Fierce

I unfolded my heart today and what I found there was fierce.

I unfolded my heart today and what I found there was fierce.

Burning heart, fiery Dragon Queen.

Turning her head left and right, scorching everything in sight.

Destruction.

Annihilation.

Power.

Feeling all of this today and knowing this is part of what I have come here to do.

To breathe fire for those who are unable to do it for themselves.

To be a trailblazer for other women to use their fierceness and fire to do the same.

My suffocated, held-in rage for all those decades - time now to release the force of it.

Being 52, this is an age where this has been simmering for a while under the surface (not always under the surface).

And here’s where I start.

I feel fierce when I know our children are hurting themselves in ever increasing numbers in order to cope with the world.

I feel fierce when I know that a child on this planet dies of hunger every 10-13 seconds.

I feel fierce when I know that mothers have to fight tooth and nail for services for their children because these are hugely underfunded and if you don’t have the fight, education or time to understand complexities of the system and complete hundreds of forms in exactly the right order, with exactly the right words your children will go without.

I feel fierce when I know that we have more children in care than every before, many of whom are unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I can’t even begin to imagine living through that experience.

I feel fierce when I know that 130 million girls are denied the human right to education around the world. That so many neurodiverse children in our own country are unable to access education inside our current systems.

I could go on but as I research I can feel my rage turn to desperate sadness and despair and that leaves me nothing but crushed on the floor, praying for peace and love.

I feel fierce at me.

I want to find the women who are making change and support them. Fiercely.

Tell me who they are if you know of them.

Tell me who you are if you want to become one.

To do what’s next, my heart needs to stay wide open, not shrink and close shut out of fear and repeating patterns embedded in childhood.

Ice and fire.

Fierce love.

An army of women.

Arms locked.

Shaking our dragon heads and roaring into the skies.