I Know Where Love Lives

Here is a poem I found many years ago that speaks about loving yourself and not making someone else necessary/responsible for those beautiful feelings we have when we fall in love.

It also reminds me of something I read once which said: "All love is self-love".

It takes practice, and this is a good reminder.

Poem for the Woman Who Doesn’t Want a Daughter

                        By Karen Ethelsdattar

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror & say

“& God created Woman & she is good”

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror

& say “God is a Woman”

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror

& say “I am God’s Daughter”

I want you to look at yourself

with a lover’s eye

& write a poem about yourself that way

I want you to taste yourself & feel yourself & smell yourself

& study how to please yourself

the way you study

the way you were trained to study

to please men

I want you to study women walkin’ down the street

the way you study men

How their hips swing & their breasts sway

& their hair goes free in the wind

& I want you to exult & sing,

“I am one of them”

I want you to bathe yourself like a baby

with scented oil till you gleam

I want you to watch the muscles of women ripple

& say to yourself

how beautiful it is when women are strong

I want you to go to your hairdresser

& say, “I want it natural.

I like the way I am.”

I want you to go through a hundred women’s magazines

& tear out every page on cosmetics & beauty care

& how to reduce yourself to a shadow

& make a fire & let them burn

I want you to boycott perfumed toilet paper

& use an outhouse for a week

in the heat of the summer

& sit there with the door hangin’ open

& look out at the trees

I want you to study proud women

& character lines

in the faces of old women

& think on every woman in your life

who did you good

I want you to find a portrait

of a great woman

& paste it over your television screen

I want you to ask for help from other women

& help them in return

& every time you feel turned on

I want you to close your eyes & say

“This is me. This comes from within.”