Maria Vlachou is an amazing, passionate woman with whom I’ve had the privilege of working and sharing a friendship for a decade and a half.
She was one of my first mentors when I lived in Portugal and she made a profound impact in my life, both professionally and personally, as an example of the mark a fully-expressed woman can make in the world.
My gentleness flows
Whether my anger knows it or not
Buried under the blurry thoughts
Running a mile an hour in my head.
I know. I know. I know.
Even when confusion seems to be the only thing I’m clear about
Until I remember where to look.
I get stuck in a dance between my past and the next step forward.
Between my brilliance and my darkest shadow. Looking outward,
knees-deep in muddy waters
Desperately hoping someone else shows me the way out.
But the compass keeps pointing at me
I look around, there’s nobody else.
Just me, my angst and my magic, sitting beside each other.
I pause, tune into the silence, look at the water
Feel the warmth of my knowing in my heart.
It’s there, it’s always there.
Welcome home, I hear.
I am the path, the walker and the destination.
I remember. I forget. I remember.
I close my eyes and I’m home again.
I’ve grappled with the true meaning of forgiveness for a long time.
The truth is, in my 35 years of life, I’ve rarely been in a situation where I’ve had to learn. Or at least that’s what I thought…
I am not this glorious shell
I move graciously in
This skin that protects me sheds
as I walk through life – I have many.
Very few things suck the joy out of life like our slavery to perfection.
On the surface, perfection seems like a good thing, right? Surely, people with high standards achieve more and make the world a better place.
Even if it were so (I argue it’s not), there’s a steep cost for chasing perfection.
How often do we allow ourselves to go into deep freeze? A hibernation of sorts to re-group, re-gather and charge up?
Certainly NOT Me. I’m a “doer” and I’ve fallen into the trap of glorifying it.
I decided a while ago not to watch the news. If something was important enough for me to know about, I’d find out about it through my circles, or casual circumstances.
I carefully sifted through my social media feeds, email subscriptions, apps and everything in my environment to weed out the mainstream, mostly negative, stories that violated my mind and heart (with my permission) daily.
We all wear one or more at some stage of our lives. Some of us die wearing them.
I’m still shedding my masks, one by one, as I walk through life. I don’t think it’s something that will ever stop happening.
You see, our corporate masks are a necessary part of growing into our own skin, of (re)connecting with our true essence and finding out what we’re truly about.
Cecília Freire De Mance is a super inspiring woman, and my first interviewee for Goddesses In The World.
I call her Goddess Creatrix, because of how she lives and creates her life, honouring who she is and recreating it at every opportunity she gets.
She’s the creator of the Creative Clay Studio, mother of three amazing human beings (Kira, Maia and Luam), wife to her Chris. Yoga teacher, clay teacher at schools and a stand for her community in Christchurch, New Zealand. Among many other things… as all women connected to their inner Goddess are…
As I watch my little goddess grow, I get reminded that we’re not born body-conscious.
My 15 month old is fully connected with her body, mind and soul and spends exactly zero time making judgements of herself.
She smiles when she sees her reflection in the mirror, she gets excited when she discovers her body can master a new movement and she stops eating when she’s full, while passing no judgement on what she’s eating.
