This evening I read a book by a brilliant woman I’d never heard of until about ten minutes ago. I spoke by one of those three-way video links to two other brilliant women whom I’ve known and loved for a long time. And there was a weird kind of consonance and connection between all three of them – the unknown woman and the known women. They were all, in their ways, talking about the same thing – about setting yourself free and being congruent and being authentic. Except the women I know said it with a lot more fucks. (We swear like longshoremen, and then laugh so much we can’t swear any more.)
And I was so inspired by this that when I went down to the field to see the horses and I looked up to see the supermoon gazing down on me, in all her gaudy glory, I said, out loud, to my mares, ‘I’m strong enough for all of us.’
All this world fear and world sorrow and world uncertainty has been making me feel weak. I think it’s making a lot of people feel weak, because everything seems so far beyond our control. I’m still getting a lot of anecdotal reports of people feeling ridiculously tired, just from getting through the ordinary tasks of daily life.
But there was something about the book and the women, and maybe even that crazy moon, that made me feel a strength I did not know. I can tell myself the weakness story – I am only a puny human, with no agency in this big game. Or I can tell myself a strength story – I have more power than I know and I’m bloody well not going to give it away to the news, or the zeitgeist, or the shoutiest of the shouty voices, or the fear of what might happen next.
It was a yell of defiance, against all the forces arrayed against me, against you, against us all just now.
And it might be a pointless cry, and there was something faintly comical about it, and the mares weren’t that impressed, being much more interested in their hay. But it felt like something. And I think we all need something at the moment – battalions of somethings, which, in the end, add up to everything.
Tania Kindersley 