sources for desire

There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient...I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something they need they are “deprived,” or even “emasculated,” and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.
On the Crane Wife, by CJ Hauser

To paraphrase, the crane wife stays up all night to pluck out her feathers, to hide that she is a bird, a creature both capable of flight and requiring care. "To keep becoming a woman is so much self erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one."

I know I am not the only one to whisper, "Ope," embarrassed for being so recognized. So what do we do with this vulnerability, with this deep want? I see two paths for myself: first to unsurface the origin stories for this sense of shame and responsibility, the stories we collectively share, and the ones that are my own, and to learn to thirst, to learn to articulate desires. First of all though, we gotta realize that this is okay... Contentedness is a means to appreciate, but does not discount desire and drive. That desire is taboo, in the truest sense of the word:

For example, I wrote earlier about Polynesida, and how the word "taboo" comes from "tupua" (or "tapu"), which means menstruation, but the most common translation of "tapu" is actually "sacred."
​Fruit of Knowledge by Liv Strömquist

So there it is. Yeah, we know desire, and expressing desire, can feel taboo- silly and wrong and shameful and unnecessary and too much- but we gotta remember that the word also means sacred. Want is not evil. It can be sacred. Desire can show us a path to who we want to be. Desire can drive us to pleasure and love and gratitude. But how do I get there? It is all unlearning and learning again. Where am I ashamed? Why? Where can I steep myself in materials that give me space to want and articulate such desires?
I am not asking you to delve into manifestation... only to acclimate yourself to who you are, and where you want to go. You usually aren't a danger to yourself. Hear what you want. Dig into it.
Without further ado, following is a list for learning to desire, and to speak.

Resources for Desire

• Adrienne Maree Brown on IG + Pleasure Activism: the Politics of Feeling Good
• Morgan Day Cecil on IG
• Moon Lists by Leigh Patterson
• tattoos, tarot, skincare, and forest bathing
• Art, Gender, and Spirituality, an Earthmama Medicine interview with Jordi
• focu$ video by Rimon
• Melodrama by Lorde
• dance dance dance dance dance
• Hitomi Mochizuki's Youtube channel
• Hold Still by Nina Laccour
• Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Sighswoon on IG
• dressing exactly the way you want to
• watching women in politics: think AOC's IG lives, Yes She Can compiled by Molly Dillon, and On the Basis of Sex
• keep a journal. be bold.

Go in peace x
M

m

 is a poet-yogi-youth librarian, found here and here,  armed with matcha, poetry books, and a lot of questions. M's words may be found puddled in paper, and in various journals too, including Rogue Agent. Ghost City Press will released M's chapbook August 14.