Grit

I love those women with a bit of grit to them

A callousness of hands and furrowed brows

Wirey strands of grey hair

Small eyed, big nosed, wrinkled

The women who are aged, past their prime, or those who never reached their prime

The ugly ducklings who never became swans

The inked ones

The pierced ones

The wild ones

The feral ones

The ones who are hungry in their sexuality

The ones who are radiantly beautiful but whose trials and tribulations and insecurities are dismissed as invalid by those who think being beautiful solves all of life's problems

The women who are a little hardened by life's challenges

Who can give as good as they get

Who rise

Who are brave

Who despite the tidal wave of criticism and mockery they face by souls who judge and see them as inferior, carry on carrying on, doing what they do, what they have always done

The women who are tossed away by society for not being soft enough and small enough and polished, pristine and delicate

But who still decide to love and live and work and strive

And who stand firmly in the ground when the winds of life blow cold and harsh

And when the rains of challenge are torrential

The forgotten women

The ones who have been hurt and victimized but through the fires of resistance and strength have decided to claw their way out of the caves of hell and re-emerge bloodied, soaked, soiled and broken fingered

The women who pray to the heavens to give them the strength to heal the parts of themselves ripped apart by darkness

Who beg the Gods for guidance and strength while they weave themselves back together; a process as gruelling and painful as a needle piercing skin and skin being stitched back together

I love those women who, despite all that they have endured

And all the grim and craven darkness they have witnessed

And all the challenges of the mundane that they don't get to deny facing

Decide to be the beacon of the lighthouse in the nighttime storm

And when lost choose, irregardless

To paddle their way back to the light

Back to themselves

Back to the truth

And back to the wholeness of their own divinity

I love the women in the mud

The women in the sand

The women in the desert

The women in the eye of the storm

I love those women with a bit of grit to them