This is a poem written by my beloved Alexander technique teacher, Ellen Bierhorst. I am choosing to publish it today because of the March on Washington today. I’m sure, as in my own city, there are smaller marches throughout the US as women and men stand to make their voices known for the rights of women. My family is represented at the local march today.

And now, the poem.  Let there be love:

Woman’s Golgotha

Well, I don’t know, Jesus, who brought you back to life on the third day,

But I know they always made a big deal of it and scared us as children

Saying you shed your blood for all of us,

But godamnit I, a woman, shed my blood for human kind not once but every month for forty years!

I don’t know who resurected you, Jesus,

But I know that I, a woman, resurected myself!

In the pit of hell, all Light extinguished, I made the awesome decision

That even though the reality of love had been disproved,

Even though the lamp of hope that had burned in my life, alone, strong and true had been shattered by my beloved,

Yet I would not accept a universe without love.

And I saw that my task could be healing Sickness as it wound its evil through my own life:

An insane marriage to a good but raging man,

A work life riddled by denials and repressions,

Family finances plagued by fear and inattention,

A big old house full of junk and mess, sagging into ruin.

Greatly more than my small courage and strength could face,

Yet for you, for Love itself I faced them all

And vowed to spend my life cleaning it up, setting all to rights.

For myself alone I had not strength to try, but that July day I wrote on my wall

In four-inch letters, “For you I will triumph over all my darkness!”

The only huge work, the only mountain I could sculpt, the only sea I could turn.

People say that it was such a horrible thing to die hanging on a cross with nails in your hands.  And it is.

But people act like nobody could match or top it.

That’s what I thought too;

As a child I squirmed at night and sweated, envisioning the tortured corpse on its cross of fear.

Well, move over, Jesus.  I, a woman, have been to Golgotha…

And my sisters cover the earth.

Alone and in the darkness, I, a woman, stood and said Let there be love!

And my sisters cover the earth.

For more information on Ellen and the many ways she makes this world a more beautiful place, see this website.