Dear Readers-

For all that has been, thank you.
For all that will be, yes.

I've always said that if reincarnation is the way the Universe will work for me, if I come back a hundred times, I'll come back as a woman every time if I have any say in it.

I love how being a woman gives us permission to talk about emotions and ideas and dreams and our children...and to encourage one another rather than just nodding thoughtfully; we can take hold of the hand of a friend or another sistah and draw her to ourselves to offer comfort, encouragement, shared joy or sorrow.  I love how my body is so angular, and yet still feminine, as compared to my husbands, which just seems impossibly engulfing.  That's part of the masculine:  to engulf.  Women are hungry and can be so strong, yet I know very few women to whom I could apply the concept of engulfing words, ideas, people...most women seem to feel as I do and try valiantly to taste each different ingredient of the dish of life.

It fills my cup to the brim to give my husband the gift of understanding and permission to talk about his emotions, his past, his feelings and dreams.  I watch as the invitation to be truly in communion with another lets his shoulders relax with each word he speaks, his forehead smooth out a little at a time.

These moments remind me that I'm privileged to have been born a woman.  Not that alone, though, but a woman who was raised to appreciate her gender...a woman who watched circles of women always drifting along with her mother through life, enfolding her within, gently, each one investing more of herself in the other and her children as time continued.  And then one day, I could see and feel that these women felt like they had a stake in me, they had hoped for me as part of that circle.  They celebrated with me and cried with me, along with my mother, who had her place in that circle, too.

Now I know that the light of the Universe has shined on a path for me to follow as I leave the cool, dark, humus rich woods of youth.

To all that has been, thank you.
To all that will be, yes.

Sincerely Yours.