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Thanks Heidi, we have turned a gift that helps us know when to dream, do, edit, and rest, that helps us have prophetic dreams, that helps us build an altar to life every month into, "well, here's an embarrassing pain in the ass you'll have to deal with foe the next 40 years" is one of the griefs of my life.

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For sure! I think the next generation is in a better place, but it will probably take many more years to undo the damage that was done with that mindset.

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I feel this as a woman. The quote from Amy's poem: "My blood was a curse

There were no wise women to tell me different

None who knew it ever to be otherwise"

hits me because it's something I have also felt and wondered at. The female legacy has been lost, and I like how Amy points this out and also seeks rediscovery.

This quote also is resonant for me:

"In definitions of success that don’t involve

Achievement

Accomplishment

Accumulation

Polite ways of saying conquest"

Again, this is something I've felt and have expressed in my own poetry and life in subtle ways. For me, subtlety is powerful and sensitive, but can be overlooked with the louder, more masculine and forward-attending actions of our current imbalanced culture.

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I never felt like I had more to unlearn than when I became a mom. It's such a powerful shift and reveals so much that we couldn't see before when we were taught this is just the way things are.

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It does feel like, as Amy K. Bell said, radicalization. Politically, but personally for sure.

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