It is in the words that I find meaning and give meaning. It is inside the words that I birth myself. Inside of the lines I untangle the ways to define and name and understand. They are my way in and my way out. They are both the map and the path my feet make on this earth.

So here then; a collection of some of the quotes from others that have formed and named me.

The words that unleashed me and sheltered me.

Words in which I found a basis for understanding myself, my experience, my movement through this world.

Words that guided me deeper into my own art, my own embodiment, my own truth.

Words that gutted me and wrapped me in warm blankets and carried me home.

1. These are the words that captured, for the first time, my inherent contraction – the enigmatic heart of me – and taught me that the mingling of my wild and my tame was not a problem to be fixed or squashed or denied. These are the words of push and pull and finding center in the midst of it all.

“What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don’t want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don’t want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”Jeanette Winterson

2. These are the words that rooted my compassion into itself. That gave it form and framework. A question to return to, again and again. A measure against which to evaluate my beliefs made real. Eventually, they will be live as reminder, inked in my own scrawling handwriting along the inside of my left forearm. These are the words of the beating heart of me.

“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.” Miller Williams

3. These are the words gifted to me by love. They are the embodiment of a love story, not just with her, but with myself. Of a lesson it took 36 years to learn. Of letters inked so painfully along ribs; scars of my own choosing. These are the words she gave me that remind me that I am whole, that I always have been and that there were those who would never ask me to be anything but that. These are the words that whisper that inside of my wholeness my goodness lives and breathes and pulses strong and true.

“I would rather be whole than good” Carl Jung.

4. These are the words of the burn down. The words of smoke and lungs and heart on fire. The words of nights curled on hard ground and tears that shook me to the core. The words that came before the rise. The proclamation of self that was a mark of my own {r}evolution. Typerwriter font on ribs the day after my 38^th birthday. When nothing was what I thought it would be and everything belonged to me, as fiercely as it ever had. These are the words of reclamation.

“I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.”   Alice Hoffman, Incantation

5. These are the words of speaking truth. The words that I return to when I wonder if I should write this thing or unleash this voice or tell this truth. The words that remind me that there is more to fear and lose inside the silence than outside in the world, voice ringing loud and clear. These are the words of my voice made real in this world.

“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language. Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” Audre Lorde

6. These are the words that delivered me to my meaning. That pushed me to define what it was and understand that it – this drive and compulsion to empty the guts and gore of me and spill words on page – was the same as the reasons for everything. That writing was loving. That writing was dying. That writing was breaking a heart and burning down the house and building it again. These are the words that taught me that the writing – it is all and everything and in and of and around all things. These are the words that hold the worlds.

“I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around me. I write because I believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write knowing I can be killed by own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by understanding and misunderstanding. I write past the embarrassment of exposure. I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds — and then I realize it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient. I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.” Terry Tempest Williams

7. These are the words that stood me taller. The words that vindicated. The words that painted my own scars and death on the page. And the words that encapsulated what I knew – that we all have lives and lives and lives that nestle in us. And that the choice to end one is not the choice of death but that of survival. These are the words that finally delivered home the message – that the choices were mine to make, and that I was worth it. These are the words of rebirth.

“It’s not easy to leave one self and embrace another. Your freedoms will scar you. Maybe even kill you. Or one of your yous. Its okay though. There are more. How many times do we die? Words, like selves, are worth it.“ Lidia Yuknavitch - The Chronology of Water

8. These are the words that found me on a deepest of nights. When my own heart was wailing stay-stay-stay-go-go-go. The words that showed me what gift it was to find your truth in the words of another. How that was a lifesaving and a homecoming and the one thing that made you take the next step and the next. These are the words that showed me the power of universal experience and of the things we all have known and lived and survived. These are the words that taught me that words could hold power the author could never have imagined. The words that taught me that telling a story could be survival.

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.” Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

9. These are the words that cut to the core of me. That a goddess wrote quickly, having no idea the impact they would make. The words that I return to, again and again to remind me of what I know. That this life is mine, and only mine. That my heart is wise and my truest responsibility in this life. These are the words that lay the path forward.

In the end you have only your heart to answer to. What will it say to you at the end of days? That you lived in the shadow of someone elses inquiry or that you lived in the light of your own? Latisha Guthrie, herbmother.com

10. These are the words that broke my heart. These are the words that break my heart. These are the words that I found long after it was done. These are the words that finally, finally gave me the peace to lay down some of the burden of guilt. Just a sliver, but enough to go on. These are the words that gave me permission to release the self-loathing that came with making the impossible choice. These words were a gift I didn’t know I needed and will always hold close.

“Go, even though you love him. Go, even though he is kind and faithful and dear to you. Go, even though he’s your best friend and you’re his. Go, even though you can’t imagine your life without him. Go, even though he adores you and your leaving will devastate him. Go, even though your friends will be disappointed or surprised or pissed off or all three. Go, even though you once said you would stay. Go, even though you’re afraid of being alone. Go, even though you’re sure no one will ever love you as well as he does. Go, even though there is nowhere to go. Go, even though you don’t know exactly why you can’t stay. Go, because you want to. Because wanting to leave is enough.”Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

 And these words are – of course – only a few. And tonight, as I sit here with the music playing and the candles burning and my heart missing and the dog curled next to me, and the cool white sheets of my bed calling and the words still whispering what I really want to know is this..

What are the words that speak the heart of you?  What words have saved and lifted and gutted you?  What words have shattered you and made you whole again?

Won’t you share them with me now?

Blessings, on you and your words and your truth and your light

The post 10 quotes for writers and lovers and speakers of truth appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I know you don’t think so.

I know you stand each morning, lift your face to the mirror and wage silent war on the skin and bones that hold you in this life.

I know you do because I do too.

But you are beautiful.

You are beautiful because of your unrelenting insistence on being utterly, uncompromisingly, completely you. Even when it hurts.

Even when it’s the hardest thing.

You are beautiful because you’re still here. Loving and laughing and bleeding and fighting and falling soft at the end of the day, into whatever space or place or body is your chosen refuge.

Your beauty is mixed with the wind and the way it tangles your hair and reddens your cheeks. It shines from the sun, and your delicate shoulders and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of your nose. It’s your happily ever after daydreams and way your inner badass takes over when she’s needed, even though you’re a good girl at heart.

Your beauty lies in the way you keep on being you. Regardless of how often you’ve been told to be something else.  Regardless of messages given by culture or family or the ghosts of lovers past who have no damn right taking up any space in your heart.

But you? You take in those voices and messages and images and directives. The magazine covers and the headlines that beg you to consider all the ways you could improve if you just squelched that irrepressible spirit for a little bit. The past love who told you in a hundred small and silent ways that you were both too much and not near enough. The rules and regulations that govern just how much you’re permitted to shine before it’s labeled narcissism. You take them all to the ocean and toss them into the current and watch them swirl out to sea.

In a world that requires assimilation, you remaining you is one hell of a wild ride. It’s the craziest thing. It’s the riskiest thing.   It’s the most impossible thing. It’s the most necessary thing.

It’s the most beautiful thing.

It is, in the end, the only thing.

And baby, you are doing one hell of a job.

So on the days when you doubt, on the days when even the moon seems to shine too bright and you long for the safety of shadows. Turn yourself to the light and let it reflect your beauty until you remember to trust in it, if even just for a moment.

And then you go out into this one wild world of ours, and you do whatever you were born to do. Whatever your wild soul leads you to do.  The thing that will make you move into yourself and fill up the space and breathe out the universe.

Make your art. Tell the truth. Take that selfie. Step into yourself. Wear that dress. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that feels like heat and sex and swirls around your legs like the sweet seduction of freedom.

Paint your lips red and your nails black.  Cut off your hair. Take a lover. Leave your lover. Pile everything that matters in the car and just drive high into the mountains until the only sound you hear is your own voice mingled with the calls of the wild things.

Damn the consequences. Even the worst of what you can imagine will figure itself out eventually. And there you will be at the end – standing tall in the midst of it all.

You.  Beautiful, beautiful you.

You take my breath away.
xo

Jeanette

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“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don’t want it.  What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.  You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”
~Miller Williams

We are all, at the heart of it, selfish assholes. And we are all, at the heart of it, good and decent people.

You have brought forth devastation and destruction.

You have been coldhearted and selfish and thrown some ugly sucker punches.

You’ve been the asshole, the heartbreaker, the one who spoke without thinking and who acted in spite of knowing better.

You’ve been thoughtlessly cruel to someone desperately in need of your mercy.

Your ego was bruised and you breathed some serious passive aggressive fire.

You’ve cheated. You’ve lied. You’ve played a callous game of wrecking ball roulette with tender hearts.

You carry the guilt of all of this buried deep in your soul. You could do a lifetime of penance, and never find deliverance. It’s a heavy weight, this hopelessly flawed humanity that is our birthright.

“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past”
~Buddy Wakefield

But remember, you’ve also stayed up all night, wrapping body and heart and soul around a friend who was grieving the end of all things.

You’ve nursed the broken hearted and lifted up the beaten down.

You’ve laid down your heart and done epic battle to shield the ones you love.

You’ve answered the phone at 3am and been the voice in the darkness that stands between life and death.

You have been mother and warrior and protective goddess fire.

You’ve dried tears and bandaged wounds and packed magical picnic lunches and changed lives with the force of your love.

You’ve given and given and given and only let it fill you up.

You have sacred coursing through your bloodstream.  You are howl of grief and the charity of a saint.   You’ve got thief in your bones and courage just beneath the surface of your skin.   And on the days you don’t want to feel and the nights you can’t sleep, when all you can remember is the moments you have failed your own divinity, know this:

In every moment of every day, you are living the path to your own redemption.

None of us is the solely the best or worst of ourselves. We are all our kindest moments and our darkest hours. We are the deepest shame and the proudest accomplishment. Shadows can never exist without light.

Our higher selves and our shadow beings like to nestle together and do a bad ass bump and grind on the dance floor. It’s after hours at the club, and there’s a full on ecstatic rave going on in the center of the floor. It’s all heat and sweat and bounding bass. Bodies so intertwined you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

There’s the good and the bad and the sex and the shame and the want and the guilt and the freedom and the chains – all right there in the sliver of spaces where skin presses against skin. This is what it is to live with the duality of our humanity. It’s sweaty and messy and hot. It’s pure and good and true. It’s the red-hot center of the paradox. It gets us into desperate trouble and it saves us, over and over and over again.

I have been selfish and ugly and weak and bold and brave and beautiful. I have had the audacity and the grace to follow the call of my own wild spirit, but only at the cost of the heart of another. I have been beautifully true and I have lived a ruthless lie out of nothing but cowardice. I have walked a million wrong paths only to fall into one of my greatest truths in middle of the weakest and darkest moments.

This is what it is to live, and to love and to stumble through this life, as inherently flawed as we are the embodiment of the divine.

The most difficult task of redemption is offering the depth of our kindness to the parts of ourselves we would rather hide from the light. To be as tender with our own flawed and frail hearts as we are with the hearts of our children. To seek our atonement from within, instead of the relentless futility of searching for it in others.

Our redemption can never be externally delivered. It lives in the molten core of our animal beings. It breathes in us and beats in us and pulses with truth and spirit and the infinite grace of our tender human hearts.

Yes, we are all selfish assholes. We are all good and decent people. And we are redeemed, over and over and over again – just by our uncompromising insistence on living and breathing and loving in this world.  By our continued willingness to reach our arms, meeting others exactly where they stand, and making a wide open offering of our frail and fierce hearts.

This is where redemption lives. In the spaces where we come together, and in the quiet moments where it all comes apart. In the wild center of this world. In the wild center of our imperfect selves.

Right here, in the vastly complex and utterly priceless wonder that it is this life.

The post Redemption Song {where the spirit meets the bone} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

What are you waiting for?
you know the words are
right there
ready to spill
ready for truth telling
ready for spell weaving
ready to be told
just sit down
with an open journal
and a smooth pen
or the click – clack of typewriter keys
and a pristine sheet of paper
or the computer screen
and every bit of fire in your soul
no excuses
no time like the present
no where else to be
just write.

The post just write it. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Dig deep.
Sit still.
Root Down.
Open.  Accept.  Surrender.
Discover Grace.

It is from this space
that everything flows.

The post i am rooted, but i flow appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Why are you so determined to keep your wild silently inside you?   Let it breathe. Give it a voice.  Let it roll out of you on the wide open waves.  Set it free.

The post Set your wild free. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Yes it is. Right now. This day. This moment. This now.

All yours.

You don’t have to wait. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t always have to finish what you started in order to begin something new. And there is no more room for playing small.

Small is so very last year.

You’ve been gathering momentum for a long time. This is a year of tipping-point greatness. Your year.

What are you waiting for?

That’s right, ease into it now. Pulse with the life force that has been waiting just for you. Feel that rhythm vibrating through the universe and running through your soul? Undulate with it. Let it carry you away, ecstatic dance style. Spin a dervish whirl until you are dizzy on the wonder of life. Ditch the layers that are holding you down. Get naked. Come on now. Don’t be shy. Right now, in this exact moment, you are free.

Keep your eyes open wide to witness all the fierce moments of grace that surround you. Reject that not-enoughness that has been desperately grasping for a hold on your magnificent spirit. Choose authenticity over approval. Be done with trying to fit into someone else’s notion of who you are. Get comfortable with entitlement. We’re done with asking permission.  No more of that, missy.

You’ve got to claim your right to rapture.

So, love too much. Way too much. Live from the center your wide open heart. Know that you don’t have to push yourself to expand in order to fill the space you are in. You are already infinite – just as you are. Let your freak flag fly. Every last thing about you is perfect. Even the weird bits.  Especially the weird bits. Those, my dear, are exactly why I’m already head over heels in love with you.

To hell with self-acceptance. That’s way too small an order.  I want you practice radical self-celebration. Throw a party in your own honor. You don’t need a wedding or a baby or a new job. You are reason enough. You are ALWAYS reason enough. Make today the anniversary of your arrival.  Rent the ballroom. Open the bar. And whatever you do, don’t forget the piñata. Fill it with every last piece of magic inside you and around you.   Now. Knock. That. Fucker. Down. and invite the world to gather you up again. To hell with the blindfold––you don’t want to miss a second of this.

Know that every time you get beaten down and emptied out, you are also spreading the fragments of your divinity into a universe that desperately needs you. Let the kindness and the raw, aching beauty of the universe shatter you over and over again. Find peace in the knowledge that your whole is composed of the sum of all of your beautifully broken pieces. Because breaking is becoming. We never lose ourselves. We don’t break forever. We just find new configurations of wholeness. And every one is breathtakingly beautiful.  YOU are breathtakingly beautiful.

That thing you’re afraid of? That label you shy away from? That word that seems too bold? That audacious goal? The life you think you don’t deserve? Aren’t talented enough to have? Aren’t brave enough to claim? Fuck. That. Shit. None of that baggage you’ve been carrying around has a place this year. Kick to the the curb. Now. This year only has space for the bold and the audacious and the brave. Don’t try to convince me you are not those things. I know better and your excuses hold no weight here. You are brave and bold and audacious and one hell of a goddess. Always have been. Always will be. 

So fill every step you take with intention. Then remember that intention is worthless without action – so get a move on, sugar. You know that whole ‘there’s no time like the present’ cliché? Actually, the ONLY time IS the present. Stop holding back. Let yourself go. Right now. All the way. You’ll be soaring before you even realize you’ve taken the leap.

Deal resistance a death blow and make sweet love to your art all night long. Put on your fishnet thigh highs and your patent leather stilettos and your special occasion lingerie. Seduce the hell out of your own creative soul.  It’s time for an epic lap dance. Dance for your paint and canvas, for fingers tripping across keyboard, for the open arms of motherhood, for the layers of flavor in the meals you create. Wind your hips down for the click of the shutter, for the 3am bathroom poem, for the late night lesson planning. Spin around the pole like fingers stringing beads into necklaces, for bodies twisting into asana, for holding a mama as she brings life. This will not be a quickie, love. No wham-bam-thank you ma’am. No – tonight is for slow, deliberate kind of love-making that changes everything.

And when the morning light filters in and you slowly leave sleep behind, you’ll awake with the vague sensation that something has changed. Give yourself time to remember that something has. That EVERYTHING has. Revel in it. You are here now. Fully present. Fully alive. Fully claiming your rightful glory. A Radical goddess. An Audacious Artist. A Mystical Mama. Celebrating the beauty that can only come from you. Flying high. Owning It.

Nothing will ever be the same again.  

And damn girl, you throw one hell of a party.

{But for the love of all that is good and holy leave the discarded fishnets and the paint spills and all those dirty dishes from the party for someone else to clean up. Because you’ve got places to be and things to do. After all, this is your year. Get moving, chica. }

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Purchase this as a Fine Art Print or Canvas

From my 100 things in 2011 series.

The post A Circle Of Women. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.