Whatever happens with us, your body will haunt mine

Life on the planet is born of woman.

You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.

As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.

We have lived with violence far too long.

But before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds.

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.