I will not allow other people’s opinions to form the image I carry of myself.

Not everyone will like you, no matter how much effort you make towards this end. You will have a myriad of people come through your life at various stages, people you will forge relationships with, people who you will meet in passing, people who you will meet through other people. Some will be your friends, others will be determined to be your enemy, and yet others will be indifferent. I run into a large variety of people in my life, many of them I meet in the process of doing readings. There was one lady who I will always remember because I knew, the minute she sat down at the table across from me, that she had already made up her mind not to like me. As I turned the cards and began interpreting them, she would come back with sarcastic comments to punctuate the reading. The reading became like a drama in comedy. After each interpretation, there followed a snide remark. I laughed, ignored the remarks, and continued the reading.

There will be people, usually family members or close friends, who will label you and try to stuff your little round body into a square hole. It hurts. They will try to paste upon you attributes of other people they know, most likely people that you are intimately connected to. How many times my grandmother told me in a burst of anger and frustration: “You’re just like your mother!” I liked my mother. So one day, after my grandmother had done this for the umpteenth time, I looked at her and calmly said, “Thank you.”

It’s of utmost importance to never allow other people to slap negative attributes upon your person, your mind, your soul. You know who you really are, and you may be the only one who does. No one else can tell you what you are like, how you feel, how you will react, what you will do next, how you will behave. They cannot do this to you…unless you let them.

I will connect with the universe through the Divine Feminine, and through that connection with my ancestors and the root of all that is me.

For centuries the Divine Feminine has been ripped from the heart and soul of womanhood, shrouded in stories of evil encompassing snakes and apples, betrayal and guilt. Womanhood needs to wrestle its freedom from this lie, to regain its strength and equilibrium through the power of the Mother Goddess.

Through the youthful exuberance of the Maiden, the fertility of the Mother, and the wisdom of the Crone, we have to pass on to our daughters the beauty of the feminine mystique, impressing upon them the reverence and respect that is its due. While the world still revolves around the decisions of men, it is woman who harvests its bounty through their children, their art, their writing, their dreams, and their strong sense of nurturing. It is woman who builds up; and through her spirituality and connection with the Goddess, woman can repair the damage of previous generations, building new futures and opportunities for her daughters.

With our strong and renewed sense of connection to the Feminine Divine, the most important thing we can do is to impart upon our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons the strength, beauty, wisdom, and power of womanhood at its most pure. We can lead them back to the Goddess, who is, after all, their Mother too.

I will strive to maintain my independence: emotional/mental independence, physical independence, and spiritual independence.

You would think, after all this time, including a generation that came through the Women’s Liberation Movement, that women today would be assertive, successful, and most importantly– independent. That’s true for a lot of women in the 21st century, but not for all. Around the world, women are still fighting for basic human rights and dignity. They are still chained to archaic religious law, racial and cultural restraints, economic and financial bonds. Even in this country, there are fundamentalist movements that prefer to keep a woman secluded in the home, barefoot and pregnant, and under the dominance of a husband.

I know, I’ve been there, done that. I managed to break free of this predicament by finding the will to fight back and overcome the suppression when, one day, my then husband, incensed at my refusal to follow his wishes, was in my face, eyes bulged, shouting with a spitty lisp, “Obey me! I said you will obey me!” That did it. As I stared at the ugly expression and insolent lump of irate human flesh in front of me, I was repulsed, the spell was broken. I stepped back, smiled, and said, “No.” In that moment, I knew I was free. And he knew it too.

As a woman I will strive to have a strong work ethic, to embrace education and all the benefits that come with it, to improve myself wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself. I will strive to learn a craft, to become an enterpreneur, to dare, to experiment, to discover, and to grow. I will be all that I can be, and then I will reach even higher.

(This essay is a work-in-progress. As I’m spiritually enlightened with future affirmations, I will post them here.)