You Have To Give To The World

Cancer Was The Most Terrifying, Arduous, Painful Thing, But It Was Also A Profound Gift In The Sense That I Was Holding So Much In My Body For So Many Years That Was Dark And Terrifying Which Was Preventing My Coming Back Into Myself.

It Really Occurred To Me At A Certain Point: Women Have Not Been Embodied. Feminism Has Not Been Embodied. It Hasn't Gotten Into Us In A Way Where It Is So Undeniable That There Is Nothing To Prove. Do You Know What I Mean? That We Are So In Our Feminist Skin, So To Speak, That We Are That World Now.

When I Was Younger I Felt Very Disempowered, Very Disappeared. I Felt Worthless, Like I Had No Right To Exist. I Think A Good Part Of My Life Was Spent Recovering From That. Pulling Myself Out Of That.

I Think It Was A Realization Of This Cancer, An Understanding Of The Broader Implications Of What Cancer Is. The Greed, The Ravaging Of Lands And Seas For Profit, The Taking Of Things That Don't Belong To Us; What We've Done To The Environment In This Fast-paced, Careless Hunger. I Think All Of That Was Happening In My Body.

Each Time I Had Five Hours Of The Poison Going Into Me, I Just Pictured Everything That Needed To Be Burned Away. I Pictured Wars, I Pictured The Things My Father Had Done To Me, I Pictured Brutality, And When It Was Over, I Am Light.