Our Collective Daughters
Our collective daughters! The baby girls, the toddling girls, the pre-pubescent maids, the young women. They are all our daughters.
We are all raising all of them.
We have the highest hopes for them. And we see that they are facing the most challenging odds.
And so it's time to step up and live the lives we hope they will live.
Let us be role models, mentors, and teachers.
Girls and young women soak up everything we feel, think, say and do. How we walk, how we breathe, the stories we tell ourselves about our bodies, our bleeding, our sexuality, our birthing, our aging, our sense of worth.
So let's strut our gifts and dig into our stuck places.
Let's nourish our sense of worth and see the worth of others.
Let us tune into our bodies. And truly live in our amazing bodies.
Let us include self-care as an essential facet of our daily lives rather than an indulgence.
Let us embrace our emotions as allies with important messages.
Let us listen to our intuition and be guided by our inner knowing.
Let us invite our Dream-maker to send dreams that speak to us.
Let us include pleasure in our lives, but not allow our appetites to override our integrity or our purpose.
Let those of us who bleed, menstruate fabulously.
Always, always, always, let us uphold sexuality as sacred. One of the earliest ways girls come to believe that their bodies ares shameful is when they are discouraged from self-pleasuring. Let us speak of self-pleasure to them, so they know it is healthy and good. And let us teach them that their bodies are sovereign, so they know that it's their choice who gets close to them, and when, and how.
Let us age magnificently. Let's speak of the arc of a woman's life as incredible every step of the way, leading to a wise and wild elderhood.
Let's all be Creatices, seeing and creating Beauty each day.
Let's do this, for our collective daughters.
...What would you add, my sisters?
Art by Emily C. McPhie (both)
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JOYW Girls' Circle by JOYW artist Karen MacKenzie