Rockin' 47!

Today I am 47 years old. 47 sleep and wake-up cycles. Forty-seven openings to the new day and emerging sun stretching out its long limbs of warmth. Today I celebrate the profound mystery and mess of life lived for 47 years.

Happy Birthday to me!

“Forty-seven” rings in my ears, it reverberates in the womb of my center. I hear it call to me, sometimes shouting and other times whispering. The loud voice declares “You rock” and I wonder from which decade that worn out phrase comes? Was it the 70’s when I was still a young kid with the future stretching endlessly in front of me? When I was adorned in the macramé vest made by my mom, and the shag haircut that replaced my long, thick flowing locks that proved to be the home of too many rats’ nests? “It has to go” my mom had said. I cried too much and too loud for beautiful hair to stay. “We’re going to get that cut,” and off we went to sit in a chair where I emerged an hour later looking like someone I didn’t know. The next morning lining up on the playground at the start of another first-grade day, Ms. Cox didn’t recognize me either. “Oh Amy!” came the exclamation. “Your hair!” Yup. I had changed. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Maybe it was the 80’s, the years of high school, homework and unspoken humiliation. Anyone looking on thought I had it all: cheerleader, popular friends, good grades. Reconnecting with high school colleagues now, none of them agree that I was an outsider with the wrong clothes and ugly body, feeling as if I was missing a vital piece of information. “What was it?” my forty-seven year old voice whispers. If I can pinpoint what I felt I lacked in high school, maybe I can find it now, when I still feel the pressure of living up to, proving my worth, worried about what others think. “Go deep,” my years of wisdom urge, “be honest and clarify your longing so you can give the secret to your children, so they will never feel lost, alone or unwanted.”

Deep. Where is that? Deep in the recesses of my choices, or the way I felt when a boy I like gave me attention? Or when my best friend settled into our friendship the way it feels to slip on that worn, loving sweatshirt? Deep down into the core of my being? To that place where I hid the secret that I was a bad girl, a sinner, a daughter who could never live up to where the eyes of her father hit each time he looked at her? Ah yes, there, that’s the spot.  “Go” my years direct, “to the profound origin of my affirmation, to where I went when I was looking for the answers.”

For decades that was God, Heavenly Father, Him, His and He. I wanted to please, to be good, to make myself in His image, like the Bible says, like I heard in church from the lips of my own father. But I wasn’t in His image and never would be, no matter how hard I tried, how earnestly I prayed or how intently I worked to cover up my womanly curves. Later the two would merge: Dad and Father, Father and Daddy. They became intertwined and soon included other men in my life: Pastor ________, Teacher ___________, Youth Sponsor _____________, Brother ______________ and finally boy ____________, boy _______________, and boy ________________.

“That was not rocking,” I say from my 47 years of knowledge, enlightenment, feminism and courageous acts of power. I have earned the right to state boldly the presence of patriarchy in my family, my church and religion and now, everywhere in my country, culture and world. I no longer wish to live up to anyone’s idea of who I am or ought to be, or what it means to be good, bad or otherwise. When I go down to dig this time, I will bring along a shovel of substance that will, I tell my 47 years, finally unearth the remaining remnants of the patriarchal lies. “I will get them out” I affirm. “Tomorrow, they will be gone.” That is the secret, I understand. “I am good, I am brilliant, I am beautiful – without any God, man or affirmation from another.” I am good because I am me.

“You rock!” must be from the 90’s, when I began this journey away from dependence on the admiration from men and women. It was then I began to allow myself to actually “rock”, to move my body without inhibition or fear of being improper or overly sexed. Learning the truth of the existence of a male-centered religion, culture and world began the to-and-fro that eventually would release me from its grip. “That is no longer you” I hear now from the core of my good self. “Now,” the voice grows in strength, “You rock!”

I do. Today, I rock. I rock hard! I proclaim my good core that I know will direct me where I ought to go, take actions that will create more good and make choices that create life, love and progression of thought. Today I know I am bigger, louder and stand taller than I ever have in my life! Even when I fail.

Today I embrace my stumbles, fall and failures. 47 years of being cautious, careful and worried about what effect a straight-up failure would have on how people see me is enough. Today I commit to not only embrace the letdowns and missteps, but to announce them! “They are mine!” I roar. “It was my good core efforts and belief in all that I can become that helped me risky vulnerability to be seen by women who need what I have to offer! It was my wisdom and skill that gave me the tools to build the ramp up which I have been rising, allowing for a fall at all!” The tone from my 47 years builds in momentum, energy and passion. “I will not be quiet or shushed!” it declares, remembering the endless battle with my strong, loud, charismatic voice.  “No more of that,” I agree with my 47 year old rockin’ self!

I am the Good-Core Goddess! I am loud! I am bold! I am open to all the universe has for me! I am a woman on a mission: a womanpreneur who will risk it all to show myself to the world and give what I have learned and earned throughout these years of work, joy, study and play. I will put my Good Core Goddess self out-there to be received and I will not be shy, afraid or deterred. When I fail, when no one attends, when the room is empty, when my TEDx numbers do not go viral, when my workshops are not full, I will keep moving. I will offer it again. I will speak again. I will write again.

Forty-seven years of knowledge, wisdom, love, sex, tears, agony, loneliness and all the grit and gratitude of life and I have arrived! “Stand tall” my inner Good Core declares, “as high as you can reach, as loud as your voice can go and as bold as you know you are worth. Rock it!”