feminism

The Foam-Born Woman: Solace for She Who Crawled from the Sea Fully-Grown.

 

She walks the world wearing bone beads and black silk over thick skin and a well-armored heart.

When she hurts, sparse tears come only after the hellfire, spit, and bloodlust. She, this misnamed Goddess of Love, was born enmeshed in a crucible of hot foam, a chaotic womb of neglect, addiction, and betrayal, and she thrives because she is a living insult to her lost childhood.

Like Aphrodite, she was born far too wild and wise to be a whisper-voiced princess, and she has erupted from her ivory shell-cocoon more times than she can count.

Hate me, but don’t dare pity me warns this decorated She-God of Transformation. She was born with the ever-seeping wound of intolerance for weakness and an infallible, unrelenting distaste for those who were well-cared-for. To be born resilient is to continually risk isolation, and she accepts the name Bitch with a temple dancer’s grace.

Her first communion was taken with whiskey and snuff, the blood and body of the Holy Renegade, and she has earned every medal pinned on her bare-breasted heart.

I have an inner Emperor who lives in my belly she says. He is uninitiated and frigid. He is the patriarchy embodied in a tattooed, green-eyed woman. He is war-weary and hungry for soft skin and warmth. Above all else, he is a God who will protect those he loves with a lone wolf’s cunning ferocity.

No one can be trusted like a foam-born woman. Any promise she makes is a promise kept, and if you stand by her, she will hold the lantern while you walk through the Valley of Death. If you do not run when her beauteous wings grow discolored and shrivel with age, she will be with you until your soul vanishes into the ether.

If you strike at those she loves, you have also struck her, and Aphrodite’s mouth is full of row upon row of venomous shark teeth. There is no known antidote to her particular poison, for she has spent long lonely nights concocting it from repressed memories and an enduring desire for perfection.

Send some vitriol her way, and you will likely be forgiven. Target her pack-members, show complacency in the face of injustice, or condemn the needs of the socially oppressed, and she will sink her teeth so deeply in your fleshy neck you will faint from the pain.

She wandered onto the sand with wet hair and wobbly knees, and she knows the way back to the flaming foam of transmutation.

Go ahead and test her; she lives for it. Whisper about her unfounded confidence in the corners. Spread all the lies you like. Challenge her passion and her presence. Poke at her scaled skin with your condescension and your feigned piety. Question her origins, for they are indeed questionable, and lie awake at night pondering the nature of her power.

She is the foam-born woman, and she is a tidal force to be reckoned with. She is wind and rain, and she was raised without the benefit of innocence. She is a self-protective dead stare, and she will not be asked to smile or giggle in the name of propriety and manners. She does not think herself superior; she thinks herself autonomous. Her body and voice owe you nothing.

She is willfully discerning because she had to be, and she has spent decades solving the labyrinth surrounding her own grief.

She is the foam-born woman, and she has spent long years in anguish wondering why she emerged from the womb-water motherless and grown. She is just now thawing her iced-over bones enough to love, and she is certainly not about to waste what little emerald-green heart-light she has on those who think her wicked.

This wild one has no patience for demure masks and false pomp and circumstance, so do not ask her to sacrifice her integrity for the sake of acceptance.

Show her authenticity in whatever form you can spare it today. Remind her that love can exist without obligation. Remember that her undersea gestation was a hellish nightmare full of finned demons and drunken licentiousness, but know her majestic identity extends well beyond her childhood wounds. She is the foam-born woman, and she is claiming her birthright as the soft-bodied Goddess of Love.

Give her time. Wait for her on the beach when she dives back into the healing saltwater to soothe her aching parts, and forgive her when she succumbs to homesickness for a youth she never knew.

She is the foam-born woman, and she is still learning to walk on legs longer than she feels she deserves. She is still granting her imaginal cells permission to shape-shift her into a creature worthy of the life she has been given. She is the foam-born woman grown too old too soon, and she baptized herself in the name of sacred shamelessness on that first, long swim from shell to shore.

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.
Danielle Dulsky