Unentangled: A Letter to the Woman Who Chose Peace

Stillwater, where peace does not argue. 

My Dearest Mermaid Darlings of the Stillwater Petticoat Society,

Permit me to draw my chair a little closer to yours, to smooth my skirts beside the hearth, and to speak in that low and tender tone one reserves for a beloved friend who has known both the frost of exclusion and the warmth of her own becoming, for there is a peculiar sorrow — and an even more peculiar strength — that arises when a woman begins to awaken into her own soul and finds, to her astonishment, that not all will rejoice in her rising; indeed, some will call her strange, others misguided, and a few, in their tremor of certainty, may even whisper that she has wandered into shadow, when in truth she has only wandered inward.

It is a curious thing, is it not, that the moment a lady ceases to ask permission to exist in her own spiritual skin, she is suddenly informed by anxious sentinels that she has stepped beyond the pale, as though the garden of God were bordered by their particular fence and patrolled by their own trembling convictions; yet I have observed, with the calm of one who has weathered many a squall, that those who cry “danger” most loudly are often fortifying the ramparts of their own fear, for when one’s faith is fused not to love but to alarm, every differing bloom appears a weed, and every sovereign woman a threat to the carefully tended order of things.

You must understand, my loves, that when you no longer quake beneath the opinions of others, when accusations fall upon your doorstep like leaves that cannot enter unless you open the door, there arises within you a most delightful lightness, a sensation as though you have at last set down a heavy trunk you had been carrying since girlhood, and in its place you discover something far sturdier than defiance — you discover steadiness; not the rigidity of stone, but the rooted grace of an old oak whose branches may sway yet whose heartwood does not splinter at every passing gust.

There was a season — and perhaps you know it well — when being misunderstood felt like annihilation, when family alienation stung like salt upon an open wound, when spiritual accusation threatened to unhouse your very sense of belonging, and yet, instead of shrinking into compliance or sharpening yourself into perpetual defence, you chose — sometimes trembling, sometimes resolute — to heal, to regulate, to return again and again to your own centre until disagreement no longer signified danger and judgement no longer dictated your worth; this, my darling, is not arrogance, nor rebellion, nor some theatrical emancipation, but the quiet consolidation of the soul.

You will notice, as your spine grows straight and your breath grows even, that many still live upon the battlements of defence, interpreting every differing thought as invasion and every unconventional woman as a herald of doom, and though it may at first tempt you toward a subtle superiority — that faint and fleeting whisper that you have grown while they have not — I entreat you to smile gently at such a flicker, for it is merely the echo of the part of you that worked so very hard to survive, and it dissolves most sweetly when met with compassion rather than censure.

True maturity, I have found, is not the absence of ego but the refusal to enthrone it, not the impulse to correct the world but the willingness to let others be precisely where they are upon their own arc, for when you can delete what disturbs you, close the door without slamming it, and whisper sincerely, “May you find peace,” you have already stepped beyond the battlefield; you are no longer interested in proving, persuading, or performing righteousness, but in tending your own lamp and keeping its flame steady for those who wander in need of warmth.

And oh, what a revelation it is to discover that the most potent form of strength is not loudness but lightness, not reaction but rootedness, not conquest but authorship, for when you cease to build your identity in opposition to others and instead fashion it from the silken threads of your own lived truth, you become psychologically expensive — unbaitable, unshameable, uncoerced — and in troubled times it is to such women that others instinctively gravitate, not because they shout the loudest, but because they remain the calmest harbour in a season of restless seas.

So if you, my sweet mermaid, have been called peculiar, misguided, or even wicked for daring to inhabit your own spiritual sovereignty, take heart, for your task is not to wrestle shadows nor to patrol the beliefs of those who fear you, but to remain soft and boundaried, open-hearted and discerning, wishing others well without surrendering your ground, and continuing, with the serene confidence of a lady who knows her lineage, to build a life so anchored in truth that even accusation cannot rearrange it.

I write this not as one who has never felt the chill of exclusion, but as one who has flourished despite it, who has learned that being unentangled is far more powerful than being victorious, and who would far rather be rooted and luminous than universally approved, and if ever you doubt your steadiness, remember that the oak does not argue with the wind, nor does the sea apologise for its tide — it simply remains itself, vast and faithful, and in so doing becomes a refuge for all who are weary.

Most affably yours ‘til my next enchanting swim, LR

On Self-Authorship and the Quiet Injury of Unnamed Things

From the Stillwater Days

My dearest Mermaid Darlings and beloved members of the Stillwater Petticoat Society,

There comes, often without herald or ceremony and at a moment far quieter than one might expect, a realisation that settles gently yet irrevocably upon a woman’s spirit, wherein she understands that she must at last take the pen back into her own hand, not for the purpose of contesting another’s version of events, nor to plead her case before a fickle and ever-attentive world, but merely to stand within the truth she herself has lived and to write from that ground alone, free of borrowed ornament, softened omission, or the restless desire for witnesses to affirm what her own conscience already knows.

I have been much occupied of late with thoughts of self-authorship, with that sober and inwardly luminous labour of remaining faithful to one’s experience even as more palatable narratives pass easily from mouth to mouth, and with the peculiar ache that sometimes attends this faithfulness — an ache not born of loss alone, but of discrepancy, of observing words employed too lightly and lives recounted with a gentleness they did not earn, until something within the spirit recoils, not in envy nor bitterness, but in allegiance to truth itself, which resents being made decorative.

For those who have truly begun again, without inheritance to soften the descent, without unseen scaffolding erected beyond the public frame, without the luxury of stepping neatly into a next chapter already prepared, beginning anew is neither a metaphor nor a literary convenience, but a lived winter crossed with bare feet and steady resolve, a home rebuilt plank by plank, a life re-entered without applause or reassurance, and it is this unspoken weight, borne quietly in the bones, that sharpens one’s awareness when tales of ruin are told without rubble and reinvention is praised without the reckoning that ordinarily attends it.

I do not set these reflections down in a spirit of accusation, nor with any desire to convene a tribunal of judgment, for the world is already overburdened with courts of opinion and verdicts rendered with undue haste, but rather to remind myself — and you, my dearest companions — that no telling, however polished or warmly received, possesses the power to diminish the truth you have lived, nor does your authority require correction of the record, comparison of paths, or the eventual unraveling of another’s carefully sustained illusion in order to be made secure.

There is, I have found, a particular freedom in laying aside the longing for visible vindication, a freedom that neither demands forgiveness upon command nor insists that justice arrive upon a public timetable, but instead releases the quiet hope that another woman’s life must be exposed, corrected, or undone for one’s own story to make sense, for self-authorship asks only that you refuse to abandon your knowing in exchange for peace with appearances, and that you remain seated within your truth even when it is less adorned and more costly than those that travel easily.

Some stories must be believed loudly in order to be endured at all, while others are endured so deeply that repetition becomes unnecessary, and if you find yourself among the latter — those who have lived without spectacle, rebuilt without illusion, and carried on without the comfort of collective applause — you may rest in the knowledge that you need neither to correct the record, sharpen your voice for hearing, nor measure your path against another’s polish, for your authority resides not in what you proclaim, but in what you have survived without ever consenting to lie to yourself.

Let us then continue, quietly and steadfastly, to write our lives as they are — salt-stained, hand-stitched, and honest — leaving ornamental narratives to those who require them for shelter, trusting that the sea, which knows the weight of true crossings, recognises the difference at once, and that in time, so too, shall we.

Most affably yours til' my next enchanting swim, LR