Power

I've been thinking about power a lot lately. Power structures, power outages, power dynamics, power plays, power games, power over, power beside, personal power, magical power, nature's power.

But I hid the main idea: I'm thinking about my own power.

Sometime last year I entered my crone phase. I don't know why this is true, only that it is. I've been in menopause since my cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2005, but I feel a shift in my body and wonder if I'm entering my natural menopause now. I feel different in my body, and I'm not talking about the changes that others can see (thickening middle, thinning hair - what strange balance there is there!), but about those I feel.

I feel powerful.

I care a lot less about other people's opinions than I once did, and I allow myself more opinions than I used to. I'm a lot better at saying "no" and meaning it. I care more about some things, and less about others. But through all of it, I feel a surge in my chest and belly and somewhere deeper, a building of energy that I've never felt before.

It's different than the energy of youth, when I pulled all nighters and maxed out the Stairmaster for 45 minutes; it's different than the burning thighs of twelve mile hikes with thousands of feet of elevation gain, or carrying a 45 pound pack (yes I did and yes that's crazy). It's different than working multiple jobs while going to school, and it's different than the drive I felt to put in twelve hour days at work without pain. It's very different than the life makeover that happened when I became a single working parent.

In some ways, it's quieter. I feel more introverted than I used to... because I enjoy my own company more. I've learned to still my mind a bit better, and so a house with no interruptions is a chance to dance with my own mind, to explore ideas, stillness, dreams, wonderment, without the clawing anxiety that I've lived with for most of my life.

I feel enough. Not better or worse, but enough, and this is more than I have ever felt before, and it's a type of quiet that I don't know how to explain but it's beautiful, like nighttime in the woods or being in a rowboat in the middle of a lake or finding a beach with nobody there. When I listen, there are all kinds of sounds (like the breeze through evergreen branches, or the waves on the shore) but most of all there is my own breathing, in, out, in, out.

Yesterday I saw the movie Wicked and walked away thinking about Elphaba's power. I'm sure that I'm not the only person to feel this way - I might be the ten millionth - but I related to her so incredibly deeply. I felt the pain of her family's rejection and their bad behavior; I felt the desire to be deeply good to others; I felt a pull to be sharp and smart to make up for other lacking traits. I felt deeply weird and green, just like her; I felt the humiliation of a "friend" who set me up to be mocked.

But most of all, I felt the relief of letting go of all of it and embracing the weird: of daring to dream of a place where the color of me is everyone's favorite, and, once realizing that such favoritism has limits, deciding that I know my internal compass and right from wrong, and fighting back simply by being my full self.

Defying Gravity, indeed.

The world has all kinds of rules for women like me - neither rich nor poor, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither old nor young. I think the main rules are 1) Be everyone's helper and 2) When not helping, be invisible.

Fuck it.

I've been helping for a long time, and slowly it is dawning on me that the person I need to be helping is MYSELF and that if I ever gave myself the attention that I give to others, maybe I too could defy gravity. It's only when Elphalba stops caring for Nessie and is willing to walk away from Galinda that she figures out how to take care of herself, and that's when the magic happens.

My daughter is ready to defy gravity all on her own - connected by heartstrings forever, I hope, but also ready to fly untethered. She needs to take on her own dreams and responsibilities, to take risks and fly. I'm a place to land until my last breath, and my thrill at watching her become herself is beyond joy, and I hope that my faith in her fuels her faith in herself. She is a main character in my story, beloved and important, teacher and student both. If she needs me, I won't hesitate to fly to her - she is life, love, breath, and there is nothing I wouldn't do for her. But she's got her own power, and she's growing into it, and she doesn't need rescuing most of the time. She needs space to grow, supported by love but not strings.

But anything is possible as I come into my power, and she needs to witness it so she'll know it's awaiting her, too.

I'm ready to create an unconventional life for myself, reinventing myself as a writer in my mid-fifties. Somewhere along the way I noticed that I don't even want to date anymore, and that the men I meet bore me more than they excite me, and so many of them need caring that feels like ropes around my neck and wrists, tethering me to a life that belongs to them, not me. I see people in healthy, happy relationships and I don't think that this is all men or all relationships, but I think, more and more, that it is MY truth.

The liberation of not craving a partner is unexpected and joyful. All that energy is available for other things, now.

Writing stories that matter, allegories and metaphors and dreams, rage and love and hope and disappointment, friendship and mothers and daughters and the occasional lover,  love letters to the world, lanterns to guide the way for those who find themselves on my story roads.

Defying gravity.

My intuition is sharper than I knew was humanly possible - they could study me, I've predicted so many things. Power. This is going to happen, is happening, unfolding as it should.

I've started loving my body more than before, maybe more than ever before. I love how I walk faster than most people, filled with energy. I love that it takes me under the waves, the cold water that deters others drawing me in. I've grown to love the strange white stripe that is such a prominent feature of my hair these days. I love the curve of my hips, and I love that at 55 I do more yoga than ever (I did yoga the past two days - in my "yoga library" downstairs, a lovely clear area of bamboo flooring surrounded by bookcases). I love the painful pull of my chest as I stretch, a reminder of not the cancer but of the strength that got me through it. It's a body filled with power and potential, even after all these decades.

I'm applying that power in new ways, manifesting new versions of my life. I'm ready to defy gravity, to break every rule, to become the unconventional and outspoken old witch in the cottage, the subject of whispers and sought out by just as many as avoid her.

I'm ready to embrace my power.

It's about time.