Today I offer a guest post from the lovely Goddess Leonie. This piece talks about her path to empowerment and self love. One of those posts I keep coming back to. There’s kinship in the circle. Enjoy, oxox Linda
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I’m sitting watching the street pour down with rain.
What can I tell you dearest, that you would need to know right now?
What can I tell you that is true about Sex and Self Respect?
I try to think of stories to tell you. Of how I felt undesirable as a young woman – unglamorous and uncoordinated and invisible to men. Of nights sitting outside clubs as two men cried over their infatuation with my friend. Of how I wondered what made other women glow and not me. Of how I eventually realised that it had nothing to do with me. Of how I wasn’t invisible to the man who loved me and saw the beauty in me.
But they are all stories. Stories of men and confusion and trying to carve my own way in the world. They are not the story of Sex and Self Respect. They are not the truth. And darling – if there is one thing I want to tell the story of – it’s the glowing, light-soaked truth. The one that makes me beam, the one that sets you alight like a star-hewn sky. That’s the kind of truth I want to tell.
So. Sex and Self Respect. What do I know for sure?
What I know for sure is this:
They have nothing to do with men.
They have everything to do with us.
We women? We have a world of magic and mystery and glow inside us. One that we can choose to switch on and switch off. One that we can dive into and let the wonders inside us flow out. It’s got everything to do with us.
So I left school. Fell in love. Stayed in love. Moved cities. Made art. Wondered and wandered. And then one day, just like that, my life changed. A shining, heaven-scented woman at my work invited me to her women’s circle.
What the heck is that? I asked her.
Just come, she said. You will see. We sit in circle and we talk and share. It is good.
I resisted, of course. I couldn’t understand how that could be a good thing. Besides, I much preferred to circle with boys and talk their simple, easy talk. But the light inside that woman kept me wondering. I wonder what secrets she knew. And I had a feeling that her women’s circle may just show me the way.
So one November night, I arrived at a plain suburban house, and walked into a plain, suburban room where women shone. They sat in circle, talking together. Each looking so familiar, so beautiful, so iridescently alight. They were women who walked through their lives conscious. With spirit. Making choices that made them whole. Where the topic of conversation was not How To Land A Man, but How To Love Beautiful, Beautiful You Even More Deeply. That was their Holy Grail, that was their destiny: themselves. The wise, precious, joyful Goddess that lived inside them.
My life changed then, of course. But of course. How could it not?
To meet women who became instant sisters. To find mentors and examples of what it is to live in this world as a Goddess. To learn at last how I could move through this world with joy and love, knowing just how valuable and precious I was. This was the time my beauty came through. This was the time my beauty emerged. A school friend exclaimed when she came to visit me:
Leonie, you look so beautiful! I mean… you always were beautiful at school and everything. But now? You are really, really beautiful.
And she was right.
Love came. Love went. Love stayed. And all through it, my beauty was the same.
The story of finding my beauty?
It had nothing to do with men.
It had everything to do with me.
______
Goddess Leonie is the creator of GoddessGuidebook.com, a popular creativity & spirituality blog.
Blog: www.goddessguidebook.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/leonieallan
Twitter: www.twitter.com/goddessleonie
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