Dear Jacqueline,
Fear not. Nobody will take your child from you. No man. No state. No god.
I love and honor your commitment to do no harm. Your loving heart knows no bounds.
And yet, at this time, I challenge, as your friend and your coach, that to do no harm to your family may require the threat of harm by you to be felt by others.
It’s time for you to be Mama Bear. To protect your young, until they are old enough to protect themselves. Do this, and one day they will be protecting you.
To stand with your hand on your sword and intensity in your gaze is not an act of violence. A predator’s primary role can be to protect. There is a place within you that is willing to kill to protect. You do not need to engage, but please know it.
Know as you walk into that courtroom. Have it be the ground upon which you stand when you testify.
Your being will be felt. It will move through him into her and together they will back down.
When your young feel this in you, they will find it in themselves and carry it with them as their independence grows and they are able to choose more who they spend their time with.
Remember always that you are a lioness. Your capacity for care is predicated on your power.
In the wake of this, as you move your gaze again towards the promising horizon of your life, do not wonder in my presence whether remaining single is your lot. To call it your spiritual destiny, I challenge, is an artful spiritual bypass. You yearn to love deeply and in fact, I know that you know who the man is you yearn to be with.
As the circumstance has arisen, perfectly timed for you and him to come together, do not toy with the story of friendship.
There is no friendship not worth sacrificing for the possibility of deep and eternal love.
Love has hurt, not as its alternative, but as its partner in crime.
In fact, the only thing we are promised in love is pain.
So risk hurt. Yes, risk pain. Risk losing a friend for the finding of a soul mate.
You have waited your whole life for a man you didn’t believe existed. And thank God, because if you had believed, you may have acted too soon with somebody else.
–
Dear Woman,
Just as I have been a champion for my client, Jacquline, who has now overcome all of those things I have written here, I am a champion also for you.
I am a champion for you falling in love with the pain of love. Not fearing it, but loving it as love’s equal.
When you love the hurt that comes with love, you are able and willing to open.
This doesn’t make you aimless. It makes you free.
This doesn’t mean you’re available to any man or to any opportunity.
It means that you have the choice to be fully with, for, and receptive to what you choose.
Furthermore, when you are able and willing to feel hurt, you become able and willing to present the possibility that you are ready to be the source of hurt.
This doesn’t make you violent.
It makes you capable of violence.
A woman capable of violence is a woman who is safe in her body.
A woman who knows her power to hurt, rarely if ever needs to impose that power.
But as long as she fears hurt, she will remain closed and at risk.
I am a champion, not for you hurting, but for you welcoming the hurt that is and adopting a will and worldview in which the possibility of hurting others is not something you avoid out of fear, but something your loving heart chooses against.
The outcome may be the same, but the being which produces that outcome is very different.
And this difference – that different way of being a woman – is what makes you an Empress.
It is this which empowers you to raise and rule an empire.
This is your right. Let no man, no cultural narrative, no thousand-year history convince you otherwise.
My promise is that a more beautiful partnership between love and hurt within you is a path for personal empowerment that will yield greater material and relationship results in your life.
Loving us all, JPM
