken. In April, 1977, the Combahee River Collective wrote "A Black Feminist Statement" in which they state, "Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work" (212), which can be seen as a background and precursor to Lorde's "erotic." And in October, 1977, Barbara Smith's "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism" was published, which was the first "writing about Black women writers from a feminist perspective and about Black lesbian writers from any perspective at all" (25).77 While Smith writes of the "overwhelming" task of breaking "such a massive silence" (25) in the field of criticism, she does note work being done in literature, including Audre Lorde's first three volumes of poetry. The essay concludes with a call that Audre Lorde would soon answer:

"I finally want to express how much easier both my waking and my sleeping hours would be if there were one book in existence that would tell me something specific about my life. One book based in Black feminist and Black lesbian experience, fiction or non-fiction. Just one work to reflect the reality that I and the Black women whom I love are trying to create. When such a book exists then each of us will not only know better how to live, but how to dream."

Lorde's entire life's work can be read as an attempt to learn and to teach how to dream. How do we learn to dream, how do we learn to envision, to imagine a better future? The answer lies in learning how to remember the pasts that we would rather forget, to remember the dreams that haunt us, and to speak of the dreams that scare us silent. Lorde teaches us that learning to dream the future is only possible by learning to speak through the silence of the past. Lorde's concern with silence shows us that paradoxically it is only through the very act of speech that there is any hope for the survivor.

Lorde writes in The Cancer Journals,

"We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak now these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And these are so many silences to be broken."

We should note several things about Lorde's remarks. First, as we have seen, silence can only be overcome by speaking, and furthermore, such speech must come even in the face of fear. Second, we have seen how "there are so many silences": the silence that results from a history of collective, institutionalized sexual violence enforced upon black women, as well as the silence that results from a history of individual, traumatic sexual violence survived by black women. These silences are both external and internal, both collective and individual, and the speech which overcomes it must occur at both levels. To this end, Lorde addresses her speech to others. This is the third important point in Lorde's remarks: speech must be addressed to someone, and together, the speaker and the listener may change, may heal. Her essays, like this one, are often given first as speeches that she writes for a specific audience; her poems, likewise, are like letters, written to specific people or to her selves, to other parts of her self. Thus Lorde shows us that even in the face of fear, silence can be overcome by speaking to someone, and that this act of speaking can lead to a regeneration on both the individual and collective levels.

In the poem, "Chain," Lorde moves from assessing the effects of a violent, collective history coupled with a traumatic, individual history to suggesting a way to heal from these histories. In this poem, we can examine further how Lorde proposes speech as a way out of the "many silences."

Chain

News item: Two girls, fifteen and sixteen, were sent to foster homes because they had borne children to their natural father. Later, they petitioned the New York courts to be returned to their parents, who, the girls said, loved them. And the courts did so.

Faces surround me that have no smell or color no time
only strange laughing testaments
vomiting promise like love
but look at the skeleton children advancing against us
beneath their faces there is no sunlight no darkness
no heart remains
no legends
to bring them back as women
into their bodies at dawn.
Look at the skeleton children advancing against us
we will find womanhood
in their eyes
as they cry
which of you bore me
will love me
will claim my blindness as yours and which of you marches to battle from between my legs?
II
On the porch outside my door
girls are lying
like felled maples in the path of my feet
I cannot step past them nor over them
their slim bodies roll like smooth tree trunks repeating themselves over and over
until my porch is covered with bodies
of young girls.
Some have a child in their arms.
To what death shall I look for comfort? Which mirror to break or mourn?
Two girls repeat themselves in my doorway their eyes are not stone.
Their flesh is not wood nor steel
but I cannot touch them.
Shall I warn them of night
or offer them bread
or a song?
They are sisters. Their father has known them over and over. The twins they carry are his. Whose death shall we mourn
in the forest
unburied?
Winter has come and the children are dying.
One begs me to hold her between my breasts Oh write me a poem mother
here, over my flesh
get your words upon me
as he got this child upon me
our father lover
thief in the night
do not be so angry with us. We told him your bed was wider
but he said if we did it then we would be his
good children if we did it then he would love us
oh make us a poem mother that will tell us his name in your language
is he father or lover
we will leave your word
for our children
engraved on a whip or a golden scissors to tell them the lies
of their birth.
Another says mother
I am holding your place.
Do you know me better than I knew him or myself?
Am I his daughter or his girlfriend
am I your child or your rival
you wish to be gone from his bed?
here is your granddaughter mother
give us your blessing before I sleep what other secrets
do you have to tell me
how do I learn to love her
as you have loved me?

Some of the figures of trauma which we traced in Sexton's "Kind Sir: These Woods" are evident here as well. As in Sexton's poem, these children are from a time and space different from our own, and they intrude upon the present, "advancing against us," from where we are not, our own past. This is our collective past, which, "advancing," demands a response from us as in war. These children have "no smell or color or time"; they exist as traumatic memories, as images one might see in a dream. And like a traumatic dream, they return and repeat: "felled maples . . . repeating themselves over and over"; "repeat themselves"; "over and over." Finally, the traumatic nature of the threat of death and the threat to life in this poem--"to what death"; "death"--parallels the "murder" and "suicide" of the last poem.
However, this poem differs from Sexton's in that it not only serves as a reminder of unresolved, unacknowledged trauma, but it also shows how to testify. As Lorde writes in the essay, "Sisterhood and Survival," "All of our children are prey. How do we raise them not to prey upon themselves and each other? This is why we cannot be silent, because our silences will come to testify against us in the mouths of our children." (7). In this poem, Lorde shows how silence testifies to destruction while speech may testify to survival. The form of the poem, a ballad, gives a clue to how such testifying speech takes place. Like a ballad, the testifying occurs orally, through dialogue, in plain language, with frequent repetition which has the effect of discharging emotions that might otherwise overwhelm the speaker or listener. Through these ways--dialogue, plain language, and repetition--Lorde attempts to reach the community, to speak to the collective, to the group, about matters that concern their very own survival.

The speaker not only addresses the daughter/children, but also the readers, as she asks us, commands us, twice in the first section, to "look at the skeleton children / advancing against us." The command is repeated by the children who ask their mother to "write me a poem" which can provide them with the language they need to speak--"tell them the lies"--of what happened. The children of this poem look to the mother for language, just as children of survivors of trauma need their parents to tell the story of the
trauma. Before this happens, the silence of the trauma is like an elephant in the living room, large and obtrusive, which family members walk around but never discuss. As Nadine Fresco writes of the children of the survivors of the Holocaust: "Putting a name on what the silence of others had made strictly unnameable generally remained impossible for the child . . . . It was a silence that swallowed up the past, all the past, the past before death, before destruction" (419). Speaking of this past would not only help the children of survivors but would provide healing for the generations after--"for our children."

Speaking in this poem is presented not as an option but as an imperative, as the children ask the mother, "what other secrets / do you have to tell me." Speaking is an imperative in that it is necessary to bring about the possibility of healing for the next generation. In order to heal, the children have to know the "secrets," the traumas in the past, that the previous generations have survived. Speaking is also an imperative that comes from within the survivors themselves. Parents also feel that they have to, must tell, what happened in order to heal themselves. If this does not happen, the pattern will be repeated in subsequent generations, as the children will pass on the effects of trauma to their children. Lorde's work shows the ways in which individual and collective trauma are connected, as each generation passes on their silence to the next. As Fresco writes, "suffering takes the place of inheritance" (421) as parents "transmitted only the wound to their children" (419). The wound of a traumatic history that this silence represents then becomes a substitute for love. Lorde's work testifies that silence is indeed not love, and then Lorde goes on to pose the question: is it possible for a mother in our generation be able to love her daughter differently, or will she continue "to love her / as you have loved me?"

4 Wordy Wednesday Love Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:39:00 +0000

Each Wednesday since 2010, I have co-created a poem on Facebook using words suggested by Facebook friends. These poems will be published by Unbound Content later this spring -- more about that soon! In the meantime, here are 4 poems about love. May you feel loved today. By these words. By me. By the co-creating energy of all the people who helped make these poems possible. May it become a ball of lavender pinkish light inside you and make you feel like a beloved star. Because you are.

Some Love

Some love just helps us to grow, gets us another
birthday, each year is a lake and we are the boat.
And some love bursts like a supernova,
illuminates everything in its torrential glow.
But some love is a cockroach, we crawl down
below on our bellies while we scurry to cope.
Some love is a blue bowl, less about connection
than what happens within. And some love is
all about patience and time, reconciliation, a cello
and bow. Some love is plumeria, scattered in a pond,
left there to float. Some love is indifferent, given
so freely it falls in fatigue. And some love we justify,
taking scissors, we learn how to prune. Some love
starts in espoir, and hope turns to dupe all too soon.
Some love is benevolent, an affirmation of hips.
Some love is frogsong and whippoorwill, a symphony
of rain and lunar eclipse. And some love is appetence,
a thunderous shower of hunger we bring to our lips.

From Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Image: Night Rain
Melanie Hofmann
20" X 20" Digital Media Limited Edition (of 25)
Durst Lambda or LightJet Photographic Print
© 2000
http://www.moonfiredigitalart.com/WL18nightrain.html

~~~~

Friends for Life

I often wake from sleep with disappointment.
I wanted renewal. But what I got was veritable
graffiti in my mind. Do you do this?

Sometimes I absolutely think I want a kiss.
But instead of an extraordinary unfolding
of bliss, I get a little forgiveness. You, this?

I envision my hearth lit with illumination.
Then the contractor comes and I am hit
with a bill of excruciating recalibration.

You say I am prescient? You say you, too,
have made such an adjustment? You
thought you were marrying frisky and

he turned reactionary? You tried to sow
peace and settled for tenacity? You
wore an ostentatious fabric and instead

of courage, you prayed for invisibility?
You tried to cook burgoo and ended up
with warm flippers on your plate?

Relax, my companion in skewed perception,
I will not try to placate. I will not bore you
with a cacophony of “Be grateful.” Blah!

The word phony is hidden in that optimistic
sorry swill. You will not swallow it. Nor will
I. I will just say this: Persist! If you will, I will.

This will be our commitment. Friends for life,
pissed at what much of life gives us. Not easy
to forgive. But still we persist. Now let’s kiss.

From Wednesday, March 21, 2012

~~~~~

After the Love

All I wanted to eat
yesterday was bacon.

It was salt and protein
masquerading as fat.

Sometimes my heart wants some
chocolate, I get that.

I look best in fuschia
lingerie, I feel best

when slurping wine and cheese.
Epic thirst engenders

dull endings. Trust hunger.
He is noble and sincere.

Keep eating until all
is mended. Your body

is not a lost phantom.
She is just fine right here.

From Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Image: http://www.eatthedamncake.com/2011/06/23/painting-of-a-naked-woman/

~~~~

When Love Comes

Watching Oprah, I see a woman. She is listing
what she wants in a lover. She is 41. The list
is long. Oprah tells her, "There's only one man
in the world like that. And his name is Jesus."
When love does come, you think, he will sound
mellifluous, he will flow like honey, your dreams
will take a jitney to a land of joy. (Isn't this our
fantasy? Eat, Pray, Love. Foreign Travel. Cute Boy.)
Somehow you will hold your heart aloft and stand
apart from the past and what might break.
(Or is already broken. Liz was running from
divorce, and Jesus, well, you've had that course.)
This is my confession: I have three friends
in their forties who have recently found love.
In one case, he is married. And so is she.
In another case, he is an addict. (And I don't
mean coffee or yoga or climbing trees.)
In the third case, they live 4,751 miles
apart. (She did the math. She knows
the numbers by heart.) So here's my advice
to my love-seeking friends: Acceptance.
Whatever is malevolent in your path will rise
to meet you. I swear to you, this is the truth.
(And I have my own nefarious past as proof.)
This is the alchemy of love. This is pulchritude.
(The word means beauty and has its roots
in the magnolia, that cheeky-monkey tree of white
sweetness and blood red burrs that drop.)
So stop. Accept that love is a laughing gull
with a slipknot in his mouth. It is in his nature
to laugh at a random joke, and when he does,
he will drop the rope around your neck.
And this is the time to take your pick:
leave the noose there and it will congeal,
or untie it by pulling the one free end.
This choice is up to you, my friend.
Earth is a free will zone. But freedom
doesn't mean you have to be alone.
It also doesn't mean there's an enemy.
Repeat after me: "I have what I need."
Apply an embrocation as you say it.
If you have a debt, don't expect anyone
else to pay it. Soothe your own hurts
with a lotion. Keep repeating this incantation.
Call it out like a penguin on a dry and rocky
beach. And before you know it, what you
are missing will be within your reach.
When love comes, you will learn patience.
When love comes, there will be acceptance.
When love comes, there will be going.
When love comes, you will be staying.
When love comes, there will be no list.

From Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Note: Check out the penguin mating call...

~~~~

And if you want to join in the Wordy Wednesday fun, friend me at

http://www.facebook.com/CassiePremoSteele

CLARITY: Earth Joy Writing : NOW WITH SONG!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:22:00 +0000

This past Saturday I led the February gathering of Earth Joy Writing at Saluda Shoals Park and I thought I'd share with you the feedback from the participants.

"Thank you for the wonderful exercises-- Owl Seeing, Deer Hearing, Fox Walking, and Creature Teacher. Each led perfectly to the next."

"I loved the time spent working on finding our animal sense of sight, hearing, and walking with intention. When I focus on the small details, the large ones emerge and I become aware of the layers around me. Nature is never still or silent."

"Learning about clarity and going through the different exercises to focus more on seeing and hearing and walking makes you realize how important it is (and difficult, too) to live in the present moment. It was a very inspiring and enjoyable session."

"I enjoyed the different steps. There was a great balance between instruction and reflection.... A calming yet rejuvenating experience."

"Today's workshop challenged me to expand my perception and open up to taking in new and different ways to experience my surroundings."

"Today's techniques on focusing and observation will help me greatly. I am a fairly new writer and am learning to notice detail and nuance."

"Today during the meditation I became very emotional and started to cry. I feel I have been living an unbalanced life. What I learned from my Creature Teacher is I have many gifts and talents, all with great value. I must share these with the world once again."

"I felt a oneness with nature. I felt the energy shift around me and I felt my own energy shift. I want more of this feeling every day."

"Can you order nice weather for next month, too?"

~~

THE NEXT EARTH JOY WRITING IS MARCH 9th.

THE THEME WILL BE OPENING.

CALL 803-213-2053 TO REGISTER.

~~~

All photos except the owl, deer, and fox are by Susanne Kappler, who is our resident photographer for the workshops.

Susanne also composed and played a new song called "Clarity" at the workshop.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN!

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler: An Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:08:00 +0000

This Saturday, my city will host its second annual Mardi Gras Parade. I missed it last year. I'll miss it again this year.

It's not because I don't want to go. The people who will be there are some of my favorite people.

But I have another thing to celebrate.

Last year, on the day before the Mardi Gras Parade, I had a TIA (mini-stroke) of the right somatosensory cortex. Fancy word: basically, something went wrong in my brain and I lost sensation from the left side of my face down my left arm and hand.

Friends came to see me in the hospital, still giddy from the festivities, and brought purple boas and multicolored beads. I felt raw. I was on a liquid diet because I could not swallow well on the left side of my throat. I smiled. I waited to close my eyes.

The closest thing to partying I experienced came when a priest came to visit me late one night and gave me the Blessing of the Sick. When he left, I took out the chocolate bar a friend had brought me and let it melt on my tongue like a Communion wafer.

I knew I would be okay.

But I also knew I was different in a very profound way.

~

Flash forward one year: in the last twelve months, all my symptoms have healed and I'm completely healthy. I've also been a TEDx speaker, my Co-Creating coaching business is thriving (with 100% of my clients being long-distance), my rates have more than doubled, I published one more poetry book, released one more album, did a national book tour, have another book on the way, and another being read by a wonderful publisher, continue to write my monthly column at Literary Mama -- and still I will not party this year.

Instead I will be at Saluda Shoals Park teaching the second in the monthly Earth Joy Writing workshops. Our theme this month is CLARITY.

The stroke taught me two important lessons, and they were clear:

1. A thing is not a thing. Even when you can't feel or understand something (an arm, a tree, a planet), it is still a being, still alive, still wanting to have a connection with you.

2. You have work to do. Each and every one of us came here with a job. It is not always our "job job" but it is our soul's passion. For me, this is writing and coaching people to use writing and their connections to the natural world to heal themselves and make meaning.

If you, like me, want to take two hours to find your own lessons (without a trip to the hospital or a $40,000 bill, and heck, you can even attend the parade before and head back for the bands after), call Karen Deaton at 803-213-2053 today to register for Saturday's workshop.

It's $25 and is open to ages 14 and up so bring your teen if you like. The temperature should reach 70 degrees, and we will walk and write and even hear live original music from Susanne Kappler as we gain clarity about our life's paths.

~~

I'm also giving a FREE workshop tonight at 6 PM at the USC Green Quad called De-Stress for Success, and there will be FREE FOOD from Rosewood Grocery.

I hope to see you tonight or Saturday. Because there are many ways to laissez les bons temps rouler!

New Center for Mindfulness in Columbia! Classes Start Soon!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:23:00 +0000

Many of you know that I use mindfulness in my work with individual writing coaching clients, as well as in group workshops. What you may not know-- and I'm super excited to share!-- is that the two gifted healers who were my mindfulness teachers have opened a new center for mindfulness in Columbia, and classes are starting soon!

What follows is a letter from Jemme Stewart:

I’m writing to give you some big news. Dr. Hilda White and I have co-founded a new business! We are excited to announce the launch of Upstream: A Center for Mindfulness Practice and Holistic Mental Health. Our beautiful new studio is located in Columbia, S.C. in Five Points across from City Yoga, where I teach, as many of you know. We’re both over the moon about starting Upstream, and we want to share our enthusiasm!

At Upstream, we will focus on teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to small groups in an 8-week class series format, starting in mid-February 2013. We’ve been very impressed with the MBSR toolset, which was developed at the UMass Medical School and uses breathing exercises, meditation, very light yoga, gentle stretching and the like to help relax both body and mind.

Our students will learn to use the MBSR toolset to manage physical and mental obstacles such as stress, anxiety, burnout, fatigue, tension, pain, sleep issues and more.

MBSR has been transformative for both me and Hilda, who is a Board Certified Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst. We’ve learned, experientially, how committing to these practices can help when you’re dealing with pain, stress and being out of balance.

Class series will be offered for Spring 2013, Summer 2013 and Fall 2013. On February 20, 2013, we will host orientation for the Spring 2013 class series, which runs on Wednesdays from February 27 – April 17, 2013. I will teach a morning session and Hilda will teach an evening session, each with 16 students.

We ran a very successful pilot series last year for a group that ranged greatly in age and occupation. What a lovely group! We received such positive feedback that we are entering 2013 confident that future groups will benefit as well.

How does the Upstream class series work?

1. Register by clicking the link below
2. Attend orientation-- day and time below
3. Confirm registration and pay $400 series fee
4. Start first class the following week

Spring 2013 class series:

DAY: Wednesdays, Feb. 27 – April 17th
TIMES: 8:30 am – 10:30 am or 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
LOCATION: 2123 College Street, Columbia, S.C. 29205
(In Five Points across from City Yoga)

ORIENTATION: Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, 8:30 am – 9:30 am or 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
RETREAT: Day-long silent retreat on Saturday, April 6, 2013, 10 am – 4 pm at Upstream

REGISTER HERE: http://upstreamsc.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9648e7166e212032eaf2a607d&id=e9da794117&e=dc76f02875

Upstream’s class series is very user-friendly and requires no prior yoga or meditation experience. Our tranquil studio provides a safe, supportive and deeply engaging learning environment to provide our students with the tools to empower their lives and enhance their overall well-being.

We are so excited to share MBSR with Columbia, and we would love it if you could share this news.

Wishing you peace and happiness in the New Year,
Jemme and Hilda

Jemme Stewart

Hilda White

Check us out on Facebook! http://upstreamsc.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9648e7166e212032eaf2a607d&id=a88bf9d054&e=dc76f02875

“Be the We the world cannot thrive without.”

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:40:00 +0000

Cassie Premo Steele’s Co-Creating Newsletter

February 2013

“Be the We the world cannot thrive without.”

~Essay: Know Where You Are

~Poem by Daniel Dowe (and a special announcement!)

~Workshop: Bright Inspiration with Brigid

~Register by 2/7: Earth Joy Writing at Saluda Shoals Park

~Special Offer for Earth Joy Writers!

~Book Launch: The Limelight

~NEW ONLINE CLASS: Co-Creating Your Career

~Spotlight: Ellen Kline McLeod, a Former Co-Creating Client

Know Where You Are

from Earth Joy Writing by Cassie Premo Steele

We humans tend to have a pessimistic nostalgia and an idealization of the natural world of the past. Even the word “natural” conjures up something primitive, something humans used to be able to be, a kind of magical living that we have lost the ability to do. But when we relegate our relationship to nature to the past like this, we are writing our own future as a future without a natural world.

We can do this with “native peoples,” as well. For many of us, our memory of our native origins has been erased through violent histories so completely that all that is left of it in everyday consciousness is a fuzzy sense of the equation of “native” with “natural.” And both terms are cloaked in a nostalgic longing, a sense of “If only we could go back, then maybe things would be better.”

But there is no need to go back, really. The truth is that both native peoples and nature are still here. In Earth Joy Writing, we open ourselves to the lived reality of native ways of living in the natural world, and this changes our awareness of the lived reality of native peoples within our own cultures.

While it is true that we were all native once-- that is, at some point in our ancestral histories, we all lived once on our "native land"—what is also true is that we are all, every one of us, from the high rises of New York City to the research outposts in the Antarctic, living on native land right now, this very moment. The whole earth is our native land.

Ask yourself this: Do you know the story of where you are?

Right now, look out the window of the room where you are sitting. Or go outside, wherever you are, and look around.

What do you see? What is the story of what you see?

What out there is “natural” and what is “constructed”? How can you tell the difference?

How did each element in the landscape come to be there? What was there before?

What might be there in the future?

Take out your journal and begin to write the story of where you are.

Here is a lovely poem by Daniel Dowe (who is writing the introduction to my next poetry book, WEDNESDAY, containing the Wordy Wednesday poems co-created with Facebook friends from 2010-present. Coming this spring from Unbound Content!)

None of Us Are Natives

By Daniel Dowe

None of us are natives,

No matter where we live,

Or get ourselves born.

We're all visitors,

Day tourists off the cruise ship,

School kids on a field trip,

Seniors from the coach tour.

I may profess to some special status,

Since I learned to walk and talk

Close to this house I live in,

Not far from where I now sleep.

But one look overhead,

On a night where dark skies

Let clouds move fast across,

And I know that nothing stays fixed.

Even home can be whisked away

Like blowing November leaves,

Who once called one tree dearest definite

And now move at the whims

Of Fortune and nomadic breezes,

Blown far away from the site of original sins.

Published 1/29/13 at www.voxpoetica.com

Daniel Dowe is a high school English teacher and poet from Windsor, CT, with a Ph.D. in English and a love of good, clear writing.

BRIGHT INSPIRATION WITH BRIGID:

A Writing Workshop with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.

at The Arts Center of Greenwood

in Greenwood, SC

Saturday, February 2^nd

10 AM- Noon

$20

Saturday, February 2nd is Brigid's Day. She was the Celtic muse of poetry, music, smith craft (think computers and technology) and healing-- and later became an Irish Catholic saint. This writing workshop will trace Brigid's story in Ireland (including a trip to her sacred well in Liscannor, Count Clare, where Cassie's great-grandfather is from) and then use Brigid's story to bring about inspiration and innovation in your creative practice. Designed for writers, artists, and anyone who uses creativity, this workshop will give you concrete practices that you can apply on a daily basis to write with greater flow and ease.

See the FB event page:

http://www.facebook.com/events/154610878023347/?fref=ts

Reserve a seat now because seats are limited.

Contact: 864-953-2462 or jenlovesthearts@gmail.com

EARTH JOY WRITING AT SALUDA SHOALS

with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.

-- 2^nd Saturday of every month!--

2:00-4:00 PM

$25/session *See special offer below!

Eco-poet and creativity coach Cassie Premo Steele will offer monthly workshops based on her book, Earth Joy Writing – a new version of the Artists’ Way. Each session is designed for participants to reduce stress and feel greater peace and balance in one’s life through journaling, natural exploration, mindfulness, and connecting with community. Participants will meet in the Environmental Education Center and then move to various outdoor locations in the beautiful 400-acre park along the Saluda River.

Register by 5pm on the Thursday before each workshop (THIS MONTH BY FEBRUARY 7^TH) by calling Karen Deaton, the Office Manager at the Saluda Shoals Park Environmental Center, at 803-213-2053

Last month, we sat and wrote along the river and in the woods. You can see beautiful photos taken that day by Susanne Kappler at http://www.cassiepremosteele.blogspot.com/2013/01/earth-joy-writing-special-invitation.html

Here are some of the things participants said about the workshop:

"I have found that the workshop helped me to think outside the box. I have started writing three pages a day a la The Artist’s Way book. My goal for this year is to explore ways to be creative—both in my work and my yoga teaching. I didn’t think I had anything to say, but I found I had a lot."

"I learned or realized that writing, art, creativity comes from what we don’t know—just make yourself available. I realized that my life is very synchronistic—I’ve heard 'you can’t create out of fear,' and the importance of love and balance. Trust the process and just be."

"We are all children of the universe. In order to find my creative spark I must get back to basics. Back to nature. Plant the seeds and take care of myself. Learning to be still—not just alone."

~~~

SPECIAL OFFER!

When you call 803-213-2053 and register for 4 or more Earth Joy Writing workshops, you will be invited to a special end-of-year retreat I will host especially for YOU, the Earth Joy Writers! Plans are in the works for a day of journaling, meditation, yoga, music, and FUN! This retreat will be open ONLY to people who attend 4 or more Earth Joy Writing workshops this year.

So, get out your calendars, pick 4 or more dates, and call 803-213-2053 today to start your journey of growing, creating, and blossoming in harmony!

February 9 CLARITY

March 9 OPENING

April 13 PLANTING

May 11 SPROUTING

June 8 FRUITION

July 13 ABUNDANCE

August 10 HARVEST

September 14 BALANCE

October 12 PEACE

November 9 GRATITUDE

December 14 CONNECTION

NEW ONLINE CLASS!

Co-Creating Your Career

with Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.

Tuesdays 6 PM- 7:30 PM ET

February 12-March 19

$270/ 9 hours of instruction and ongoing email support

Times have changed. You have changed. How do you move into your new dreams and allow your career to reflect your deepest desires for yourself and the world?

In this six-week series, you will learn:  

-how anxiety and pushing work against your growth and development 

-how to move into change in easy and fun ways 

-the 10-minute daily practice that can jumpstart your career 

-how to use journaling to get into your deepest dreams

 -the differences between goals and flow (hint: one is a dead end; one is magic!) 

-the secrets of co-creating your career at any stage of life

TO REGISTER, VISIT http://www.anymeeting.com/cocreating

Praises by Philip Mullen

Book Launch:

The Limelight: A Compendium of Contemporary

Columbia Artists (Published by Muddy Ford Press)

Sunday, February 24 5-8 PM

Tapp’s Art Center in Columbia

Please plan to join us as we celebrate the launch of a book of essays written by Columbia artists and writers about Columbia's artists and writers. The evening will be spent collecting autographs by the essayists and the subjects of their work, sipping, snacking, connecting, and chatting.

$15 admission provides you with a First Edition copy of The Limelight (regularly $18), admission to the party where artists and writers will be on hand to autograph your book, great company and conversation, music and snacks. Cash bar. ($25 for two people and one book.)

Book Cover Art by Philip Mullen. (And Cassie’s essay in the book discusses her friendship with Philip.)

Check out the Facebook event page:

http://www.facebook.com/events/254880507975365/

Spotlight on a Co-Creating Client

I’ve decided that each month I will feature news or writings or happenings from one of my past or present Co-Creating clients. You won’t be surprised that I’ve chosen Ellen Kline McLeod as my first one. Ellen started working with me by taking the “Birthing the Mother Writer” class I held in September of 2009. Within two years, she had published her first poetry book, GARDEN, and she now blogs weekly at http://www.musingmondaymorning.blogspot.com and has also become a yoga teacher who teaches at the following places in Columbia, SC:

Gold’s Gym on Forest Drive, Saturdays at 10:30 am (Free w/ membership.)

Forest Lake Presbyterian Church, 6500 N. Trenholm Road

Class meets in the Parlor. Enter the parking lot from Trenholm Road.

Tuesdays, 9:00 am

Thursdays, 9:00 am

Thursdays, 5:30 pm

Bethel United Methodist Church, 4600 Daniel Drive

Classes meet in the Poole Activities Building.

Tuesdays, 1:15pm

Thursdays, 1:15pm

Cost for the Tuesday and Thursday classes is $5. It is best to bring your own yoga mat if you have one, but she has some available to borrow if that is keeping someone away!

Check out her book, GARDEN, at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Ellen-Kline-McLeod/dp/1936373211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332179695&sr=8-1

And here’s the first poem from her book, which is one of my favorites:

Our Delegation

Three people are a delegation: 

Triangulated strength to see all sides. 

Protect one in the middle if she is weak or worry-wandered.

Dance a circle of joy. 

Fetch wine, make bread, ready the table. 

A delegation’s united mission: 

Be the We the world cannot thrive without. 

Three women are God.

~~~

To contact Cassie about scheduling individual or group Co-Creating sessions, visit the Contact page at www.cassiepremosteele.com Thank you!

The last Wordy Wednesday poem before the book comes out!

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:13:00 +0000

You, Witches and Dancers and Terminal Ones, This One’s For You

You, deciduous witch.

I see you coming and

going like this, at esbat

gatherings on full moon

nights. It will be alright.

And you, man, enamored

of other men. You long

to savor the sticky succor

until sleepy. Go on,

sweetheart. Give in.

You, wavering between

truculent and blissful,

giving the one who

adored you a mouthful.

Be still. Be mindful.

You, carrying the word

terminal in a perpetual wallop

across your back. Stop that.

No need to wallow.

I absolve you.

Speaking of clemency,

I turn to you, silver dancer

who spins in ecstasy. To be

a siren is no sin. I give you

hugs and a kiss. Fly. Be sexy.

And then there’s you,

abject one in anonymity,

anxious over this unseasonal

warm weather. Take off your

sweater. Sequined is better.

And you, you erudite boob

pawning exclusion as your best

offer. Allow for emersion from

your sea. Come up. It is

nourishment you are after.

All of you, the sensuous and

obsessed, the groovy and skittish,

you fascinate me far beyond curiosity.

I samba in gratitude, right here,

every Wednesday, in your honor.

Image: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/10/dancing-in-the-forest-stephanie-lee/

This Wordy Wednesday poem was co-created by Cassie Premo Steele and Facebook Friends. After this week, Cassie will be taking a hiatus from writing weekly poems in order to pour her energy into a new Kickstarter project and the production and launch of a new poetry book....

containing Wordy Wednesday poems from the years 2010-2013. Coming this spring! Stay tuned!

Sign up for Cassie's Co-Creating Newsletter, which will come out this Friday, to get all the inside news and sparks for your creative life! Sign up by clicking HERE!

Justin Bieber in Charlotte: today's Wordy Wednesday poem

noreply@blogger.com (Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D.) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:13:00 +0000

That Mom, Baby

Some moms make tacos in the kitchen.

Some moms work in a dark shark tank.

Some moms go to Paris and paint.

And some moms ride on broomsticks

and tango till late.

Some moms wander, lost in Shangri-la.

Some moms drink claret, get dizzy.

Some moms burn the turducken.

And some moms wear stiletto heels

even when it’s drizzly.

Yesterday, I noticed my hairline

receding and knowing the interdependence

of moms and the moms they are breeding,

I brought the chalice to my lips and drove

77 like der Autobahn into the abyss.

Justin Bieber sang my swan song,

floating like an angel in a shower

of sparks, ablutions spreading to all

the moms in the dark.

Some moms are miserable and some moms are crazy.

Some moms make parsnips and some moms are languishing lazy.

Some moms play the musette and some moms are lonely.

The thing all moms share is their progeny feels like the only.

I will write about this later in prose. I need more sentences

to go from sophomoric to a scene with some clothes.

Suffice it to say that the withering gaze of mothers

judging each other did fade in an estrogen cloud.

That young man made it rain from 14 to 40—hell,

9 and 50 joined in—and it wasn’t soggy. It was loud.

My ears are still ringing, a soft chiming thing,

whispering, “Remember this freedom. Be resolute.

All moms are my mom. Your daughters are looking

to you. Be that mom who loves who you are and

dances and jumps toward the stars in whatever you do.

And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh.”