I Hope You Will Go Out And

Tears Are A River That Takes You Somewhere…tears Lift Your Boat Off The Rocks, Off Dry Ground, Carrying It Downriver To Someplace Better.

All The "not Readies," All The "i Need Time," Are Understandable, But Only For A Short While. The Truth Is That There Is Never A "completely Ready," There Is Never A Really "right Time." As With Any Descent To The Unconscious, There Comes A Time When One Simply Hopes For The Best, Pinches One's Nose, And Jumps Into The Abyss. If This Were Not So, We Would Not Have Needed To Create The Words Heroine, Hero, Or Courage.

We Are All Filled With A Longing For The Wild. There Are Few Culturally Sanctioned Antidotes For This Yearning. We Were Taught To Feel Shame For Such A Desire. We Grew Our Hair Long And Used It To Hide Our Feelings. But The Shadow Of Wild Woman Still Lurks Behind Us During Our Days And In Our Nights. No Matter Where We Are, The Shadow That Trots Behind Us Is Definitely Four-footed.

There Is A Time In Our Lives, Usually In Mid-life, When A Woman Has To Make A Decision - Possibly The Most Important Psychic Decision Of Her Future Life - And That Is, Whether To Be Bitter Or Not. Women Often Come To This In Their Late Thirties Or Early Forties. They Are At The Point Where They Are Full Up To Their Ears With Everything And They've "had It" And "the Last Straw Has Broken The Camel's Back" And They're "pissed Off And Pooped Out." Their Dreams Of Their Twenties May Be Lying In A Crumple. There May Be Broken Hearts, Broken Marriages, Broken Promises.

I Come From A Long Line Of Tellers: Mesemondok, Old Hungarian Women Who Tell While Sitting On Wooden Chairs With Their Plastic Pocketbooks On Their Laps, Their Knees Apart, Their Skirts Touching The Ground... And Cuentistas, Old Latina Women Who Stand, Robust Of Breast, Hips Wide, And Cry Out The Story Ranchera Style. Both Clans Storytell In The Plain Voice Of Women Who Have Lived Blood And Babies, Bread And Bones. For Them, Story Is A Medicine Which Strengthens And Arights The Individual And The Community.