For the Pencil-Slinging Warrior Princesses

“Words fuel, feed, nurture and nourish,” I say to my daughter, reaching for my wallet to give her money. “Books are as good as blueberries.”

“Except you can’t eat a book,” she says.

“Oh, sweetie,” I say, “you can devour a book. You can suck and chew and gnaw on the same one over and over and over again.”

I didn’t confess how I lived off books when I was her age. I didn’t say how without books, journals and pets, I wouldn’t have made it to now.

Instead I spoke of Mary Oliver’s poems as though “Dogfish” was a relative who whispered the secret to life.

Pema Chodron has been the bottle and binky I’ve suckled through all of life’s major storms. Pema fed my infant and primal emotions with the tenderness and love my mother couldn’t. I slept in, on and with her books even before I could understand them.

In fact, I’m still chewing on all the books I’ve ever read.

“Books are necessary” is what I say to my tweenie.

“I guess,” she says, more interested in her iPhone now that I’ve given her the money.

“No guess about it,” I want to pull over and say, urgent and insistent.

I leave it, and her, alone. It’s not up to me to say what will fuel her engine.

The other girl—the girl I once was, now an invisible and palpable presence in the back seat—is pulling my attention. I’m driving her—this stranger to my daughter, who is my history and core—around with us.

And I ache.

My 11-year-old self was a bet-wetting girl who also got her period and didn’t have access to sanitary supplies. She went to school sitting on her hands, hoping blood wouldn’t mark school chairs. She held her breath, hoping it would keep others from smelling her. Abuse and neglect weren’t words she knew or could understand. She just thought she was doing life wrong and that’s why it was hard.

When I hug my daughter and say, “I love you,” she says, “Of course you do. I’m awesome.”

The mother I am smiles and the little girl I was shakes her head and wonders what it would be to feel loved and lovable as a child.

She’s the part of me who cried earlier this week when my soul friend, Heidi Aylward, called me a pencil-slinging warrior princess. I choked up and put my hand on my heart. 

Even though I’m a close to 50-year-old goddess-queen, it was the little girl princess tearing up.

For years, I thought I was damaged, broken, flawed and a magnet for violence. I was wrong. I now know I’m a strong warrior, but it was the first time I realized I was a warrior—even then. Read More