I have been sitting this morning with the memory of a lady who once walked very near to where I now keep my quiet thoughts—Elizabeth Robins—a woman of stage and pen, who lent her voice to the rising tide of women and yet, in time, withdrew not in defeat, but in discernment, choosing the quieter authorship of influence, where ink travels farther than any cry.
For we are often told, in this present hour, that power must announce itself—must arrive in great volume, in insistence, in visible command—and yet, if one watches closely, the most enduring movements of the world have seldom been so hurried in their expression; they have been carried, rather, as the sea carries her tide—steadfast, persuasive, and entirely certain of her return.
Miss Robins, in her way, seemed to perceive this truth before many others, that there exists a manner of shaping the world which does not require one to harden oneself against it, nor to meet force with force, but to stand so wholly within one’s own knowing that the world, quite naturally, begins to rearrange itself in response.
And I confess, my darlings, it has led me into a most tender line of thought.
That perhaps a woman need not become louder in order to be heard, nor sharper in order to be taken seriously, but rather more deeply rooted within her own inward authority, where persuasion—true persuasion—lives not in the tongue, but in the state of being from which the tongue is moved.
For is it not so that the garden does not argue with the season, and yet, in its quiet readiness, it becomes the very proof of spring?
I have often observed that when we attempt to force the world into shape, it resists us with equal vigour; and yet, when we become the shape itself—when we assume, with a certain calm certainty, the end already secured—the outer world seems to soften, as though it had been waiting all along for our consent.
There are those who would say this is too gentle a way to meet a world so given to noise, but I have never found gentleness to be weak, nor stillness to be without motion; indeed, it is in still waters that the deepest currents are held.
And so, as I think of the early women—those who stood, and those who wrote, and those who chose their influence with care—I find myself less concerned with the manner in which power appears, and more devoted to the manner in which it is held.
It is simply certain.
There is, I believe, a great unravelling taking place—of old structures, of inherited assumptions, of ways of living that no longer feel as though they belong to the soul that must now inhabit them—and though it may be named as loss by some, I cannot help but recognise it as a clearing, as though a long-neglected garden were at last being opened to the light.
And in such a season, it would seem unwise to rush about in distress, when one might instead take up one’s place with a quiet readiness, tending first to the inner soil from which all outer forms must grow.
Heaven, if it is to be found at all, has never been elsewhere.
It is discovered, rather, in the gentle return to oneself.
And so I write to you not as one making a proclamation, but as one sharing a small and steady knowing—that there is a way of being in this world that does not require you to abandon your softness in order to be strong, nor your grace in order to be effective, but asks only that you become so entirely aligned within that the outer world can do little else but follow.
Let us, then, be as the tide.
Unhurried.
Unmistakable.
And entirely our own.
Most affably yours 'til my next enchanting swim,
Lady Raquel
