Woman’s power is in blood. Woman’s love is in blood. Woman’s medicine is in blood. Blood is given to every woman. It is up to her to create chaos or beauty, wallow or worship in these waters.

When I was about 13 years old, I began to harvest blood in the magic places of a woman’s body. They say the deep waters are the last undiscovered frontier of this earth. Woman holds these towering depths in the yet-fused triangle of her pelvis. Entering womanhood is a lot like being lost at sea during a hurricane. The power. The grace.

When I entered womanhood, my mother took me to be initiated. I spent a week in sacred circle in the woods with 15 other women. Ceremony, sweats, giveaways, songs, play, extraordinary and ordinary magic. Near the end of the week I was gifted a name by a medicine woman, to welcome me into my place in the circle. She had been instructed by an elder to gift this name to five girls in her lifetime. The 15 women sat circled in an octagon hut. The door was shut, it was completely calm outside. As she spoke the name over me for the first time, initiating me to its sound, a wild wind whipped through, tore the altars that lined the walls. It flung the door open and almost off its hinges. The feral air surged through before we could blink and feathers, rattles, pinecones went flying. And just as quickly as the wind came, it went. The door slammed shut. It was quiet. Still. Silent. The name that was given to me translates to “Woman of the Wind”.

This was my initiation into womanhood: a hurricane of terror and beauty, chaos and calm, sacred and lunatic.

Learning to be a woman is a lot like learning to stand in the middle of a hurricane, to exist as the eye of the storm, all of it and none of it. To harness the winds for love or medicine, destruction only when absolutely necessary. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary.

Learning to be a woman is learning the tides of blood. When you marry the moon, you agree to moments of complete darkness. Of forgetting who you are and why you came here. You are emptied, carved clean, hollowed like ice. Nothing lives here, only a tired and forgiving bow to that final release. You agree to light. You agree to let the stars shine from your bones, through your skin to meet the world. You agree each cell humming every beautiful song ever sung. You agree to let the beauty of the sky wash over you like blessings every day of your life. You agree to real, in body, ecstasy.

Most importantly, learning to be a woman is learning to name the force that makes the tides. Not identifying with the tides themselves, but rather the force that steers them. It is learning the sound the body makes to pull and push the blood. Learning to be a woman is marrying that unnamable torrent and flow that has made the world. You are that. You are nothing more, nothing less.

This is the eye of the storm. The sacred center from which all things are birthed. This is woman. This is you.

In support of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock:
My call to women everywhere: Our water is under threat. Our life blood. Our vitality. What we harvest to create and feed children. Water is woman’s sacred tool. Our greatest gift. Women ARE water. You know this force that pulls water. Go. Sit in the sacred center of all that you are. The eye of the storm. The birthplace of all things. Empty and fill. You know how to do this. Remember. Ask that our waters be restored. Ask that the beauty, the terror, the chaos, the calm, the sacred, the lunatic be channeled where it is needed in order to restore balance. This is all you must do. Sit in yourself, as fully yourself, and make a prayer for the water, for the keepers of the water. Then you will know what to do to hold the world in balance. Women are the ones who are changing the course of the world. We are the healers. We are the restorers of balance. It’s time.