It’s a couple weeks away from the show and I’m feeling excited, happy, scared, stressed, angry and just raw. I’m excited and scared to tell and show my story. In a way, this is like my coming out party. I’m stressed and anxious because I want to do a good job. It brings up my need to be perfect. Dance perfect, look perfect. I feel like I’ll be naked on stage showing people what I’m about. This show will make an amazing impact in the community. I’m thankful and honored that you want me to be a part of it. I have so many questions and thoughts running through my head. Will I be more comfortable in my own skin? Will I not have to fight myself so hard to not withhold or to stay present? There is something very freeing about standing on stage and saying, “Yes, this happened to me and I don’t want to pretend anymore that it didn’t!” The relief and support that there will be other women who are working through their trauma. That’s where the happiness and excitement comes in.
Client Journal: Poem – Hungry Eyes
I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Crawling on hands and knees
Raw and bloody from the glass
You leave behind in your wake
I call it bread
Convincing myself it nourishes me
I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Looking for your smile to shine on me
Coating me warm and perfect
And waiting for you
To tell me I’m beautiful
To tell me you love me
To tell me you’re proud of me
I am the girl with the hungry eyes
Laid shivering in your shadow
With my fingers unfolding slowly
Turning seconds into minutes
Minutes into hours
Hours into days
And days into years waiting
For the scream that lies in waiting
To sound out your name
Poem: A Condemned Woman – by Sonam Hajela
I am condemned
By my mother’s hand
and her anger
that flows like wine
murky and deep
By my fear of the
Unknown
By my father’s desperate
Desire for the world
To be
By my inability to
Focus
To thine ownself be true
And all else a lie
By my legacy of hate
And judgment
That has drowned me
I am a condemned
Woman
Hear my blood speak
it mocks me
It knows my
Grief and
Hunger
Yet it condemns
Me to gaze up on that which
Is not and cannot
Be mine.
Poem: The Beast Unchained by Sonam Hajela
I broke my ties
From you
They lay on the floor
You ask why
And I cannot answer
Because my heart is a wild beast
And is roaring against the
Bars of blood that close in
So take my words
You made my body a cage
But I will break every bone and bleed out every
pint of blood
so I can walk with this
Beast
And roar against the tides of all my
Yesterdays
You ask why
And I cannot answer
For I have loved your pain for too long
My own is now too loud to ignore
So take my words
And know I dug in the dirt you never wanted me to
touch
streaks of it now mar my face
but oh wouldn’t you know
I was elbow deep in your cloak of shit
And I found a key.
I am looking for peace
It is not still
It is an ocean that rips against those bars
Mixing with the scarlet
There are things
You cannot know
I want ugliness, a mark against this
Fragile filigree of lies
There is nothing pretty
About clawing my way out of your
Paralyzing eyes
And you are not forgiven
I forgive myself
You broke all the pieces and would have
Thrown the rest away
Locked away in shackles
So take my words
I will leave a trace
Of myself
Without your haunting legacy of
Reins and blood and bone
Cages.
Client Journal: Why Don’t They Love Me?
My father never comes home when he says he will and he never talks to me. He doesn’t really act like he wants to get to know me. My mother tells me all the time how different or better her life would be if i was not in it. She treats me like I am a roach that is bothering her and she hits me to get rid of me. It hurts so much and it makes me so sad. I wonder why they don’t want me and why they don’t love me.
***
They hurt me so much and all I want is to get rid of them. I want them out of my life. I don’t want to want or need them. I can’t wait until I get away from them forever. I would love nothing more than to erase them from my past, present and future. Underneath it all my hatred is my need for them to love me and it kills me inside. IT JUST KILLS ME. It makes me even angrier. I hate them for what they did to me. I hate them and I hate myself for still loving them. I hope that one day my father realizes what he has done and fall in love with me and wants to become a real father to me…I know it won’t happen but maybe he will be like M’s dad or my other friend’s dads.
Our Bodies, Our Voices, Cultivating the Courage to Speak our Truth
Come explore more of Caring for the Divine Feminine. Be deeply guided and connect to your body-voice. Share and commune with others in cultivating your courage to speak your truth; feel, express and heal. Join us on this journey on Friday, March 18th at Your Big Picture Cafe in Davie, FL. Your Big Picture Cafe is at 4900 South University. Click HERE for map and directions. You will also have the opportunity to purchase tickets to The Telling, or visit www.martaluzim.com and buy them today!
The way we care for the planet, Mother Earth, is the way we care for our bodies and souls. Inside our skin, our organs, our heart that beats, and our stomachs that pump nourishment. Through our psyche, our blood, every inch of us is the mirror of our entire existence, both personal and universal. We have genetically inherited in our DNA the human species. We are human. Being human, and everything that it takes to be human, is how we learn to care for the Divine. The Divine cannot care for us if we do not care about our bodies and our voices. This is the softer revolution. The revolution of body wisdom, the voice from our skin and bones.
Our senses; touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste speak to us in volumes and tell us what we feel and experience in our lives. Our brain is merely a computer, a download of information. It is not our soul, it is not our spirit, it is not our humanness. Our bodies have a voice that speaks to us through our senses, feelings and intuitions. This is how we are connected to the earth and heavens. Within our voice is a gut feeling, a vision, a spark of imagination. It is a gentle nudge of heightened sight. Other times, the voice from within is loud and pushy, as when we have a dream that wakes us up from sleep that inspires or frightens us.
We ignore our body’s voice. We think our body is about shape, form and muscle. But it is also a vehicle, a container for our soul voice, our spirit.
Caring for the Divine Feminine is caring for our body’s voice. A silent roar that tells us to change, to create, to have compassion and to transform.
How do you listen to your body?
How do your urges push you in your body?
How does your physical self talk to you?
Do you ignore a gut feeling?
How are you split between you head and what your body feels? Which do you usually listen to first?
Write about a time when you came to the edge of a choice:
I remember a time in my life when…
Client Journal: There are many 9 year olds
I am in Oman, and mom and dad leave to go out a lot. The nanny stays with my baby sister. I write letters and leave them on the stairs for mom and dad to find. I ask them to say if they love me or not. I am surrounded by maids, chauffeurs, cooks, tutors, cleaners, and nannies all day. My mother is not very present, and I wait for my dad to come home. He’s always happy to see me.
I play by myself a lot, make up scenes and sounds in the crushing silence of the afternoon. It’s very lonely and scary.
I still sleep with my parents.
I am now in New York. It is cold here and very scary. Daddy has gone to Florida to find a job and left me alone with mom. She scares me with her tight grip on my arm, face and hair. Why does her touch always feel so cold? I feel like I have to impress her all the time in this new foreign place. It’s hard and she doesn’t help and screams at me a lot. She stays in the apartment and waits either for me or daddy with my baby sister. I don’t feel carefree like I did in Oman. I feel trapped.
I am now in Florida. It’s like mommy has left the building. She is always hitting me, and I can’t ever show how much it hurts. I feel like I have to be perfect or she will scream or hit me. And then daddy comes home and I put on a smile on my face. How come he never knows how mommy treats me when he’s not here? But would he care? I don’t know. I feel lost here. Everyone is white, and I feel like I have to impress them too. I don’t know how to say, “I hurt. I’m sad, I’m scared, I want to run away from here” it’s like I’m not allowed or supposed to. Daddy only wants to hear how well I do at school.
Client Poem: Haunting
Searching for the still voice that once lived in my belly
Thoughts race by and by again
As they pass I toss them into a jar but the loud cries stir echos from afar
HAUNTING!
I can’t breathe…my breath a lost spinning tornado
Round and Round in my head
Tears come to the surface but I strangle them dead
My bleeding heart slowing down
Where is my voice? She remains unfound
A dying expression that chokes my scream
Sadness pinching my arms
Awaken to myself…to feel my hunger for love like a vulture
My desire…my fire…my need to bleed…to feed off of my tears…
For you to love ME
All of my weakness and fears
Wounded eyes and black & blue ears
Scarred from all of those years
Not good enough
You are stupid…slow
No one will love you if they know
In search of a perfect balance between the sun and the moonlight
No longer can I deny this wounded child from her birthright
Her bloody tears build up puddles of fears
I must face her…embrace her
Castles in the air…heartache and despair..
Take all of her or none
But without her you are aren’t even here
Invisible and untouchable
Because she is the child and the mother…the hope and the fear
She is the you that completes the you
My heart…my promise…my fate
All of my sadness, happiness, love
Oh love how I love to love
She is all that and you are her
The birth of the feminine
Her bleeding heart is yours and you are awake
You cry…and cry and cry with crystal clear loving eyes
Poem: Mirage – By Sonam Hajela
Mirage
Your love came to me
In a time of thirst
Deep need
And a raging desire
My own pools
Have been drained
And I tire of scraping the walls
With my nails
For droplets that have long gone dry
And leave trails of sadness
So I ran to you
I ran and
I ran
My skirts tripping my bare feet
My face blazing from the sun
My arms on fire
And my heart half dead
Only to find you
Disappeared…
Your face was like an oasis
Fingers in my mouth
And your scent in my breath
Your body warm against my skin
But you were never there
I drop to my knees
And cry to the sky
Rail against the dunes of time
My tears draining me of
What is left…
With you
I disappear
I disappear here.
Give Her A Voice: Interview with Joyce
Give Her A Voice gave me a voice! You would think someone who is so conspicuous and vocal in the community and who has spent all her life writing and expressing, wouldn’t need one. But as I sat down with Marta to make my video, I discovered there were parts of myself that I had never expressed…not even to myself. What I have learned is that even if you are on the surface a successful, contented woman, there is still a history of pain, there are still unaddressed needs and all of us have some sort of little girl in us, crying out to be heard. Give Her A Voice is for all women, everywhere. -Joyce Sweeney
