When I was 25 I took on a mantra that at the time I thought would heal me, everywhere I went I posted it:

fear, it is the only enemy with love I will defeat it

I even considered getting a tattoo of it. 12 months ago I admitted to myself after committing to force health into a body that I had pushed to the edge of reason, that I had actively, wholeheartedly without consideration for self – resisted love. Yet I considered myself a free woman. Free women must express…must be love. A free woman who resists love in any form is not nor can she be free. By my own resistance I had chained myself inexplicably to fear to pain to unforgiveness. I had willed myself ill because I had failed to answer the call to love. Free women should speak more on love. When you hear a free woman speak there is so much conversation about power. About personhood. About independence. I can discuss anger and grief to exhaustion but have not or rather have refused to discuss love. Perhaps it is of love that we are the most afraid. So today I break my silence. Today I speak of love. Love to the free woman is action. It is power. Love is not some mushy fairy tale sap that makes a knight climb a tower to rescue a damsel in distress. Love is the stuff that breaks down the tower. Love is the revelation to the damsel that this is not her place of rest. Love is the revolution that makes the knight possible not merely from his desire to be a hero but from the seed of freedom birthed in the damsel. I believe in Love. Love as power. Love as creation. Love as God. Yet I have turned from it because I thought erroneously that a turn from love, the romanticized version of it anyway, was the only way to release myself. Turning from love, however, traps you in fear. Fear does not produce fertile ground from which a free woman can take flight. A fearful mind is a dangerous thing. A diseased thing. It cannot heal. It cannot resolve. It cannot be anything more than what it sees and it sees only darkness and pain. Going back to my mantra (fear, it is the only enemy with love I will defeat it) I know that in order to rid myself of fear I must return to love.  Today, I commit to the act of loving.

Whenever and wherever I enter may love fill this space.