"trust what comes next. trust your survival. watch those wildlife documentaries. it is always the female of the species that can predict the oncoming natural disasters. this struggle is power.

this makes a whole from your halves. this reminds you never to dichotomize your sense of self at the knife of another’s deceit.

you know about the monarch butterflies of yucatan, don’t you? you have come here through generations of women like yourself; women with clayen pitchers & bronzed children on their hips, women like your mother who sat alone in a pregnancy ward, feet heavier than church bells, your grandmother - 15 when married, 18, illiterate with 2 children, 25 -a student of herbal medicine.

you have flown through epochs of migratory trance, the ache of wintered wings, their chorus warming your chrysalis. respect their lives. respect yours.

(…)

all civilizations are cradled in ruins.

(…)

go forward. touch your past.  then let it go. it can’t call out. it has no voice, only echoes. close the door. there is nothing to be scared of. 

(…)

loss is a weed of language. find a scythe. don’t keep your apologies hungry. don’t let anyone reduce you to the sum of your mistakes.

refrain from bisecting yourself into the martyr/victim binary. you are neither. you are both. you are so much more.

break often - not like porcelain, but like waves. make multiples out of your singularity.

bind the rains to your tongue. find that place in your mouth where a storm darkens. stand still while this hell handles you. trust me, you have begun to scare the fire out of its throat."