When asked " What did you inherit"

 

I inherited 4000 years of matriarchs running through my veins 

 

12 generations of women: carrying loads not their own, cloaking tradition in the acceptance of religion, quiet labors, secret rituals, dimmed lights, nervous laughs, waved hands, solo travels, held breath and stolen glances, stigma, a life never exhaled. 

Given labels and names palatable to the weak, harmless to lustful and greedy:

Mid wife, mother, community organizer, green thumb, good preacher’s wife, caretaker, foster mom, hippie, granola, mountain woman, throw back, freak, rebel,whore, odd duck, church chairwoman, Relief Society President, prepper type, visiting teacher, educator, soldier, life coach, doula, one of those women

Anything but what we are:

Witch, Warrior, medicine woman, Owl Woman, Shadow Walker, Clan Mother, Matriarch, Healer

I inherited ancestral wisdom and shame, generational trauma that our women uniquely bear. Unspoken rules. Grit, strength, pain, confusion, lonely paths, rocky roads that have left us bloodied and untrusting, cynical from birth. Our unshed tears fill the next daughter’s womb.

I inherited no book or map to navigate this path. No coven , no sisterhood to yoke the task, share the burden, collectively heal, celebrate in joy . In their code of silence, sealed by fear of our shed blood , with the smell of burning flesh and home  baked in memory. No trace left. In our shame, no guidance given. Only left with the innate gifts of instinct, failure, death, an eternal call to a bone deep belief

 I am magic.

My inheritance a spell:

What patriarchy fears

What colonies and empires seek to lay waste and ruin

A power they cannot ration and commodify

A community within me they cannot stamp out

A rhythm of drums, bag pipes that doesn't stir their soul or move their feet

A crying song, hallowed and sacred, they cannot hear, then never silence

A peace their violence only spills but never extinguishes

I am a woman armed with that which they never burned,

My Worth is Cosmos and Chaos all wrapped in flesh

 

I inherited 4000 years of matriarchs running in my veins