#forest within

Don't you dare teach my daughter to be afraid of the forest.

This is how you have created the fear of the search within.

I never want my daughter to limit her journey to bright, open places,

Places that are easy to touch and see.

Because I have learnt that sometimes the truth of who we are lies in shadows and damp places where mushrooms grow and plants reach out sideways and down-ways and new-ways, haphazardly searching for sun.

It is my own journey that taught me this and that women come into this world with a forest – ancient, jagged and wise – a forest nestled deep inside her soul.

So you can try to scare my daughter out of the forest but I am going to tell her about her ability to lay roots and to respect the roots of others. That these are her veins, her connection to love, to the Divine, her roots back to herself.

I am going to teach her that her heart-roots ground her, that green is the colour of love.

My daughter will know that things are allowed to birth and grow wild inside her soul-forest: ideas, thoughts, secrets, intuitions but that they may die in winter, when they have broken free and had their day in the sun.

She will understand that the soul-forest has many shady paths upon which the light may glimmer and shimmer and play tricks, but that to experience going the wrong way once in a while is but a moment in time once she gets started on the right way.

She will realize that the moon will always lead her back home.

I will teach my daughter her soul-forest is there for her to retreat to, that she will find true abundance, true nourishment and true peace, that it holds the mystery to the meaning of life.

The shadows are there to make the journey to uncovering that mystery all the more exciting.

If the time ever comes when my daughter should feel that life has worn her down, I will show her that in the soul-forest, there is always life teeming under the surface. Like an owl stalking a mouse in the moonlight, some part of her somewhere is always awake and bustling peacefully in the silence; alert, watching, waiting.

So, don't you dare teach my daughter to fear the forest.

You know those stories that speak of the wolf in the wood? I will teach my daughter that she is the wolf – free, primal, and connected to the moon.

And you know those wicked witches in crooked cottages hidden behind dark oaks? I will let my daughter know that she is the witch. She is the wise woman who lives in her own soul-forest. I will tell her that the witch is the crone, her elder, her wisdom, the new moon in all her glory.

There is no dark mystery that you can scare my daughter with because I am going to teach her that she is at the heart of that mystery, that her divine feminine power is the greatest mystery of all to those that don't understand it.

We’moon will not be scared of connecting with our innate power and we are rising to howl no more!

So don’t you dare teach our daughters to fear the forest.

"Forest Within" by Lusid