At the center of creation

And suddenly the walls are plastered – a hundred post-it notes sprawled across the palette beside my place of rest with thoughts of "I am beautiful, soft, sheerly magnetic." My heart hears these words like music for the first time come to stir my soul. I am clearing out the pathways in my mind, lining them with pink rosebuds and baby's breath, a peace-warrior in my own right. Negative thoughts merit no place in the glowing newness of the love that grows in me. We live only to discover beauty, all else is a form of waiting.

Diane Bunn is teaching me how to heal, planting new seedlings as I toil on my hands and knees, weeding, weeding, weeding through the seemingly endless rains of my tears. This is the most depressed I've felt in my life. I watch my body fill up and out, terrified of my new form – the one that whispers "woman." Yet still it's ironic. Physiologically I am granted the energy needed to generate new ways of thinking and perceiving the world around me. Something strong rises on the inside. The soul fills out in perfect mirror of the breasts and buttocks that house me. Suddenly I am imbued with the energy to make this happen. Suddenly I am stronger than I've ever felt in my whole life. I slash the voice with my warrior sword. "I am the ruler of this temple. Get the **** out!" Direction shifts and passion grows anew. My commitment to love is fierce. No child deserves the fires I've seen. I deserve complete and utter healing. All women do. And so begins my new quest. I rise like a phoenix from the ashes of my own self-inflicted horrors.

– from the chapter Tending a Delicate Bed, Freedom to Blossom – An Invitation to Shine

I am the soft of petals whose colors fade into one another like a sunset. I am the long drawn-out sighing of a thousand voices, echoing their laments. I am the raindrops freeing themselves from a hundred clouds. I am sister to more women than my heart ever dreamed possible, and mother or daughter to the rest. All of us are. All of us are all of it. We never had to burn more fat to be happier. Nothing we could ever do could separate us from what we already are. The cool arches of autumn branches firing up the sky. The deep inhalation of a woman mid-conflict with her lover. The contagious gurgle of a new baby. The anguished cry of a Bombay child sold for prostitution, her vagina being steadily pounded by the first man in a line-up of eight. Or eighteen. The shadows of first love on a summer eve. It all goes on and on. I am one voice. One woman. One motion. One flower in this field of forever. And if it were up to me (and I think, as far as my reach stretches, that it is partly up to me) we would all hold our stems erect, we would all see our faces turn and face the sun. We would all blossom out into the world scattering seeds of awareness born of our hearts and our willingness to shine on. We would all grow up. Wild. And free.

– from the Epilogue, Freedom to Blossom – An Invitation to Shine