Powerful/Canada!

This is going to be a multi-layered post! I am leaving for home this week so I need to make it good!

The prompt this week at Sunday Scribblings is 'powerful.' This is a topic that I have been mulling over an awful lot over the past few weeks. The novel that I have been working on so much has this as one of its underlying themes. It's about female power; about learning to listen to yourself and to get past some of the barriers that a shocking number of women in the western world have up around themselves. It's about where we put that power and what we allow to have power over us.

It's such an intense thing to be thinking about all of the time. A little while ago I decided that I needed to stop writing about all of the ways that I wasn't good enough. I decided to stop writing about all of the ways that I was frustrated and unhappy. Out of that decision came the most productive writing time I have ever had. Writing about power has shone a light into my own perceived lack of it and I have spent some uncomfortable moments realizing what that means.

We are surrounded nearly every moment of every day with the message that we aren't good enough. We aren't thin enough, we aren't rich enough, we don't have enough toys, enough gadgets. We aren't creative enough, we aren't eating the right foods, we aren't using the right products. We are so frightened we have stopped listening to ourselves. We listen to the false internal voices of self-doubt and the mean external voices of discontent. Happy, contented people don't buy lots of things to fill holes and gaps. Frightened, discontented people do. Marketing companies want us to be afraid. They want us to believe we are somehow lacking. They want us to spend money to make up for that perceived lack. They want us to believe that we need their product to make us feel good again. Type 'diet' into Google and you get one hundred and sixty-two million hits. WHAT are we DOING?!

I have a group of dear friends who I think are among the most beautiful women I know. They are creative and beautiful and strong and feisty and fierce. Every single one of them also worries about her weight. Not one of them needs to. If we each took back every ounce of energy that we waste being AFRAID (of being too fat, too thin, not good enough, not strong enough, not lovable, not worthy, not beautiful enough, not creative enough, not, not NOT), things would be different. We could reclaim our power. We could change our lives. We could change our world.

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I am leaving for Canada this week! "Oh Canada, [my] home and native land!!" We are going home for two things that aren't happening anymore, but we are doing three different things. We are going to two huge family gatherings and spending the week in between at a cottage on a lake. I am going to lay on the dock and canoe with my parents and play with my niece and hang out with my brother and sister-in-law, and play in the autumn leaves and (hopefully) book a wedding venue (eep!) and relax.

We are kind of dashing home so we won't get a chance to see everyone, but we will be home again at Christmas for longer, so that visit will be better. THIS one is about actually having a holiday - YAHOO!! I've told you before how much I love October! When we get back it'll be my birthday and then my work changes and then before you know it it'll be time to go back again. I miss Canada with all of my heart and soul. It's been 9 months since I was there. I'm very excited to reconnect with my landscape.

I'll see you when we get back! Take care of you!

xo