Mary Oliver, And My Birthday

"Instructions for living a life. 

Pay attention. 

Be astonished. 

Tell about it." 

-Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver's birthday is today.  Mine is tomorrow.  (Somehow, this makes me feel cool.) I am following her advice today by sharing some astonishment with you, and inviting you to be astonished with me.  

Few things are more astonishing to me than the feeling of wholeness I have after teaching and experiencing a Qoya class.  Qoya is the movement class I teach every Tuesday. Qoya was created by my good pal Rochelle Schieck. It is a movement class based on the idea that if it feels good, you are doing it right. There are no rules, no simon-says instruction.  It's not about getting your body to look like what mine is doing, or what the person next to you is doing. What I love the most about Qoya is the way it offers a woman reclamation of doing things HER way.  

Qoya is about remembering that as women, we are all inherently wise, wild and free. I believe that this connection to body is the cutting edge for women's empowerment. When a woman chooses to source her truth from within her very bones, rather than looking to a set of rules outside of herself, she is truly wise. When she can stand up and speak a truth that is boiling up inside her no matter how big a risk it is to speak it, she is claiming her wild soul, perfect and untamed.  When 5,000 years of conditioning is telling her that her way is wrong, but she decides right then and there that her way is right, and in fact, always has been, she is finally free. 

For my birthday this year, my biggest wish is celebrate my life by empowering other women. Tuesday September 11th, I will be having a by-donation Qoya class where all proceeds go to benefit Women for Women International.  This organization provides education and training for women victims of war all over the world.  The women who take this training often go on to start their own businesses, becoming financially independent.  The most important thing the classes offer is giving women education about their RIGHTS.  The more we are educated about our rights, the more we are able to give ourselves permission to access that which is wise, wild and free within us.  

On my birthday, this Tuesday September 11th, please join me in celebrating this year's twirl around the sun with Qoya and Women for Women.  Class will be held at Chelsea Studios in NYC, 151 West 26th Street, from 7-8pm. 

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Photo by Jodi Jones

The Personal Is Political

One of the first things I read this morning was the following article in the NY Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.       


But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.       

The solution holds grave risks for Gulnaz, who uses one name, since the man could be so humiliated that he might kill his accuser, despite the risk of prosecution, or abuse her again.

I am enraged. I want to flail myself on the floor in heartbreak and pound my fists.  How can I, as a woman, even get out of bed when across the world one of my sisters is enduring this kind of atrocity because she is female???!!!! I could cry a river of tears.

I am writing this blog because I don't know what to do, other than tell everyone I know about this and get them as fired up as I am.

This morning I woke up feeling aimless, concerned mainly with what I could achieve and entertain myself today. The positive is that after reading this article, my passion to celebrate the feminine and strengthen myself could not be burning brighter. Because I know for a fact, that every time I celebrate myself as a woman, it sets another woman free.  Good breeds more good. Freedom breeds more freedom. 

Today, I did yoga to strengthen and center myself. I called my best friend and told her I love her madly.  My husband drove us to a different store to get the organic, free range chicken to stand for the Great Mother of us all. I looked into holding a fundraiser/movie screening for the film Miss Representation. I chose to save my money and not spend it on unnecessary items just to fill the void.  I dedicated my self-pleasuring to Gulnaz, her lawyer, her sisters in prison, even to her rapist and the judge, that my love of my body and the part of me that is most feminine would send shock waves of love and pleasure across the world. 

The personal is political.  What are you doing today to celebrate and give thanks for being born a woman? Share with me below....