She could be bitter. She has every right to be. Much has been taken from her, much expected. She sometimes feels so little seen, so little known and valued in her small domain. She knows within her lives a power that she can use. She can rise up. She can be loud. She can make demands. She can bring down kingdoms.
But she has learned another way. She has learned that power can be a gentle force, less like a hurricane and more like a river patiently carving a path into the earth. She knows that she can take life, drain souls dry in her quest for a reckoning, or she can give it. She can demand to be seen and heard, or she can listen. She can hold. She can open herself wide and receive—pain and loneliness, it is true—but also deepest joy. She can be a light around which people gather for warmth and comfort.
She knows that sometimes the most powerful thing to do is to empower others. And so she becomes the shaper of the whole world, the one no one thinks of in the moment but everyone remembers as the strength behind it all. This is she. Lifegiver.
(Five Minute Friday)
View from the Valley 
Wisdom by the water. Love the message and the photo really evokes a calm where perhaps up the stream it was more turbulent.
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Love the last paragraph.
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I know these things to be quite true,
that she is strong and able,
and she knows what she must do.
rule world by rocking cradle.
I know of sorrows in her heart,
but as a dude, I’m kinda dumb;
though I see them tear her soul apart,
their depths I cannot plumb.
I know she could be brash and loud,
but that is not her way,
to self-proclaim, conceited, proud;
no, she’s grace to stay
in quiet, and not throw a fit,
to heal Creation, bit by bit.
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