Women, the next time you feel guilty for taking time for yourself for self care, or play, or for doing something pleasurable just for the hell of it, for even considering making it an important part of your day, the next time you judge your own pleasure as frivolous or think it’s the least important thing you could do right now, especially right now, remember that we inherited that guilt. For 100,000 years we were tribal.

Women were doing glorious things like bathing in oceans, running through the jungle, participating in tribal power, being medicine women, running barefoot, fucking who we wanted to. All of it. We had total freedom. I think about trying to compress a woman that was designed for that awesome level of freedom into something like, say, Victorian society. Or to have her support her children by herself instead of within a strong community. Or to have her spend her life with someone she didnt love or wasn’t even attracted to.

There must have been an insane level of fear for people to want to keep a woman that small and contracted, right?

Now why would anyone want women to think that we should only take care of the home and our family and not ourselves? Why were women told in so many ways that if we took care of ourselves and our own desires and pleasures, society would literally fall apart?

Probably because if a woman stepped even a little out of that smallness, if she wasn’t tired and down on herself and started to feel her inherent freedom, started to feel any feelings, she would be WAY harder to control.

I mean this literally. Dopamine levels increase a lot when you feel pleasure and higher dopamine levels mean more feelings of empowerment, more feelings of being capable, of being excited and wanting to strive for things. So that means a woman might speak up for herself more. And that might mean she might even participate in business or government or, god forbid, her own freedom. The truth is that its more than ok to take time for your own pleasure. Turns out it’s the main source of your life force and your power.

Does that sound frivolous? Be diligent about your play and anything that gives you pleasure like your life depends on it.

Viva la Revolution.

-Linda

Letters From the Big Top

Kate and James: Wedding on Chebeague Island

The play is the thing.