Feb 18, 2019 - Cycles by Tara Houska

Crafted sound bytes with poignancy and marketability — speak of missing and murdered indigenous women, of matriarchy, of the strength of our women, while clutching the mic tightly in your fist and passing judgment on every woman you know.

Did your tribe of homegirls get you that gig? That oasis in the storm? The funding in your pocket? Those connections sorely needed?

Which homegirl are you? The kind that speaks of sisterhood and empowering women? It’s easier to work with men, less razor sharp barbs and hidden malice. Love your sisters, but only yours. Cut at the others, there isn’t enough shine for us all. Speak softly in shadows, hope for a fall.

Your trauma, or mine?

Be the strong woman who turns the cheek. Wait for him to grow, be the rock to smash his pain against. Swallow your hurt, it has no place here. Your value is your beauty, your amiability, what you do for him. Get an education, a job, a home, raise the kids, be the backbone for his peaceful silence and guide for his damage. Lash out, boil over, betray, twist the blade as hard as your bone-deep rage. Drink away your sorrow.

Be the strong man who feels nothing. Laugh away your brokenness, stoic warrior. Shove those shards deep inside, and hand off the splinters to women you love. If they endure, it must be real. Your value is your seed, your blood, your mystic stare. She will take you back. Women are sacred, but it’s the men they follow with desperate claws and rearing horses in their Hollywood heads. The warrior days were stolen with the land, so construct an image in the fat taker’s online world instead. Drink away your sorrow.

Use ceremony as a temporary fix, it has to catch on for good sometime, right? Get that spiritual boost and feel your feet digging in the soil, for now. Reset your battery. Let the waves of your ancestors roll over your muddy heart. Suffer hard, relative. The pain will dull. The threads of truth reconnected inside, the glimpse of real truth, will weaken and snap until the next round.

So says the colonizer.

By Tara Houska