WHAT IF?

5 AM poem

What If We Told Our Daughters?

What if we told our daughters

before the world did,

that they belong to themselves?

Before the magazines.
Before the algorithms.
Before the lonely hunger
to be chosen.

What if we gathered them
beneath the willow tree,
at the edge of the river,
under a moon that has watched
women for thousands of years,

and whispered:

You are not here to become smaller.

You are not here to spend your life
waiting at the doorway
of someone else’s approval.

The earth did not make you
for that.

Look at the heron.

Look at the fox.

Look at the peony
opening without permission.

None of them ask if they are enough.

What if we taught our daughters
to listen to the drum
inside their own ribs?

To trust the wisdom
that rises from the belly.

To know the difference
between loneliness
and abandoning themselves.

What if they grew up knowing

that love is a beautiful traveler,

but not a homeland?

That a partner may walk beside them, but should never become
the ground beneath their feet?

Build your life, we would tell them.

Build it like a forest.

Rooted.

Alive.

Connected.

A place where many creatures
can rest.

A place where joy
knows the way home.

Then perhaps they would use their power
the way rivers do.

Not to conquer.

Not to control.

But to nourish.

To heal.

To carve new pathways
through hardened places.

Perhaps they would remember
that the earth is not separate
from themselves.

That tending a garden,
raising a child,
writing a poem,
feeding a stranger,
protecting a stream,

are all forms
of the same prayer.

I did not know this
when I was twenty-eight.

I was still learning
how to hear my own voice
beneath the noise.

Still mistaking longing
for direction.

Still believing
someone else held the map.

But age has its own medicine.

And now,
as the years gather around me
like old friends,

I find myself wanting
to place this knowing into the hands
of every young woman I meet:

You are already whole.

Love deeply.

Risk your heart.

Dance when the music comes.

But do not hand anyone
the keys to your belonging.

You belong
to the stars,
to the earth,
to the mystery,
to yourself.

And from that place, love the world.

Love it fiercely.

Love it well.

Love. Always. ~Jayne